Sunday 10 December 2023

Why High-Speed Rail Is A Tough Sell?

 Well....you start with  the safety issue and convey that the train will be moving along at 200 mph.  You go and spend $3-billion to build some network from LA (central) to Vegas.  In the end, with safety problem values....the $3-billion will stretch into $6-billion.

Then one day....you have one single derailment, with forty dead folks and three-hundred seriously wounded folks.  By the time you reach a 'cause'.....the legal challenges come up, and the rail folks need to cough up half-a-billion to make everyone go away 'happy'.  

So then the problem is....what if there is a second derailment?

At this point, riders will drop drastically (like the use of the Hindenburg), and the potential of profits fall like a rock.

A year or two with only 20-percent of the seats filled for each trip....the states are now offering massive discounts to get people back, and the safety factor continues to be the problem.

Five Humble Thoughts

 1.  Life is not a Rubik's Cube....but sometimes you just can't get all the same colors on the same side.  Live with it.

2.  Conspiracy theories on occasion, will transit to being factual.  Sometimes, facts will even transit to being conspiracy theories.  I read this week that one out of five college students believe the German holocaust against Jews....consider the stories now to be conspiracy theories....rather than fact.

3.  The term 'ban' used to mean something.  I'm not sure a meaning exists anymore.

4.  Freedom of speech appears to have 1,000 different versions and meanings.  I guess if there were a freedom of silence appearance in the Constitution....it'd also have a thousand meanings.

5.  It just seems like a quarter of people that you might bump into daily...are hyper-critical about various topics (from politics and sports, to news and religion).