http://www.youtube.com/v/zD1QGNsRg74
Wow, LEAD ON CALIFORNIA, BRAVO! While I doubt the "zero-subsidy" hype, (ALL modes are subsidized in some way), this is the answer at home too. Note that in the video, the same track is being used for commuter rail, (the double deck cars) and high-speed rail, (the blue electric powered trains). More cool stuff, the same track and same electric system COULD be used by light rail trains. Not at the same time, probably not even the same period in time. However, the same system that supports high speed rail could work for light rail, one has to wonder if anybody at FDOT or CalTrans has thought of this?
Don't worry folks, by the time California can pull this off, WE will be on the high road to a new chapter in future transportation schemes. JTA will be moving in the general direction of SRT or "Space (Saucer) Rapid Transit". The first phase will be a system of giant bus sucking tubes under and over the streets of Jacksonville. FAR CHEAPER then LIGHT RAIL! They will function like the tubes at the drive-through teller window at your local bank. When a bus is needed, you will just dial 1-800-SUCK and in an instant a bus will spring forth from the ground and as soon as you enter, the whole affair will be sucked into a vacuum tube and rocketed to the other side of town. The newest incarnation of this advanced BRT idea will be called "Dial A Sucker!"
(http://photos.innersource.com/media/6617/l/Exelon-Tube.jpg)
Artistic Image of the new JTA Dial A Sucker, BRT Line! Funded by FLDOT!
So while we busy ourselves with more pavement and buses, (either the 12 mph type, or the 23 mph BRT models) California, will leave us eating the ballast dust kicked up by their new trains. Happy Cows come from California, so do dancing grapes, Old Hippies and great ideas... JACKSONVILLE and FLORIDA? Well, y'all, I can hear the snoring at Myrtle Avenue, and Tallahassee, from Coral Springs! Myrtle Avenue and Tallahassee? Yeah, "Happy swamp lizards come from there..."
Ocklawaha
It's a good video, but I think the California rail project is in the same situation as Florida's.
Quote
High-speed death watch
Governor, Legislature seem determined to kill a great idea.
Fresno Bee
07/24/07
California's proposed high-speed rail system is on life support, and the governor and Legislature have issued a "do not resuscitate" order. If the project is killed, it will be an appalling betrayal of the state's residents, and a legacy of shame that should attach itself to our so-called "leaders" until the end of history.
In the latest budget farrago in Sacramento, Democrats in the Legislature pulled $1.3 billion in statewide transit funding from the budget -- including a measly $55 million for high-speed rail -- in a failed attempt to placate Republicans in the state Senate.
They had sworn they'd leave the transit funds in the budget, but this is our state government. The Democrats also vowed to support the needs of old people, the poor and the young, but betrayed them as well in their not-so-fancy budget footwork.
The governor had sent a budget that included just over $1 million for high-speed rail, a sum barely sufficient to keep the process alive, much less make any actual progress. In fact, absent at least $40 million, many contracts for engineering and environmental work would have to be shut down.
This is the same governor who wrote, in a Bee commentary May 5, that "a network of high-speed rail lines connecting cities throughout California would be a tremendous benefit to our state. ... The promise of high-speed rail is incredible."
The governor's support has always had a catch -- a big one. He wants private funding up front before committing state funds to the project. That's why this great supporter of high-speed rail wants to pull a bond measure from the November 2008 ballot that would provide the project with nearly $10 billion to begin actual construction.
That's nuts. There may someday be substantial private investment in the project -- it pencils out as a money-maker -- but that's not going to happen unless the state primes the pump. And the governor and his staff know that, which makes his "support" of the high-speed system even more mealy-mouthed.
The "budget" now has some $15 million for high-speed rail, left over from an older bond measure. But recently Bakersfield Mayor Harvey Hall, writing on behalf of the San Joaquin Valley Rail Committee, urged the governor to veto that funding and spend the money instead to upgrade Amtrak service in the Valley. Some Sacramento observers say privately that Hall acted on behalf of Caltrans, which hates high-speed rail because it doesn't conform to their mid-20th century vision of ribbons of concrete and asphalt covering the entire state.
But the Hall letter gives Schwarzenegger the political cover he needs to put a spike through the heart of high-speed rail for good.
That's a terribly sad scenario. High-speed rail is advancing all around the world in more enlightened nations, but in California we remain fixated with the past, despite Schwarzenegger's relentless photo-op environmentalism and invocation of a return to grand visions for the once-Golden State. Those grand visions once propelled California into world leadership, but that was when we had real leaders, not this collection of venal panderers and childish buffoons.
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/news/2007/07-24-07.asp
Yep! I'll bet California still pulls this out before anyone else in our country. You know the good old USA? Number 1 in War, Number 1 in Peace, and Number 12 in the industrial World in rail. Have no fear, China is going high speed rail too, so we're about to become Number 13!
Ocklawaha