Fresno has a Santa Rampage?
theCryptofishist wrote:High Speed Rail
In general, transportation is a good infrastructure investment. Most of the great cities of the world are on trade routes, and that's been true for centuries. The Eric Canal opened up all the great lakes region and made New York City the main east coast port and must have really made Chicago into the Second City as well. And the railroads made huge amounts of money when the opened up the West.
I'm lucky enough to know a man, now retired, who spent most or all his career in the transportation planning business. And I work for one of public agencies working with the High Speed Rail Authority, so I have some insight there. The retiree and I had a discussion about a year ago, and he told me that California was probably the best place in the country to introduce HSR, because there was a large population, but there was also enough empty (-ish) space to build straight-aways where the train could hit those high speeds. And then there it all gets into politics.
The environmental work is on-going, and some people are pretty pissed. (I believe Kings County supervisors have asked that the project by-pass the county, for instance.) It's going to take a long time to build, and it's going to be expense.
At this point in time Merced to Fresno to Bakersfield just seems ridiculous, I agree. They went for the "easiest" section first. Even if the rest of it isn't built I can see some use for the two sections. All three cities have universities, which means that ideas and face-to-face meetings (and the internet will never completely replace a handshake) and professors and students would be able to travel up and down the corridor, and universities are good for generating economic activity, too.
And if the whole thing were already built, well, Jax Dee would have known how to get from Los Angeles to Fresno, no problem. People in the Central Valley could commute daily to San Francisco and Los Angeles. jkisha and I could arrange to meet each other in Fresno and have a Santa Rampage next month. Tourism. And long-term it's possible it will be the plane. Rail is a much more efficient (per gallon of fuel) mover of people than airplanes and gas is only going to go up. When rail is as cheap or cheaper than a plane and takes about the same amount of time, with less hassle, there will be a lot of demand. Plus the greenhouse gas savings--I know many people don't believe that, and I'm not going to argue about, but I want that on the table. And with the rail in place, Fresno and Bakersfield and Merced may actually become exciting destinations in of themselves. But it will take time. These are long term investments.
And, of course, we can't be sure that it will work out. It's a gamble. And the politics. And the ephemeral wetlands. And the possibility of induced growth into land that should be kept open. But, the window of opportunity to get the alignment won't be open forever. And I think we should be funding both new infrastructure and upkeep on the old infrastructure. And universities. We just have no idea what the roots of our prosperity are, so we don't water them. Bad practice in my view.
Vaccinations
Nobody makes money on the flu vaccines. Nobody! They don't make enough money--and we are putting our lives and our communities at risk by not having enough. If we get another influenza--and we will, maybe not in our lifetimes, but it will come--people will be dieing, children will be orphaned, or vice-versa, perhaps even mass graves, not enough health care workers so people dieing alone, people abandoning sick family members in order to escape the virus...And No Extra Vaccine, Because We Don't Make Enough. (Can you imagine riots of people trying to get the vaccine--because they will...) Okay, these examples are pretty much from the 1918-19 pandemic, and that's probably the worst outbreak ever. But it is a deadly disease and it is a simple vaccination, and I get my shot every single year. For Scott, if you must know, he'd hate it if I died of something so simple to avoid.
(Yes, the hpv virus shot costs a lot, and it's really hard to say "much smaller chance of cancer in 30 years" if you have to come up with $200 for each kid, but long term, that's probably a good investment too. $200 isn't going to go very far in cancer treatement... And the drug company deserves something for coming up with it...)
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