Interesting Links for 04-08-2025

[andrewducker]

1. 85% of Canadians want to integrate their economy with the EU

(tags:Europe Canada trade )

2. Did Musk Propose Hyperloop To Stop California High-Speed Rail?

(tags:ElonMusk transport rail trains California USA OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

#1. I'd vote for it (if I could).

#2. This is hilarious. Both projects were just a way to attract money, I guess. HSR was a failure (and who needs it anyway?), and Hyperloop was a fantasy.

[andrewducker]

High Speed Rail would move a lot of people between the two city centers, massively reducing the amount of air travel. There are around 130 flights per day between the two cities, and they're only 500 miles apart.

As far as I can tell, the major reason why it's failing so far is a lot of legal cases slowing things down.

[juan_gandhi]

Well, I'm familiar with the theory. But their idea was that HSR would start in downtown SF, and go through all the suburbia, like Palo Alto (100 m away from the Stanford professors houses), etc (about 1.5 km from the house where I lived in San Jose). Everybody was fighting. Then they decided - ok, let it end, for a while, somewhere like Buttonwillow, in the middle of the desert.

All of this sounded all the time like attempts to fight the population. Since Sacramento, the capital, was so far away from all this... why did not they want to connect Sacramento with LA? I guess, the feeling was the usual NIMBY.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, everyone wants transport, nobody wants to pay for it or have it go near their home.

[dewline]

I'd like to pay for it to be closer to my housing.

[andrewducker]

To be honest, me too!

[bens_dad]

Bristol had a plan (30-40 years ago IIRC) to fund a railway by buying up the property around it first and to sell it at a profit once the service was running.

I didn't hear that it had either succeeded or failed.

When I lived there I had a railway at the back of the garden, but I lived at the front, so don't know whether it was noisy.

I suspect everyone wants to be close to the station, but not the tracks.

[dewline]

1. I'll vote for it if I can.

2. Disgusting of him. Totally on-brand for him, too.