tool name

Similar stories:

• Do the math, taxpayers

  Do the math, taxpayers

  Can we really afford high-speed rail in California? The rail project will be 520 miles in length. Using 110 miles of existing tracks will save $30 billion, a savings of $273 million per mile. The remaining 410 miles of track to be built will cost (410 miles times $273 million) $112 billion, not $68 billion.

  Perhaps we should invest this money in solving our water crisis and not paying China to build the high-speed rail system.

  Greg Grouleff

• HSR is our future

  HSR is our future

  In response to the April 16 letter by Tom Moradian on "High-speed rail and young professionals," he suggests high-speed rail is not a good investment in our future because there are currently no private investors and the Republican Congress isn't going to invest in HSR. He says our future is "tied to an economy already stressed by wasteful wars, short-sighted speculation and stubborn unemployment."

  All of those reasons are why, as a young professional, I am in full support of high-speed rail. As resource wars continue and the price of gasoline and oil drive up and up in the years ahead, HSR will help us get off of the foreign fossil fuels we are waging war over, help the unemployment rate with thousands of meaningful jobs, and will benefit all in society with an alternative to higher and higher prices at the pump.

  So, how again is high-speed rail going to "undermine" our future?

• Politics, not funding, drove growth of Spain's high-speed rail

  Politics, not funding, drove growth of Spain's high-speed rail

  BARCELONA, SPAIN -- Money wasn't a big obstacle when leaders in Spain decided in 1986 to build a high-speed train system.

  The nation was in an era of relative prosperity and preparing for a global limelight. In 1992, when Spain launched its first high-speed rail line, Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics, and World Expo '92 in Seville marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the Americas.

  While control of Spain's government has wobbled between conservative and Socialist parties over the past two decades, the continued expansion of high-speed lines has enjoyed support from both parties and the Spanish public -- and hefty contributions from the European Union.

• What California can learn from Spain's high-speed rail

  What California can learn from Spain's high-speed rail

  There are lessons -- from both successes and mistakes -- that California can learn from Spain's 20-year history with high-speed trains. Top among them is just how hard it is to be self-sufficient, even when conditions seem ideal.

• California auditor accuses high-speed rail project of risky financing

  California auditor accuses high-speed rail project of risky financing

  In yet another blow to California's troubled high-speed rail project, California's state auditor said this morning that the project's financing is "increasingly risky" and its oversight inadequate.