Matt Yglesias explores "the real point" of the thought experiment:[I]f we took 10 percent of the defense budget and re-allocated that to infrastructure, we could have a national HSR network in ten years.
Heck, the total construction costs here are just two or three years' worth of federal farm subsidies, and I hardly think the California HSR project could be completed on a three-year schedule anyway.
(Another nearly $2 billion, also authorised Friday, will go towards other transportation and rail improvements, some of which are tangentially related to the HSR plans).California is the last remaining proponent of Barack Obama's vision of a modern railroad network in America, an idea that has grown increasingly unpopular as projected costs have risen.
Republican-run states, including Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida may have rejected federal stimulus money to spend on swanky new schemes, but California which has the most ambitious HSR plans of all is pressing ahead.
Every setback for California HSR, then, is a setback for American HSR, too.But this blow, while damaging, may not ultimately prove fatal.
Last year, inspired by Mr. Blanc's work, Matthew McGregor-Mento, 38, an executive creative director at Gyro: HSR, a New York advertising agency, and his wife, Emma, 35, a massage therapist, set out to build a vertical garden in their two-bedroom apartment in the East Village.
This quotation from blind American educator Helen Keller is an excellent starting point for anyone thinking about building a high-speed railway (HSR) line down Australia's east coast.
However, studies have shown that for every dollar spent on HSR on the first section between Sydney and Melbourne, the project would return $2.15 in economic benefit to our nation.
