Maglev at the Port
I'm going to be slipping in here to point out this great/interesting story from today's Times on the testing and exploration of building dedicated maglev cargo lines to service the Port. Only the revenue depleting traffic jam to come can motivate the kind of cash flow that the big iron required to take a genuine step forward in cargo moving technology at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach should be looking into. Of course it's a long way off. Any real change in the environmental impact of the Ports is a generation away - but it's a definite step in the right direction.
6 Comments:
Well, it sounds awesome...hopefully they can pull it off.
You think maybe they can sneak a few billion dollars into the Maglev budget to give us some passenger rail between Pedro and downtown LA?
if the port would kill the red car, perhaps that might work. nobody uses the damn thing anyway.
the one time i did go down there, there were three employees to a car (one was being trained).
one insisted I apply for a job because "this job pays great." if you ask me, the taxpayers are getting royally screwed on that deal.
Sorry to go off topic here. Just rec'd the December 2006 issue of San Pedro "Magazine" (the word magazine intentionally in quotes). It just keeps getting worse. A bunch of ads with a couple of amateurish, wordy columns. My high school newspaper was more informative and professional than this.
IMBG - one thing at a time. I want my maglev and I want my rail to downtown - I don't want them tied together so that neither ever happens. I think the cost of developing real rail transit in the South Bay that serves Pedro is a bigger project than the dedicated cargo maglev would be anyways. More likely that the piggyback would be the other way around.
Anon - I've seen the same "joke of a situation" on the Red Cars. I'm so embarrassed by them that I could cry. It's mass transit mockery.
IMBG - one thing at a time. I want my maglev and I want my rail to downtown
I was just joshin'. Like, I imagined somebody at the budget meeting creating a phony disturbance and then another guy scribbling down a paragraph really quick earmarking a few bil' for a passenger train.
If we ever do get a train (hey, it could happen), good old boring light rail would do the job perfectly well, as well as being compatible with the rest of the MTA system.
I'm so embarrassed by [the Red Cars] that I could cry. It's mass transit mockery.
For true. The Red Cars themselves are handsome and everything, but in terms of their relationship to actual rail transit they're just a step above those phony-ass "trolleys" that are really buses-painted-like-trolleys. (I always feel bad for the bus...it's like, they can't even just let it be proud of being a bus; they have to humiliate it by making it wear a ridiculous train costume, IN PUBLIC, all day long. "Look, everybody, I'm dressed as what everyone wishes I were!")
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