First John McCain ridiculed spending federal money on researching the DNA of grizzly bears, and a three million dollar earmark for an "overhead projector" in Obama's home district. The "overhead projector" turned out to be a state-of-the-art planetarium projector for Chicago's renown Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum. Then Sarah Palin ignorantly ridiculed truly valuable fruit fly (Drosophila) research.
Now "Bobby" Jindal is mocking "wasteful spending" on volcano monitoring (please note there are 93 volcanos in Sarah Palin's home state of Alaska, one of which is fixing to blow any second and could potentially affect 34 villages, towns and cities, including Anchorage and Wasilla) and magnetic-levitation rail (or, Maglev) systems.
While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.
Time to get real, governor. Follow me downstairs.
Maglev rail is faster, quieter, smoother and more energy-efficient than conventional rail, and is already in use in Japan, China, Korea and Germany. Countries with proposed systems currently being studied include Great Britian (linking London with Glasgow), Japan (linking Tokyo with Osaka), Venezuela (linking Caracas with La Guarira), China (linking Shanghai with Hangazhou), India (linking Mumbai and Dehli), Pakistan (linking Lahore Central and Lahore Airport), Germany (linking Munich with its airport), and surprise surprise, the United States where seven different systems are being studied, including an international line connecting my home town of Seattle with Vancouver BC.
And sure enough, the so-called 269-mile "Disneyland to Sin City" line (officially called the "California-Neveda Interstate Maglev") is already under consideration, and has been for about three years. (Actually, the terminal would be in Los Angeles, not Anaheim. In any event it's important to note that Disneyland gets about 14.7 million visitors a year, or 40,000 a day. However, in the summer, during three-day weekends, spring break, and the Christmas/New Years holiday season, daily attendance spikes to almost 60,000. Having a Maglev rail servicing Disneyland makes perfectly good sense to me.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
California-Nevada Interstate Maglev: High-speed maglev lines between major cities of southern California and Las Vegas are also being studied via the California-Nevada Interstate Maglev Project. This plan was originally supposed to be part of an I-5 or I-15 expansion plan, but the federal government has ruled it must be separated from interstate public work projects.
Since the federal government decision, private groups from Nevada have proposed a line running from Las Vegas to Los Angeles with stops in Primm, Nevada; Baker, California; and points throughout San Bernardino County into Los Angeles. Southern California politicians have not been receptive to these proposals; many are concerned that a high speed rail line out of state would drive out dollars that would be spent in state "on a rail" to Nevada.
Things to consider:
. $45 million for funding an environmental-impact study of the California-Neveda Interstate Maglev was in a transportation bill signed in June 2008. By President George W. Bush.
. Interstate 15, which links Los Angeles and Las Vegas, is chronically traffic-choked. Roughly 11 million South Californians make the 5-hour drive to Las Vegas every year. (Sometimes that drive can take 7 or 8 hours.) A Maglev train would take 86 minutes to make the full trip, and that includes stops in Anaheim CA (Disneyland), Ontario CA (Ontario Airport), Barstow CA, Primm NV, and Invanpah Valley Airport NV.
. With the increased efficiency and convenience of a Maglev line servicing the I-15 corridor, ridership will almost certainly pay for itself, and carbon-puffing oil-consuming auto traffic between LA, Disneyland and Las Vegas would be eased significantly.
. Conventional trains have to compete for rail space with freight trains, a problem that has plagued Amtrak for years and which explains in part why rail travel in the U.S. is slow and largely underused. Because Maglev trains don't use conventional rails, they won't have that problem.
. The expansion of Maglev lines across the country would promote more travel, and would be cheaper, more convenient, more energy efficient, and nearly as fast as flying.
Consider that the distance between Seattle and Eugene, where my parents live, is nearly identical as the distance between Los Angeles and Las Vegas (283 and 269 miles, respectively). Currently we make that long 5-hour trip only about once every year or every other year simply because it's such a long boring drive. Consider the alternatives:
. While Amtrak is fairly convenient and it'd be nice not to drive, it's moderately more expensive and actually takes longer (7 hours).
. Flying from SEA to EUG takes an hour and five minutes (not counting check-in time) but it's vastly more expensive and, travelling with three small children, not very convenient at all. And getting to and from the airport poses a whole set of new problems.
. Going by Maglev would take only about 1-1/2 hours, and would be just as convenient as taking Amtrak. (The train station in Seattle is downtown and easily accessible.) I'm certain that when you weigh the efficiency and the convenience of taking a Maglev train, it would more than makeup for the cost.
I can say with utmost certainty that if a Maglev line existed between Seattle and Eugene, we'd make the trip to see Mom/Dad (Grandpa/Grandma) much more frequently. And getting Grandpa and Grandma up here to visit us would be much easier.
::: UPDATE :::
My claim that the Maglev terminal would be in Los Angeles not Anaheim was based on the Proposed Route inset box in the wikipedia page linked above.
However, it appears that the proposed terminal for the Maglev line would in fact be in Anaheim. The line would connect in Ontario with a North-South HSGT line that had gone through LA. See pdf below:
http://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/...