Modern high-speed rail will allow overnight travel between the coasts and day trips between Chicago and New York, attracting the business traveler. Also the latest maglev trains floating on a literal cushion of air, may reduce the time further by a third or more, all without time-consuming trips to and from airports at both ends.
A project to connect San Francisco with Los Angeles supported by Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is underway even if all the financing is still not in place. Originally intended to utilize state, federal and private financing, it is opposed by President Trump and Congressional Republicans, drying up federal funding. With $30 billion of the necessary $100+ billion in hand, work continues on the Fresno to San Francisco section in the hope that future elected officials would find it difficult to abandon an unfinished project with partially constructed pylons, viaducts and railbeds littering the landscape.
Rationality is less of a problem than a Republican aversion to new government-funded projects -- in marked contrast to the people's enthusiasm, people who happily passed the original bond vote to initiate funding for the high-speed rail project in California.
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