Las Vegas-To-California Bullet Train Gets Bipartisan Backing (apnews.com) 191
A group of ten bipartisan lawmakers from Nevada and California have asked the Biden administration to quickly provide federal funding for a private company to construct a high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area. The Associated Press reports: All six of Nevada's elected federal lawmakers and four House members from California sent the letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. They said they're on board with a proposal from Brightline West to spend more than $10 billion to lay tracks along the Interstate 15 corridor. The Mojave Desert is largely open space, and the electric-powered trains could potentially cut the four-hour trip in half, carrying passengers at speeds of nearly 200 mph (322 kph). "This project is a major priority because it will make southern Nevada more accessible to millions of visitors each year," said U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, the Nevada Democrat leading the group. She said it "will boost our economy and create more good-paying jobs."
Union labor will be used during construction, the company and the Southern Nevada Building Trades Union have announced in recent weeks. Brightline West is seeking $3.75 billion in federal funding from the Biden administration-backed federal infrastructure law. The project could be "the blueprint for how we can connect major city pairs that are too short to fly and too far to drive," said Mike Reininger, CEO of Florida-based Brightline Holdings LLC, the only privately owned and operated intercity passenger railroad in the United States. The lawmakers' letter pointed to company projections of 35,000 construction jobs, 1,000 permanent jobs and reduced planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.
Union labor will be used during construction, the company and the Southern Nevada Building Trades Union have announced in recent weeks. Brightline West is seeking $3.75 billion in federal funding from the Biden administration-backed federal infrastructure law. The project could be "the blueprint for how we can connect major city pairs that are too short to fly and too far to drive," said Mike Reininger, CEO of Florida-based Brightline Holdings LLC, the only privately owned and operated intercity passenger railroad in the United States. The lawmakers' letter pointed to company projections of 35,000 construction jobs, 1,000 permanent jobs and reduced planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.
If all these projects delivered what they claimed (Score:4, Insightful)
We'd have 0% unemployment, huge federal and state budget surpluses everywhere, and the CO2 level in the atmosphere would be dropping like a rock.
Re:If all these projects delivered what they claim (Score:4, Informative)
Some of the pros and cons were discussed last month when this project was announced.
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
It appears some of the officials from both Nevada and California are trying to accelerate the funding for this high-speed project.
Re:If all these projects delivered what they claim (Score:4, Informative)
1) "We'd have 0% unemployment"
Unfortunately this is unachievable in an ideal world as there are some people who are simply unemployable, largely due to issues beyond their control (physical and mental disabilities). Take a military veteran who is suffering from severe PTSD, there is very few jobs they can hold down in the modern world (although anecdotally being an apiarist [beekeeper] actually helps PTSD suffers as you are too focused on not being stung!)
2) "huge federal and state budget surpluses everywhere"
There are possibly two reasons why governments are not having large surpluses:
a) Ensure everyone is paying a "fair and reasonable" amount of tax (will not explorer this one as "reasonable" is such a subjective issue)
b) Infrastructure projects no long move the dial like they used to 50+ years ago
Historically infrastructure projects addressed "the necessities of life" such as providing food, water, housing at affordable prices. There is no longer the large vacant tracts of land there used to be that could provide new opportunities for people once the basic infrastructure was put in (dams for water & electricity, roads to transport the products in/out of the new areas). Given the USA has largely outsourced manufacturing to other low cost countries the benefit of improved transport to industry (the kind that adds value by making stuff) is minimal.
3) "CO2 level in the atmosphere would be dropping like a rock"
Wait about 10 years, we are probably approaching peak CO2 emissions due to a number of reasons.
a) Coal fired power stations are capital intensive requiring about 20 years to pay back the initial investment. Ignoring all government subsidies solar and wind are currently have a better payback than a coal fired power station. Existing coal fired power station will be run until they reach about 30 years old at which point they are likely to be shut down as they are no longer economically viable. The environmental credentials of solar and wind projects are simply a way for investors to "expedite" the planning approvals and/or get some good PR. Yes - energy storage is an issue - will discuss battery related materials later.
b) On the hydrocarbon front the world will be transitioning from crude oil to natural gas. One of the challenges with oil and gas fields is the deeper you go the more the formation changes from liquid hydrocarbons towards methane (natural gas). Extended periods of time at higher temperature breaks down hydrocarbons such that ultimately you are left with very lean methane with not much else other than nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Oil and gas is still going to be around for several decades longer but it is likely to be a slow decline as certain industries will still require hydrocarbons. Finding "green alternatives" is going to be an order magnitude harder than getting everyone to drive EVs to free up enough supplies for those demands.
c) EVs have probably passed the point of critical mass - issues such as range and charging infrastructure have been largely addressed in most countries. Technologies that take years to be established as mainstream generally have a very long life time, an example would be how fast DVDs appeared and subsequently disappeared (replaced by BluRay and streaming), however vinyl records have not truly died (yet!). EVs are here and are going to be around for some time.
Back to the issue of battery related materials (Lithium, Nickel & Cobalt are the main ones). Nickel is an interesting reference case as one of the main uses is steel production (stainless steels) where demand spikes at the start of an economic cycle as companies start investing in new equipment but the existing nickel mines have been struggling to survive - what happens is the nickel price spikes until new mines/refineries are brought on-line (which takes 3 to 5 years) before there is an oversupply, then the nickel mines go into a cost reduction mode trying to survive until the next boom time (barely make ends meet for 9 out of 10 years but it rains m
Re: If all these projects delivered what they clai (Score:2)
Infrastructure projects don't work the same as manufacturing doesn't work as well any more.
It isnt what is being produce, that helps it is employing hundreds of thousands of people in high paying jobs.
We don't throw x00's of people to do a job now. We send in 10 with the right tools and they bang it out in half the time.
We can do more faster with less people.
If a car plant today held people like they did in the 60's Ford would have millions of employees. Not thousands.
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In which case, you can count on cost, manpower and time overruns that will very likely turn this into the same money pit boondoggle that the CA speed train project has proved to be these past few years.
If they kept is a bit more private business, you might have a chance it would be on time and at cost or under (especially if it means more profit for the private company).
Re:If all these projects delivered what they claim (Score:4, Interesting)
Some countries seem to be much better at building infrastructure than others. Japan was the first to build high speed rail, and is currently building the world's first long distance maglev line, 90% of which is tunnelled through mountains. Improvements on existing lines continue, with wheeled trains reaching ever higher speeds.
Meanwhile the US and UK seem unable to build high speed rail, and when it does happen it's multiples of the original budget and decades late. What went wrong here that makes us unable to get these things done?
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What went wrong here that makes us unable to get these things done?
Unrestrained capitalism.
The good of the people doesn't matter when there's more profit to be made in making them suffer.
Re:If all these projects delivered what they claim (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism succeeds by serving customers to their satisfaction, inducing them to purchase capitalism's products and thus provide a compensation for those involved for their efforts.
Um, yeah, in theory.
Communism is very appealing in theory, as well.
They both make horribly wrong assumptions about human nature and ignore human drives.
Real capitalism (not the dusty book theory) is, in a sentence, solely aimed at squeezing as much profit as possible out of the product, customer satisfaction, safety and interests be damned.
Re:If all these projects delivered what they claim (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism succeeds by serving customers to their satisfaction, inducing them to purchase capitalism's products and thus provide a compensation for those involved for their efforts.
Um, yeah, in theory. Communism is very appealing in theory, as well. They both make horribly wrong assumptions about human nature and ignore human drives.
A million times this!
The problem with all of these 'isms is that they always assume something.
Libertarianism believes that all humans are intelligent and skilled at making decisions.
Communism believes all humans are willing to work with all other humans to a common good.
Socialism - well, that's a mismash of strange stuff.
Capitalism, which some have called "harnessing greed", believes that that greed can actually be harnessed.
The purer the 'ism, the worse it fails. It always looks at humans as a monolithic block.
Now - what does work?
You take a bit from this concept, a bit from that concept, and you put a system in place that shows understanding how things work.
One of the mistakes people make is trying to assign an ism to a time and place. 21st Century United States is an example. Often claimed as a Capitalist State, we're actually a combination of many things. There are not likely too many Capitalist states where if you are below a certain income threshold, you can get free phones, free food, Free heating oil, drastically reduced housing costs, and free healthcare. And for those who doubt this - it is all referenceable.
It isn't popular to say anything positive in here about the USA, but we actually have some grip on accommodating the nuances of humans.
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There are not likely too many Capitalist states where if you are below a certain income threshold, you can get free phones, free food, Free heating oil, drastically reduced housing costs, and free healthcare. And for those who doubt this - it is all referenceable.
With the mention that all those free” things are sometimes theoretical and almost always of shitty quality.
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Any unrestrained "-ism" inevitably leads to tragedy. One of the critical skills of leadership is pragmatism, and pragmatism literally means finding the middle course between competing extremes; as so eruditely put by Jeremy Bentham: "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong".
Unrestrained capitalism inevitably leads to a concentration of capital. Marx wasn't wrong about that. His solution, of course, was simply to flip the poles around, and try to disburse th
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Unrestrained pragmatism is almost as bad as extreme moderation.
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Sure, true in a way. But ask yourself, who are the 'customers' of a company these days, i.e. who do they actually serve? There's a common sentiment that a corporation's primary duty is to their shareholders, so taken from that view, satisfaction of people who buy the product are secondary to those of the shareholders.
The recent bankruptcy of Bed Bath and Beyond is a good example of this -- sure they'd been losing marketshare and customers for quite some time. But if you talk with actual customers, this was
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That makes capitalism even more like communism: if it's not working that's just because you're not doing it right!
Re: If all these projects delivered what they clai (Score:2)
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To be fair, the UK suffers a lot from being an early adopter - the legacy clearances require custom built rolling stock. The only British railway line that works with standard rolling stock is the HS1 that was built to French standards.
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The only British railway line that works with standard rolling stock is the HS1 that was built to French standards.
No, it was built to UIC standard, which is an international standard.
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It was, matter of fact, built to the French standards. It uses French signalling, French train control system and French tracks. The loading gauge is UIC for continental Europe, though.
HS2 is planned to be built to international standards using ERTMS, ETCS and a slab track.
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Meanwhile the US and UK seem unable to build high speed rail, and when it does happen it's multiples of the original budget and decades late. What went wrong here that makes us unable to get these things done?
IMO it's because of the whiners like the OP. Oh no it will take years and cost billions! There will be delays! We can't do that!
Huge projects like this almost always go over time and budget and there are various unexpected issues discovered and so on. And you just deal with it and get it done eventually because it's important, instead of the whole thing getting immediately defunded after an election. Let's see how Japan's maglev line is doing, since you mentioned it.
Government permission to proceed with construction was granted on 27 May 2011. Construction of the line, which is expected to cost over Â¥9 trillion, commenced in 2014. The start date of commercial service is currently unknown, after Shizuoka Prefecture denied permission for construction work on a portion of the route in June 2020.[1] JR Central originally aimed to begin commercial service between Tokyo and Nagoya in 2027, with the Nagoyaâ"Osaka section planned to be completed as early as 2037. Originally, the Nagoya-Osaka section was planned to be completed as late as 2045, but the date was moved up following a loan from the Japanese government.
So... they started 10 years ago, one of t
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They will resolve the issue with that one prefecture blocking. It's just politicking to get some concessions elsewhere, it's not delaying construction yet. It does take them a long time to build, but this is brand new technology. Not just the train, but the tunnel construction system, the track itself. Japan does take a long time to build stuff, but they plan for that initially and meet the deadlines in most cases.
Similarly for the wheeled high speed rail they are building new lines up to Hokkaido, which in
Re: If all these projects delivered what they clai (Score:2)
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On the other hand, the geography of Japan is much more challenging that much of America. The proposed line in California is relatively flat and easy in comparison to what Japan builds.
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I'll concede I may have gotten off at the wrong station, however it's not laws that stopped sprawl. Sprawl started in the US before the automobile took off. There was and is an attitude of having space being desirable as opposed to living on top of one another. Many Europeans came to America with space being a desirable plus, though definitely not a deciding factor. Outside of the Great American Desert, there was no risk of war from a neighboring nation, so compact villages weren't needed. In modern develop
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Sprawl started in the US before the automobile took off.
Who told you that??
Again, who told you that? It is a safety issue and was invented before automobiles were on the roads in any significance.
You are mistaken.
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/... [vox.com]
You seem to be European (British?) and given that, it's easy not to realize just how vast the US is.
Yeah yeah I've heard all the America is special arguments. I lived in New Mexico for a number of years, I know how far it is between towns.
So given that, in betw
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Indeed, prior to the mass adoption of the automobile in the first decade or so of the 20th century, North America was already serving most major centers with intercity routes. With the completion of the first Transcontinental railroad in the US in 1869 and Canada's completion of its own transcontinental line in 1887, and the vast web of rail lines in between, one could get on a train in New York and get to most major centers in North America. At the same time, city rail lines were burgeoning. There was ever
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And then the automobile took off and the rest, as they say, is history.
Well... not quite. Automobile industry lobbying and propaganda had a huge effect. Interestingly though this wasn't uniquely American. There were definitely plans to raze everything and put in huge roads in parts of Europe as well. Europe was initially more concerned with rebuilding after WWII, and by the time the will and money was available for the grand schemes, it became clear that the American model wasn't quite going to plan.
In some
Re: If all these projects delivered what they clai (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing about American geography forces people to build cities that sprawl unpleasantly, and indeed before the 1950s cities were built to be much more compact and walkable. After colossal amounts of lobbying pressure including purchasing new crimes (jaywalking was a crime invented and then purchased by the car industry) the sprawl started and the downtowns were ripped out to make more room for cars and parking.
Did it never occur to you that many people like living in the suburbs? Having more than a postage stamp size city yard, or worse, an apartment? Cars made that possible, they did not need to do anything else. Cities sprawl because that is what people want. Space, not crowds.
Re:If all these projects delivered what they claim (Score:4, Insightful)
High speed rail didn't even exist until the 1960s. Japan built the first line in time for the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. The age of the samurai was long past by that point, and they continue to build high speed rail to this day.
Re:If all these projects delivered what they claim (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple shit for brains, their rail networks were initially built when the had an authoritarian government agents of which could go cutting off people's heads with little to no repercussions so long as the person was not a noble or an equal or higher ranking samurai
The bullet train network was started in 1959, about 100 years after the Samurai were abolished.
and converting from traditional light rail to high speed rail lines in certain areas was relatively easy since they have no significant heavy rail system because their interior landmass is small enough not to need it.
Like everyone else, there was no "conversion", it was almost a complete rebuild because standard rail lines don't allow trains to run fast enough. New tunnels, new lines, new signalling systems, the works. Plus "light rail" does not mean what you clearly think it means because it's never used to refer to intercity rail.
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Indeed. The Japanese common name for bullet trains is "shinkansen", which actually means "new trunk line". The lines were built from scratch and are a wider gauge than standard ones. They are always separated, usually by grade.
The only exception I know of is the Seikan Tunnel where there is a combined, 3 rail standard gauge and shinkansen line, but that was purpose built that way rather than converted.
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It's a bizarre take on why American doesn't have decent trains, but if there was a Steampunk alt-history with the Samurai creating a high speed rail network, I'd watch that.
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However when most of your modern cities are designed around passenger railroad usage which were all laid down when taking land was easy and cheap it is much easier to add additional rail lines. Moreover the Shinkansen was started pre-war with multiple tunnels and routes used in the final product dug before/during the war, with construction only stopping in 1943. The bullet train version was rolled out in the 60's after having been forgotten/ignored during the reconstructive period of the 50's.
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However when most of your modern cities are designed around passenger railroad usage which were all laid down when taking land was easy and cheap it is much easier to add additional rail lines.
Shinkansen runs between cities.
And having existing lines in no way makes it easier to add new ones. You need more space.
Moreover the Shinkansen was started pre-war[...]
So a mere 75 years after the Samurai were disbanded?
was started pre-war with multiple tunnels and routes used in the final product dug before/during th
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If anything that's an argument in Japan's favour. They have even more NIMBYS to deal with, land is at even more of a premium, city centres where the stations are are even more dense.
Japan also has very difficult terrain. Compared that what California and the UK are trying to build.
It should be far easier and cheaper in the US and UK.
If car companies stopped shutting down (Score:2)
Re: If all these projects delivered what they clai (Score:2)
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That one has a top speed of 125 mph. Because of its slow-ish top speed, they were able to reuse an existing rail corridor, saving a lot of money on land acquisition.
Brightline West will have a top speed of 180 mph and will run in a freeway median, stopping just short of the mountains in Sou
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California High-Speed Rail will have a stop speed of 220 mph.
Helluva deceleration!
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Somebody lobbies real hard to get this one to pass with so few roadblocks. There's a TON of public money about to be funneled into studies and research and blah blah blah, but there's zero chance this ever actually happens. Maybe a modest little test-track somewhere, that sorta-kinda resembles an attempt to build infrastructure, but there's no way that we'll ever see any public benefit from it.
When you see the government move in lock-step to provide funding to a private company? It's a payment to somebody t
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0% unemployment would spike inflation. Government spending can increase inflation too.
CO2 levels will drop about 30-50 years after the last internal combustion engine is melted down for scrap. There won't be a neat and tidy immediately visible cause and effect when it comes to climate change. It's a lot of hard work to figure it out, which is why laypeople don't trust it.
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A train's capacity is way higher than a plane's, however. And there is plenty of demand for LA-LAS
Wasn't Musk supposed to build this 10 years ago? (Score:3)
Re:Wasn't Musk supposed to build this 10 years ago (Score:5, Funny)
It just wasn't interesting enough.
Seriously, who names his company that?
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Seriously, who names his company that?
Because you think Microsoft is better? Worse, originally it was styled as Micro-Soft.
Or Apple.
Or Tencent. Even 50 Cent doesn't sound as cheap.
(Okay granted, that last one is a Chinese company name. But they could have made a better-named US subsidiary)
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Isn't "Tencent" a reference to microtransactions in "free-to-play" games? You know, the whole basis of the mobile app boom. At least they're somewhat honest about it.
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Other way around.
https://gizmodo.com/silicon-va... [gizmodo.com]
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Certainly seems to be the case. The tunnels they built are extremely ordinary. Standard construction, standard cost. The cars they use in them are driven by humans, no "full self driving".
The whole thing would work better if it had trains running in it. It doesn't solve any problems or advance the state of the art.
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Certainly seems to be the case. The tunnels they built are extremely ordinary. Standard construction, standard cost. The cars they use in them are driven by humans, no "full self driving".
The whole thing would work better if it had trains running in it. It doesn't solve any problems or advance the state of the art.
The geology under Las Vegas is also some of the easiest to bore through.
Something tells me that Musk is going to find his griftprojekts are going to be a lot harder to pull off in the future. Hyperloop is an embarrassment, both to him and the fund providers.
Re:Wasn't Musk supposed to build this 10 years ago (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile for people who care about facts rather than out-of-context quotes spread by Paris Marx, the actual quote in the Vance book was:
So to reiterate, this entire "story" comes from Ashley Vance getting an email that said "Down the road, I might fund or advise on a Hyperloop project, but right now I can't take my eye off the ball at either SpaceX or Tesla,". But Hyperloop Alpha was introduced as an "open source engineering project", and literally says as much right in the engineering document, and was from the beginning said to be something that SpaceX and Tesla had no plans to build themselves. Which is why several "Hyperloop" startups formed to take the reins. It actually came as a surprise when Musk announced that he does plan to eventually build it.
There's no "news" here. The "reveal" is "exactly what was said at the time of the announcement".
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TBC switched to focusing on in-town systems (Loop), rather than long-distance (Hyperloop). Their notion is build Loop systems first, then connect Loop systems with Hyperloops**.
** The main legitimate criticism with the Hyperloop Alpha proposal was where a good portion of their cost savings came from: it skipped actually going into cities. The original notion was that the stations be more like an airport, on the outskirts, and just go (largely over public right-of-ways) straight to the destination with no
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TL/DR: Most of the cost of any such project - be it HSR or something as unusual as Hyperloop - has nothing to do with the cost of the materials, or physically building the track, or acquiring the rolling stock. It's overhead. Acquiring the land, dealing with holdouts, getting environmental permits, dealing with lawsuits, on and on and on. And when it's a public project, everyone wants you to not simply go near them, but have a stop right in the middle of their city (cities being vastly more difficult wit
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What happened to the Boring Company doing this project?
The Boring Company bores tunnels. No point in boring a tunnel under mostly desert and other open country.
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Objectors to HS rail projects in the UK also use the "Hyperloop is coming real soon now!" as an argument. They would of course object even more strongly to Hyperloop, but it is a play for time and they know Hyperloop will never happen anyway, especially in the UK.
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Where has high speed rail worked in the US? Acela, which has a whopping 20 minutes (under 50 miles) of high-speed rail? Florida's private Brightline service should have HSR in service this summer, and this Las Vegas-San Diego route is also going to be private: Brightline West.
Musk believed (and probably still does) that California's HSR project is a turkey, and won't be finished. CAHSR doesn't even pretend to have a schedule for the full length of the project now -- three years after it was originally pr
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Where has HSR been built?
It has a much higher chance of working in California than the Hyperloop anywhere.
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California's plate tectonics and geological features make it hard to put HSR in the state. ... Musk was right to push them to look at alternatives.
And a Hyperloop would solve that, right? The extreme speed of Hyperloop means that it must be built in an almost straight and level line, with radii of curvature (horizontal and vertical) not less than about 25 km. Try fitting that through anything but a flat desert landscape without some spectacularly expensive civil engineering.
Maybe first.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Maybe first.... (Score:2)
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Now where's the money in that?
Getting people shuttled to a place where they can be fleeced and swindled out of money, now that's how you drive an economy! And when they gambled away all their money, they can't pay for water anymore anyway.
Re:Maybe first.... (Score:4, Informative)
Well thankfully California and Nevada have enough people to do more than one thing at a time.
Re: Maybe first.... (Score:4, Funny)
As long as the risk stays in the private sector (Score:2)
One of Margaret Thatcher's greatest achievements was ensuring that the (English) Channel Tunnel - unlike Concord - was built with all the risk taken by the private sector. The $3bn subsidy here is probably legitimate given the reduction in cars driving the route, but let's hope that remains the only cost taxpayers will have to bear.
Let's be clear what happens with public sector projects: the design team offers a cost based on EVERYTHING going perfectly - because everyone else proposing projects does. In pra
Re:As long as the risk stays in the private sector (Score:5, Insightful)
That seems logical, but it's not actually true [pedestrian...ations.com]. In fact, the public sector is capable of handling risks in a more efficient manner than the private sector, because the public sector can more easily raise money by taxes or cheap borrowing. You can write your contracts so that the private sector is responsible for risks, but all that means is that the private sector will inflate their bids to compensate for their increased risk. As a result, you lose everything you gained by outsourcing risk, plus more because the private sector is worse at handling risk to begin with.
More efficient maybe, but 'better'? (Score:2)
The problem with the public sector (at least in the Anglosphere) is that the wages it offers for highly skilled personnel are usually a lot less than those in the private. The effect is thus that brightest and best at all aspects of contracts are in the private sector, whilst the game keepers left in the public sector are, too often, second raters. Add in the political pressure to play nicely with contractors who offer significant bribes (sorry 'campaign contributions') to those with political control, and
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The problem with the public sector (at least in the Anglosphere) is that the wages it offers for highly skilled personnel are usually a lot less than those in the private.
I'm not sure that's true, at least not in the US. Using union labor generally guarantees you're paying top dollar. Public sector employment used to offer low wages with great stability but has evolved to high pay and great stability (see, for example, this article [hoover.org] from the Hoover Institution.
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...The $3bn subsidy here is probably legitimate given the reduction in cars driving the route, but let's hope that remains the only cost taxpayers will have to bear.
Yes. If we're creating "a blueprint for how we can connect major city pairs that are too short to fly and too far to drive", how about that include letting the people or states who benefit pay for it? As a California resident, since the vast majority of the benefit accrue to Nevadans and Californians, we should be footing the bill, not people in Massachusetts or Florida.
Even better, have the company pay for it and charge appropriate ticket prices. At most I'd consider using eminent domain to acquire right o
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CA is a net positive state when it comes to Federal taxes. It's citizens pay more in Federal taxes than the state gets in Federal funding every year.
I don't see a problem with it getting Federal funding in that context.
Las Vegas to Los Angeles (Score:2)
Bullet train (Score:2)
Why do they need a train to move bullets around?
Koch Brothers both dead then? (Score:2)
nft
Another Solyndra. (Score:2)
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BrightLine in Florida has proven successful because the FEC (the local railroad), the State, and the local governments are all willing to work together to bring BrightLine's visions into reality.
And by "successful" I mean this:
- You can actually pay to ride those trains NOW along most of the line.
- The track work to Orlando is all complete and being tested/certified as I write.
- The Orlando facility is up & running.
- The additional trains have arrived and should be ready for paying customers.
BrightLine
Federal funds? (Score:2)
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How does this benefit the country? It sounds to me like Vegas should pay for it. I want a high-speed rail from my driveway to my office...
I agree. This should either be paid for by private funds (and private companies seem quite capable of funding $10 billion projects these days) with maybe California and Nevada kicking in a few bucks rather than paying to widen I-15.
Ideally, it would only be SoCal paying for it but that's pretty awkward to manage. This is a good example of why we should break California into a number of smaller states. No reason for people in Crescent City to pay for this.
Sports teams (Score:5, Funny)
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This will be nice as it will make it easier for a lot of Californians to go see their sports teams.
YES, 100% agree. Living in CA, if a sports team wants a tax-payer funded stadium, let them leave the State and don't come back, ever... I can stream the Reno Giants, the Las Vegas Lakers, or the Tucson Chargers, I honestly don't care. Go Albuquerque Mariners!!! Also if they want a high-speed line from LAX to LAS, then let the sports franchise owners and gaming industry pay for it. They have money.
DC to NYC (Score:2, Insightful)
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Acela is slow, only able to hit maybe 100mph on a few parts of track. The current train under discussion would be twice that fast, hence half the time, or actually less if the entire track length were 200mph.
Start with a normal train (Score:2)
Apparently there was an old Amtrak route from LA to Las Vegas closed down in the 1990's. Why not resurrect that first, see if people actually want to take a train. There are already tracks there, so if a train is only doing 75mph you are still avoiding traffic jams, avoiding flight delays, security, etc. Admittedly Amtrak today totally sucks** the way to not make this suck would be to limit the stops. Maybe one or two in LA area then non-stop to Vegas.
None of this "Make the train stop in Barstow becaus
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Because bullet trains make a profit. [businessinsider.com]
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The "old Amtrak route", formerly used by Amtrak's "Desert Wind", is actually rail owned and operated by Union Pacific (UP).
It is a single track line with sidings in many places, formerly known as the "Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad".
Union Pacific moves a lot of freight between the Los Angeles area and the Salt Lake & North Platte areas over that line.
UP has no incentive to double-track the line, or even improve it to support 75 mph service just so passenger rail can run over it. The current line mee
Pass. (Score:3, Interesting)
About 1.5 million people a year fly from LAX to Vegas.
The cost of a round trip airline ticket is under $50.
Assuming you could capture 100% of that market, and you charge $25 each way ($50 round trip), that's $75 million per year.
Even assuming no debt, it would take over 130 years to recoup the initial $10 billion investment.
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How many drive?
A flight out today and returning tomorrow is $218 round trip. If the train is priced at 83% of airfares as CAHSR plans to do, then that roundtrip on Brightline would be $181.
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$50 isn't the average cost of a round-trip ticket. It's probably the lowest cost if flying Spirit on sale.
I'd guess ASP for that particular route is about $100. Also, they're trying to capture the market of people driving to visit Vegas from LA. Which is a considerably higher number. Vegas has roughly ~40M visitors per year. I can't find data on how much of that is LA but given the proximity, I'd have to say quite a considerable amount.
bipartisan (Score:2)
What is a "bipartisan lawmaker[s]"?
Effin (Score:3)
Let the casinos pay for it. What the efff!
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That $200 million bridge to nowhere in Alaska was to an island with 50 people, who did not want it.
Who wanted it were developers who wanted to build premium housing or something.
"Oh boy! There will be union workers building the rail!"
You realize this isn't a positive, but massive corruption, right?
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An extremely fair question.
The truth is that the casinos know that given the scope of the project, there's no way they could do this without "government involvement" ( read: corrupt meddling ). We've seen how well that works with the high speed rail project in CA; they could spend every dime of their considerable fortune and never lay a single rail. Why bother?
Incidentally, I don't know why people think "bipartisanship" is a good thing; it only means both sides have figured out how to screw the tax payer, a
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In a way, it's fortunate that for the CAHSR project, the federal government required "independent utility" which means even if the line never runs a single high-speed train, the bridges and tunnels and land acquired during construction can still be used for regular passenger trains or even freight trains so people no longer have to wait at railroad crossings.
In a way, it's also unfortuna
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...the casinos know that given the scope of the project, there's no way they could do this without "government involvement" ( read: corrupt meddling ).
And casinos are against corrupt meddling since when, exactly?
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Since they're not the ones benefiting from the corruption.