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California Requests Stimulus Funding For Bullet Train
marquinhocb writes "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger requested $4.7 billion in federal stimulus money Friday to help build an 800-mile bullet train system from San Diego to San Francisco. 'We're traveling on our trains at the same speed as 100 years ago,' the governor said. 'That is inexcusable. America must catch up.' Planners said the train would be able to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes, traveling at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour. About time! There comes a point when 'let's add another lane' is no longer a viable option!"
At least not in our lifetimes. Between all of the NIMBY's and environmental impact statements, this will be delayed in the courts for decades
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I can fly Southwest from Sacramento to San Diego in 1:25 minutes of air time.
Add 45 minutes at Sac security and 20 in the terminal and I still get there faster than the travel time on this train which probably won't ever exist.
Not only that, but the plane ticket costs around $74 during the summer. There is no way this train could possibly compete with airfare. Crossing california is not practical on trains.
Trains are great for crossing urban centers. A train from San Diego to LA would have been great when I lived in SD and worked in LA. Fix that problem, then we can talk about bullet trains.
From the article, it says this is going to cost $45 billion to build. $45 BILLION? For 800 miles of high-speed tracks and trains? I can't see any concievable way, even if they had to purchases premium land the entire length rather than using state land, that there's any way to justify 56 million dollars per mile. International constructions have cost around one twentieth of this amount.
Lots of bridges, tunnels and filldirt.. Its already been kicked off of the SF Peninsula because they said it would be too expensive to go underground the whole way, and the only other way to have a 200+mph train go through high density residential areas is to elevate it, which the residents refused as an option. It would have shared the caltrain route, which already has long sections of elevated track (via10-20' of filldirt and fences on both sides) that effictively creates a berlin wall through neighborhoods. To keep people from "trespassing" they would have to elevate the whole line, and that pissed a bunch of people off (especially those in Atherton behind their wooden fences). Caltrain electrification will be done first, and highspeed rail, to be successful, would have to tie in to caltrain somewhere, or it would just be a train to nowhere.
-T
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
It's not like the US Govt is having problems keeping a balanced budget.
Stop having so many wars... they're expensive! Iraq and Afghanistan, ~$150 billion a year. How many bullet train systems could you buy?
I'm guessing most of it would be between SF and LA, but San Diego isn't that far from LA, so adding that isn't much more.
Amtrak actually makes a little money. Unlike, say, the massive socialist US interstate system.
The bullet trains in Japan are quite convenient, like you say. They run exactly on schedule almost all the time. About the only thing that stops them is earthquakes. I show up at the plat form 5 minutes before the train comes, put my large luggage in the storage area near the door, and sit down and relax. It is certainly a lot nicer than air travel.
The real problem is cost. I don't know how much the train would cost in California, but it is expensive here in Japan. A ticket to Tokyo from Shizuoka city (where I live -- a distance of 180km) is about $60 if I recall correctly. That's one way. I'm not sure Americans are willing to abandon their cars for something this expensive.
Amtrak is insanely costly compared to what the train service used to cost. I don't see this as being any cheaper. And the current right-of-way isn't well maintained. This would need even more in the way of maintenance than the current system.
The rail lines right-of-way is owned by the freight haulers. They put their priorities first, and passenger trains regularly get delayed. The last time I rode the train from Nevada to Berkeley (well, Emeryville...the Berkeley station was closed) the train was delayed for over four hours. With no explanation or estimate of when the problem would be fixed.
Yes, we definitely need better train service. But lets go for improvements that we know can reasonably be made. Like the Dept. of Transportation in charge of the right of way, so that freight trains can't arbitrarily pre-empt the lines from passengers. (I'm not thrilled with how the DOT maintains highways, but it does a better job than the railways do with their right of way.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You know, you might have missed this key fact, but the Simpsons monorail episode is a sixteen-year-old CARTOON. When the hell are the anti-rail twits going to stop treating it like a serious guide to transportation issues?
Oh, right, we still have people who think Frankenstein was a guide to science. Never mind. Carry on, then.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Actually, it hasn't been kicked off of the SF Peninsula... http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/map.htm Quite the opposite, in fact.
As pointed out in previous posts: Airlines are already subsidized. (As are the Auto makers). I would like to go as far as to say that a railroad would be competitive if you were to take out ALL subsidies given to the auto makers (road construction and direct subsidies) and Airlines (Airports, cheap planes due to defense contracts).
Putting public money to work to build a railroad network is a good way to invest public money. it's a hell of a lot better than subsidizing bankrupt companies. It will make the US more competitive in manufacturing (cheaper freight transport), services (cheaper people transport). And building the whole system will provide a lot of meaning full jobs.
There comes a point when 'let's add another lane' is no longer a viable option!"
There also comes a point when "let's have another horrendously expensive tax-sucking boondoggle" is no longer a viable option.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I think it would operate a lot like amtrak... the us govt will sink tons of money into it and it will never come close to breaking even.
Kind of like airports and highways, yep.
Oh, but those are somehow magically different!
[sigh]
Actually, there is a difference. The federal government sinks tons of money into air and road travel, but it doesn't demand the kind of insane restrictions it imposes on rail (freight trains always get right-of-way over passenger trains, that kind of thing.) IOW, those systems aren't set up to fail the way Amtrak is. It's pretty impressive how well Amtrak manages to keep its major lines going when it has to deal with a system that is specifically designed not to work by anti-rail ideologues.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
That's becasue it's not your area of expertise.
Civil project are expensive, very expensive.
They have to deal with roads, mountains , bridges, tunnels.
It's very expensive to build roads of any type. If you want them to last.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just fly larger aircraft. An airbus A340 seats up to 800 and will do the same trip in 75 fewer minutes.
You've assumed time for security screening will be the same. You've assumed delays will be the same. You've assumed the ticket cost will be the same.
All three assumptions are only true if the train is managed -extremely- poorly. Given that this is California, that might be the case, but they are still huge assumptions.
And pollutes like crazy. When you consider the coming wave of environmentally driven taxes, if negative externalities are realistically factored in, it won't be that cheap for much longer.
This has got to be the stupidest idea yet. If we assume 30 dollars one way as a reasonable fair, and it does not go into cost overruns, and it costs ZERO dollars to operate once it is built, it will take 156,000,000 trips to pay for itself. At 50 dollars one way, it is still 94 million trips. How many people make that commute? How long will it take to pay for itself? Of course, we know it WILL go into cost over runs, and it will cost a great deal of money to keep going, for maintenance, employees, power, etc. Can anyone explain to me how this will be economically feasible? Anyone? Arnold?
On 9/11 I watched the television in shock. On 9/12 I said, "If we go to war over this, it will be a mistake. We should rebuild the damaged buildings, and focus on tighter borders so the enemies can't get in. A war will be a waste of both lives and dollars, and make us no better than the terrorists."
I was right. Our country would be about 1 trillion dollars richer now, and at peace instead of war. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"Warned them, I did, but nobody listens to poor Zathras."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And of course despite your Insightful rating, Amtrak loses money, over a billion dollars a year.
http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/08financial.pdf
And Gulliver's Travels was a childrens book.
Not to justify the war in Iraq, but $150 billion a year isn't shit compared to the $2 trillion the government's spent on bailouts in the last year. Even going by the (likely biased) http://costofwar.com/, that's twice the amount spent on the entire Iraq and Afgahnistan wars. And that's just one year.
The point is, you can't just point out one thing and say, "It's because of that." The government's spending crazy amounts of money all over the place, on a TON of shit that it shouldn't be spending money on. I'm kinda surprised we keep voting in these morons. First Bush, now Obama. I'm almost scared to think about who's gonna be next.
Maybe not
Where's your source for this claim that it's been kicked off the Peninsula? Yeah, there's been flack from some communities about elevated tracks, but kicking it off the Peninsula would make the project practically useless, since that would destroy any travel benefits to all those people (like me) who live between San Francisco and San Jose.
Besides that, I figure they'll have to elevate or bury the lines eventually anyway, because too many trains are being delayed by people who use them as a suicide mechanism.
some of the hardest working US citizens
Which makes it even worse. Some of the hardest working US citizens, and they spend all their time doing unproductive stuff. So yes, most of that trillion was basically set on fire.
And that is where everyone is so wrong about stimulating the economy. There is no point spending money on doing unproductive work A, just so the worker can buy productive work B. In that case you should just buy productive work B immediately and avoid work A. Stimulating the economy only works if you can spend the money on something actually productive.
This is btw very similar to the (intentional) "mistake" that the US government has been doing with the bank bailouts. They claim that they have to pump the money into those bad banks so that they can lend to main street. But in that case, the government would be better off just pumping the money directly into main street. Everyone knows it, but very few actually says it out loud. Financial industries are never worth saving by the government for the simple reason that they don't do any productive work. They are simply conduits that help other sectors do productive work, and as such are easier to just replace.
.That being said I have no idea if it will make money. Probably depends on how well it its managed.
The concern about making money is touching. How much money does
Interstate 5 make each year? Oh. Wait. Other than a gas tax of perhaps a couple
of cents a mile Interstate 5 (which is the major N/S route in California)
the driver is not paying anything (other than income taxes and the like).
Why do we expect basic transport to make money? What makes you think the
Airlines have (net, over their history) made any money? (without the subsidies
in the airports etc airlines would be out of business). We need to get folks
off of Interstate 5 and a sensibly priced choice will do that and save lots
of energy for the country and make a safer trip. A big win. Build the bullet train!