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72 July 2015
of Los Angeles uses in two years. (“Letter from the Imperial
Valley,” 4 May)
Ms Goodyear wrote, “The intensifying four-year drought
has devastated small communities in the north, decimated
groundwater supplies in the Central Valley, and made the
cities fear for the future. To achieve [the savings mandated
by the governor], Californians are starting to forgo some of
the givens of life in modern America: long showers, frequent
laundering, toilet-flushing, gardening, golf.”
› “Compared with the high-speed trains of Western Europe
and East Asia, American passenger rail is notoriously
creaky, tardy and slow.” (the Washington-based National
Journal, 18 April). Simon Van Zuylen-Wood illustrated his point
with the Acela, currently the only “high-speed” train in the US,
which runs at an average pace of 68 miles per hour between
Washington and Boston. In comparison, he noted, a high-
speed train from Madrid to Barcelona averages 154mph. The
most punctual trains operated by the US National Railroad
Passenger Corp (Amtrak) arrive on schedule 75 per cent of
the time. Judged by Amtrak’s standards, he wrote, Japan’s
bullet trains “are late basically 0 per cent of the time.”
In March, the US House of Representatives voted to fund
Amtrak for the next four years at a rate of $1.4 billion per
year. Meanwhile, Mr Van Zuylen-Wood observed, China will
be spending $128 billion on rail in 2015. “Thanks to the House
bill, though,” he wrote, “Amtrak passengers can look forward
to a new provision allowing cats and dogs on certain trains.”
Steel
As seen from Pittsburgh,
Canada’s ArcelorMittal Dofasco
is having a very good year
“Call it a tale of two steel companies – the best of times for one
and the worst for another.”
Steve Arnold, of the Ontario-based Hamilton Spectator,
placed on one side ArcelorMittal Dofasco (AMD), Canada’s
largest producer of flat carbon steel and a current success:
stable, profitable, and looking to take on workers to keep its
mills humming.
On the other side he set United States Steel Corp (USS), of
Pittsburgh, with $75 million in losses for the first quarter of
2015 and its Canadian branch in court-ordered protection
from creditors. (“Dofasco Thrives as US Steel Topples Off the
Cliff,” 30 April)
As reported by the Spectator, the contrasts between the
companies were on display on 29 April, when USS president
Mario Longhi acknowledged that thousands of forced layoffs
had left his mills running at barely more than 72 per cent of
capacity. On the same day, AMD president Sean Donnelly told
a local Chamber of Commerce that his company is running at
up to 97 per cent of capacity and is having trouble filling the
jobs it has on offer.
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