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!"

Comments

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[Tmack]

From the article, it says this is going to cost $45 billion to build. $45 BILLION? For 800 miles of high-speed tracks and trains? I can't see any concievable way, even if they had to purchases premium land the entire length rather than using state land, that there's any way to justify 56 million dollars per mile. International constructions have cost around one twentieth of this amount.

Lots of bridges, tunnels and filldirt.. Its already been kicked off of the SF Peninsula because they said it would be too expensive to go underground the whole way, and the only other way to have a 200+mph train go through high density residential areas is to elevate it, which the residents refused as an option. It would have shared the caltrain route, which already has long sections of elevated track (via10-20' of filldirt and fences on both sides) that effictively creates a berlin wall through neighborhoods. To keep people from "trespassing" they would have to elevate the whole line, and that pissed a bunch of people off (especially those in Atherton behind their wooden fences). Caltrain electrification will be done first, and highspeed rail, to be successful, would have to tie in to caltrain somewhere, or it would just be a train to nowhere.

-T

Re:Fly Southwest

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Whereas airlines do everything all by their lonesome, right? No government assistance at all. Bold entrepeneurs, living the American dream, unlike those commie railroads.

GMAFB. Every major type of transportation -- air, road, rail, and water -- is dependent on public funds, in the US and everywhere else. Anti-rail zealots like to pretend that rail is inherently socialist and that air and road are inherently capitalist (water doesn't seem to enter into their thinking at all.) There's a deep irony here: the 19th-c. "rail barons" also liked to present themselves as bold, individualistic risk-takers, meanwhile sucking at the government teat.

When an airline builds and runs its own airport and ATC system, give me a call.

Re:Monorail!!

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You know, you might have missed this key fact, but the Simpsons monorail episode is a sixteen-year-old CARTOON. When the hell are the anti-rail twits going to stop treating it like a serious guide to transportation issues?

Oh, right, we still have people who think Frankenstein was a guide to science. Never mind. Carry on, then.

Re:Fly Southwest

[Mr. Slippery]

And all the major cities on Amtrak routes have commuter flights between them which cost the same or less, are more frequent, and except for Boston - Providence, take much less time.

Commuter flights go between airports, which are located outside of cities. (Well, mostly -- I'm amazed at the downtown location of Vegas's airport.) To go from downtown Baltimore to downtown New York, you have to drive or catch a cab or light rail out to BWI, go through security, fly to LaGuardia, wait for your bags, and take a cab -- or a bus then the subway -- downtown.

Amtrak, on the other hand, takes you from Penn Station in Baltimore's Station North district to NYC's Penn Station right at Madison Square Frickin' Garden. Assuming that you actually want to be in the city, it's a straight shot, most definitely faster, and more comfortable.

Amtrak simply has found an alternate source of revenue that doesn't depend on actually satisfying customers.

Airlines have taken plenty of government money (especially when you include the subsidies that keep airports running), and are not exactly know for customer satisfaction.

Re:Fly Southwest

[Daniel Dvorkin]

That's as silly as saying that trucking companies are dependent on government because they don't build their own roads.

Except it's not silly at all to say that; it's a simple observation of the truth. And that basic truth -- that every major form of transportation we have is dependent on government -- should be remembered in discussions on building transportation infrastructure, instead of pretending that one form of transportation is Honest God-Fearing American Capitalism Hard At Work while another is Evil European Pinko Socialist Government Interference In The Free Market. Which is pretty much what the conversation seems to degenerate into every time rail is mentioned.

In 2006, which appears to be the most recent year for which figures are readily available, total government expenditures (federal, state, and local) on highways were almost $100 billion, while rail expenditures were a little over $1.5 billon. Please, please try to tell me that this doesn't constitute a massive subsidy -- a hell of a lot bigger than anything Amtrak gets, or ever will get -- to trucking and other industries that depend on highways for their existence.

Oh yeah -- air travel? A little under $42 billion. Again, this is a massive subsidy, and so far beyond anything that rail gets that there's really no comparison. So go ahead, bitch about Amtrak ... but remember where your tax dollars are really going.

Re:It will never happen

[babyrat]

And then there's the scalability problem.

Huh? Need more throughput, add an extra car to the train - or run additional trains on the same rails - you know that trains aren't going bumper to bumper right?

My boss spend 1.5 hours on his train commute; I only take 45 minutes.

I hate to state the obvious, but how long would it take you to drive your car from LA to San Francisco, and then how long would it take a bullet train going 200mph?

Waiting time == non-productive time

No, driving time is unproductive time. You waste 45 minutes driving while your boss could be working while he is sitting on the train, because he isn't driving.

So if the railways have died out, how come trains are thriving in many places? They are not suitable for all applications, but for specific high density routes they are way more efficient than anything else we currently have.