mtuandrew wrote:I don’t put a whole lot of blame on Newsom, he made a hard choice once Gov Brown’s term was over.
Politically, I have no idea how Virgin Trains America will play in California, but I bet they’ve been beating a path to Sacramento. They have a working relationship with a major equipment supplier, an amazingly large amount of capital from investors foreign and domestic, a good reputation in Florida, and an existing HSR project LA-LV. They also have ties to some Republicans (Rick Scott is or was a major investor in Brightline) that Newsom and the state house may find noxious, but money and a reputation as a good private partner smooths over a lot.
Yet Rick Scott was that same guy who mothballed an earlier (public-funded) HSR corridor that Brightline has come to fill the void with. The general Republican concensus towards transportation (and a lot of things, really) is minarchism, where the only things government are the military and police (and the laws that they enforce), which would explain why they're OK with spending huge on the military yet they flip out on anything that isn't military (even if it costs less and they can benefit more that than military). Everything else is private, though they seem to be OK with the government maintaining the freeways.
Wonder how Republicans would feel about Public-Private Partnership, though personally I'd much rather see (at the very least) the STRACNET tracks be nationalized.
mtuandrew wrote:This really has drifted from Tejón, hasn’t it.
Pretty much. It went to discussing about diesels on the Tejon (which IMO isn't really practical) and the whole politics surrounding CAHSR.