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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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