California Going Ahead With Bullet Train 709
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the NY Times:
"[California state leaders] have rallied around a plan to build a 520-mile high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, cutting the trip from a six-hour drive to a train ride of two hours and 38 minutes. And they are doing it in the face of what might seem like insurmountable political and fiscal obstacles. The pro-train constituency has not been derailed by a state report this month that found the cost of the bullet train tripling to $98 billion for a project that would not be finished until 2033, by news that Republicans in Congress are close to eliminating federal high-speed rail financing this year, by opposition from California farmers and landowners upset about tracks tearing through their communities or by questions about how much the state or private businesses will be able to contribute."
Re:The bond measure was for $98 billion (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Time (Score:2, Informative)
"The first transcontinental railroad took less than 10 years to build"
In no small part due to the use of Chinese laborers that were banned from panning for gold- and the lack of consideration before the removal of Indians from the territories nearby.
I will assent that more than 27 miles per yer is more than doable though...
Re:The bond measure was for $98 billion (Score:5, Informative)
It could have a little something with Californians voting on propositions to put caps on their taxes.
Seriously, it's like telling people who are filling out their tax returns, "Just pay whatever you want".
Of course, they still demand all the services.
Plus, Californians send a lot more money to Washington in Federal taxes than they get back. Somebody's got to pay for the "Texas Miracle" after all. All those government jobs Rick Perry created don't come free.
Re:The bond measure was for $98 billion (Score:4, Informative)
Both Texas and California send more money to the federal government than they get back; what Miracle are you speaking of?
Have to look at the alternatives (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, high speed rail is going to be expensive. Yes, it's now projected to cost much more than the original estimate. (The cost has largely increased due to delays (the longer it takes to build a project, the more it costs), particularly fuelled by NIMBY appeasement ("We don't want the train passing near our house!" "But it is much quieter than standard trains and will increase your property values by being near an HSR station." "Build a tunnel!" "Okay, we'll build a tunnel." "The costs on this project are ballooning!").)
But you have to compare the cost to the alternatives. California's freeways and airports are jammed. With increasing population and mobility, something to move people around will have to be built. And the estimated costs to add volume to airports and highways is estimated to be $100-billion as well [cahsrblog.com].
And, to top it off, high speed rail runs on an operational profit. (This means that yearly revenues are higher than yearly costs.) Everywhere. Yes, high speed rail lines run an operational profit in Japan and France [miller-mccune.com], Spain [nytimes.com], Russia [cahsrblog.com], Taiwan [cahsrblog.com] and car-loving-and-train-hating America [businessinsider.com]. In Britain all rail is private, and for-profit companies are in fierce competition to pay for the rights to run rail services, which are barely at HSR levels if at all. It's a strongly held misconception that rail travel is unprofitable: HSR makes a profit all over the world, and it usually subsidizes local and regional rail transport (which the US has much of).
And though only the Tokyo-Osaka and Paris-Lyon line have paid off all their construction costs, that's because they're the oldest HSR lines; others are on track to in the future. Which modes of transportation don't pay off their construction costs? Oh, that's right, nearly all roads. Remember Carmageddon/The Carpocalypse, when an overpass outside LA was torn down, shutting traffic for the weekend? That was all so they could widen the highway through a mountain pass. Were the anti-HSR people asking for ridership studies for the Sepulveda Pass? Were they asking for the expansion to run an operational profit, let alone an overall profit? Of course not; only rail is subjected to such standards.
Add to this that a train is much more efficient in transporting this number of people, from an energy, environmental and economic perspective, and this is using studies that are assuming that gas prices will be relatively stable over the next few decades.
Obviously there still has to be overview of the project, making sure money is being spent efficiently and for best value. But the entire transportation sector needs to be looked at from this viewpoint. Airlines can work with rail to transport their passengers on their "last mile", freeing up their planes for more profitable medium- and long-haul routes, like done in Germany (Frankfurt Airport has two train stations). Road funds can be diverted to repairing our existing infrastructure as opposed to building more asphalt that needs to be maintained. And everyone will get to where they are going sooner. If this is done, North America will look back 20 years from now, not wondering "How could they do this?", but instead "How did they wait so long?"
Re:High Speed rail (Score:4, Informative)
I like airplanes. I really do. Someday I'll fly one myself. But beyond that, air travel has it's own set of problems. Each airplane "ride" has this annoying process called "boarding and deplaning". It's the whole reason why you have to show up 1 hour early to the airport, and while your flight arrives at maybe 2pm, it still takes you 30 minutes to be on your way out of the airport. And that's all IF things go smoothly. Chances are a bag gets lost, somebody holds up the security line, etc.
No matter how hard you try, you can't argue against that. A transfer in a large sized airport will need at least 1 hour to make it assuming things go well. But usually you plan on a 2 hours between transfer just incase you're delayed for whatever reason. It doesn't matter where you are, this seems to be the norm all over the world for air passenger travel.
A train transfer on the other hand can be as short as however fast you can run to the next train. There's also none of that take-off and landing stuff. You can even line up outside the door as the train comes to a stop. A ticket purchase can also be made minutes before the actual departure. It is quite a trip to see a good working train system in action. I recommend it. We don't have much of it here in the states.
Now on the to the cost. There are certainly a lot of dumb reasons why the California HSR project is getting inflated. It basically boils down to two groups that I'll call "Not in my backyards (NIMBY)" and "Please in my backyard". The first is easy to explain, but it is mainly rich people and people like yourself that think the project is useless. So these people band together to prevent any meaningful progress happen. I'd say their strategy is akin to that of the GOP's strategy in congress (whine as much as possible so that nothing gets done). Rich people obviously don't want the project because it will change their communities along the proposed track lines. People like yourself don't want it because you don't think it is economical.
The strange thing is the farmers and small towns along the valley DO want the train. In many studies when HSR is built, small towns that get a trains stop actually see population and economic growth due to more people having access to the town. So this becomes a lot of bickering and whining for stations, some which may not even be worth the hassle in the initial segment.
Finally there's a lot of freight companies and FRA standards that make absolutely no sense. Not only does this affect HSR, but it also affects local passenger rail services. Our passenger rail trains are generally overweight due to "safety" rules enforced by the FRA on minimum weight.
So if you combine all of those factors, what we have is a lot of unnecessary needs to address factors just so that everyone in their municipality or interest can benefit. That means unnecessary tunneling where it is perfectly viable to be at grade. Unnecessary extra tracks. Unnecessary stations. Unnecessary train specifications.
But of course people like you have to make this political, make it black-and-white. "There is no viable HSR system" is obviously not the case when the rest of the world continues to expand passenger rail services. This project is obviously overweight, I agree with that, but let's at least understand what's wrong rather than fill it up with logical fallacies. It's quite obvious that's how many things are working out in this country. Everyone seems more interested in throwing up own straw-men rather than working together to do what's reasonable.
Fun observation, the interstate highway system is probably the most expensive public works project in history. Should that have been considered a boondoggle? From wikipedia: "The initial cost estimate for the system was $25 billion over 12 years; it ended up costing $114 billion (adjusted for inflation, $425 billion in 2006 dollars) and took 35 years."
If I had to run the project I'd certainly look at implementing a shorter initial segment with less oppositio
Re:Oy Vey! (Score:5, Informative)
"A Nation Derailed", Lewis McCrary [theamerica...vative.com]
The above quote was written by a conservative arguing for rail. Your "Damn those liberals and their lying propaganda!" line is, I'm afraid, very often accurate. It is sad that so many on the right are so ready to defend the federal highway systems and automobiles against all other alternatives. Certainly, there are many things to recommend cars and good highways, but currently the funding of these systems is a subsidy for corporations who rely on externalizing the cost (on taxpayers) of long distance transportation, e.g. Wal-Mart, to the detriment of local businesses and small competitors. I call this sad because conservatives, and on this account I will accept the appellation myself, claim to favor traditional patterns of life and to be skeptical of the kind of federal subsidies which support business models which might otherwise fail. The loss of rail and the rise of cars was a blow to small town civic life. Thereafter, the bypass ("It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses!") and the big box stores, always by externalizing their costs and frequently with the help of imminent domain laws, further eroded civic life and economy.
Re:Land? (Score:4, Informative)
European high speed rail connections are not limited by borders, of course going from one city to the next is cheaper than building one huge rail with only two stops, 520 mile rail is not extremely long. The high speed rail makes sense where the travel time is competitive with airplane travel time and population centers have demand to travel between them. California is great place for high speed rail, very sparsely populated land with huge cities along the coast. San Diego - Los Angeles - San Francisco - Sacramento train would cover big parts of California, extend that to Las Vegas, Portland and Vancouver with more stops on the way and you have all west coast covered.
Re:MORE airport subsidies? (Score:5, Informative)
$16.1 million local railroad project a failure (Score:1, Informative)
The project damaged 5 adjacent properties, including the city's oldest business, which was forced to close from the damages.
The project was intended to provide both train and bus transportation. The local railroad was supposed to roll in during the ribbon cutting ceremony. $16.1 million later, there are no train tracks even running to the station, and there never will be. The tiny local bus transportation company moved it's operations to the center. So now we have a grandiose 16 million dollar empty bus station for an existing bus company. There is no train. There are no new consumers flocking here to spend money at local businesses. It was a complete failure, and a complete waste.
Why did they do it? It was stimulus money = find somewhere to spend it or lose it. So, a few lucky contractors made a fortune. A few folks were temporarily employed.
Re:Time (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, 500+ mph (804 km/h) is ridiculous. Bullet trains go around 190 mph. Even maglev trains max out at 361 mph. (And don't talk about how much they cost per mile.)
Re:The TSA will ruin this. (Score:5, Informative)
The TSA did try the train "Your papers
US rail operators did talk about the searches
http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/p/188504/2059127.aspx [trains.com]
Re:Time (Score:5, Informative)
It makes an interesting comparison with Japan's new high speed maglev track. It is scheduled to be running by 2025 at over 500Kph. The terrain is difficult and there are major issues with noise pollution that increase the cost, but when it comes to buying land they realised that it is often cheaper to just elevate the track. Less disruption and no need for dangerous crossings.
Elevated track also makes it easier to keep the whole thing level when you would otherwise have to do a lot of digging to flatten the ground below normal track out. IIRC the spec for Shinkansen (bullet train) track is something like no more than 6mm height variation over 10m.
Re:The bond measure was for $98 billion (Score:4, Informative)
You are correct... The Prop 1A only accounted for California's contribution. The $98-99 billion represent the "new" projection for the TOTAL project. The original $37-40 billion price tag was based upon the CHSRA original 2005 cost projections. It took pressure from the California legislature demanding new cost projections to force the CHSRA to admit to a $98-99 billion price tag in 2011 reality. The fact that California is "fiscally challenged" and Washington is not in the spending mood, make the HSR project a questionable proposition (albeit, not dead).
It is a misconception that the increase in the cost estimate was due to delays. Not true - two independent business school studies projected a much higher price tag quite a while ago. There is some truth to the NIMBY effect. However, there is no evidence to support the argument that property values will increase near the HSR. And, contrary to one of the other posters, the CHSRA has told more than one city, that it (CHSRA) would NOT fund any tunnels. So, that higher price tag has little to do with "tunnels".
Re:Time (Score:4, Informative)
Conventional maglevs are very expensive, yes. An Inductrack [wikipedia.org] based system would be far cheaper though, and may be cost competitive with the proposed high speed rail. The ECCO cargo maglev proposal [portoflosangeles.org] estimated an Inductrack maglev to be competitive with highways based on throughput. (It would require an 8-lane highway to provide the same throughput, and that isn't cheap either. See page 116.) Obviously, this is not directly comparable, but the point is that maglev isn't necessarily as outrageously expensive as most people assume.
That said, when you aren't moving bulk cargo, a PRT [wikipedia.org] system like Skytran [wikipedia.org] may be more attractive yet. Furthermore, the speed of a maglev is primarily limited by air resistance. Systems like ETT [wikipedia.org] use evacuated tubes, and "proposed speeds are up to 350 mph (560 km/h) for in-state use and up to 4,000 mph (6,400 km/h) for cross country and global travel."
Re:Time (Score:5, Informative)
Union Station and Transbay Terminal look to be right in the centre of LA and SF respectively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cahsr_map.svg [wikipedia.org]
Train rides: Comfortable and you get work done (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The bond measure was for $98 billion (Score:2, Informative)