Some stories from the wire..or, my Google Reader.

Local Vegas News

On the quest to burn the ring, an alliance of dwarfs, elves, hob…oh sorry, wrong story. But this is a story about an alliance. The Sun reports that Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Arizona have created the Western High-Speed Rail Alliance dedicated to building high-speed rail between all four states’ major cities. What about California, you say? Well, you can thank them for tanking Nevada’s economy, so proposals are underway for an impenetrable wall on the western most lines of Clark County. (Just kidding about that past part )

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So, if you’re like me and walk around downtown a lot you know that the current Downtown Transit Center pretty much sucks. That’s why they’re building a new one! At $17 million, the RTC is building a multi-modal transit center for pedestrians, bikers and busers.

Neighbor News

Weary Angelenos may say goodbye to this ethnically ambiguous, scantily clad “hot babe:”

I know you’ll be sad. I see her everywhere, even in my dreams. But NO MORE! says LA city councilman Dennis Zine. He’s proposing a ban on these roving billboards that he says block views, clog traffic, and give people the creeps. This sort of thing has been up for legislation at least twice in the last couple of years in Vegas. Nothing has been done, yet. God speed, Mr. Zine.

Food for Thought

Carbon Trace asks an interesting question about statutes that forbid anyone under 21 from texting while driving:

“Do you suppose that people older than 21 are capable of texting and driving?”

If you think you can, please play the NY Times’ game to be sure.

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Tom Vanderbilt has some thoughts on the existentialist dilemma of being a pedestrian.

“The irony, of course, is now that it’s driving that’s become pedestrian, and walking which is novel.”

CLAP.

UPDATE: Thanks to commenter Mark Johnson. Here are two studies on Maglev trains:
DesertXPress Press Releases and Studies
Southern California Logistics Rail Authority (PDF)

In an Op-Ed in Sunday’s Sun, former Nevada governors, Kenny Guinn and Bob Miller, make arguments to build a Maglev between SoNev and SoCal.

The govnas make lofty comparisons to Europe and China while praising innovative German technology.

But the article does little to explain why specifically Nevada and California needs to connected. How many people travel between Vegas and LA a year? How bad has the traffic gotten? How bad are the roads?

Two years ago, Guinn told SoCal to Vegas commuters in 2006 in a Bloomberg article that

“they should leave maybe on a Thursday instead of Friday. On Sunday, some people leave hours earlier than they normally would.”

That’s a far cry away from

“if the administration wants to make a lasting contribution to our transportation system, it needs to invest in next-generation technologies such as the magnetic levitation (maglev) system built in Shanghai and operating with a 99.98 percent on-time performance, having traveled 3.5 million miles and carried 18 million passengers.”

Schwarzenegger had some conniptions about improving travel between the two southwestern cities, probably after learning that in 2006, SoCal tourists spent $9.5 billion in Las Vegas. I’d like to hear what the Governator has to say about Miller’s and Guinn’s proposal for Maglev.

This is a long-time dream for rail enthusiasts – in 1999 Amtrak proposed a high-speed train called the Talgo between Vegas and LA. Nothing has come of that since, especially with Bush cutting chunks out of Amtrak’s budget (in 2008, their budget was $800 million.)

Richard Silver, executive director of the Rail Passenger Association of California says the corridor between the two cities is much too short a distance for it to even gain enough momentum and speed that Maglevs require.

Maybe the problem with high-speed rail isn’t funding, but framing. If the train side could make a solid economic argument for high-speed rail between Cali and Nevada, with the costs and benefits placed upfront, voters wouldn’t be so shocked when they get in the booths and read the price tag of the whole shebang.

There has to be study somewhere, right?