California Requests Stimulus Funding For Bullet Train 567
marquinhocb writes "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger requested $4.7 billion in federal stimulus money Friday to help build an 800-mile bullet train system from San Diego to San Francisco. 'We're traveling on our trains at the same speed as 100 years ago,' the governor said. 'That is inexcusable. America must catch up.' Planners said the train would be able to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes, traveling at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour. About time! There comes a point when 'let's add another lane' is no longer a viable option!"
It will never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
At least not in our lifetimes. Between all of the NIMBY's and environmental impact statements, this will be delayed in the courts for decades
Re:It will never happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It will never happen (Score:1, Insightful)
I simply worry about their ability to get it done at all.
Not the NIMBY's and the environmental impact, just the corruption factor and the fact that it's Tax-N-Spendifornia. If they were in the black it'd be one thing but they want the federal gov't to pay for it when they are deep in a major budget crisis? If I were the feds (or the rest of the nation) I'd say "screw you, come back when you can manage your own budget and maybe we'll talk."
Fly Southwest (Score:3, Insightful)
I can fly Southwest from Sacramento to San Diego in 1:25 minutes of air time.
Add 45 minutes at Sac security and 20 in the terminal and I still get there faster than the travel time on this train which probably won't ever exist.
Not only that, but the plane ticket costs around $74 during the summer. There is no way this train could possibly compete with airfare. Crossing california is not practical on trains.
Trains are great for crossing urban centers. A train from San Diego to LA would have been great when I lived in SD and worked in LA. Fix that problem, then we can talk about bullet trains.
Re:$45 Billion? With a B? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article, it says this is going to cost $45 billion to build. $45 BILLION? For 800 miles of high-speed tracks and trains? I can't see any concievable way, even if they had to purchases premium land the entire length rather than using state land, that there's any way to justify 56 million dollars per mile. International constructions have cost around one twentieth of this amount.
Lots of bridges, tunnels and filldirt.. Its already been kicked off of the SF Peninsula because they said it would be too expensive to go underground the whole way, and the only other way to have a 200+mph train go through high density residential areas is to elevate it, which the residents refused as an option. It would have shared the caltrain route, which already has long sections of elevated track (via10-20' of filldirt and fences on both sides) that effictively creates a berlin wall through neighborhoods. To keep people from "trespassing" they would have to elevate the whole line, and that pissed a bunch of people off (especially those in Atherton behind their wooden fences). Caltrain electrification will be done first, and highspeed rail, to be successful, would have to tie in to caltrain somewhere, or it would just be a train to nowhere.
-T
Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like the US Govt is having problems keeping a balanced budget.
Stop having so many wars... they're expensive! Iraq and Afghanistan, ~$150 billion a year. How many bullet train systems could you buy?
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:yeah, just like amtrak (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train (Score:3, Insightful)
The bullet trains in Japan are quite convenient, like you say. They run exactly on schedule almost all the time. About the only thing that stops them is earthquakes. I show up at the plat form 5 minutes before the train comes, put my large luggage in the storage area near the door, and sit down and relax. It is certainly a lot nicer than air travel.
The real problem is cost. I don't know how much the train would cost in California, but it is expensive here in Japan. A ticket to Tokyo from Shizuoka city (where I live -- a distance of 180km) is about $60 if I recall correctly. That's one way. I'm not sure Americans are willing to abandon their cars for something this expensive.
Re:Fly Southwest (Score:5, Insightful)
Whereas airlines do everything all by their lonesome, right? No government assistance at all. Bold entrepeneurs, living the American dream, unlike those commie railroads.
GMAFB. Every major type of transportation -- air, road, rail, and water -- is dependent on public funds, in the US and everywhere else. Anti-rail zealots like to pretend that rail is inherently socialist and that air and road are inherently capitalist (water doesn't seem to enter into their thinking at all.) There's a deep irony here: the 19th-c. "rail barons" also liked to present themselves as bold, individualistic risk-takers, meanwhile sucking at the government teat.
When an airline builds and runs its own airport and ATC system, give me a call.
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
The Feds didn't worry about mismanagement by banks or auto companies, why would they worry about mismanagement by state governments?
"Oh, you screwed up and have no money? Back your large truck up and we'll shovel in money until you say stop... we just have to wait for the printer to finish printing out more."
SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced. (Score:5, Insightful)
Amtrak is insanely costly compared to what the train service used to cost. I don't see this as being any cheaper. And the current right-of-way isn't well maintained. This would need even more in the way of maintenance than the current system.
The rail lines right-of-way is owned by the freight haulers. They put their priorities first, and passenger trains regularly get delayed. The last time I rode the train from Nevada to Berkeley (well, Emeryville...the Berkeley station was closed) the train was delayed for over four hours. With no explanation or estimate of when the problem would be fixed.
Yes, we definitely need better train service. But lets go for improvements that we know can reasonably be made. Like the Dept. of Transportation in charge of the right of way, so that freight trains can't arbitrarily pre-empt the lines from passengers. (I'm not thrilled with how the DOT maintains highways, but it does a better job than the railways do with their right of way.)
Re:Monorail!! (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, you might have missed this key fact, but the Simpsons monorail episode is a sixteen-year-old CARTOON. When the hell are the anti-rail twits going to stop treating it like a serious guide to transportation issues?
Oh, right, we still have people who think Frankenstein was a guide to science. Never mind. Carry on, then.
Re:$45 Billion? With a B? (Score:2, Insightful)
This makes a lot of sense (Score:4, Insightful)
As pointed out in previous posts: Airlines are already subsidized. (As are the Auto makers). I would like to go as far as to say that a railroad would be competitive if you were to take out ALL subsidies given to the auto makers (road construction and direct subsidies) and Airlines (Airports, cheap planes due to defense contracts).
Putting public money to work to build a railroad network is a good way to invest public money. it's a hell of a lot better than subsidizing bankrupt companies. It will make the US more competitive in manufacturing (cheaper freight transport), services (cheaper people transport). And building the whole system will provide a lot of meaning full jobs.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:yeah, just like amtrak (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it would operate a lot like amtrak... the us govt will sink tons of money into it and it will never come close to breaking even.
Kind of like airports and highways, yep.
Oh, but those are somehow magically different!
[sigh]
Actually, there is a difference. The federal government sinks tons of money into air and road travel, but it doesn't demand the kind of insane restrictions it imposes on rail (freight trains always get right-of-way over passenger trains, that kind of thing.) IOW, those systems aren't set up to fail the way Amtrak is. It's pretty impressive how well Amtrak manages to keep its major lines going when it has to deal with a system that is specifically designed not to work by anti-rail ideologues.
Re:It will never happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, WHAT? Cali has way more money/ability to get money than most states. Not to mention they have more of a 'need' for this type of transport. Most other states probably wouldn't have the numbers of people to justify building it. Imagine a state in the midwest asking for 5 billion so that the tiny train riding population can ride in style. Ya right. So if by any state you mean New York and surrounding area then yes. The population density throughout the US is not really set up for a bullet train system because even if you did connect major cities, you would need cars and buses to get people to their spread out homes.
Re:$45 Billion? With a B? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's becasue it's not your area of expertise.
Civil project are expensive, very expensive.
They have to deal with roads, mountains , bridges, tunnels.
It's very expensive to build roads of any type. If you want them to last.
Re:Here is how it will work (Score:3, Insightful)
Just fly larger aircraft. An airbus A340 seats up to 800 and will do the same trip in 75 fewer minutes.
You've assumed time for security screening will be the same. You've assumed delays will be the same. You've assumed the ticket cost will be the same.
All three assumptions are only true if the train is managed -extremely- poorly. Given that this is California, that might be the case, but they are still huge assumptions.
Re:Fly Southwest (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, airlines pay substantial fuel taxes which not only pay for ATC but get siphoned off into the general fund. Then they pay landing fees at many airports as well.
No major airport in the US is run at a loss. Some of the smaller airports may be, where the city feels that the benefit of the airport outweighs the cost, but all major airports pay their own way.
Re:Fly Southwest (Score:5, Insightful)
Commuter flights go between airports, which are located outside of cities. (Well, mostly -- I'm amazed at the downtown location of Vegas's airport.) To go from downtown Baltimore to downtown New York, you have to drive or catch a cab or light rail out to BWI, go through security, fly to LaGuardia, wait for your bags, and take a cab -- or a bus then the subway -- downtown.
Amtrak, on the other hand, takes you from Penn Station in Baltimore's Station North district to NYC's Penn Station right at Madison Square Frickin' Garden. Assuming that you actually want to be in the city, it's a straight shot, most definitely faster, and more comfortable.
Airlines have taken plenty of government money (especially when you include the subsidies that keep airports running), and are not exactly know for customer satisfaction.
Re:Oh, for crying out loud. (Score:5, Insightful)
There also comes a point when "let's have another horrendously expensive tax-sucking boondoggle" is no longer a viable option.
Look at Spain's high-speed rail network for an example of how it can only pay for itself, but actually earn a decent profit too. The AVE in Spain is the perfect case-study government funded decent rail infrastructure can really work out really well for everyone except perhaps the airlines - they charge x2 what airlines charge because they know they can fill trains after train even without coming close to competing on price.
High speed rail really is the future if you have the vision to invest in it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8268003.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Re:I don't know, air fair is pretty cheap. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
leglize pot
let everyone out of jail who has any pot convictions, even if they trafficed 500 tonnes, just give them a tax bill.
im sure that will save 10 billion.
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
The national average for cars is approximately 25 miles per gallon
We need to be finding ways to get people out of their cars, not enabling that lifestyle. It's more than gas mileage, it's all the overhead it takes to support the roadways. We spend a collective fortune on highways so you can have a semi-private box to convey you from one place to another. I'd also like to see your numbers on the national gas mileage average. Because I can guarantee you around here it's closer to half that.
A more fair efficiency comparison would be to air travel. Not to mention adding in the costs of airport maintenance, air traffic control and the cost of aircraft. Quite aside from the fact the flying experience sucks ass these days. We managed to pick the two most expensive and inefficient methods of travel and neglected the infrastructure for the more comfortable efficient alternatives.
When you're comparing costs, you have to look at the whole cost of the infrastructure. Getting the tracks in place isn't much more expensive than a highway but the maintenance costs over a period of years is a fraction of highway maintenance.
Re:It will never happen (Score:2, Insightful)
My boss tried to convince me to do my daily commute "because a bunch of us all ride together and it's lots of fun" (picture in your mind the guy from the Office). He then described how he leaves home at 6 am by car, hops on the train, and then takes the company van from the local station to arrive at work at 7:30.
I didn't say anything but smile, because my commute by car is only 45 minutes. It's also probably a lot cheaper... about $3.50 gasoline with my Honda Insight. Doing what my boss suggests would be a downgrade.
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I heard, California was flirting with bankruptcy, so I doubt they have the money...
Oddly enough, many of the world's people and organizations most able to generate huge sums of cash are constantly on the edge of debt disaster. Massive revenues are often more important than debt levels when determining how much capital a government, corporation, or dude can raise.
Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money... (Score:1, Insightful)
On 9/11 I watched the television in shock. On 9/12 I said, "If we go to war over this, it will be a mistake. We should rebuild the damaged buildings, and focus on tighter borders so the enemies can't get in. A war will be a waste of both lives and dollars, and make us no better than the terrorists."
I was right. Our country would be about 1 trillion dollars richer now, and at peace instead of war. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"Warned them, I did, but nobody listens to poor Zathras."
Re:It will never happen (Score:1, Insightful)
Likely true, but if California is able to do this, any state can.
If California was a person, it would be spending twice as much as it makes, smell awful, and have a sense of entitlement that could drop cattle at twenty paces. Don't kid yourself -- they're not looking to build a bullet train, they're looking for another handout. Should they get the money, they'll inflate the budget, blame everybody else for cost overruns, drag their heels for years, and it'll wind up costing 3x as much and the General Accounting Office will be admonishing everyone involved. And the "bullet train" won't be able to run more than 35 MPH because it runs within 5 miles of a school zone and they're worried Little Timmy might get run over.
You want to see mass transit that works? Look at Minnesota's Light Rail. It's making money, and they're expanding it with only a minimal outlay of federal funding. The only reason we have to ask for funds at all is because MNDOT up and let a bridge fall into the river.
Re:Fly Southwest (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:yeah, just like amtrak (Score:3, Insightful)
And of course despite your Insightful rating, Amtrak loses money, over a billion dollars a year.
http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/08financial.pdf [amtrak.com]
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Its like if your neighbor has a Rolls Royce, you naturally think they are rich. Then you go in their house and realize they have no food because everything was spent on the Rolls Royce.
Re:Fly Southwest (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, airlines pay substantial fuel taxes
No they do not. Tax rates for jet fuel are $0.04 per gallon (federal) and about $0.06 including state taxes. Compare this to $0.184 per gallon of gasoline (federal) and an average of $0.40 including state taxes.
No major airport in the US is run at a loss.
Construction is usually heavily subsidized, so the fact that operational costs are covered in no way refutes that airports are subsidized.
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fly Southwest (Score:5, Insightful)
That's as silly as saying that trucking companies are dependent on government because they don't build their own roads.
Except it's not silly at all to say that; it's a simple observation of the truth. And that basic truth -- that every major form of transportation we have is dependent on government -- should be remembered in discussions on building transportation infrastructure, instead of pretending that one form of transportation is Honest God-Fearing American Capitalism Hard At Work while another is Evil European Pinko Socialist Government Interference In The Free Market. Which is pretty much what the conversation seems to degenerate into every time rail is mentioned.
In 2006 [bts.gov], which appears to be the most recent year for which figures are readily available, total government expenditures (federal, state, and local) on highways were almost $100 billion, while rail expenditures were a little over $1.5 billon. Please, please try to tell me that this doesn't constitute a massive subsidy -- a hell of a lot bigger than anything Amtrak gets, or ever will get -- to trucking and other industries that depend on highways for their existence.
Oh yeah -- air travel? A little under $42 billion. Again, this is a massive subsidy, and so far beyond anything that rail gets that there's really no comparison. So go ahead, bitch about Amtrak ... but remember where your tax dollars are really going.
Re:It will never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
And then there's the scalability problem.
Huh? Need more throughput, add an extra car to the train - or run additional trains on the same rails - you know that trains aren't going bumper to bumper right?
My boss spend 1.5 hours on his train commute; I only take 45 minutes.
I hate to state the obvious, but how long would it take you to drive your car from LA to San Francisco, and then how long would it take a bullet train going 200mph?
Waiting time == non-productive time
No, driving time is unproductive time. You waste 45 minutes driving while your boss could be working while he is sitting on the train, because he isn't driving.
So if the railways have died out, how come trains are thriving in many places? They are not suitable for all applications, but for specific high density routes they are way more efficient than anything else we currently have.
Re:Monorail!! (Score:1, Insightful)
And Gulliver's Travels was a childrens book.
Re:It will never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Ooh, ooh! I know this one! Because the government subsidized the automotive infrastructure!
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Pick some place that needs developed. One possibility is anywhere the 'perma'frost is melting - there's infrastructure needs in every part of that process. But, I wouldn't worry too much about how soft the down time would be for the criminals, one way or the other, I say worry more about getting important work done during their on duty time. A tropical island is no vacation if the criminal is working 10 hr/6 days a week building a longer and more durable airstrip or a hospital or any serious project.
How about oil rigs? Janitor at a Radome on the DEW? Or let 1 winter-over in Antarctica (with good job performance) count as 2 or 3 normal years good behavior. Right now, there are convicts in some of the western states who volunteer as smoke jumpers. Talk about paying your debt to society.
Only problem I see is, why offer such options to the violent criminals? The smoke jumper programs for Colorado and others all seem to be early out programs for the non-violent. They also give those convicts something that actually helps them get decent employment afterwards - making license plates won't get you much in the current industrial climate, not compared to widespread general heavy construction experience.
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't kid yourself -- they're not looking to build a bullet train, they're looking for another handout.
"Handout"? Last I checked, Californians pay federal taxes too. It's really not so much to ask that some of those federal dollars be spent in California on a project that would benefit millions of people. You can only build so many interstate highways connecting the dirt farms of North Dakota.
Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to justify the war in Iraq, but $150 billion a year isn't shit compared to the $2 trillion the government's spent on bailouts in the last year. Even going by the (likely biased) http://costofwar.com/ [costofwar.com], that's twice the amount spent on the entire Iraq and Afgahnistan wars. And that's just one year.
The point is, you can't just point out one thing and say, "It's because of that." The government's spending crazy amounts of money all over the place, on a TON of shit that it shouldn't be spending money on. I'm kinda surprised we keep voting in these morons. First Bush, now Obama. I'm almost scared to think about who's gonna be next.
Re:Fly Southwest (Score:3, Insightful)
none of the hell that comes along with modern air travel...
I don't know how long that will last, truly. I have heard rumblings that TSA is really eyeing up Amtrak as a great expansion to their mini empire. Ah, yes, a few years old but: http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/press_release_0401.shtm [dhs.gov]
I'm waiting for the first train to get blown up in the US. I suspect the only reason it hasn't happened is because no one rides trains here.
I can't wait until the federal government decides to try to build fencing around major rail corridors.
Re:Fly Southwest (Score:3, Insightful)
Just curious, did you happen to think to look up usage based revenues like gas tax [api.org], registration fees, etc.? Just asking...
If the government built the water system you get your water from and funds its construction and ongoing maintenance with a "per gallon used" fee, it's not a "subsidy".
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
They're just looking for their money back from the feds.
Kicked off the Peninsula? Who says? (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides that, I figure they'll have to elevate or bury the lines eventually anyway, because too many trains are being delayed by people who use them as a suicide mechanism.
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
How are millions of passengers going to get to hotel or housing? A new massive taxi fleet charging more than the train ticket to get you home/to a hotel? A new bus system? In America we are not compact enough for this. It's basically the last mile problem but for transport.
This gets parroted every time the subject of high-speed trains comes up. Interestingly, it also "proves" that air travel can never be viable. How are people going to get from the airport to their homes/hotels? In reality there are a lot of ways to leave the airport, like by buses, trains, taxis, cars. I'm not going to guess at the percentages for these modes of last-miles transport, but I will be bold enough to claim that most air travellers eventually make it. Otherwise we would have heard about huge populations accumulating at the airports. And no, that Tom Hanks movie isn't relevant to this discussion.
Or am I missing something that makes train travel fundamentally different from air travel with respect to this last-mile problem? Do the magnetic fields from the pantograph current interfere with people's brain waves and make them forget how to get a taxi? Otherwise I think the biggest difference is that the train station tends to be closer to all those city-center hotels than the airport is.
Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money... (Score:5, Insightful)
some of the hardest working US citizens
Which makes it even worse. Some of the hardest working US citizens, and they spend all their time doing unproductive stuff. So yes, most of that trillion was basically set on fire.
And that is where everyone is so wrong about stimulating the economy. There is no point spending money on doing unproductive work A, just so the worker can buy productive work B. In that case you should just buy productive work B immediately and avoid work A. Stimulating the economy only works if you can spend the money on something actually productive.
This is btw very similar to the (intentional) "mistake" that the US government has been doing with the bank bailouts. They claim that they have to pump the money into those bad banks so that they can lend to main street. But in that case, the government would be better off just pumping the money directly into main street. Everyone knows it, but very few actually says it out loud. Financial industries are never worth saving by the government for the simple reason that they don't do any productive work. They are simply conduits that help other sectors do productive work, and as such are easier to just replace.
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Second there's the lost time of having people standing-around waiting for the damn train.
That's better than wasted time driving the car. You can read and write while waiting at the station. Once on the train you can read, write, eat, go to the toilet, have a meeting on the way to the conference, use your laptop, etc.
And if the train is faster than driving you'll likely still end up at your destination sooner.
I have to walk an hour to get to my station
So, about 4 miles? I suggest you buy a bicycle.
You can't do the same with railways - people could kill themselves tripping over the rails when trying to board the train.
Are you trolling, or have you just never seen a railway?
Once the capacity is fully used (with the maximum service frequency, longest possible train with e.g. double-decked carriages) you might add another two tracks. Just build them alongside, and add another platform, with a footbridge or subway to connect the platforms.
None of this is new technology.
Re:Why? is making money an issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
.That being said I have no idea if it will make money. Probably depends on how well it its managed.
The concern about making money is touching. How much money does
Interstate 5 make each year? Oh. Wait. Other than a gas tax of perhaps a couple
of cents a mile Interstate 5 (which is the major N/S route in California)
the driver is not paying anything (other than income taxes and the like).
Why do we expect basic transport to make money? What makes you think the
Airlines have (net, over their history) made any money? (without the subsidies
in the airports etc airlines would be out of business). We need to get folks
off of Interstate 5 and a sensibly priced choice will do that and save lots
of energy for the country and make a safer trip. A big win. Build the bullet train!
Re:It will never happen (Score:3, Insightful)