I see the airlines are instituting a new round of surcharges on travel, charging more money for suitcases, snacks -- even water. That's just one more reason why we should have more options for travel in California -- like high-speed rail, for example, zooming up through the center of California and taking folks to the coasts north and south.
The plans for high-speed rail are very exciting, but there's some infighting among the supporters. Come on, people, if the thing doesn't get started, nobody goes anywhere. We write about the importance of jump-starting this project in an editorial in today's Bee. Read it by clicking here.
Associated Press photo: On Friday, China unveiled a new high-speed rail route from Beijing to Tianjen, which will help transport Olympics visitors. The new train cuts travel time for 70 minutes to 30 minutes.
This should have been done years ago already.
This is much needed and needs to be done immediately. It is a commuters dream come true. Hopefully the prices wont be through the roof. Not that we need mlore people here but some to fill the houses that they keep building would be better than housing graveyards. Get it done.
Cutting travel time in half is impressive. But we still have to know how much the money for the Sacramento/San Diego line would buy of a conventional railway net for all over the valley. The fast train from Paris
to the English Channel coast is great, but the French have trains to practically everywhere else as well. Californians between San Francisco and Bakersfield don't. They are still dependent on automobile travel because buses have been curtailed too over the years. The Bay Area is served well by BART. I dispute the claim that
thousands of people would travel on the bullet train Sacramento/San Diego daily The Lawson vote would go for a SQART? ? ? San Joaquin Valley Area Transportation.
But a a no for the financing of that Bullet train.