Note: Robert is honeymooning all week. Regular posting will resume August 3. Until then use these open threads to discuss anything related to the California high speed rail project.
Comment Starter: How did you first become interested in high speed rail? Was it a trip on a European or Asian HSR system? Repeated trips on California passenger rail that led you think "a bullet train would make this SO much easier?"
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Wednesday Open Thread
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9 comments:
"Comment Starter: How did you first become interested in high speed rail?"
I'm gay.
I think spokker brings up a good point. Gays are generally progressive thinkers and readily embrace new and different ideas about society moving forward. I don't know any gays who aren't supporters of CAHSR. There is probably little to no research on the matter but in my opinion gays love high speed rail.
I don't see how sexual orientation has anything to do with it, except perhaps that most gays in the US also happen to lean left politically and this is a government-led project. Plenty of heterosexuals support this project as well.
For me, the attraction is that electric trains are the quintessential zero (tailpipe) emissions vehicles. No need for fancy new batteries, the technology has already been in service for many decades.
Unlike gasoline and kerosene substitutes, electricity can easily be produced in any number of ways and transported over long distances. Indeed, Germany would like to shut down both its nuclear power plants and those running on coal. Researchers there are already developing virtual power plant control strategies for renewable electricity generation. California could do much the same.
The true core of this meme is "metrosexuality." The word carries no special baggage other than connoted by urbanisim and urbanocentrism. The CAHSR is designed to serve the extant urban cores. There is little debate on that matter. Sacto-SF-LA-SD. Really this isn't debatable no matter how much the half percent in the Central Valley protest.
Rob Dawg,
I respectfully disagree. The Central Valley is projected to grow immensely by 2050.
A large share of the expected 22 million addition people living in this state will be precisely there... the Central Valley and along the SR 99 corridor; Bakersfield, Fresno, Merced, Modesto, Stockton, Sacramento, etc.
HSR is not solely intended to serve existing cores, but to also serve this these growing population centers and provide transportation solutions. If HSR were not intended to serve these areas... we'd see a more direct line up the valley a la I5 corridor.
The movement of people and goods has been an interest of mine for over 30 years. Or, since I was a child. Initially exhibited interest in freeway interchanges, but later grew into urban planning, transportation, and then transit and rail.
I first learned of CHSRA about 10 years ago. At the time, no one knew what the north-south alignment would be... and there was some local speculation that a coastal route through San Luis Obispo was an option. That is where I was at the time and I have
followed the efforts since.
I am now in San Diego and look forward to finally voting (by absentee ballot).
...
Concerning Car-less in San Diego... I wouldn't be suprised at all if there is a correlation between progressives and HSR. And, as he says, gays are generally more progressive.
It’s been my experience the gays are more likely to live in urban core areas. In the Sacramento area, do you think the population of gays is higher in downtown/midtown, or Rancho Cordova? In the Bay Area are you more likely to find gays living in SF or in Pleasanton? Whether gay or straight, the new urbanism pro-transit type is more likely to come from these urban core areas.
"There is probably little to no research on the matter but in my opinion gays love high speed rail."
There should be at least a couple trains per day that go direct to SF that are all gay all the time. These are the party trains that have rainbow livery and only the cool dudes can buy tickets.
There should be two types of gay trains, one for the in your face fruity queen types like myself and one for the more respectable "wow I didn't know he was gay" types that work at aerospace firms.
Serious answer: I hate driving.
No ..there are alot of Gay F/A that will not vote for this..There
Job...I have already have 3 heated
arguments over this.. I called them SKY Bitches..
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