The High Cost of Low-Information Voters
1st May 2013
William A. Jacobson takes a look at ‘high speed’ rail.
Look at the travel time scale. First it assumes the train will move at 220 mph — quite a feat. If you ever have taken the Acela train in the Northeast Corridor you know that this is pie in the sky. Plus, even at that unobtainable speed, the trip from New York to L.A. would take almost a day of actual travel time — as opposed to a few hours on a plane. Good luck selling those tickets.
And cost? We have covered the massive cost overruns and time delays just to build a high speed rail from L.A. to San Francisco. Imagine that on a national scale.
It’s easy to poke fun at low information voters. Until you realize how much they cost.