Opinion: Southwest Airlines, flaws and all, is still superior to the high-speed rail project
Indeed, a supporter of HSR, Sen. Scott Weiner tweeted, “The Southwest Airlines meltdown reiterates the critical need for California to create a statewide high speed rail system.”
Here’s what the Authority sent out, minus the slick animation of a yet-to-be-built train: “!!Californians deserve the quick, efficient, and reliable travel alternative that much of the world already enjoys. With top speeds of 220 mph, high-speed rail will get you from SF to LA in under 3 hours, permanently transforming transportation in CA.”
Notice how the posting begins with not one, but two, exclamation points, as if announcing that Californians had better hurry to buy tickets. The tweet generated a list of comments longer than the imaginary track between Los Angeles and San Francisco. While a fair number of comments were from HSR supporters — most likely uninformed or those with a financial stake — far more comments were savagely critical. Among those who recognize the endless failures of the boondoggle is Democratic Sen.
This column has criticized HSR from its inception. Californians were promised a super-fast train that would travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco in about two and a half hours; the ticket price would be about $50; the total cost of the high-speed rail would be about $40 billion; and there would be significant private-sector support to build the project. Every single one of those promises has been broken.
Even before the 2008 vote, transportation experts were warning that the project would become a massive black hole into which California taxpayers would be committed to pouring hundreds of billions of dollars.
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