My view of People from New Jersey

As a New Englander, we’re practically trained from birth to not be nice to people from New Jersey.  But after this commentary by NJ Representative Albio Sires, I’m going to try and be nicer.  He’s almost too nice in advocating for high speed rail.  I’m going to help him out with some charts.

One of his main points:

During the past 50 years, the United States has invested nearly $1.3 trillion in our highways andover $484 billion in our aviation infrastructure. In contrast, rail investment has received only $67 billion over the past 31 years.

needs graphing.

The next time someone says “what a waste of money railroad is” ask them how much they want to cut in highway subsidies next year.  Or ask them if the $100 billion per year China is spending on high speed rail PER YEAR will make them more or less competitive when they’re finished?  Speaking of which, here’s the same graph with China’s investment in high-speed rail alone this year.

And just to put Obama’s federal stimulus expansion of high-speed rail into perspective.

I would put the money that Wisconsin and Florida rejected on this graph, but frankly the amount is laughable.

Another Shout Out to my AP US History Teacher

Who taught me that history is an ongoing process, and that ideas and “facts” are a matter of perception.  The authors of this dedicated-to-the-book site put together a really cool prototype of this concept, in their twelve volume chronicle of the changing history of the Iraq War, as captured in edits to the Wikipedia definition.

As long as we’re kicking around history, Shorpy has some cool pictures today of 1930s urbanity – Chicago, Savannah.  Here’s one that makes me miss trains.