{"id":3875,"date":"2010-06-25T13:36:27","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T21:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3875"},"modified":"2010-06-25T13:38:48","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T21:38:48","slug":"from-the-mailbag-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/from-the-mailbag-13\/","title":{"rendered":"From the mailbag"},"content":{"rendered":"
Thanks for linking this article<\/a> in your blog; it was interesting reading. But as I was finishing the article, the question that kept popping up in my head was: Does it make sense to spend billions and billions for a single rail-line between Vegas and (somewhere in) SoCal?<\/em><\/div>\n
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\"\"Wouldn’t it be just as effective to just add more airline flights? SoCal has more than a dozen airports located from Santa Barbara<\/strong> in the north to San Diego<\/strong> in the south (including LAX<\/strong>, John Wayne<\/strong> [Orange County], Burbank<\/strong>, Palm Springs<\/strong>, etc.), thus eliminating a very major issue with BOTH train proposals (single-point terminuses at either Victorville<\/strong> <\/strong>or Anaheim<\/strong>)<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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Even if Vegas needed a second new airport (isn’t one already proposed\/started\/etc.?)* to handle the extra flights, the total cost would be a FRACTION of the billions and billions to build and operate a rail line<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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[* — A second airport is indeed planned for the Jean<\/strong> area but appears very, very far off now, especially with fewer flights coming into McCarran International Airport<\/strong> for the foreseeable future.]<\/div>\n
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And how many passengers could such a rail-line handle if everyone was trying to travel to Vegas on a Friday afternoon\/evening (or trying to return on a Sunday)? There is a real limit as to how many passengers could be handled on a single-line during any 4-8 hour window — a limitation that airline flights are MUCH less affected by (especially if a 2nd airport was built in Vegas).<\/em><\/div>\n
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I still don’t understand the “obsession” with building a passenger rail line from a single-point terminus in SoCal. Is someone who lives in Thousand Oaks<\/strong> on the north side of the L.A. area (not to even mention Santa Barbara further north) really going to drive down to Anaheim on a Friday afternoon to catch a train to Vegas? That drive from Thousand Oaks during traffic can take an hour and a half (or even longer).<\/em><\/div>\n
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Maybe I’m missing some factor, but it just doesn’t seem like a very good way to spend billions and billions when we are already running out of money. I’m not against attempts to relieve the travel congestion in and out of Vegas on the weekends, just not sure why a multi-billion railroad is the best answer (especially with the single-point terminus issue for such a spread-out location as SoCal).<\/em><\/div>\n
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Readers, I’m stumped on this one. Anybody care to be attorney for the defense?<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks for linking this article in your blog; it was interesting reading. But as I was finishing the article, the question that kept popping up in my head was: Does it make sense to spend billions and billions for a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,14,19,100],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3875"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3877,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3875\/revisions\/3877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}