High Speed Rail:
Im currently reading
Visions in the Desert: Carl Hayden and Hydropolitics in the Southwest and it amazes me that we used to have guys like Carl Hayden and Barry Goldwater who actually did some good for Arizona. Today the Federal government is giving out huge sums of money and we have to rely on our Mayor and a Congressman to wrangle any of it for us.
Obviously we need more rail options for commuters and it would be nice to not be so reliant on air travel when going to other cities. Like James Howard Kunstler says, we have "a rail system the Bulgarians would be ashamed of." Arizona ought to pursue a HSR line connecting Nogales to the Grand Canyon. Something along these lines:
High speed rail connecting 2 major metropolitan areas to the gateway to another country and one of the 7 wonders of the world would be amazing for tourist and locals alike. If other states/the Fed wanted to chip in there could be a junction in Wickenburg to connect up to Vegas and one in Phoenix (at Union station) connecting to LA. Im not sure how you'd connect to SD, maybe through Phoenix or maybe Florence would make more sense. Or maybe youd just have to go to SD by way of LA.
I know it would be insanely expensive and thus itll probably never happen. But hey, the CAP cost billions too. Id love it if we had leaders who were able to sell the Federal Gov't on building it as a demonstration project for nationwide HSR but its highly unlikely we'd be able to convince them to build it here instead of somewhere like NYC-DC.[/QUOTE]
Yah having more Rail Options in the valley would be nice pretty cool.