>> [...] the pace of Chinese rail-building [...]
>
> Right. But didn't we have that pace here before? How do
> you repeat that?
You just feel it in your gut that it's the right thing to do, step up to the podium and say: We're going to do this.
How do you go to war twice in 2 years?
Same way.
> And, to keep with rail projects, they don't always solve
> the problems we think they do. Here in LA, rail projects
> in the last 20+years have been designed to get low-wage workers
> into the city from low(er)-rent areas miles outside.
China is maybe the wrong place to look; France and Germany are better places to look.
I would say that the rail efforts in LA haven't worked not because they were done wrong, but as Krugman might say, "it wasn't tried" -- it's such a small drop in the bucket, and the LA basin has had a pretty big share of the activity. Multiply that by 100 and see where it gets us ...
The Northeast Corridor study that just came out looks good, but try to accomplish it in 6-8 years instead of "30" (which means, really, 40).
$117B: cheap.
/jordan