Nearly $1 Billion in Funding Restored for California Bullet Train (msn.com) 199
Back in 2009, then-governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger requested $4.7 billion in federal stimulus money 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."
Nearly 12 years later, "a $929-million federal grant for the California bullet train project was restored Thursday," reports the Los Angeles Times, "reversing a decision by the Trump administration to terminate the funding." But their story (shared by Slashdot reader schwit1) notes this grant has a very long history: The grant was originally made in 2010 after other states backed out of high-speed rail projects and declined to take the federal support. The California project already had won another $2.5-billion grant from the Obama administration's stimulus program, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Trump action to take back the money was highly controversial, and federal grant experts said such terminations were rare in cases that did not involve fraud but were merely behind schedule.
Ronald Batory, then chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, cited California's multiple failures to forecast accurate schedules, among other problems, in taking the action. Along with House Republicans from California, Trump officials were highly critical of the California project, with former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao calling it a "bait and switch" on promises made to taxpayers. Chao and Trump had issued an even bigger threat, to claw back the much larger $2.5-billion grant that had already been spent. Despite such rhetoric, the Trump administration never made an attempt to get back the funds.
The $929 million is part of a planned $22.8-billion effort aimed at building a 171-mile partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced [part of the route between San Francisco and Los Angeles], as well as completing environmental planning and making some high-speed rail investments in Southern California and the Bay Area.
In a statement, America's Federal Rail Agency said the settlement "reflects the federal government's ongoing partnership in the development of high-speed rail." And they called their restoration of funding "an important step in advancing an economically transformational project in California."
The Times adds that "Some bullet train advocates believe $10 billion or more from the state and federal government could be added to the project, allowing an expansion of the current construction. But even that much money would not close a roughly $80-billion shortfall needed to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco."
Nearly 12 years later, "a $929-million federal grant for the California bullet train project was restored Thursday," reports the Los Angeles Times, "reversing a decision by the Trump administration to terminate the funding." But their story (shared by Slashdot reader schwit1) notes this grant has a very long history: The grant was originally made in 2010 after other states backed out of high-speed rail projects and declined to take the federal support. The California project already had won another $2.5-billion grant from the Obama administration's stimulus program, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Trump action to take back the money was highly controversial, and federal grant experts said such terminations were rare in cases that did not involve fraud but were merely behind schedule.
Ronald Batory, then chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, cited California's multiple failures to forecast accurate schedules, among other problems, in taking the action. Along with House Republicans from California, Trump officials were highly critical of the California project, with former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao calling it a "bait and switch" on promises made to taxpayers. Chao and Trump had issued an even bigger threat, to claw back the much larger $2.5-billion grant that had already been spent. Despite such rhetoric, the Trump administration never made an attempt to get back the funds.
The $929 million is part of a planned $22.8-billion effort aimed at building a 171-mile partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced [part of the route between San Francisco and Los Angeles], as well as completing environmental planning and making some high-speed rail investments in Southern California and the Bay Area.
In a statement, America's Federal Rail Agency said the settlement "reflects the federal government's ongoing partnership in the development of high-speed rail." And they called their restoration of funding "an important step in advancing an economically transformational project in California."
The Times adds that "Some bullet train advocates believe $10 billion or more from the state and federal government could be added to the project, allowing an expansion of the current construction. But even that much money would not close a roughly $80-billion shortfall needed to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco."
The Bullet Train is a running joke (Score:3, Insightful)
While Trump appointed and enabled corruption in the highest tiers of government, this was a "stopped clock is right 2 times a day" moment. The CA bullet-train project is a pointless developer/union money-grab, which has never been about finishing the rail line. It will not be finished in the lifetime of anyone alive today. This billion dollars won't get much done [governing.com]. Goes to show that both sides are unbelievably corrupt, with the defining characteristics being who they support and which political allies they support.
Correction: NON running joke! (Score:3)
Too much of the land needed is tied up in NIMBY.
The (somewhat better) idea of burying the whole thing has the pesky problem of crossing fault lines.
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Japan has far more fault lines and somehow manages. The new maglev track is 90% tunnel through mountains.
Re: Correction: NON running joke! (Score:2)
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It worked well in the 19th century excepting at the end there was a bunch of Chinese people in N. America.
Re: Correction: NON running joke! (Score:3)
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It does make sense to come along the central valley. It's cheaper for one than all the tunnels that would be needed with a coastal route. It could also connect up what have become bedroom communities for the Bay Area, rather than merely connecting two cities.
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There already is a costal route that gets little rail traffic anymore. It's the route used by the Amtrak Coast Starlight from LA to Seattle. No need to worry about NIMBY since there is already rail and stations along this route, just not nearly as much rail traffic as there used to be.
I wonder if they specifically DIDN'T try to build here because there's not enough work for all the graft.
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Well rail stations don't really matter for a bullet train which by its nature has to be an express service, stopping and starting takes time.
Which leaves the question of the geography, which I have no idea of but where I live, much further north, a coastal route would not work very well due to grades and turns. A bullet train needs straight aways with gentle curves and very small grades to run at high speed. Also double tracking for the majority of the route, or if shared with freight, double and triple tra
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Going through the Central Valley also avoids the worst of the seismic faultlines.
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Going through the Central Valley also avoids the worst of the seismic faultlines.
Also they could buy up all the fields along the I5, put tracks on them and tear down all the lunatic fringe signs that farmers have posted along the roadside. A win-win for drivers and train riders alike.
Re: The Bullet Train is a running joke (Score:2)
And that's why US infrastructure lags behind much of the world. Japan has had a bullet train for a long time, they did all the initial work and years of testing. Traffic in US cities is a nightmare. This is a proven idea that could seriously improve quality of life and economic productivity.
Re:The Bullet Train is a running joke (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with building transit, always, comes down to NIMBY/Property rights. In less democratic countries, the state just eminent domain's the property they want for the line, damn the consequences.
The major problem with transit in North America in particular is this obsession with "most bang for the buck" which often favors the worst transit options because they can buy more of it with the same dollars, rather than buying the most efficient long-term planned solution that will ensure that residents 300 years from now will still be using the same right of ways.
Only elevated, grade-separated rail options should be picked for high-speed routes between cities, and it can go underground as it goes through the city as long as the rail station is close to the center of the population center. Otherwise you get restricted to putting the rail station in the least usable place.
For example the proposals for a HSR between Portland Oregon and Vancouver Canada along the existing Amtrak Cascades route runs into this kind of problem, where the terminus in Vancouver Canada would be a pain to acquire the land, but would have to terminate in Surrey, but nobody wants it to terminate in Surrey because that's an extra hour to get to the train from downtown Vancouver. Seattle's rail station is above grade, but the actual terminal is at a different grade. So a HSR through Seattle isn't unreasonable. Seattle HSR unfortunately would still mean going to a rail station that is only connected by slow light rail trains, so most people using it would likely use Uber, not the embarrassing light rail system.
Portland's light rail system is even more embarrassing, At least it connects to the Amtrak station, but it runs above-grade through the city, so a high speed system would have to relocate either the light rail or the amtrak line, and that's just going to be a a huge money pit. Portland can't bury the light rail either, as when it rains, the existing places the light rail goes underneath a road fill up with water and flood the trains. Portland's light rail tracks also tends to buckle in the heat.
That's the thing here, every time "more" cheap transit has been built, it's been a huge money pit to maintain or retrofit due to design 'cheapness'. Like one of the reasons the Surrey Light rail was scrapped in Vancouver Canada was because of all these "cheapened" design choices seen in places like Portland, Seattle, Calgary and Edmonton show exactly what happens when light rail options are picked. So if this same logic was applied to HSR, all these cities that picked high-maintenance light rail options would also likely pick bad locations for HSR to go through by picking the cheapest land to build it.
Since transit funding is often done by "ballot" in the West part of the continent, it's a huge pain for the long-term transit planning as subsequent city or state governments can destroy a century's worth of transit planning on a whim.
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The problem with building transit, always, comes down to NIMBY/Property rights. In less democratic countries, the state just eminent domain's the property they want for the line, damn the consequences.
This country does exactly that. Eminent Domain is in the Constitution and the SCOTUS recently (a few years ago I think) expanded the power to include the right to seize property for "economic redevelopment". I.e. the State can take your property, pay you CURRENT market value, and give it to a developer.
Re:The Bullet Train is a running joke (Score:5, Interesting)
Eminent domain is legal, however politically it has a lot of landmines. Few people donating to campaigns care if you tear down a long strip of slums, but don't you dare get anywhere near a middle or upperclass neighborhood!
Things may have changed somewhat.. It used to be that train stations, even light rail, were in the poor areas of town. Now there are hipster apartments that want to be close to the station since they can now do a commute without a car much more easily. Even in some of the new BART stations you are seeing a much more upscale set of apartments and stores being build. Meanwhile, bus stations like Greyhound are still in the poor parts of town, because richer people and hipsters never take the bus.
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Portland can't bury the light rail either, as when it rains, the existing places the light rail goes underneath a road fill up with water and flood the trains. Portland's light rail tracks also tends to buckle in the heat.
There are these amazing new things called "sump pumps". Portland should look into them. :-D
But yeah, that's what happens when you don't properly design drainage into the system.
That's the thing here, every time "more" cheap transit has been built, it's been a huge money pit to maintain or retrofit due to design 'cheapness'. Like one of the reasons the Surrey Light rail was scrapped in Vancouver Canada was because of all these "cheapened" design choices seen in places like Portland, Seattle, Calgary and Edmonton show exactly what happens when light rail options are picked. So if this same logic was applied to HSR, all these cities that picked high-maintenance light rail options would also likely pick bad locations for HSR to go through by picking the cheapest land to build it.
Light rails are inherently a mistake unless you already have the track (and maybe even then). You start with the slowness of low-speed surface rail, then you make it wait for surface street traffic, and finally, just to add icing on the cake, you crank up the number of stops so that it's only about twice as fast as walking.
There ar
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Well, the light rail isn't meant to be fast. It just has to be faster than the bus or with fewer transfers and not smell as bad. There are places where the light rail or trolley service is nice. When weather is nice I like to walk to the light rail, take it near to work then walk the rest of the way, for only $2.50 each way. It's slower than driving but more relaxing and healthier.
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Well, the light rail isn't meant to be fast. It just has to be faster than the bus or with fewer transfers and not smell as bad. There are places where the light rail or trolley service is nice. When weather is nice I like to walk to the light rail, take it near to work then walk the rest of the way, for only $2.50 each way. It's slower than driving but more relaxing and healthier.
The problem is, it approximately never pays for itself, because the cost of building it is so high compared with a bus, but the performance isn't significantly better, if at all. Light rail at surface street levels tends to have speed limits slower than the speed limit for vehicular traffic, which means there's not really any benefit over running a bus unless your surface streets are clogged. (And if your surface streets are clogged, you have a traffic light timing problem that light rail is likely to run
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The problem is the focus on "pays for itself" taking precedence over literally everything else. Reduce the number of cars on the road, reduce pollution, get people walking, etc.
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I think you're misunderstanding what I mean by "pay for itself" here. If you have two options for how to achieve your goals and one costs more money, that extra cost has to somehow be justified, and the only valid justification is proportionally higher ridership. If it won't produce that result, you're wasting taxpayer dollars.
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No, reducing the pollution is also a valid goal. Trains do that very well, when they are properly utilized. They reduce fuel consumption AND they don't depend on rolling on rubber tires, which themselves are possibly more polluting than the motor fuel. AGW is the most important issue right now, period. Addressing it is not wasting money.
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Light rail has one big advantage, which is that you can run light rail cars on rails built for freight. Some such are just lying around unused, mostly they need significant repairs but that's still cheaper than securing RoW and building out all of the rail. Rails that won't sustain full-weight trains can still carry light rail vehicles. These days there are plug-in hybrid light rail vehicles that can fill this niche with reasonably low buy-in costs, and very low emissions in most cases.
On the other hand, I
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There are really only two types of trains that make sense at this point: subways and elevated trains. It's too bad nobody wants to pay for either one.
I think trackless trams have a fairly bright future, at least in certain places. Even tracked trams seem to be flourishing in places like Melbourne, Aus.
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Probably why the Surrey light rail is now going to be a Skytrain extension, generally elevated. Past Surrey, the Province still has the rights to the old BC Electric line up the valley, which may be fine for surface rail with the biggest problem being population centres having moved in the last century.
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Light rails are inherently a mistake unless you already have the track (and maybe even then). You start with the slowness of low-speed surface rail, then you make it wait for surface street traffic, and finally, just to add icing on the cake, you crank up the number of stops so that it's only about twice as fast as walking.
None of this has to be true, it is just characteristic of certain light systems that were designed badly.
Put the light rail in separate lanes, it can go at the local speed limit in betwee
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Sounds like an idea for a video. I'd be interested to see the history of the original plan vs what was actually built, what it looks like now, using it now, and what is the future.
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Oh I know all about creimer and his history here. I still have an irrational belief that he can improve. Maybe by covering a subject he has a personal interest in, AND is also interesting to other people, he can take the chance to shine.
We can hope. I don't see much point in constantly shitting on the guy, pretty sure he already knows the general consensus about him.
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curious.
why does the bullet train have to be above ground
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ground level is cheap in building costs. Drawback is grade crossings and clearing the route. underground is more expensive. (elevated is too, just not as much, and people really hate it when they live nearby)
But from what I've read, underground vs not underground isn't really the current issue with the California HSR. From criticisms I've read, the current route is essentially "nowhere" to "nowhere", and after there's been a big invested cost in most of the route, oops I guess we really have to go ahead and
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the current route is essentially "nowhere" to "nowhere", and after there's been a big invested cost in most of the route, oops I guess we really have to go ahead and do the hard/expensive part now
That is a standard tactic for public projects: Do the easy part first, then use the Sunk Cost Fallacy [wikipedia.org] to demand more funding.
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Yes, in the Bay Area the very upscale town of Menlo Park (upscale means literal mansions, not mini-mansions as they are in Palo Alto) blocked having BART trains run through it back in the 70s. Which means the north-south route is a major bottleneck for mass transit, and BART now finally bypasses it by going around the east bay. Menlo Park has also blocked expressways and the like. so that traffic coming over one bridge suddenly decides to spread out and take lots of residential roads to get to the west si
USA needs to update... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:USA needs to update... (Score:5, Insightful)
Travelling medium distances by train takes about the same time, door to door, as flying but without the horrible, degrading security theatre & baggage reclaim mishaps
Perhaps we could fix the security and baggage processing at the airport rather than build an entirely new transportation system.
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The train will take 30 years to complete.
By then, we will have SDCs that can drive in dense platoons, increasing highway capacity. No new lanes will be needed.
Also, HSR isn't really a replacement for driving because when you get to your destination, you don't have a car.
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Well I'd rather not put so many miles on my own car.
Re: USA needs to update... (Score:2)
So you want a bullet auto-train, where you and your car rocket between SF and LA with only a couple dozen stops in cities you'd never otherwise visit?
Interesting.
Auto-train, for the kids, is a train you drove your car on to and drove away at your destination.
https://www.amtrak.com/auto-tr... [amtrak.com]
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In 2012, a one-way ticket on CaHSR from SF to LA was projected to cost $86.
But that was based on a construction cost of $77B. The construction cost is now $98B. So a proportional increase in the ticket price would be $109.
My EV uses 0.3 kwh to drive a mile. At 10 cents per kwh and 380 miles from SF to LA, that is $11.
My car can comfortably seat 4 people. So the total savings by driving instead of taking the train is over $400.
If a lot of people look at the cost and act rationally, the projected train ri
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The current plan is to price HSR tickets at 83% of airfares.
Actually it's $69.1 to 99.1 billion.
Irrelevant. Remember, 83% of airfares.
How much does each mile of travel reduce the value of your car?
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The train between London and Paris can do 320km/h (199mph). Can your car drive that fast?
Train takes 2h16m. Driving takes about 5h30m to 6h
Re: USA needs to update... (Score:2)
The cost of driving a car is more than just fuel. Tire wear alone might be more than the cost of fuel in an EV.
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It won't take nearly that long. There are already stretches of it done, and during the Trump administration the construction continued despite having money clawed back.
Re: USA needs to update... (Score:2)
The Bakersfield to Merced connection is fascinating, by the bits connecting it to SF snd LA are going to take another decade and a half, minimum.
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The train will take 30 years to complete.
If it does it will be because of obstructionism.
By then, we will have SDCs that can drive in dense platoons, increasing highway capacity. No new lanes will be needed.
They still have polluting rubber tires, and those tires can still fail and cause mass pileups of platoons.
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If it does it will be because of obstructionism.
So? What's your point? "This project will fail because of obstructionism. Therefore we should throw $100B into a rathole so we can watch it fail and say, "We told you so!!!""
The obstructionism isn't going away. It may worsen as the costs balloon, and more and more people get fed up with the waste.
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>"The obstructionism isn't going away. It may worsen as the costs balloon, and more and more people get fed up with the waste."
For many such projects, if a private company won't (or is unwilling) do it themselves, then that should send a clear message against the government trying it. The free market will look at the problem and, more likely than not, correctly determine the risks, rewards, and outcomes. On the other side, the government is driven by politics, kickbacks, corruption, and so-called "exp
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Well not mine exactly, it's a rental.
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The Madrid-Barcelona 300kph HSR service took around 5 years to complete
The US is not Spain.
America is astoundingly inept at large construction projects, and there is no reason to believe that "This time will be different."
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The US is not Spain. America is astoundingly inept at large construction projects, and there is no reason to believe that "This time will be different."
Agreed. Russia has huge problems with corruption at all levels of govt. & yet they manage to build large infrastructure projects within reasonable periods of time. Why is the US so bad at this stuff?
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The real calculus is about how many votes will you get from your constituents if you vote for or against HSR. Right now, if you're a California Republican you will lose the primary if you don't oppose high speed rail.
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There's a beach I know with a big circular reef that is exposed at high tide. Years ago a bunch of locals decided if the there were only breech in the reef, it make the perfect place to moor their boats. So a couple of dozen guys spent several hot summer weekends shifting rocks . As you can imagine, it was very hard labor, but eventually they managed to create an entrance to their artificial harbor.
Then the first storm came. It was a small one, but everyone was eager to see how their boats had fared. Th
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Wouldn't actually help. In reality the train is much, much faster over medium distances. With new maglev trains that's even more true.
In the UK for domestic flights you need to turn up an hour before. Next flight will be hours later. Airport out of the way, poor transport links because there's nothing else there. Same problem on the other end when you land
The train goes from the city centre every 15 minutes, and takes you to another city centre transport hub.
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The stations in Japan are economic centres. Many of the stations themselves are shopping malls, destinations on their own. Other businesses cluster around them too, and even the smaller ones usually have a bus station attached.
For some reason we have the same problem in the UK as you do. Stations are massively under-utilized and at most you have a few crappy concessions and one bus. I don't know why it's like that, you would think that the owners would look at places like Japan and see a massive business op
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An airplane can be turned into a very potent weapon
Lock for cockpit door: $50.
California high-speed rail: $100 billion.
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I can do simplistic numbers too:
- Set of drones to bring a $300 million airplane down in a neighborhood: < $2K.
Obviously security isn't the only factor to consider when comparing solutions, but it is one. Personally, I think the long-term environmental issues really favor trains, but aviation gets to treat its enormous impacts from noise, kerosene plumes, contrails, greenhouse gases, etc. as externalities, so that comparison will never take hold.
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Those competitors form a list of 1: China, a command economy with the ability to do things without regard to rule of law. And having lived there for five years, I agree that the trains are nice, as long as you keep the trip under five hours. Otherwise, aircraft tend to win again. While China is the size of the USA, its population is concentrated in fewer, higher-density areas, so that helps.
Europe is kind of the same. Look at an overlay map to compare western Europe with the USA. It's highly densified and v
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Except nobody is asking to connect the whole US with high speed rail. Only where it makes sense like in California, Texas, and the East Coast.
China has invested in high speed rail into poorly populated areas like Xinjiang, and they are presently building a high speed rail line from Sichuan into Tibet. So no they aren't only building in dense areas. Their plan is to connect all cities with at least 500,000 citizens with each other.
Re:USA needs to update... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem in the US isn't "lack of density" per se, it's the fact that ironically, we have too much of the "wrong kind" of density.
In Europe, building HSR involves expensive runs through dense urban areas, but eventually, you break through a semi-invisible line a few kilometers beyond the city center where you HAVE open countryside again. In the US, if you were to route a rail line so it hit the center of every big city along its route, you could conceivably go for HUNDREDS of miles before the tracks ran through anything truly rural.
Consider Florida. For all intents and purposes, the east coast of Florida is a semi-continuous city stretching from Jacksonville to Key Largo. The only visible breaks are basically areas where nothing is ALLOWED to get built. That doesn't necessarily mean the urbanized zone is WIDE... in places like the area north of Titusville, "downtown" is only a mile or two east of open countryside west of I-95... but if you're going to insist upon putting every city's station at the literal downtown, there's only so much meandering you can do before it becomes hopeless to even try avoiding routes that pass through single-family suburbia.
This was a HUGE problem the original planners for Florida's proposed HSR had to contend with. They identified one route that plowed south in a straight line from downtown to downtown, and would have cost hundreds of billions of dollars. They identified a second route that diverted inland south of Boca Raton, followed the Sawgrass Expressway, put "Fort Lauderdale's" station out by Sawgrass Mills & Weston, then basically routed along US-27 and above the existing Tri-Rail tracks to get the train to Miami International Airport. It was ENORMOUSLY cheaper... but would have PROFOUNDLY compromised the train's usefulness in Miami (Fort Lauderdale is a tougher call... Sunrise/Weston would have been about equally useful for residents, but mostly useless for visitors).
The fundamental problem with putting Miami's station at MIA is the fact that development around that station would have been forever constrained by the fact that most of the area is consumed by buildings related to the airport, and new buildings would have been height-limited due to planes taking off and landing overhead... so if you'd taken the train to MIA, you would have still had ANOTHER 30-60 minutes of travel to get to wherever you were actually GOING. The main advantage of putting the station downtown is that you can then build lots of stuff within a few blocks around it, so a company with its HQ there can have people take the train in for a meeting, walk a block or two from the station/ and be there quickly instead of having the train just be the first half of the trip.
As luck would have it, the straight-line ideal route happens to be more or less the exact route that Brightline is now using. Basically, railroad execs read FDOT's papers, realized having passenger rail along that route would someday be a license to print money, politely declined offers to buy their ROW, then launched Brightline instead. Why "license to print money?" Because every business-case analysis done by Florida concluded that the route would lose money IF it were built as a brand new corridor to HSR standards, and would HEMORRHAGE money when you took debt service on the corridor purchase into account... but would turn an outright PROFIT on operation if it ran at 110-125mph on upgraded (but not completely rebuilt) tracks. FEC said, "hey... wait a sec... WE ALREADY OWN THOSE TRACKS, so if we can get the state to get us the corridor to Orlando and Tampa, WE could be the ones making money hand over fist", and the rest is history.
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The new Japanese maglev track will be 90% tunnel and goes through extremely challenging mountainous terrain.
Another recent express line, the Tsukuba Express, is mostly elevated, except where it enters central Tokyo where it's underground.
By comparison the challenges in the US are not at all hard to solve.
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The Tsukuba Express is 36 miles long. To put that in perspective, the BART San JoseDaly City (south SF) line is 53 miles long. It goes through tunnels, elevated tracks, underwater tunnels, and regular above ground tracks.
Oh...also remember the entire country of Japan is smaller then California.
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Oh...also remember the entire country of Japan is smaller then California.
Yeah, but they're within shouting distance of being the same size, and California has big swaths where statistically nobody goes.
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Does this hold true anywhere besides SoCal and the DC-to-NY corridor?
1. Pretty much the entire east coast of Florida.
2. The "I-4" corridor from St. Petersburg to Daytona Beach. Technically, St. Pete is I-275... but that portion USED to be the tail end of I-4 ;-)
3. US-41, from slightly north of Bradenton to slightly south of Naples.
4. US-27, from Ocala to Sebring. This one's kind of a reach... but give it another 10-20 years, and it'll be wall-to-Walmart development from Gainesville to Lake Okeechobee.
5. US-19 and Veteran's Expressway, from St. Petersburg to Crystal River thr
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If you are travelling between New York and LA, you will take a plane. But if you take an area like Californa plus the inhabited bits of Nevada, then rail makes sense.
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It's Amurica. If my grandpappy could get around without a train or electric rail, then so can we!
Kind of ironic, as I note from my great grandmothers diary that they were taking the trolley in the L.A. area back in 1910ish. Which was a surprise to know that a trolley even existed, much less that some of the curmudgeonly great uncles were using it before they moved and became farmers and ranchers.
I do have conservative views, and liberal, and a mix. But I always felt that the "don't do anything new!" stanc
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It's not the "don't do anything new!" issue.
It's the "let's dump money hand over fist into pet projects that are never finished" thats that issue.
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Travelling medium distances by train takes about the same time, door to door, as flying...
You're not an American are you? I don't think you really understand the size of this country. What is a medium distance to you is probably not the same for me. Because, if it is, your statement is laughable.
The distance between the two largest cities (both coastal) of NY and LA is 2790 miles (4,490 kilometers). That sets the scale for you.
What's medium distance? One state over? Two states?
I'll go with one state. LA to Phoenix is a 6 hour drive.. 1:20 by air. Assuming a high speed train can
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To put that into context, the *slow* trains from the town I live in to London do 95mph, and the fast trains do 140mph. "High speed" is 300km/h(186mph) from London to Brussels, or 320km/h(199mph) London to Paris.
So if you run an actual high speed train, it would be 2 hours, and that makes it competitive against air.
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You should calculate overall time from door to door. That includes the time spent getting to the airport, queuing to check in, going through security, waiting at the gate, & possibly waiting at baggage reclaim. Train stations are typically in town & city centres & link directly to local public transport networks.
Yes, flying from NY to LA takes about 6 hours, which by train would take over 15. You're talking about crossing 3 time zones, which would be like travelling from Paris to Russia or Turke
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You imply here that our esteemed colleagues at the TSA will not be screening passengers and baggage for passengers on high speed rail lines. That assumes facts not in evidence.
Please consider that they already explored this option a decade ago [forbes.com]. (AdBlockWalled link)
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In the EU, you may have to pop your luggage through an x-ray machine. That's it. Do they have that at train stations in the USA?
It much easier to sabotage the 1000's of km of tracks that the trains run on. A derailment at 300 kmph is pretty catastrophic.
How the west was won via railroads (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How the west was won via railroads (Score:5, Informative)
Even so, this section will have cost about $40B by the time it ever completes, while the whole project from SF-LA has already been projected to cost more than $100B with $150B in sight. The entire rail system may not see an end-to-end run before the mid 2030s at the earliest.
Re:How the west was won via railroads (Score:5, Insightful)
They are building it there first because it is where it is easiest to get the right of way.
Even then they still haven't acquired all the land there either.
They shouldn't be building without acquiring the land first. That is one reason why costs are so high.
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I think it's a given that the San Jose to Merced segment will get built, because there's too much potential real estate profit on the table for developers there to allow it to fail. Once Merced and beyond becomes a sane suburban commute into the Bay Area, it's going to have wholesale development until the whole Central Valley looks like satellite photos of Miami. CalHSR might look like a boondoggle for 25-50 years, but a century from now, its absence will seem as inconceivable as the absence of BART or I-5.
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That's because the chance of completed sections connecting into nothing is also nil, due to the federal requirement of "independent utility."
No, the current cost estimate is $69.1 billion to $99.9 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars, or $72.8 billion in 2019 dollars.
I hope you will read the latest busi [ca.gov]
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This is boon-doggle with a capital "B" as in billions. Before we drop $200 billion plus to shuttle Norcal folks to Disneyland and SoCal folks to wine country, why not try a smaller scale demo. Bear with me.
There are already freight lines in California running all over. Here's one map, https://bnsfcalifornia.com/bns... [bnsfcalifornia.com]. Issues are
1.) Freight takes priority
2.) Not highspeed in the TGV/Shinkansen sense of the word.
But, we the right of ways already exist. So instead of dropping 100's of billions on new stu
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This will not work, for two reasons:
1) Parts of the freight ROW are unsuitable for high speed trains. The curves are too sharp, and the mountain crossings much too convoluted [openstreetmap.org]. These parts would have to be built from scratch anyway. And these are the expensive parts of the route (particularly the mountain crossings) which make up the large majority of the route cost.
2) You can't run freight trains and HSR on the same tracks. HSR tracks need to be very precise in shape and location to run safely at high speed
Re:How the west was won via railroads (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a moment to consider that the 'railroads of the past' were built by powerful financial interests that could clobber any senator or competitor that got in the way. There were no environmental concerns and relatively few property rights problems to consider. The native americans might have objected, but so what.
Things are a bit different. Without wasting much of your time I'd like to add attorneys to the list of concerns. Everything about life in our time is more complicated, more expensive because of the potential for lawsuits. If you're a man with a plan, it may seem that there are hungry lawyers lurking on every corner looking for an opportunity to interfere with the American dream.
It's only a billion dollars (Score:2)
That is not serious money anymore so consider it a grant like UBI and a stimulus payment whose result will matter little next to the enormous CA economy.
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Accumulated legacy is enemy to progress (Score:3)
Europe and Japan got fresh starts thanks to WWII (war is great for development if you survive it!) while China has vast room to build from nothing and a central government capable of imposing order and kicking aside obstacle humans.
The US has so much old shit there's no room for new shit without stepping on "muh rights" so while we have Constitutional government (on the rare good day anyway) we cannot have massive rail projects like other nations. Our road net accumulated beyond repairability and there's no point in passenger rail away from the coasts because most of the US remains "empty" and not worth passenger rail but VERY MUCH WORTH FREIGHT which is what we have.
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Europe also had more walkable cities, and populations were not heavily segregated into a few big cities with lots of nothing inbetween. The trains there are also used for commuting, not just the long distance moving of cargo or the occasional vacationing tourist. Europe feels a lot more like the New England area in some ways, where there is an active train system being used all the time. But head further west and the trains really don't do much except connect cities that are very far apart.
Unlike the airp
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This is one of the reasons why the US never adopted the Metric system. Re-tooling everything would have cost so much.
Good news! (Score:2)
/SMH - seriously, this is on again? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Trump action to take back the money was highly controversial, and federal grant experts said such terminations were rare in cases that did not involve fraud but were merely behind schedule.
Merely behind schedule? Did we forget to mention the tens of billions of dollars in projected cost over-runs?
The $929 million is part of a planned $22.8-billion effort aimed at building a 171-mile partial operating system between Bakersfield and Merced
[part of the route between San Francisco and Los Angeles], as well as completing environmental planning and making some high-speed rail investments in Southern California and the Bay Area.
That's a staggering $131.6 million per mile -to get from Bakersfield to Merced, and another $80 Billion is expected to be needed to complete the trip from SF to LA.
This is a "Bigger than the Big Dig" boondoggle by at least an order of magnitude.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
With all the stops along the way, how fast will this "bullet train" trip from SF to LA in 2038 (or whenever they actually finish it) ? Will it still be just $55/one-way?
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It will be "83% of San Francisco-Los Angeles airfare with lower rates for shorter distances" [cahsrprg.com].
Burn it with fire (Score:3)
This is one of the worst managed projects in the history of ... mankind? It is criminally over budget and late for its schedule. It is now only supported by politicians, and the contractors working on it. At this point, the best would be just ending the suffering and pulling the plug.
Of course, not all needs to go do waste. A proper project that covers the existing partial construction around Fresno could be completed with that additional budget. But, forget about connecting LA to Sacramento let alone SF.
Whatever we do, just drop the San Jose -> San Francisco section. That is one of the most expensive real estate in the world, and even re-purposing existing Caltrain tracks would cost many billions by itself. Give that money to Caltrain, and let is do *some proper modernization*, but don't waste money trying to get HSR trains through that corridor. That will not happen. (Just demolishing a single of homes block will easily cost $20 million, go figure the 48+ miles, no HSR trains do not fit into existing corridor).
I fear there was never a proper study for the project. They just got some initial public support, and kept going with the sunken cost fallacy "we spend $10 billion already, we just need to spend an additional $200 billion and we should be fine".
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This looks like a case of NIMBY, as we call it in the UK. That is, good public rail transport is a fine idea, but Not In My Back Yard. In the UK, the big fuss is about HS2, which is a high speed rail project to connect major regions of London, the Midlands, and the North of England. Real estate purchases are escalating the costs. Environmentalists despair at the destruction of ancient woodlands. And the socialists point out that all this does is save 30 minutes for rich businessmen to travel between London
Trains are obsolete. (Score:3)
Simple thing to do: Peel off a lane in each direction in existing highways, separate it from rest of traffic using jersey barrier or walls. Mark this special lane with special RFID beacons and other sensors to make self driving vehicles possible. Exits/entrances once in 40 miles or so. Commercial vehicles will be certified and will have authorized software to communicate with other vehicles and road sensors and waystations. For private cars there should self driving skates, you park your car on top and lock the wheels down. Skate leaves one parking lot, and stops at the destination parking lot. Vehicles negotiate with one another to let them merge in from entrances. All completely autonomous driving enabled by the road. We can easily reach 120 mph for such vehicles.
A overnight journey can cover 1200 miles, at your schedule. And you get a car at the destination. You save motel stay and car rental at the destination.
Investment needed is a fraction of what it takes to build a HSR line.
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Trains need heavy investment
[...]
For private cars there should self driving skates
omfgwtfbbq. You want a whole system that hasn't even been invented yet and won't solve pollution from tires which is at least as bad as the pollution from burning the fuel, and you think that the overall cost is going to be lower than rail?
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The idea of dedicated lanes for autonomous vehicles, instrumentation of the road to help autonomous vehicles, vehicle-to-vehicle communication protocols, authorization and certification of software, all are being developed and talked about. HSR will find it very difficult to get a foo
Railroad grift is ubiquitous (Score:2)
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Re: We have airplanes. (Score:2)
Add to this, most properly designed train systems have them running from city centre to city centre, with a possible bonus option of passing through a major transport hub, such as an airport.
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