California HSR

YESYESYESYES.

I don't know how I missed this, but holy fuck I'm excited.

For those who don't know, HSR stands for high-speed rail. It's what it sounds like: it's your standard passenger train, except it's sleek and sexy as hell and goes anywhere in the range of 200-300 km/h. For some scale reference, if there was a HSR line along the Cascadia corridor you'd be able to get from Vancouver to Portland in a little over two hours - in the California model they're projecting San Fran to LA in about two and a half.

In truth, I don't know why this hasn't caught on in North America. I think anyone who's travelled by train can agree that it's exponentially more enjoyable than flying, and infinitely more enjoyable than driving. You can read, sleep, eat, work, talk with friends, or just stare wistfully out the window while you're riding a train. Hell, even the slow, standard passenger train ride from Victoria to Parksville (over three hours, probably about twenty minutes if it was HSR) is infinitely nicer than driving.

HSR's got it's downsides too, obviously. The amount of construction that it's going to take to put in all the rails and stations is going to be enormous, and rail construction, although admittedly much less messy than road buildings, is still pretty heavy business. Once everything's built, too, then you've got to power the trains. Electricity is better than oil or jet fuel, but you've still got to produce it somehow and that's where you can get problems on the Green front (although California could probably make a killing off solar and wind investments [like everywhere else, fuck]).

Above issues aside, HSR is long overdue and really, REALLY needed on this continent, and I really hope that this project doesn't fizzle out through beaurocratic processes. I'll be surprised if the system is running before 2020, but still, uuuuuuuuuuuurgh I'm really pleased that this looks like it's legitimately going.