Bullet Trains: Cash for Clunkers II

President Obama wants $53B for high speed rail.

The White House on Tuesday announced plans to spend $53 billion over the next six years to build high-speed railroads, bringing California's massive bullet train project closer to reality.

It's so fundamentally stupid that it makes me think it's some kind of political payoff. It's like Cash for Clunkers all over again. I almost want it to be corrupt. At least then I wouldn't be thinking that this administration was completely divorced from reality.

Who's going to ride a train to go between cities that are only a hundred miles apart? I guess if you're talking about the congested Boston-DC corridor, that might make sense, but here in California? Are you crazy? Where I live, if I wanted to take the train north to LA, I'd have to drive south to get to the train station and then time my trip according to the train schedules. Once I got to LA, I'd either have to take a cab or rent a car to get where I wanted to go.

It would be absolutely impossible to make this trip take less time than driving. The whole idea is staggeringly dumb.