Readers React: Keeping up with the bullet train

To the editor: Once again we go down the rabbit hole with Alice. (“California bullet train project is attracting interest — but not funding,” Oct. 8)

California High-Speed Rail Authority Chairman Dan Richards is thrilled that his agency received 36 responses by international firms to his request for “partners.” He didn’t get any partners. A partner writes checks in anticipation of a return on investment. He got 36 vendors who are hoping Richards will write them a check.

He continues to dismiss suggestions that subsidies will be needed for California’s bullet train, remarking that every high-speed rail system makes money. Did he actually read the replies from his “partners”?

Spanish company Ferrovial SA notes that most systems need operating subsidies and that California’s bullet train will likely require them long term. Siemans in Germany doubts that it can operate at a profit.

Even a casual reading of the article makes it apparent that someone appears to be lying through his teeth. Why not demand the truth?

Michael Gorman, Glendale

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To the editor: I am shocked — shocked I say! — that the foreign partners have concerns that California’s high-speed train might not be profitable and will require subsidies, as most high-speed railways around the world have required.

Look at our own L.A. Metro system: So many people ride it. Some even pay.

And I can’t tell you how many people have said to me, “I just wish there was a faster way to travel between Burbank and Merced.” Nope, I just can’t tell you.

Jennie Fahn, Los Angeles

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