California’s Fast Future.

They’re one step closer to Burbank to San Francisco in less than 3 hours. Besides being fast, high-speed rail’s other touted benefits do sound pretty impressive:

  • Reduce CO2 emissions by up to 17.6 billion pounds/year. This is the equivalent of removing about 1.4 million vehicles from state roads annually and eliminating the CO2 emissions produced from 15 billion miles of vehicle travel.
  • Reduce NOX emissions by up to 15.3 million pounds/year.
  • Reduce total organic gases (TOG) by 10.2 million pounds/year.
  • Reduce CO emissions by 64 million pounds/year.
  • Reduce California’s oil consumption by up to 22 million barrels/year (1100 million gallons/year) even with future improvements in auto fuel efficiency.
  • At a price of $75/barrel, savings in oil costs would approach $1.65 billion annually.

Although “at a price of $75/barrel” is already sounding sort of quaint….