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

It will never happen

[winkydink]

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

Re:It will never happen

[pixelpusher220]

Likely true, but if California is able to do this, any state can.

Re:It will never happen

[expressovi]

Also didn't we (the state of California) just have a huge budget deficit? I'm all for new trains but maybe we should attend to what's already on our plate.....consistently their are some great deals on regional flights between our states major airports....idk

Re:It will never happen

[Moryath]

I simply worry about their ability to get it done at all.

Not the NIMBY's and the environmental impact, just the corruption factor and the fact that it's Tax-N-Spendifornia. If they were in the black it'd be one thing but they want the federal gov't to pay for it when they are deep in a major budget crisis? If I were the feds (or the rest of the nation) I'd say "screw you, come back when you can manage your own budget and maybe we'll talk."

Re:It will never happen

[Brian Gordon]

Well the $4.7 billion would come from the federal government.

Re:It will never happen

[Starlon]

As if our federal government was in a reasonable position to fund a bullet train project for California, or any other state for that matter.

This all reminds me of Obama's "Ask me questions" website. At the top of all questions was "Lightrails and Bullet Trains" -- as if that was the most popular topic, above marijuana legalization, and even above single payer health care. I wrote Obama an email suggesting that he concern himself over those other topics, rather than looking at America as if it were his toy train set. The chance of him reading that, however, is quite low.

Re:It will never happen

[pablodiazgutierrez]

Spain, with its very similar geography, has shown this can be done on budget and (mostly) on time, so long as the project adheres to tested technology, as is the plan. And it's pretty popular. If Spain can do it, surely California can as well. It just takes willing

Re:It will never happen

[Volante3192]

Clearly you've never seen the San Joaquin Valley. Once you get past the Cajon Pass from the south it's all fault free, mountain free flat land all the way to Sacramento.

And it smells like asparagus. I hate the I-5...

Re:It will never happen

[Volante3192]

Damnit, Tejon Pass. Yeah, someone's gonna correct me on that one before /.'s "You must wait longer!!" filter lets me reply...

Re:It will never happen

[superdave80]

The Feds didn't worry about mismanagement by banks or auto companies, why would they worry about mismanagement by state governments?

"Oh, you screwed up and have no money? Back your large truck up and we'll shovel in money until you say stop... we just have to wait for the printer to finish printing out more."

Re:It will never happen

[Thomas M Hughes]

I simply worry about their ability to get it done at all.
Not the NIMBY's and the environmental impact, just the corruption factor and the fact that it's Tax-N-Spendifornia. If they were in the black it'd be one thing but they want the federal gov't to pay for it when they are deep in a major budget crisis? If I were the feds (or the rest of the nation) I'd say "screw you, come back when you can manage your own budget and maybe we'll talk."

I think you may be mistaking California for Massachusetts. If California were Tax-N-Spend, it wouldn't have a budget issue. The issue in California is that they can't tax. All budgets in California must (1) be balanced, and (2) be passed by a super-majority. The legislature's made up of the Senate consisting of 25 Democrats and 15 Republicans; and the Assembly having 49 Democrats, 29 Republicans, 1 Independent, and 1 vacancy. So the Dems have a significant majority (and have since 1970), but not enough to pass a budget on their own. And the California Republican party has maintained incredible party discipline for a while now, absolutely refusing any increases in taxes, period. So, obtaining taxes for services has become essentially impossible.

This has been complicated by being "tough on crime." Things like Three Strikes laws have dramatically increased California's prison population in recent years. This has resulted in an increase in funds that must go to prisons. This, combined with a refusal to increase taxes means that much more of the limited government revenue is going into the black hole that is the prison system. Because of this, pretty much every aspect of California's selection of services have been significantly cut back for at least a decade now. The impact on the University of California in particular has been huge; they lost 20% of their funding in this past year alone, on top of significant cuts before the budget crisis. (The increase in tough on crime laws is bi-partisan, the democrats have their fair share of blame in this one. The lack of increase in taxes to cover for shortfall is a R-party issue entirely though.).

Re:It will never happen

[interkin3tic]

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

But we have SOOOO much money in the state budget, we'll be able to buy them all off!

Note that this is bitter bitter sarcasm. As the state is laying people off left and right and performing slash and burn on it's education system among other things, it's good to know that the governator is still willing to reach for the pie in the sky.

Re:It will never happen

[maharb]

Wait, WHAT? Cali has way more money/ability to get money than most states. Not to mention they have more of a 'need' for this type of transport. Most other states probably wouldn't have the numbers of people to justify building it. Imagine a state in the midwest asking for 5 billion so that the tiny train riding population can ride in style. Ya right. So if by any state you mean New York and surrounding area then yes. The population density throughout the US is not really set up for a bullet train system because even if you did connect major cities, you would need cars and buses to get people to their spread out homes.

Re:It will never happen

[commodore64_love]

>>Well the $4.7 billion would come from our [communist Chinese buddies overseas].

Fixed.

So this bullet train that covers 800 miles will carry how many of California's population each year? 0.1%? Yeah that's a wise investment of non-existent american dollars. Wouldn't it make more sense to lay-down an I-3 to run semi-parallel to I-5, and thereby carry any excess traffic between these two cities? It would be far cheaper, far more flexible in design (cars aren't tied to rails), use existing equipment (cars and macadam and road signs and lighting), and could even be made environmentally-friendly by designating the new I-3 "for hybrids or electrics only".

Also before someone jumps on the "Trains are more efficent" bandwagon:
- The national average for cars is approximately 25 miles per gallon
- The national average for passenger trains is the same energy equivalence (25 people-miles per gallon).
- So if you simply upgrade your car to a hybrid (40-70mpg), then you are more-efficient than a passenger train. Or if you carpool and carry a passenger, your car's efficiency jumps to 50 people-miles per gallon.... again more efficient than a passenger train.

(dons kevlar shield) I'm about to get flamed for what I just said.
It's similar to how Christians used to burn witches.

Re:It will never happen

[Brian Gordon]

High speed trains don't burn gasoline

Re:It will never happen

[WaXHeLL]

You forgot about the 5000 or so California voter initiatives to fund the that will not raise taxes! Horray for stupid voters who look at bond money and assume it's free or something. California has a problem with having like 80% of its budget allocated before a budget is written.

Re:It will never happen

[zach_the_lizard]

What spending did you vote for? In my state, I have never been able to vote on any sort of spending. Occasionally I can vote on taxes (one tax has been defeated many times for the past decade or so), but I don't recall being able to choose where my tax dollars go. Do other states let the public vote on this sort of thing?

Re:It will never happen

[zn0k]

For what it's worth, the German ICE (which is a reasonably modern high speed train) is usually quoted with getting somewhere between 70 and 80mpg with normal loads, that calculation essentially covers emissions from power plants as the train runs on electricity. Obviously those numbers get better the more passengers the train carries.

Re:It will never happen

[Sri Ramkrishna]

Also you still have to pay maintenance on all that road. So I don't buy it. Train travel today is a joke. I look at Amtrak prices and wonder why does it cost as much as air travel with more delays. I would also like to see a high speed corridor between Los Angeles to Vancouver, BC. Then we can see some good people movement. Bullet trains and everything would rock. We have the technology, we don't seem to have the will. I would love to go on a train, get some internet in there and have a relaxing trip than be cooped up in some flight. sri

Re:It will never happen

[cheekyboy]

leglize pot
let everyone out of jail who has any pot convictions, even if they trafficed 500 tonnes, just give them a tax bill.

im sure that will save 10 billion.

Re:It will never happen

[commodore64_love]

>>>High speed trains don't burn gasoline

Apparently you didn't read the phrase "energy equivalence" . Trains have the same energy equivalence as 25 people-miles per gallon of gasoline.

Re:It will never happen

[Idiomatick]

California referendums like everything... they can't tax who would vote for that. Corruption maybe. But I'd like to see a comparative analysis between states before you call it the tax and spend state. Anyways better than Bush's spend and spend plan. Also tax and spend implies people are paying for it. It is also only 4.7B of a 50B dollar plan. You are way off the mark. Also the money is coming from a federal pot that is already set aside for developing highspeed rail.

Re:It will never happen

[HangingChad]

The national average for cars is approximately 25 miles per gallon

We need to be finding ways to get people out of their cars, not enabling that lifestyle. It's more than gas mileage, it's all the overhead it takes to support the roadways. We spend a collective fortune on highways so you can have a semi-private box to convey you from one place to another. I'd also like to see your numbers on the national gas mileage average. Because I can guarantee you around here it's closer to half that.

A more fair efficiency comparison would be to air travel. Not to mention adding in the costs of airport maintenance, air traffic control and the cost of aircraft. Quite aside from the fact the flying experience sucks ass these days. We managed to pick the two most expensive and inefficient methods of travel and neglected the infrastructure for the more comfortable efficient alternatives.

When you're comparing costs, you have to look at the whole cost of the infrastructure. Getting the tracks in place isn't much more expensive than a highway but the maintenance costs over a period of years is a fraction of highway maintenance.

Re:It will never happen

[commodore64_love]

My boss tried to convince me to do my daily commute "because a bunch of us all ride together and it's lots of fun" (picture in your mind the guy from the Office). He then described how he leaves home at 6 am by car, hops on the train, and then takes the company van from the local station to arrive at work at 7:30.

I didn't say anything but smile, because my commute by car is only 45 minutes. It's also probably a lot cheaper... about $3.50 gasoline with my Honda Insight. Doing what my boss suggests would be a downgrade.

Re:It will never happen

[Brian Gordon]

Apparently that was too complicated for you. Unlike a car, it doesn't run on gasoline, meaning that it can be powered with clean energy. Also, it's not dependent on fossil fuels so it can work even when oil becomes scarce - and it can delay that situation.

Re:It will never happen

[Colonel Korn]

Last I heard, California was flirting with bankruptcy, so I doubt they have the money...

Oddly enough, many of the world's people and organizations most able to generate huge sums of cash are constantly on the edge of debt disaster. Massive revenues are often more important than debt levels when determining how much capital a government, corporation, or dude can raise.

Re:It will never happen

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

3. Violent crime should be punished by an automatic sentence to one of the US owned Pacific Islands such as the Johnston Atoll.

So, you want to reward criminals by sending them to a tropical island with nothing but sand, sun and surf? Those islands aren't quite Hawaii, but a lot of people wouldn't mind a year's vacation in the archipelago.

The Aleutian Islands, on the other hand, would be a lot less desirable of a destination.

Re:It will never happen

[Colonel Korn]

lulz. The Democrats have the majority, but its the Republicans fault!

Typical Californian.

So you're arguing that the Democrats are the ones who don't want to increase taxes?

Re:It will never happen

[DerekLyons]

a refusal to increase taxes means that much more of the limited government revenue is going into the black hole that is the prison system. Because of this, pretty much every aspect of California's selection of services have been significantly cut back for at least a decade now.

Oh, it goes back much further than a decade - it all starts with Proposition 13. (Most Slashdotters are probably too young to even remember it.)

Re:It will never happen

[mrlibertarian]

The issue in California is that they can't tax.

That's one way to look at it, but here is a different take:

...voters diluted the Gann Spending Limit in 1990, when they passed Proposition 111, exempting infrastructure projects, disaster spending and a number of other state expenditures from the spending limit.

Prop. 111 freed politicians in Sacramento to use the revenues that gushed in during the dot-com boom and housing bubble to grow the state budget to unsustainable levels. If Gann hadn't been neutered, a Reason Foundation study found in February, California would have been rolling in a $15 billion surplus this year.

Re:It will never happen

[Colonel Korn]

Things like Three Strikes laws have dramatically increased California's prison population in recent years. This has resulted in an increase in funds that must go to prisons. This, combined with a refusal to increase taxes means that much more of the limited government revenue is going into the black hole that is the prison system.

So the solution is to have prisoners work on building the railroad, then?

Re:It will never happen

[girlintraining]

Likely true, but if California is able to do this, any state can.

If California was a person, it would be spending twice as much as it makes, smell awful, and have a sense of entitlement that could drop cattle at twenty paces. Don't kid yourself -- they're not looking to build a bullet train, they're looking for another handout. Should they get the money, they'll inflate the budget, blame everybody else for cost overruns, drag their heels for years, and it'll wind up costing 3x as much and the General Accounting Office will be admonishing everyone involved. And the "bullet train" won't be able to run more than 35 MPH because it runs within 5 miles of a school zone and they're worried Little Timmy might get run over.

You want to see mass transit that works? Look at Minnesota's Light Rail. It's making money, and they're expanding it with only a minimal outlay of federal funding. The only reason we have to ask for funds at all is because MNDOT up and let a bridge fall into the river.

Re:It will never happen

[commodore64_love]

>>>All budgets in California must (1) be balanced, and (2) be passed by a super-majority.

I fail to see the drawback. A government that has to work within its means (like citizens do every day) sounds as close to perfect as one can get. I wish my government had similar restrictions, because I'm tired of mailing them ~$8000 checks every April 15th (plus another $4000 in property/school taxes). That check keeps getting bigger year-after-year, because the politicians spend money like teenagers with credit cards. They have no self-discipline.

Re:It will never happen

[Idiomatick]

I think it is a cool idea. I think making it a toll highway where electrics and hybrids don't have to pay would make more sense though. I think car makers would oppose this since they don't all have good electric options yet and the japanese companies would KILL the american ones which wouldnt be popular. Otherwise interesting idea.

That said! High speed rail does NOT get 25pmpg, they get more like 300, and a newer system could likely do better, regular old fashion trains get 40~50pmpg. Which kills your whole argument. (Current highspeed rail runs at 712pmpg when full. Multiply that by w/e % you like)

Also your sig doesn't take into account people that buy CD's because they downloaded it, albeit a small group that would cut the number down further.

Re:It will never happen

[commodore64_love]

>>>Apparently that was too complicated for you.

Apparently you still can't read. What part of this phrase did you not comprehend? "...could even be made environmentally-friendly by designating the new I-3 for hybrids and electrics only." So that kills your objection to using cars for transport.

BTW electric trains are not as clean as everyone believes, even in California, since most of your power is imported from coal-burning states like Nevada and Utah, and coal is extremely dirty. I know that's a difficult fact to swallow, but there it is. (See this why even though I'm an environmentalist who drives an 80mpg hybrid, I rarely hang-out with my colleagues. It's impossible to talk to them rationally or logically, because they refuse to accept the basic facts.)

Re:It will never happen

[Kral_Blbec]

Debt is not capital, regardless of how you slice it. True, those in the worst debt often spend the most, but it isn't on capital nor on huge sums of cash. They are leveraging their reputation in exchange for larger loans than would be given to a smaller entity (too large to fail anyone?...) They aren't raising or spending money because they have it, but rather because they can pretend to have it by pointing to their size and history and saying "Of course we can cover it".

Its like if your neighbor has a Rolls Royce, you naturally think they are rich. Then you go in their house and realize they have no food because everything was spent on the Rolls Royce.

Re:It will never happen

[WoodstockJeff]

Unlike a car, it doesn't run on gasoline, meaning that it can be powered with clean energy.

And where will this "clean energy" come from? Nuclear is out, because the same people who push trains are also against any form of nuclear energy. Solar, maybe? No, because the amount of acreage that would have to be covered with solar collection equipment would cause a huge uprising of both the environmentalists and the NIMBY crowd. Wind power? Ooops, too many condors being chopped up, and, again, those NIMBYs are all over the idea of "ugly" wind turbines. Hydroelectric? Um, well, Nevada and Arizona called, and they want their Lake back. And the Pacific Northwest needs their hydro power to feed what they hope to be all those computing centers.

Cars offer greater flexibility in travel, for those who don't live or work near a train station. And who says cars can't be fed by those "clean energy" sources, once they're found?

Re:It will never happen

[Batfang]

Thomas: The reason the Republicans in the California legislature have been blocking tax increases is because California already has sky-high taxes. California's inability to control its wasteful spending habits is the problem, we do not need tax increases for basic services or for this silly train. Speaking of which, why do we need an incredibly expensive train running between San Francisco and San Diego? What problem is this solving? What California needs transportation-wise is solutions to get people to work and back more efficiently, not crazy-expensive long distance trains.

Re:It will never happen

[commodore64_love]

>>>So they died-out, similar to how newspapers are dying out today.

P.S.

Railroads are to cars in the 1930s, as newspapers are to websites today. The old outdated technology was/is replaced by the newer, more convenient technology.

Re:It will never happen

[jonadab]

> Cali has way more money/ability to get money than most states.

When the other commenter said "if California can do this any state can", he wasn't talking about the money issue. He was talking about delays caused by "all of the NIMBY's and environmental impact statements", as mentioned by the grandparent comment.

I suspect that assessment is incorrect, on the grounds that a lot of environmentalists tend to be in *favor* of such trains, on the theory that they reduce motor vehicle traffic.

> Not to mention they have more of a 'need' for this type of transport

It's more than that. You're headed in the right direction saying they have more need, but it would be even more accurate to say they have an actual *use* for a bullet train, where a lot of other states wouldn't. Southern California is basically one great big city, so public transportation is widely available and city-to-city passenger trains are actually *practical*, much like in Europe and Japan. People could take the buss to the train station in San Diego, hop on the bullet train, get off in San Francisco, and take the streetcar or a taxi to their final destination.

Whereas, a bullet train in Indiana would be a pointless curiosity; its actual usefulness in practice would be virtually nil.

Re:It will never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

a refusal to increase taxes means that much more of the limited government revenue is going into the black hole that is the prison system. Because of this, pretty much every aspect of California's selection of services have been significantly cut back for at least a decade now.

Oh, it goes back much further than a decade - it all starts with Proposition 13. (Most Slashdotters are probably too young to even remember it.)

Wrong - Tax revenue from property tax has grown faster than any other California revenue source, outpacing inflation + population growth by 50%+

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.

Re:It will never happen

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

He didn't mention anything about putting up a 5 star resort, or even sending food..

Ah, so he was making a joke!
I guess that means he was joking about the first two points too.

Re:It will never happen

[Runaway1956]

Unlike your detractor, AC, I understand exactly what you are saying. More, it's true. Yes, California IS all but bankrupt. The last couple of budgets took months to hammer out, services cut back, yada yada yada. In fact, most of the local and state governments in the states are the same. All rely on the fed, directly, or indirectly. Every freaking county courthouse in the country is busting ass right now, trying to balance budgets. Bonds, loans, increased traffic patrols, whatever they can do. The city of Houston, and surrounding counties were in the news just a few short months ago, desperately shifting funds around, trying to cover losses after the bank bailout, because they lost funds in that mess.

The whole nation is in trouble. And, building that train isn't likely to help much. At least it's a better use of stimulus money than bailing out another bank, so I won't complain.

Re:It will never happen

[cowbud]

>>>it's all the overhead it takes to support the roadways.

Supporting railways has FAR more overhead. Laying the rails for one thing, and maintaining them. Second there's the lost time of having people standing-around waiting for the damn train. My boss spend 1.5 hours on his train commute; I only take 45 minutes. Waiting time == non-productive time. And finally because there's no station anywhere near most people homes (I have to walk an hour to get to my station), you have to figure out how to get the people to the train, which is even more overhead to add to the trains' cost.

If trains were a priority his 1.5 hour amount of time spent would be reduced. This argument is moot it is essentially the chicken in the egg. If we never build the infrastructure you end up with a broken system like ours where BART only services ~20 (if that) stops instead of the whole bay area. Secondly, he has the potential to work on the train. I hope for the sake of the other drivers you aren't working while you are racing along the highway. Over time your 45 minutes and his 1.5 hours would converge and he would have more time to work (if that is your priority). Lets ignore the difference in stress riding a train/shuttle and driving yourself. I ride a shuttle for 2 hours a day and I think if I had to drive in the traffic out here day in and day out I would go insane! Instead I work, read books or even sleep during that time. Wasted time is just completely incorrect. I won't even go into how ridiculous it is to compare your boss's commute to yours, what about the people that live right next to the train station?

Re:It will never happen

[Brian Gordon]

Except that's not true anywhere except the US

Re:It will never happen

[HangingChad]

You waste 45 minutes driving while your boss could be working while he is sitting on the train, because he isn't driving.

Exactly. Not only can you work on the train, you can drink on the train. So you're not only missing work time, you're missing drinking time.

That has to figure in to the equation somewhere.

Re:It will never happen

[demachina]

As I recall part of the problem with California's prison costs is guards often make $100K or better. $100K is a lot for a no skill job. Gray Davis in particular gave them a 30+% raise just because they were a huge campaign supporter.

Re:It will never happen

[steelfood]

The cost overruns pretty much describe every government project. Look at the 2nd ave. subway in NYC. It was delayed since the 60's, suddenly restarted a couple of years ago, and now they're talking about delays again.

But the thing about going 35MPH 'cause somebody's going to be scared of little Timmy running onto the tracks, that's Cali for ya.

Besides, this bullet train isn't going to solve any traffic problems. SF and SD are so far away, flights from SF to SD will still be cheaper, faster, and probably more reliable.

If they want to solve the traffic problems with trains, then it's time to stop building suburbs and start squeezing people together again. Or, they could just rip out the middle two lanes in every major highway and build some rails there, with footpaths or underground tunnels to reach the station in the middle and a parking lot at the other end. Trains work best where population density is highest. At least one end has to have everything within walking distance. Otherwise, people'll just drive.

Re:It will never happen

[good soldier svejk]

Then in the 1930 and 40s they abandoned them. Why?

Ooh, ooh! I know this one! Because the government subsidized the automotive infrastructure!

Re:It will never happen

[Sannish]

Don't kid yourself -- they're not looking to build a bullet train, they're looking for another handout.

California pays more in federal taxes then it received in services every year. According to the Tax Foundation (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html, page 5) in 2005 California received $0.78 from the federal government for every dollar paid. In 2005 (the most recent report) they were 43rd among states for money received. Saying they are looking for another handout is a bit of a stretch.

Re:It will never happen

[TheGreenNuke]

And finally because there's no station anywhere near most people homes (I have to walk an hour to get to my station), you have to figure out how to get the people to the train, which is even more overhead to add to the trains' cost.

You conveniently left out the part of the additional overheard required to get all those cars to that 12 lane highway you hold near and dear to your heart. I have to drive 30 minutes to get to the highway. Just like there is no rail station near most peoples homes, there is also no highway near most peoples homes. Just like you have to "figure out how to get the people to the train" you have to figure out how to get people to the highway.

people could kill themselves tripping over the rails when trying to board the train.

What train stations do you frequent that requires people to cross the rails? Every station I've ever been to has bridges over/tunnels under the rails. And to increase capacity, more cars on the trains, and have them come more frequently normally does the trick. Then you add another rail where its needed just like you do for the highways.

Re:It will never happen

[PRMan]

Southwest Airlines charges like $59 for the same trip. Is the train really going to be cheaper than that? Doubt it.

Re:It will never happen

[IANAAC]

Most other states probably wouldn't have the numbers of people to justify building it. Imagine a state in the midwest asking for 5 billion so that the tiny train riding population can ride in style. Ya right. So if by any state you mean New York and surrounding area then yes.

You most likely have not lived east of the Mississippi. There are HUGE swaths of populations that could use fast, convenient mass transportation. Not just New York and "surrounding areas." Think the entire eastern seaboard. Think Chicago to New York. Think St. Louis to Atlanta. Don't think they're big enough? Check the size of these metropolitan areas and some of the cities running between them.

If you don't want to compare metro areas, fine. But then you might as well knock out SF - it's quite small in comparison to many other eastern cities.

Re:It will never happen

[Artifakt]

Pick some place that needs developed. One possibility is anywhere the 'perma'frost is melting - there's infrastructure needs in every part of that process. But, I wouldn't worry too much about how soft the down time would be for the criminals, one way or the other, I say worry more about getting important work done during their on duty time. A tropical island is no vacation if the criminal is working 10 hr/6 days a week building a longer and more durable airstrip or a hospital or any serious project.
      How about oil rigs? Janitor at a Radome on the DEW? Or let 1 winter-over in Antarctica (with good job performance) count as 2 or 3 normal years good behavior. Right now, there are convicts in some of the western states who volunteer as smoke jumpers. Talk about paying your debt to society.
      Only problem I see is, why offer such options to the violent criminals? The smoke jumper programs for Colorado and others all seem to be early out programs for the non-violent. They also give those convicts something that actually helps them get decent employment afterwards - making license plates won't get you much in the current industrial climate, not compared to widespread general heavy construction experience.

Re:It will never happen

[Temkin]

Wrong - Tax revenue from property tax has grown faster than any other California revenue source, outpacing inflation + population growth by 50%+

You don't think it actually costs $400k to build a house in Tracy or Apple Valley, do you? Prop 13 forced the cities to rig the system. Here's how it works:

1. People want housing, developer wants to build a house... City has to expand services, including schools, police, roads, water & sewer.

2. Cities set up exorbitant planning and permit fee's to offset costs. These fee's can be as high as $100,000 per house!

3. Permit fee's build in a market floor. Any house with a valid occupancy permit is worth more than the fee's. This lifts all home values.

4. Fed loans banks fiat money at obscenely low rates. Banks turn around and loan it to home buyers at higher rates.

5. Homeowner's now pay banks 5 - 6 - 7% on permit fee's collected up front, rather than as yearly property taxes. Bankers laugh all the way their country clubs, where they meet with their colleagues and find ways to encourage more.

6. Lather rinse repeat for 30 years...

Re:It will never happen

[PachmanP]

This all reminds me of Obama's "Ask me questions" website. At the top of all questions was "Lightrails and Bullet Trains" -- as if that was the most popular topic, above marijuana legalization, and even above single payer health care. I wrote Obama an email suggesting that he concern himself over those other topics, rather than looking at America as if it were his toy train set. The chance of him reading that, however, is quite low.

Well if I had the choice between health care and the sweetest game of railroad tycoon evar, I'd probably go with the railroads. Although, I might go the route of legalizing pot then playing railroad tycoon for the synergy...

Re:It will never happen

[DrLang21]

I'm still trying to figure out why it's cheaper for me to drive than it is to take the MetroLink. Gas has to get upwards of $4/gallon before I start to break even, and then I don't have the convenience.

Re:It will never happen

[DrLang21]

If you want to solve traffic problems with trains, make it cheaper to take a train. If I take the train into downtown LA, it's cheaper only because of parking. To go anywhere else by train around here is pointless unless you have no choice.

Re:It will never happen

[superdude72]

Don't kid yourself -- they're not looking to build a bullet train, they're looking for another handout.

"Handout"? Last I checked, Californians pay federal taxes too. It's really not so much to ask that some of those federal dollars be spent in California on a project that would benefit millions of people. You can only build so many interstate highways connecting the dirt farms of North Dakota.

Re:It will never happen

[aaarrrgggh]

This bullet train proposal has been going around for at least six years; it isn't a federal funds land-grab. The seeking of stimulus funds has much more to do with the current economic situation.

Coastal California is a metropolitan area in and of itself; there is a significant number that commute between SD-LA, or LA-SF. it is similar to the eastern seaboard, but commute distances are 30-50% longer, and there is much less matrix commuting.

The only problem with this is that it needs to be faster-- 250-280mph would make it more attractive.

Re:It will never happen

[Martin Blank]

I work at a county in SoCal that had to cut back its budget for the 2009-10 fiscal year by 18%. That's a cut from what was spent last year, not from the budget that was anticipated for this year. That was just the initial budget, too. We were recently told that further cutbacks are coming, because property tax revenues are down sharply from what was expected. This does not include any further cuts from an expected mid-year budget session to cut the state budget even further.

Re:It will never happen

[wickerprints]

Asparagus? That's downright pleasant compared to the smell of cow shit as you drive past Coalinga, home to the Harris Ranch feedlot. I'm all for a bullet train that would more than halve the time I spend smelling that stench.

But I don't have much hope for this to happen. They've been talking it up for so many years, and still we can't build something that the Japanese had done over 40 years ago. The environmental impact of taking all those cars off the road would be worth it.

Re:It will never happen

[conureman]

Hey, I remember the fantastic lies they told when they were trying to sell BART in the sixties, and I actually got to ride it in the late seventies. It could happen. Of course BART ended up being a parody of a good transit system, used mainly to punish people too stupid to drive their own cars/helicopters to work, but it is useful for certain small groups of white collar commuters in certain exclusive communities. In twenty or thirty years, if you live in the right place, and work in the right place, you too can park your Porsche 999 in a gated structure and enjoy a MASSIVELY subsidised ride to one of about three possible destinations. Cheaper than going to Mars, probably. Enjoy!

Re:It will never happen

[scotch]

45 minute commute? Wow, that sucks. What is that, about 10% of your day awake spent in a car going from point A to point B.

Re:It will never happen

[maharb]

You are right. Lets build a bullet train to Detroit. Seriously, even though there are 'big cities' you have to look beyond the idea mode and look at what the system would look like if built. How are millions of passengers going to get to hotel or housing? A new massive taxi fleet charging more than the train ticket to get you home/to a hotel? A new bus system? In America we are not compact enough for this. It's basically the last mile problem but for transport. Bullet trains don't have 50 stops all over a metro area.

The populations and systems needed to support this are hardly developed. New hotels would need to be built closer to the drop points to reduce last mile destination problems. At least Cali has put a good estimate on it because the cost is way more than just building a train. I am guessing private investments into supporting activities around the train will come close to equal the trains cost but these investments will only happen in areas of predictable success.

NY to Chi-Town would probably work... but start looking further than that for practical connections and it looks a bit more risky and at $5 billion it's not like you can just try it out and hope it works you better be damn certain that nearly everyone is going to ride the thing.

Please note I was responding to 'any state can have this if cali does'. I predict that maybe 5 states could pull it off right now without redoing the states whole transport structure. The future is a different beast but I only see cities expanding further from their centers right now making this even harder to implement.

Re:It will never happen

[Ichijo]

The population density throughout the US is not really set up for a bullet train system because even if you did connect major cities, you would need cars and buses to get people to their spread out homes.

If that is true then airports also must not be viable.

Re:It will never happen

[demachina]

"But you probably haven't had a 100k salary being taxed at CA's tax levels."

And California's state taxes are high why? Because you made prisons your leading industry with three strikes.... and you pay your prison guards a hundred thousand fracking dollars a year for one of the world's least productive, least skilled jobs. You apparently don't recognize a vicious circle when you see one....

"Want to pick up the cheap real estate? Sure. Welcome to some shitty commute times and high fuel prices."

With the possible exception of San Quentin I think most prisons are located in shit holes with relatively cheap real estate. You dont generally put them in upscale neighborhoods.

The only reason California's real estate is expensive is because you started another vicious circle with a housing bubble where people kept charging more for real estate only because people were willing to pay it and everyone started flipping real estate to get rich quick and get money for nothing.... For every Californian who complains about the price of their real estate is one who made a ridiculous amount of money selling California real estate in one of the longer running real estate bubbles of all time. The only divider is if you bought 20 years ago or 2 years ago. If you bough 2 years ago you got screwed like all late arrivers to bubbles and Ponzi schemes. California in particular and America in general has turning in to a semi continuous Ponzi scheme generating money out of fantasy and you can only generate money out of thin air for so long.

Re:It will never happen

[StarsAreAlsoFire]

Hey, you're on to something.

Then it becomes unreported income, and they go to FEDERAL prison. SCORE! No more money drain on poor old CA.

Re:It will never happen

[CodeBuster]

To be fair though, there are other expenses when operating a private vehicle besides simply filling up the gas tank. There is insurance (liability at a minimum and probably collision too if it is a newer model vehicle), parts and maintenance (or expensive repairs for failing to maintain the vehicle), parking expenses, toll road fees, etc. For many people, the freedom to go wherever whenever conveniently and quickly is worth the price; but the gap between the Metro and driving in Los Angeles is narrower than a simple comparison of fuel and ticket prices alone would suggest.

Re:It will never happen

[uncqual]

In California, we go to the polls to vote on which bid for toilet paper the DMV should accept. ...or at least it seems that way sometimes.

Re:It will never happen

[jdcope]

And the Pacific Northwest needs their hydro power to feed what they hope to be all those computing centers.

No so fast...we here in the PNW are probably going to lose hydro power because of salmon. The feds are already discussing ripping out four dams on the Klamath river. All that leaves us up here is coal powered plants.

Re:It will never happen

[girlintraining]

California pays more in federal taxes then it received in services every year. According to the Tax Foundation (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html, page 5) in 2005 California received $0.78 from the federal government for every dollar paid. In 2005 (the most recent report) they were 43rd among states for money received. Saying they are looking for another handout is a bit of a stretch.

Uhh... what does that have to do with the price in China? They have a $42 billion dollar budget deficit. They need money from anywhere they can get it. Yeah, they're looking for handouts.

Re:It will never happen

[timeOday]

Nah, nobody would consider such a thing.

Re:It will never happen

[Arthur Grumbine]

What California needs transportation-wise is solutions to get people to work and back more efficiently, not crazy-expensive long distance trains.

Duh. They'll work on building the train. And they can build another rail system to get the construction workers to the job site - which will require more construction workers... repeat until unemployment is solved and/or California has gotten a proportional (population-wise) share of the stimulus bill.

Re:It will never happen

[Trepidity]

They're just looking for their money back from the feds.

Re:It will never happen

[Anonymous Coward]

How are millions of passengers going to get to hotel or housing? A new massive taxi fleet charging more than the train ticket to get you home/to a hotel? A new bus system? In America we are not compact enough for this. It's basically the last mile problem but for transport.

This gets parroted every time the subject of high-speed trains comes up. Interestingly, it also "proves" that air travel can never be viable. How are people going to get from the airport to their homes/hotels? In reality there are a lot of ways to leave the airport, like by buses, trains, taxis, cars. I'm not going to guess at the percentages for these modes of last-miles transport, but I will be bold enough to claim that most air travellers eventually make it. Otherwise we would have heard about huge populations accumulating at the airports. And no, that Tom Hanks movie isn't relevant to this discussion.

Or am I missing something that makes train travel fundamentally different from air travel with respect to this last-mile problem? Do the magnetic fields from the pantograph current interfere with people's brain waves and make them forget how to get a taxi? Otherwise I think the biggest difference is that the train station tends to be closer to all those city-center hotels than the airport is.

Re:It will never happen

[blind biker]

leglize pot
let everyone out of jail who has any pot convictions, even if they trafficed 500 tonnes, just give them a tax bill.

im sure that will save 10 billion.

I agree. Marijuana/THC is not addictive, doesn't cause aggressive behavior (both hallmarks of... alcohol!) and it even shows some anti-depressant properties.

Make it a tradeable item, for the benefit of everybody.

Re:It will never happen

[MaxVT]

Actually, if you look just a bit further down the energy chain, those high speed trains would run on coal, which would be burned to heat water - just like steam engines of yesteryear.

Do you know how most of the electricity in the US is produced? Or do you think it just magically appears on those catenaries?

Re:It will never happen

[Alex Zepeda]

And then there's the scalability problem. I-95 started as a four lane road, and now in some parts it's 12 lanes wide, so it's increased its capacity by three. You can't do the same with railways - people could kill themselves tripping over the rails when trying to board the train.

Man, if I had mod points, I'd mod you -1, Wrong.

You can't have more than two sets of rails side by side because someone could trip over them? Look, I live in San Francisco, an area not known for its well developed rail system. I can easily point out instances where you see more than two sets of tracks. The most well known is the Market St subway setup with two sets of two tracks on top of each other. Another would be BART's Oakland City Center / 12th Street station with god knows how many tracks. Or even smaller stations like their Daly City station with three tracks side by side (and nobody tripping to their death that I know of).

Or you could even go completely crazy and simply look at how other countries do this sort of thing. London's Liverpool St. Station is a great example. They've got, what, 12? 15? sets of tracks for their National Rail system there. Plus however many sets of tracks for the Underground. And nobody tripping to their deaths there either. Go figure.

Re:It will never happen

[nixman99]

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.

It doesn't have to be. During my commute I listen to these things called "podcasts" that allow me to catch up on news, learn more about economics, and improve my foreign language skills.

Re:It will never happen

[stmfreak]

> It just takes willing

And money. God awe full amounts of money. What ever they say it will cost, double or triple it. And double the schedule as well.

CA voters recently approved $10B in bonds for high speed rail. I'm pretty sure most of them didn't read the part about how paying those bonds off was going to cost $20B over thirty years. Nor did they likely read that the entire project was estimated to cost $55B. Triple that to $165B and ask how many passengers will it take to make that project worthwhile?

WA State had a light rail project back in the 80s that was supposed to extend from SeaTac to Everett. Most of the State voted no. They went forward anyway, choosing to tax a subset of the State to fund it. Years later, the train runs from Tacoma to Seattle, not quite the distance necessary. Cost overruns and several thousand passengers per day. At an investment cost of $400,000 per regular passenger.

I understand that the concept of high-speed travel between L.A. and S.F. is nice, but we already have planes and airports. And cars and roads for those of us who don't approve of the invasion of privacy required. These sort of public works projects that benefit few at an extraordinary cost to the many seem very wasteful and wrong-headed.

As for high-speed trains, they are able to travel 200mph due to extremely smooth and straight railways. If we put that sort of accuracy and stability into our freeway systems, along with long on/off ramps and appropriate barriers to prevent oncoming collisions, we could vastly increase the speeds on our interstates and cut down travel times in all directions. It just takes the will to act to benefit all of us.

Re:It will never happen

[icebike]

Not to mention they have more of a 'need' for this type of transport.

Really? Why is that?

Why do we want to move so many people so far so fast. What is the point?

The idea that there is that much traffic from one city to the other on a daily basis is an excuse to get the money.
(Its 800 miles, people. Nobody drives that daily).

No the real purpose here is to allow people to live outside these two cities and commute in for work. Fleeing the city at night to the smaller towns between.

Why not encourage people to live closer to where they work so that you don't have to build 800 mile commuter lines and then run them at high speeds.

If you want to push that line to Seattle then you might have a justification, because you could take 50 flights a day out of the sky with a morning and evening run in both directions to handle long distance travel.

But this line is proposed essentially for commuter service in disguise.

The problem is this concept that people should live hundreds of miles from where they work. Its fundamentally unjustified to hack over our economy, both California's and the Countries, hack over our infrastructure, our farm land, and our natural resources to support his model of population distribution which is really based on an elitist idea that the city is a place you go to make money, then get the hell out before dark.

It would be more sustainable in the long run to fix the cities so people didn't feel they had to flee them each evening.

We made this mistake all over the eastern seaboard. Is there any point in repeating the endless lines of cattle car commuter trains on the west coast?

Re:It will never happen

[Colin Douglas Howell]

And finally look at history:

Our ancestors had a network of rails all over the U.S. which acted as the backbone of the nation during the 1800s and early 1900s. Then in the 1930 and 40s they abandoned them.

When you look at history, it helps to get it right. The big decline for passenger rail in the U.S. was after World War II. Yes, there was falloff before then, due to competition from cars, but there was no real alternative to rail for long-distance travel for most people. And during the war U.S. passenger rail traffic boomed, thanks to gasoline rationing and the needs of troop transport. It was only after the war, thanks to the growth of the interstate highway system and increasingly affordable air travel, that U.S. passenger rail entered its catastrophic decline.

Why? If rails had been superior then the railroad companies, being the dominant industry of that time, would have killed the car in its infancy. They failed because even though the rail companies were rich and could have squashed the carmakers, they were horribly inconvenient to use. So they died-out, similar to how newspapers are dying out today.

Yes, U.S. passenger rail transport eventually became less convenient than travel by car or by air, but the situation is nowhere near as simple as you lay out. By the time auto and air travel had become a big threat to the railroads, they were supported by giant industries themselves. And those industries were being aided by major government programs at the same time as the railroads were becoming increasingly hampered by government regulation.

By the way, you shouldn't use the standards of today's dysfunctional Amtrak to judge the convenience of U.S. passenger rail in its heyday, when it was fast, timely, and frequent.

Re:It will never happen

[misnohmer]

Are you implying that most other states take more out than they put in? Wow, that would federal explain the deficit. No wonder the feds need to print money by the trillions - everyone expects to take more than they pay in!

Re:It will never happen

[jonbryce]

Actually, the population density in the US is ideal for a bullet train system, unlike some other countries where the train wouldn't get a chance to get to full speed before it reaches the next city. What you really need is bullet trains going from from the East Coast to the West Coast to take people out of the planes. If China and France can manage it, why can't anyone else?

Re:It will never happen

[jonbryce]

Bullet trains are not supposed to be a last mile solution. They are supposed to replace internal flights, and I don't think you find 50 airports in the metro area. Maybe two or three at most if it is a big city. To make this work, you really need to think inter-state travel and have a network to link the main cities in each state.

In Britain for example, the only TGV service we have goes from London to either Paris or Brussels.

Re:It will never happen

[Alex Zepeda]

Ya but how many airports do you have in the London area? I count at least five (Heathrow, Stansted, London City, Gatwick, Luton).

Re:It will never happen

[jonbryce]

Cars don't drive at 280mph. At least not safely on a public road. That is where the attraction of rail is.

In Britain, the CrossCountry Voyager (a train) gets only slightly more passenger miles per gallon than a Hummer (a very large American gas guzzling car). But the train does 125 mph, whereas the Hummer's mpg is measured when doing speeds of 62.5 mph (100 km/h). If you drove the Hummer at 125 mph, I think you would find it performed much worse than the Voyager for fuel economy.

Re:It will never happen

[jonbryce]

Hybrids are overrated IMO compared to clean diesels, and in any case on an interstate where it drives at a pretty much constant speed, it will perform the same as an equivalent petrol engine, except that more fuel will be used to move the battery pack along.

Re:It will never happen

[Colin Douglas Howell]

So this bullet train that covers 800 miles will carry how many of California's population each year? 0.1%? Yeah that's a wise investment of non-existent american dollars.

Well, if we really don't have the money, then we can't afford to do anything, including building the extra highway you propose.

Wouldn't it make more sense to lay-down an I-3 to run semi-parallel to I-5, and thereby carry any excess traffic between these two cities? It would be far cheaper, far more flexible in design (cars aren't tied to rails), use existing equipment (cars and macadam and road signs and lighting), and could even be made environmentally-friendly by designating the new I-3 "for hybrids or electrics only".

That might reduce some of the load on I-5, true. But let's think this through a bit more. First, it's not obvious to me that a new interstate highway between San Francisco and Los Angeles would be vastly cheaper than the high-speed rail line. You have to buy land, do environmental studies, overcome political objections, lay roadbed, build all the connector ramps and other infrastructure, etc. And to make the system effective, you have to deal with the two big bottlenecks on the route: Tejon Pass in the south, where I-5 enters the L.A. basin, and Pacheco Pass in the north, where California highway 152 runs over the mountains between US-101 and I-5. It's a lot harder to build a highway through a restricted mountain pass than through open flatland. The 152 around Pacheco Pass is especially bad; a good portion of its length is a two-lane undivided highway running through farm communities with driveways that open directly on the highway. The speed limit is 55 mph, and in this case it's fully justified. And while there has been some political opposition to the proposed rail route through there, it would be nothing compared to what a major highway expansion would face.

Even if you dealt with those, you'd still run into congestion once you entered the L.A. basin, because the entire freeway system there has become horribly overloaded.

And when you're done with all this, what do you have? Another route which will still carry a 70 mph speed limit and which requires you to focus on driving all the way. Even if you ignore the legal limit and aren't delayed by trucks, you're not likely to go above 85 mph at best. It will likely take just as long to drive between the two cities as it does now: 6 to 8 hours. That hardly seems worth the trouble to me. (I drive the route a few times a year.)

It seems much more attractive to have a system which promises to cut that travel time to one half or even one third, and which would allow you to relax during the journey, while still avoiding the hassles of modern air travel. True, you would give up your car while you were away, but that seems a relatively small inconvenience, especially for brief stays. And you can always rent a car.

Re:It will never happen

[amRadioHed]

How could you forget about Prob 13 when it comes up every time CA has trouble passing a balanced budget, in other words it's in the news every year.

Re:It will never happen

[Alex Zepeda]

I agree completely that people live too far away from their jobs. I live less than seven from mine, and I still have a painfully long commute. However, the California HSR was sold to people in part by providing for significant upgrades of one of the Bay Area's commuter rail systems (Caltrain) because they would share right of way and some tracks.

Caltrain currently runs from San Jose to the middle of San Francisco (4th and King streets) using diesel trains along (not just a right of way, but...) tracks shared with freight service at grade the entire way (with one or two exceptions IIRC). 4th and King is still about 20-50 minutes away from the downtown area of San Francisco where most of the jobs are. The time it takes depends entirely upon how lucky you get in catching a bus or train.

Among the promises were: grade separation along the entire right of way, electrification, and bringing Caltrain to the current transit hub in San Francisco (1st & Mission -- stumbling distance from the downtown area, and 1-2 blocks from the subway ). The so-called Transbay Terminal at 1st and Mission is a gathering place for Greyhound, SF Municipal public transit, Golden Gate Transit from Marin, AC Transit from across the bay, and SamTrans from the peninsula. The intersection where Caltrain currently terminates at 4th and King is one giant clusterfuck to put it kindly (and worthy of a whole other post if you're interested). So while I have significant doubts of the utility of HSR, it was sold on promises that, if kept, would greatly improve commuting options in the Bay Area.

Of course, now, one of the key architects of the HSR gimmick, Quentin Kopp, is now pushing to have the HSR end at 4th and King or at Beale St (about a block away from the Transbay Terminal, thus making sure that any Caltrain extension will need to be a separate project) conveniently right around where the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge anchors.

Compared to the rail blingfrastructure (cribbed that one from Tom Radulovich) that's currently being proposed/rammed down our throats, HSR could provide real benefits. Read up on BART's $500 million Oakland airport connector fiasco, then think about what $500 million might be able to do elsewhere in the BART system (like an infill station and some extra tracks to go with it). Read up on San Francisco's atrocious central subway, and then read up on any number of other sane proposals for the city and county of San Francisco.

Re:It will never happen

[amRadioHed]

The Democratic majority is irrelevant as long as Republicans have enough votes to obstruct the budget all by themselves, which they do.

Re:It will never happen

[jabithew]

But our standard High Speed Train service runs at either 125mph (on the Great Western Line) or 140mph (East Coast or West Coast Mainline), which is significantly faster than anything in the US. Even those speeds mean that London-Manchester (e.g.) is much faster by train than by plane.

Re:It will never happen

[jabithew]

There's also the ludicrously named "London Oxford" terminal.

Re:It will never happen

[Alex Zepeda]

That depends entirely upon where you look. The San Francisco Municipal Railway runs all of its electric vehicles (streetcars and trolley coaches) on power from the Hetch Hetchy dam. BART buys most of its electricity from hydro plants. Besides, cleaning up a handful of power plants is far easier than cleaning up millions of cars.

Re:It will never happen

[Colin Douglas Howell]

Also before someone jumps on the "Trains are more efficent" bandwagon:
- The national average for cars is approximately 25 miles per gallon
- The national average for passenger trains is the same energy equivalence (25 people-miles per gallon).
- So if you simply upgrade your car to a hybrid (40-70mpg), then you are more-efficient than a passenger train. Or if you carpool and carry a passenger, your car's efficiency jumps to 50 people-miles per gallon.... again more efficient than a passenger train.

Without knowing the source of these estimates, this is hardly convincing. And while it's no great surprise that underutilized Amtrak trains with poor service and scheduling might be less efficient than cars, that's not the choice we're making here.

What's the per seat-mile efficiency for a car running from San Francisco to L.A., versus that on a high-speed train running the same route? And what about the advantage of shorter travel time?

Of course, a fully-occupied train should be more efficient per seat mile than a fully-occupied car running the same route at the same speed, assuming the train doesn't have excessively heavy passenger coaches. It's simply a matter of physics; the losses per person due to air drag and rolling resistance are smaller, and the power plant, being larger, will be more efficient, since it can run at higher temperatures (greater thermal efficiency) and will have lower frictional losses per unit of power produced (greater mechanical efficiency). (If the train is electric, there will be transmission losses, but the net efficiency should be even higher, since otherwise diesel-electric locomotives would be used instead.) I suppose the increased drag of a high-speed train might offset some of the efficiency gains, but I'm not sure by how much, and you get shorter travel time in return.

The big question is what the utilization of the high-speed train would be.

One could compare to air travel, but I would expect the high-speed train to come out ahead. The L.A.-San Francisco corridor is not exactly optimal for jet airliner efficiency; the plane can barely get to cruising altitude before it has to descend again.

Re:It will never happen

[Stephan Schulz]

Our ancestors had a network of rails all over the U.S. which acted as the backbone of the nation during the 1800s and early 1900s. Then in the 1930 and 40s they abandoned them. Why?

Well, the fact that the road network is nearly fully state-sponsored may have something to do with it...see e.g. Interstate Highway system.

Re:It will never happen

[jonbryce]

Which is in Kidlington, and nowhere near London. You have a 35 minute bus journey to Oxford, then a one hour train journey from Oxford to London Paddington. You can get from Birmingham Airport to London in about the same time.

Re:It will never happen

[pommiekiwifruit]

Hey, Ryanair "Copenhagen" (Malmo) was not even in the right country let alone city :-)

Re:It will never happen

[h4rm0ny]

Nuclear is out, because the same people who push trains are also against any form of nuclear energy.

Wrong! Watch - I think both nuclear power and greater investment in public transport such as trains is a good idea.
Don't mistake loudmouth groups like Greenpeace for representing us environmentalists. They're just loud, that's all.

Re:It will never happen

[drinkypoo]

Wait, WHAT? Cali has way more money/ability to get money than most states.

And yet, we have dramatically more costs than any other state. We produce a majority of the nation's food supplies (look it up) and have to support health care for migrant workers without tax support. We have more miles of interstate highway than any other state but Texas, which has less hills and variability of weather (Asphalt is somewhat self-healing in the heat, but does not perform well on the sides of hills which it slides off of over time, or in earthquakes which are not much of an issue in TX.) And in fact, California is the most populous state in the union, but probably has the lowest proportion of taxpayers.

So while California may have more money, it has less ability to get money, and higher costs.

Not to mention they have more of a 'need' for this type of transport.

The whole nation has a need for this type of transport. We could eliminate the interstate highway system if we installed a sufficient rail network. The interstate system was sold on the basis of military purposes, because it's easier to build a small roadway around a bomb crater and move trucks around it than it is to run new rail across one and run trains over it. At the point where we get invaded, we're fucked anyway, because of our relatively small population. Its actual purpose was to sell cars. Look where that's gotten us: while driving is still a privilege and not a right, it's also a necessity in many American cities due to our pathetic public transportation system, which was largely purchased and dismantled by the auto companies. Actually, the same is true of freight rail, which ironically still seems to run up to the doors of auto manufacturing plants, but few other places. You'll still see steel mills and coal plants served by rail, but both of these things serve the auto industry.

Re:It will never happen

[xaxa]

Its 800 miles, people. Nobody drives that daily

Trains stop at more than one city along the route. Someone might travel 100 miles of the route daily (I don't know if that's a reasonable distance for CA, in this country people would think you were mad for commuting that far every day).
It means you can travel from one city to the other -- e.g. for a meeting -- easily too.

Re:It will never happen

[xaxa]

Second there's the lost time of having people standing-around waiting for the damn train.

That's better than wasted time driving the car. You can read and write while waiting at the station. Once on the train you can read, write, eat, go to the toilet, have a meeting on the way to the conference, use your laptop, etc.
And if the train is faster than driving you'll likely still end up at your destination sooner.

I have to walk an hour to get to my station

So, about 4 miles? I suggest you buy a bicycle.

You can't do the same with railways - people could kill themselves tripping over the rails when trying to board the train.

Are you trolling, or have you just never seen a railway?

Once the capacity is fully used (with the maximum service frequency, longest possible train with e.g. double-decked carriages) you might add another two tracks. Just build them alongside, and add another platform, with a footbridge or subway to connect the platforms.

None of this is new technology.

Re:It will never happen

[frisket]

At least not in our lifetimes.

Probably true. Whatever about NIMBY and environmental issues, with a government in thrall to the unions as well as big biz, the road transportation lobbies (union and employer) will crush this idea like a gnat. The rail lobbies simply don't have enough money or influence to buy out enough politicians, so expect this idea to die stillborn. The fact that it's so clearly The Right Thing To Do is, sadly, no longer relevant today.

Re:It will never happen

[xaxa]

Or you could even go completely crazy and simply look at how other countries do this sort of thing. London's Liverpool St. Station is a great example. They've got, what, 12? 15? sets of tracks for their National Rail system there. Plus however many sets of tracks for the Underground. And nobody tripping to their deaths there either. Go figure.

That's a terminus, so there's no need for bridges/subways between the tracks.

A better example (in London) is Clapham Junction, which has 18 platforms pic (you can see the footbridge, there's also a subway).
(I used to have to change trains from platform 2 to platform 15. The walk over the footbridge was longer than the walk from my house to the nearest station...)

Re:It will never happen

[JDevers]

San Fancisco metro population is 4.2 million people and all are in a moderately small area. It isn't NYC, but there is a hell of a lot of traffic between SFO, LAX, and SAN.

Re:It will never happen

[jabithew]

Man, when I get hit on my bike by a driver not really paying attention to the road, at least I'll have the solace that they finally managed to nail the tonality on 'putonghua'.

Re:It will never happen

[Malc]

The train by itself is not enough to make it successful. A public transport network around each station and ticket costs will also be important. I have colleagues who fly SFO/SJC to BUR every week, and of course they won't switch if they can't get to the office easily when they arrive in LA.

Re:It will never happen

[chrb]

It's better to think of a continuum of service speeds rather than a discrete separation between bullet trains and local trains. This high speed railroad map of Europe shows there are lines within England which are handling >200km/h trains. Network Rail has proposed upgrading the London to Edinburgh line to 320km/h+ by 2020 but they need funding to the tune of £34 billion.

Re:It will never happen

[TheRaven64]

200mph seems very slow for this kind of thing though. To put it in perspective, that's around the speed of the current (since 1996) Japanese bullet trains and the TGV. These are both currently being upgraded to around 300mph and cover much smaller distances than most internal flights in the USA. By the time this is finished, 200mph is likely to be regarded as quite slow for high-speed trains and will be much slower than planes.

The long check in times don't really apply to a lot of internal flights either; you can turn up at somewhere like Salt Lake City airport half an hour before departure and still catch your plane. For bigger airports, you might need an hour while a plane would only need 15 minutes. You'd take your luggage with you on the plane, so you can probably save another 15 minutes at the far end (my record for disembarking was ten minutes from landing to sitting on the bus at Heathrow, but I was very lucky that time). All included, you probably save an hour of standing-around time with a train.

A 737 (commonly used for internal flights) has a cruising speed of around 500mph. After one hour, the train has gone 200 miles and the plane has gone zero. Half an hour more and the train has gone 300 miles, the plane has gone 250. Anything more than 300 miles will be faster for the plane. With a 300mph train, the numbers are different. After two hours the train has gone 600 miles but the plane has only gone 500. This is important when you realise that the proposed route for this train (San Francisco to San Diego) is 500 miles long. A 300mph train would be faster than a plane, but a 200mph train would not for this journey length.

Of course, this isn't taking cost into account. Trains have a lower energy cost, but a higher infrastructure cost, so it's difficult to make comparisons about their overall costs without knowing a lot more details. If it's subsidised then this could drive the ticket price down, which could increase the number of passengers (and therefore the efficiency, because the energy cost of moving a full train is not much different from moving a half-full train).

Oh, and Britain is a really bad example. Our train system has been a national embarrassment since the Beeching report and was made even worse by privatisation.

Re:It will never happen

[TheRaven64]

my commute by car is only 45 minutes

Only?!?! You're spending 1.5 hours of each day (assuming you mean 45 minutes each way), which works out at around 10% of your waking life, sitting in a car achieving nothing more than moving from one place to another, and you think that's a productive use of your time?

Re:It will never happen

[E IS mC(Square)]

>> Man, if I had mod points, I'd mod you -1, Wrong.

Actually, going by the bullshit he has accumulated on this thread, we will need -100 "send this one to oblivion" mod.

Re:It will never happen

[slackbheep]

I would go nuts having to commute so far, I work in a Assisted Living Home, which is somewhere around a 10 minute walk from my house.

Re:It will never happen

[Nazlfrag]

We here at Project Bullinator are pleased to announce our projected low, low price of just $50 a ticket! Book now for your chance to become a part of history in the making at some point in the future!

We only need every man, woman and child in America to ride the train at least three times to cover the construction costs! We might need you to ride it again a couple of times to pay for the staff and maintenance and marketing and the overspending and the bribes and hookers and blow! Let's say ten times, or maybe even twelve! Why not! It's every American childs dream to travel at 200mph from some city somewhere to some other city nearby but not that close really, and to do it several times!

Re:It will never happen

[DerekLyons]

I suspect that assessment is incorrect, on the grounds that a lot of environmentalists tend to be in *favor* of such trains, on the theory that they reduce motor vehicle traffic.

They're in favor of the *theory* of such trains, it remains to be seen if they will accept the inevitable environmental damage which comes with the actual existence/construction of the trackage and infrastructure.

Re:It will never happen

[DerekLyons]

Most other states probably wouldn't have the numbers of people to justify building it. Imagine a state in the midwest asking for 5 billion so that the tiny train riding population can ride in style. Ya right. So if by any state you mean New York and surrounding area then yes.

You most likely have not lived east of the Mississippi. There are HUGE swaths of populations that could use fast, convenient mass transportation. Not just New York and "surrounding areas." Think the entire eastern seaboard. Think Chicago to New York. Think St. Louis to Atlanta. Don't think they're big enough? Check the size of these metropolitan areas and some of the cities running between them.

I *have* lived east of the Mississippi - and the OP is correct. Outside of California and a very few locations on the east coast, this kind of train doesn't make sense.
 
 

If you don't want to compare metro areas, fine. But then you might as well knock out SF - it's quite small in comparison to many other eastern cities.

It's not about physical size, it's about the amount of traffic between them - which is considerable on the LA-to-SF route. The St Louis-to-Atlanta route you cite above would be a virtual ghost town. (The only other major city such a route passes near, without hundreds of miles of of incredibly expensive detour, is Nashville.) A Chicago-to-New York route on the other hand, would be quite busy, but hideously expensive. In fact, if you aren't connecting to New York, I can't think of any route whose traffic would justify the expense.

Re:It will never happen

[SuperBanana]

The population density throughout the US is not really set up for a bullet train system because even if you did connect major cities, you would need cars and buses to get people to their spread out homes.

Right, because we don't have those cars or busses...

You do realize that the US is actually ideal for high-speed rail, right? It's not designed to get you from your house to your office. It's for crossing vast distances for people or freight; then people and freight take secondary transit.

For example, coast to coast at 200mph is 15 hours, and we avoid the massive localized pollution (during takeoff) and upper-atmospheric pollution (when they're cruising.) You get on in California, get off in Boston, and via the subway, commuter rail, local rail, busses, and taxis. You can get anywhere in the state.

The real trick will be finding the right balance between too many stops and too few. You want enough stops to make it versatile, but not so many as to kill average speed. Right now, Amtrak has that problem with the Northeast Corridor. You shouldn't have more than 1-2 stops per state, and local rail should fill in...

Re:It will never happen

[EQ]

You might want to update your knowledgebase from something other than the propaganda factory of one of the major parties. United States Attorney General Eric Holder, citing serious prosecutorial misconduct during the trial, decided to drop all charges against Stevensâ"an action that vacated Senator "Tubes" convictions. There are pending investigations into possible criminal misconduct by the prosecutors. Looks like the whole thing was designed to get Stevens ousted and a Dem into the Senate for that 60 seat majority the party wanted.

Re:It will never happen

[Marcika]

As for high-speed trains, they are able to travel 200mph due to extremely smooth and straight railways. If we put that sort of accuracy and stability into our freeway systems, along with long on/off ramps and appropriate barriers to prevent oncoming collisions, we could vastly increase the speeds on our interstates and cut down travel times in all directions. It just takes the will to act to benefit all of us.

Smooth and straight track - and more importantly, advanced signalling and very few drivers on the track at once. Germany already has that sort of "accuracy and stability" in many of its freeways. (and no speed limit on them). Nevertheless you can only drive above 150 mph on a Sunday morning at 5am when the freeway is empty, since all the other relatively slow and unskilled drivers would kill you within half an hour. (Not to speak of the capital investment that you need to make to get a car that drives 200 mph+.)

Re:It will never happen

[arndawg]

Here's a foreign language lesson for you. In europe, podcasts is called audiofiles.

Re:It will never happen

[theaveng]

I own both - the hybrid and the clean diesel Jetta. Now if only they were merged into a single hybrid-diesel car; it would be awesome.

Re:It will never happen

[theaveng]

45 minute commute? Wow, that sucks.

I can't speak for the GP but I find my 50-minute commute time is very relaxing. No kids, no wife, just me and the road. Sometimes I listen to books-on-tape or Teaching company lectures to pass the time, although most times I prefer the quiet. I like driving. And I only have to do it four days a week. I get a three day weekend every week

Re:It will never happen

[theaveng]

Only?!?! You're spending 1.5 hours of each day

The key is that the train commute is worse than the car commute. That guy's boss spends *3 hours* a day commuting by the train. Plus if he's like me and works in the D.C. or other expensive metro area, moving closer ain't an option. Homes within 10 minutes drive of my job cost nearly a million dollars. Who the hell can afford that?!?!?

I could downsize to the teeny-tiny 1/2 million dollar homes, but don't want to. Instead I have a nice-sized home that is some distance from my job but only cost only $150,000.

Re:It will never happen

[moortak]

The spending aspect isn't similarly limited. Citizens can vote in basically any project that they want with a majority, but actually raising the money takes a super-majority.

Re:It will never happen

[theaveng]

you know that trains aren't going bumper to bumper right?

Actually in most metro areas trains are going "bumper to bumper". Like in D.C. - the rail capacity is full, and adding more trains would either create congestion, or collisions (which just happened a few months ago), or both.

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?

Who cares? I don't travel 800 miles a day to get to my job so the problem is a non-existent one.

If I did make such a trip, it would be for a vacation, and I'd rather take my car because driving through California is FUN. Riding a train would make for a boring vacation.

No, driving time is unproductive time.

Not when you listen to books-on-tape, or Teaching company lectures, or news on the radio, or whatever.

Trains are only suitable for high-congestion areas like inside cities. For example the Metro system in D.C. is superb. But outside the cities, either the car or the airplane are superior. The car is slower but cheaper to operate, and the airplane is waaay faster than any bullet train.

Re:It will never happen

[theaveng]

A better example (in London) is Clapham Junction, which has 18 platforms

What a gigantic waste of space, and all to serve what - 1% of the commuter traffic? Waste, waste, waste. Yes roads take-up a lot of room too but they serve 99% of the commuters.

Also I don't know how the UK funds its trains, but in the Virginia/Maryland region they make the drivers pay the bill. The train/metro money comes out of the revenue collected from road tolls. Why should people in cars have to pay to provide free or almost-free tickets to train riders? No reason I can think of.

Re:It will never happen

[DrLang21]

But if you have a car at all, you will need insurance whether you drive it or not. So that expense should not be factored in. There are no tolls on the 5 or the 4-0-slow. The only extra expense is parking. If you're not going to downtown, that's not an issue.

Re:It will never happen

[theaveng]

Because the government subsidized the automotive infrastructure!

The government didn't subsidize anything, either then or now. Every mile of paved road was *directly* paid by the people who drove those miles. It's called a road toll, and it's collected at the gasoline pump. Roads took-off because the drivers were willing to pay the ~50 cents per gallon toll required to keep the roads maintained, and turned their backs on trains.

This was a strictly personal choice made by the consumers of the late 1940s and 50s. They let the passenger trains die (stopped buying tickets), and instead paid tolls to run their cars on paved roads.

Perhaps you think the consumers of that time made a bad choice, but they had every right to make it. Just as today consumers are abandoning newspapers in favor of websites. Perhaps someday our grandchildren will call us idiots for letting newspapers die, just as we criticize our ancestors for abandoning passenger rail, but right now this is the choice we want - let the papers die.

Re:It will never happen

[RichiH]

Well, and because the car companies bought the public transport systems of the major cities to let them die. Guess which city stopped them from doing so.. Hint: It is in the West and famous for its many hills and.... public transport!

Re:It will never happen

[pete6677]

Amtrak gets TONS of subsidies. It would have been gone long ago without them. I'd rather see air travel get subsidies than train, since it is a hell of a lot more effective. Amtrak is useless if you actually need to get somewhere relatively soon. The real problem with Amtrak is poor management and excessive politician interference.

Re:It will never happen

[jadavis]

I wonder how many of the prisoners are there entirely because of pot? I would think that most of them have committed other crimes, as well.

Re:It will never happen

[girlintraining]

They're just looking for their money back from the feds.

I think the fed should hold onto the money; The last thing you do to someone who doesn't know how to budget themselves and blows their money on crap like booze and toys instead of rent and food is give them more money.

Re:It will never happen

[dgatwood]

The biggest problem with mass transit in the Bay Area, IMHO, is that we have a half dozen or more mass transit systems, all run by different people who don't talk to each other. The systems don't always connect, and when they do, they often connect in poorly chosen locations as you've noted.

The schedules also aren't intelligently chosen to intersect. I wrote a letter complaining about this to the VTA folks about the light rail connection in Mountain View departing once an hour, but departing ten minutes after Caltrain southbound got there and almost an hour after the previous one got there. They said they would fix the schedule, but by the time they did, it was two months later and too late for it to do any good for our conference.

And then, there was the BART/Caltrain nightmare. I took that once on a weekend. BART was running about three minutes late and the Caltrain engineer apparently decided that being on schedule was more important than the 50+ passengers who were running across the bridge trying to get down there. So there were 50+ people standing around on the platform waiting for an entire HOUR for the next Caltrain. I don't think I'll EVER take Caltrain and BART again on a weekend.

I was so pissed off that I called Caltrain while standing on the platform and chewed them out. Their exact response was "We're not responsible for synchronizing our schedule with BART's schedule." I replied, "Well, if you aren't, who is?" The customer support rep didn't have an answer for that. And therein is the real cause of our mass transit problem. Every agency blames the problems on every other agency, so nothing ever gets fixed in a timely fashion.

What we need is a single Bay Area Mass Transit Authority responsible for managing all of the transit agencies from north of Oakland all the way down to and including Santa Cruz Metro, VTA (as far south as Gilroy), etc. It's completely clear that having multiple organizations running things has been a complete disaster. The only way things will ever get better is if there is someone in charge of all of it.

Oh, yeah, and a better, more standardized payment system. I should be able to go to the VTA light rail station and buy my VTA single ride pass, a Caltrain single ride pass, and a BART card with enough money on it for the last leg of the trip, all from a single vending machine. It's insane that you have to leave enough layover to stand in a long line and wait to buy a ticket. Can you imagine if airline flights worked that way? If everybody had to leave security, go out to the lobby, wait in line, buy the second leg ticket, go back through security, and fly? Our airline system would be gridlocked and nobody would fly.

I should also be able to buy a non-dated VTA single ride pass for the return trip that I can shove into a validator and get stamped in half a second. Ditto for the Caltrain single ride pass. There's no excuse for their validators only doing multi-ride passes. That's brain damaged. Using validators everywhere would not only make travel much more convenient, but would also eliminate a whole class of excuses commonly made by fare dodgers.

Re:It will never happen

[calmofthestorm]

My my my don't we jump to assumptions. Stevens was a doddering old man who was let off easy because that's what happens when you commit political crime.

And my knowledge of Stevens' corruption predates my knowledge of the name Barack Obama. Just because a major party says something doesn't make it false, you just have to sift the propaganda mills with a fine sieve.

Could I be wrong? Of course. But I've looked into this guy before, even before he earned the "tubes" name, and was always shocked he had never been brought down.

Keep in mind Alaska doesn't have tax, they have government handouts.

Re:It will never happen

[maharb]

Of course it isn't a last mile solution but you have to have SOMETHING for the last mile. You can't just run a giant fiber pipe into the middle of a city and tell everyone they have to access it from that point because there is no last mile infrastructure. Other countries already have this in the form of non-bullet trains, affordable and timely taxis, buses, etc. America is built on cars and planes. I'm not saying it's not possible to switch, I am saying it is a bigger project than just building a train. It is a reorganization of society... people don't like that so not only do you have financial hurdles you also have social/political hurdles. Good luck!!

Re:It will never happen

[maharb]

Have you ever stopped to think that people like some fucking freedoms. I don't really feel like going where politicians let me, when the politicians let me, after an anal probe and piss test. Cars provide freedom and that is what America is supposed to be about.

The second we are dependent on the government(see public transport) is the second America is dead. We are getting closer every day and it's sad. You can talk about the economics of it all day and you are probably right... economically I am guessing it beats out the car/plane system by a long shot. Who cares? I want to be able to get places fast and on my schedule. We are advanced enough at this point we don't have to make everything the most efficient... we can have some freedoms and fun FFS.

Your points about industry using trains makes no sense... are you saying we should be treated like raw materials and cattle. Shipped and offloaded like a resource that the government uses to make tax revenue? You have fun, I'm going to keep driving my car, thanks.

Re:It will never happen

[good soldier svejk]

Ah, so there is no federal Highway Trust Fund or gasoline tax? Tolls magically fund the construction of highways before they exist and that there is no such thing as a freeway? Good to know.

Re:It will never happen

[NoOneInParticular]

One thing you forget to cater in is that airplanes are typically much further from anyplace interesting than train stations. In Europe, train stations are usually down-town, and you can walk to a hotel from there. I understand that in a typical American city does not have such a down-town, but still, train stations can be much closer to whatever is the actual middle of nowhere in the typical American town. Contrast this with an airport which typically is 40 mins or more away from where people actually are.

Re:It will never happen

[EQ]

Look dimwit, not disputing Stevens was crooked, most politicians are, and if they're a politician from Alaska, they're crooked - you can make good money betting on it. Its where the bridge to nowhere was born. And all you need to do to is look at the timing for the verdict, charges etc. They were all politically motivated - until those came up and were paraded around, Stevens was still winning his race. Anyone in Alaska knows that too (they kept voting for the coot). But the dispute was that you are wrong about "behind bars". Figures you didn't even admit that nor correct yourself. Like I said before, get your facts straight. One other thing you may want to look at in terms of federal funding - how much of the land in Alaska is set aside, preserved, and prevented from being explored for petroleum production? They could fix that "balance of payments" in a hurry if they really wanted to get the excise taxes for the oil thats extractable up there with little adverse impact on the wildlife. ANWR is a case in point. Another issue is the large amount of land versus the very low population density - so of course per-capita spending is going to look worse than dense states like Rhode Island or NY, or even CA (back to the original topic). Basic initial civilized infrastructure costs the same whether 100 or 1000000 people are using it, and the climate in Alaska insures that much of it is more costly due to maintenance. I could go on and on, but either you get the point already (and you realize you were wrong), or you're too dense to waste any more electrons on. Either way, I'm done with this and off you go to -5 land.

Re:It will never happen

[ChrisMaple]

Thanks for the reference. It's interesting that New Jersey is screwed the worst at about 67 cents on the dollar, while #1 New Mexico gets off like a bandit at $2.03 on the dollar. Surprise, surprise, Washington DC gets just short of $6 for every dollar taxed, almost 3 times more than any state.

I'd guess that some of these numbers will shift a little with the Democrats back in power, each party does try to reward its supporters.

Re:It will never happen

[ChrisMaple]

"Benefit millions of people" ???

Take a look at commuter rail into NYC. Long distance rail has lower usage than commuter lines. A bullet train running along the West Coast from Mexico to Canada would be unlikely to serve 100,000 a day for people travelling over 100 miles. Only regular users are economically meaningful; people who only use the train twice a year may be "benefitted" but not in a manner justified by the sysem cost.

Re:It will never happen

[tuomoks]

Very good point. Actually for example Chicago (middle of everything in US, kind of) has the train stations in city. Handy, except in winter but L and taxis are available and not very expensive. Try to get to Chicago airports (Metra is not bad but not (yet?) perfect) - by car on rush hour it may take hours, traffic is sometimes just too bad. And then, of course, stand on line - sometimes a long, long time.

In Europe the stations are really in city, even for example in London, Frankfurt, Paris, etc the connections to airports are not too bad. One reason I prefer TGVs over plane, nice environment, go get a drink or meal, relax, quiet, roomy, very easy to have your stuff, in some places it is even waiting in hotel before you. I just love trains but busses, trams, other public transportation can be good (or bad) depending of the public attitudes. Still wonder why so many people in San Francisco insists to have a car, a real pain in parking, etc when it really is a walk town and the buss system is, if not perfect, nice?

Anyhow, a TGV through California makes sense (IMHO should run from Vancouver BC to San Diego!), I would use it every time instead of driving 5 which is a long way and can be interestingly challenging sometimes, sudden fog, the smell (bad in some places), boring, etc or, SFO, LAX, SAN are not too bad but if I can just step to the train, sit comfortably, get drinks / meal, read, sleep, etc wins every day.

Re:It will never happen

[ChrisMaple]

People used roads more as automobiles became more popular. Government was the logical entity to improve roads, and people were (relatively) happy to pay the government to improve the roads. Government was not the necessary entity; the roads would have been improved by private owners in the absence of government, because roads and automobiles are a far more versatile and effective means of moving people and most freight.

Unless you live on a rail line or your destination is on a rail line, you have to change transportation modes at least twice on one-way trip, three times on a round trip: Mode 1 from your door to the train station, mode 2 is the train, mode 3 from train station to destination.

Don't give me any guff about "people should walk more". A large portion of the population is sick/elderly/frail/disabled, and from among those the ones who can drive derive great advantage from the automobile.

Re:It will never happen

[drinkypoo]

Cars provide freedom and that is what America is supposed to be about.

That's a false freedom which doesn't really exist, which the car companies have spent a lot of money promoting. You are, in fact, a twaddled turnip, and a potted plant. You don't really own your car, because the government can take it away from you any time they like. They can stop and search you on any pretext they like. They can call the K-9 and signal the dogs to bark, providing probably cause... if they think you can afford a lawyer. This kind of shit happens to drivers every day, many of whom don't even deserve it.

We are advanced enough at this point we don't have to make everything the most efficient...

So far, we are living unsustainably, so while you may be correct all proof is to the contrary.

Your points about industry using trains makes no sense... are you saying we should be treated like raw materials and cattle.

That's a stupid conclusion to draw from what I said; my point was that the car companies shut down our use of the rail system, but it's still good enough for them. The ideal solution (to my mind) is a mix of rail, light rail, and PRT. The last mile would be covered by zero-emissions golf-cart like devices.

Re:It will never happen

[Captain Hook]

The Scottish Parliament recently announced it wouldn't fund it's share of the High Speed rail route, pretty much because they are looking to save money like everyone else.

Re:It will never happen

[stevelinton]

The population density throughout the US is not really set up for a bullet train system because even if you did connect major cities, you would need cars and buses to get people to their spread out homes.

If that is true then airports also must not be viable.

Indeed, the obvious places to put the HST terminals are the airports. The "last mile" problem already has solutions from those places, and you get to connect with inter continental flights, replacing short-haul, without really forcing people to change their travel habits.

Re:It will never happen

[xaxa]

A better example (in London) is Clapham Junction, which has 18 platforms

What a gigantic waste of space, and all to serve what - 1% of the commuter traffic? Waste, waste, waste.

You've clearly never been there, "the station is one of the busiest in Europe by number of trains using it, more than one hundred an hour outside peak time"

Roughly 200 million people pass through every year. Ignoring that there's less people at the weekend, that's 500,000 people per day. London has a population of 8 million, the whole of South East England ~16 million, and obviously not everyone travels to central London every day.

Yes roads take-up a lot of room too but they serve 99% of the commuters.

Figures pulled out of your arse?
" In 2006, on an average day in London there were just under 28 million journey stages; 39% of these were made by car, 19% by bus or tram, 10% by Underground, 8% by rail, 2% by cycle and 20% were on foot."
" Of these journey stages, 37% were by public transport, slightly more than in 2005. The public transport share has steadily increased from 32% in 2000, while the share of journey stages by private transport has continued to decline."
" On an average weekday in Autumn 2006, 1.1 million people entered central London during the morning peak (7am to 10am). This was a 5% increase on the previous year and also higher than the previous peak in 2000. All the public transport modes saw increases, especially rail, Underground and DLR, while the number of people entering by car continued to decrease."
These are for all of Greater London (the area 30 miles across). Only 7% of peak time journeys into *Central* London are made by car, with average vehicle occupancy of 1.38.
(Compare with the whole of Great Britain, where 76% of journeys to work are by car.)

Also interesting "On average London households spend nearly 15% of their total expenditure on transport, a lower share than the United Kingdom average, almost 17%."

Also note, 231 people died on the roads in London that year, 3715 were seriously injured, and 25864 slightly injured.
9 people died on railways, 150 injured. Almost all of this is people falling off platforms and down escalators etc (and if the "Take care!" posters are to be believed, most of them were drunk.)

(All this from the 2007 London Travel Report.)

Also I don't know how the UK funds its trains, but in the Virginia/Maryland region they make the drivers pay the bill.

Not in London (not sure about the rest of the country).

Re:It will never happen

[xaxa]

Don't give me any guff about "people should walk more". A large portion of the population is sick/elderly/frail/disabled, and from among those the ones who can drive derive great advantage from the automobile.

In London, almost 40% of 85+ people's main transport is walking. 20% use the bus. (Citation, with lots of other interesting data in the 2007 PDF. Travel mode by age is chart 2.5.1.).

People should walk more, it's about the most basic thing you can do to prevent yourself getting sick, frail or disabled.

Re:It will never happen

[pommiekiwifruit]

Don't give me any guff about "people should walk more". A large portion of the population is sick/elderly/frail/disabled

Don't forget the obese! In the USA they outnumber people of healthy weight. (at the moment it is 1/3 healthy or underweight, 1/3 fat and 1/3 obese for US adults). The future described in Wall-E (for personal transportation anyway) is already nearly there.

Said as a fat man who can still walk to the train station, as long as it is along the flat :-)

Re:It will never happen

[smithmc]

Most other states probably wouldn't have the numbers of people to justify building it. Imagine a state in the midwest asking for 5 billion so that the tiny train riding population can ride in style. Ya right. So if by any state you mean New York and surrounding area then yes.

You most likely have not lived east of the Mississippi. There are HUGE swaths of populations that could use fast, convenient mass transportation. Not just New York and "surrounding areas." Think the entire eastern seaboard. Think Chicago to New York. Think St. Louis to Atlanta. Don't think they're big enough? Check the size of these metropolitan areas and some of the cities running between them.

How about rebuilding the Northeast Corridor (and building missing sections e.g. from New Haven to Boston) so we can have true high-speed rail that could serve as many as 50 million people? How many people would this California train serve - 10, 20 million at most?

Re:It will never happen

[smithmc]

Our ancestors had a network of rails all over the U.S. which acted as the backbone of the nation during the 1800s and early 1900s. Then in the 1930 and 40s they abandoned them. Why?

Well, the fact that the road network is nearly fully state-sponsored may have something to do with it...see e.g. Interstate Highway system.

[facepalm] Did you even read your own citation? Like that part that says "Interstate Highways usually receive substantial federal funding (90% federal and 10% state)"?

Re:It will never happen

[spitzak]

It is quite amazing and I think unlikely that riding a train makes it physically impossible to use a car for part of the same trip. That appears to be the basics of your argument, however.

Re:It will never happen

[spitzak]

This is total bullshit. I built a house in Los Angeles. The big money went to the contractor. All the permits were billed separately and I therefore know they were on the order of several thousand dollars, not the ludricous $100,000 you claim.

Re:It will never happen

[dcw3]

Of course it isn't a last mile solution but you have to have SOMETHING for the last mile. You can't just run a giant fiber pipe into the middle of a city and tell everyone they have to access it from that point because there is no last mile infrastructure

No, but you could run it to the same location as other major transportation, like maybe the airport, where people could easily transfer from one mode of xport to another, and there's already significant parking, hotels, etc.

Here in VA, we're finally going to get the D.C. Metro system out to Dulles airport. I boggle at why we didn't do that when it was built in the first place.

Re:It will never happen

[tholomyes]

At least 32 of the states did, circa 2005: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html

Re:It will never happen

[Temkin]

This is total bullshit. I built a house in Los Angeles. The big money went to the contractor. All the permits were billed separately and I therefore know they were on the order of several thousand dollars, not the ludricous $100,000 you claim.

So you built in one of the irresponsible Socal sprawl cities. Go price some of the SF bay area "smart growth" cities. The ~$100k number was from Livermore. It's one of the highest, or at least was 4+ years ago when I left.

Re:It will never happen

[smithmc]

Um, how does your using a potentially confusing term ("state" in a discussion involving these United States) make me a "noob", coward?

Hmmm

[MightyMartian]

I'm thinking a better suggestion is between Los Angeles and Tijuana.

Re:Hmmm

[geekoid]

So your proposing a one way train then?

Re:Hmmm

[mateuscb]

I think an even better idea would be betwen LA and Las Vegas. You would def have more people doing that route than LA to San Fran. Granted the above post wa funny, but honestly throwing out some other ideas.

Re:Hmmm

[MorderVonAllem]

The problem with that is when you have a train from La to Vegas it just means money can leave the state that much faster. I can't understand why Vegas itself hasn't gotten around to building a rail in that direction...

Re:Hmmm

[mateuscb]

Very true! Didn't think about that aspect. Vegas should build one. It would def take more people out there.

Re:Hmmm

[californication]

You can take the San Diego Trolley from the San Ysidro border crossing all the way up to the Santa Fe Depot or Middletown (near the airport) via the blue line. The HSR line would end at either an intermodal transit station near the airport or at Santa Fe Depot, so technically a lot of people across the border could take the blue line to the HSR and use that to get wherever they need to be.

In fact, San Diego's blue line is one of the most successful transit lines in the U.S. In '96 roughly 90% of its cost was paid for by fares collected. At one time it even turned a profit.

the eventual outcome

[Anonymous Coward]

After spending $4.7 trillion, not billion, they will have a light rail between San Diego and San Francisco that travels at 50 MPH.

Re:the eventual outcome

[Tubal-Cain]

After spending $4.7 trillion, not billion, they will have a light rail between San Diego and Santa Barbara that travels at 50 MPH.

Fixed that for you.

Why?

[geekoid]

are there a lot of San Diego to San Francisco commuters?
Also, he should look into California's unique geology and formations between those two destinations.

Re:Why?

[TechyImmigrant]

They should do San Jose to Portland instead. The sheer volume of techies passing between these two cities would make such a railway line profitable. Intel alone runs a small fleet of private jets to ferry staff back and fourth, because it's cheaper than filling commercial flights. And that's just the internal traffic within a single company.

Also, Portland and San Jose is full of the sort of people who like trains, so the opposition would be less.

Re:Why?

[shadowofwind]

Portland and San Jose is full of the sort of people who like trains, so the opposition would be less.

Unemployed semiconductor engineers like trains?

Re:Why?

[s73v3r]

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.

Re:Why?

[iceOlate]

I was thinking that as well. Perhaps if they STARTED with LA to San Diego, and then expanded from there. Then at least the project can already start generating some return as they complete other sections. After all, driving from LA to San Diego can take a long time with all the traffic in LA. I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy an express alternative such as this.

Re:Why?

[geekoid]

In my experience? yes.

Re:Why?

[grcumb]

Portland and San Jose is full of the sort of people who like trains, so the opposition would be less.

Unemployed semiconductor engineers like trains?

Semiconductor engineer? What is that - some guy who pilots a monorail? Or maybe he only collects half the tickets....

Re:Why?

[Phil_At_NHS]

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?

Re:Why?

[Nethead]

Might as well go all the way to Vancouver BC then. The Seattle metro area is a LOT bigger that lil' ol' PDX.

Re:Why?

[TechyImmigrant]

> You also clearly don't know Portland

Fail! I live there.

Re:Why?

[The Evil Couch]

Make it compatible with Seattle's light rail and you've got a deal!

Re:Why?

[Nethead]

If we had the monoral, I would say yes. One reason I moved out of the RTA was because of light rail.

check out http://monorails.org/

Re:Why?

[plague911]

ok now lets go to math class. 156,000,000/365 = roughly 43000. 43000/20 years is roughly 2150 people a day. 2150 people a day is next to nothing In NYC over a million people take the subway a day.....http://gothamist.com/2009/09/22/subway_yearbook.php....That being said I have no idea if it will make money. Probably depends on how well it its managed. But the numbers clearly indicate that it is possible. And yes I realize i didnt find the number of people who take the train INTO nyc but its the closest number i could find in 2 minutes.

Re:Why?

[outsider007]

First, consider the cost of the war in Iraq.
*Now* imagine how much can be saved by reducing our dependency on foreign oil.

Re:Why?

[torxim]

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?

Let's not jump to conclusions here. These numbers are unrealistic. First of all, a reasonable fair of $30? It would cost $50+ in gas (not to mention depreciation) alone at 30mpg on the highway. Let's say $60 one way. That matches the cost of a flight and has a lot less hassle. The eurostar capacity is 15 trains per hour, 800 people per train which translates to 12,000 passengers, per hour, per direction giving 24,000 passengers per hour counting both ways. Say you run at 50% capacity on average, that is still $720k/hr at $60 per ticket, and you can easily have a first class cabin that has a higher cost. Say you spend 75% of that on operating costs, etc and you still need just 26,000 hours of operation to pay that 4.7bil. that is under 3 years of operating at 50% capacity. Even if this can pay itself off in 10 years it would be a great investment for the state to make. Now I know my numbers aren't perfect but the breakdown in the parent post is ridiculous

Re:Why?

[divide overflow]

are there a lot of San Diego to San Francisco commuters?

Yes, there are. Southwest Airlines has hourly flights between San Diego and San Francisco that are often 100% occupied...and they are only one of many airlines flying that route, not to mention flights from Los Angeles, and flights to San Jose and Oakland.

Also, he should look into California's unique geology and formations between those two destinations.

California's geology has been studied to death. We have no challenges that the Japanese haven't had to face with their bullet trains.

Re:Why?

[cptdondo]

Heh... One Tokyo train station handles 4 MILLION people in rush hour. Do the math; using your numbers it will pay for itself in a couple of months.

We're talking MASS TRANSIT, folks, not 1 person per car.

Re:Why?

[CrimsonAvenger]

In NYC over a million people take the subway a day

Of course, we're not talking about a local subway trip, we're talking an 800 mile trip.

Re:Why?

[foniksonik]

OK so you're math is like so:

4,700,000,000 / 30 = 156,6660,667 trips

Are you thinking that each trip only takes 1 person? Now that would be a boondoggle!

We'll assume this is to be equivalent to a modern commuter train / light rail system and have at least 500 passengers per train

That's now just over 300 thousand trips
4,700,000,000 / 30 x 500 = 313,333 trips

Now let's say it's mildly successful, mostly used as a commuter train and there are 6 trains a day going each way... thats 12 trains a day, (whereas hugely successful would be more like 12 trains per hour).

4,700,000,000 / 30 x 500 x 12 = 26,111 days at 100% capacity
Not great (72 years at full capacity) but still orders of magnitude more effective than you give it credit for.

4,700,000,000 / 50 x 500 x 12 = 15,666 days at 100% capacity
Charge $20 more and it's down to 42 years which is looking almost reasonable.

Looks like we'll need to run double the trips per day to bring it in line with a good investment - 21 years (or 35 if you add in unaccounted for operating expenses and less than 100% capacity) to become truly profitable. That's about how long a good long term investment takes...

Re:Why?

[aaarrrgggh]

There are at least 4mm annual passenger transit between the two cities by air today, with average round-trip tickets coming in at $250. Air travel has hidden costs as well, and both ticket and underlying hidden costs will rise over time.

If fares were $100 each way, and travel didn't increase, it would pay for itself in 20 years. (if, if, if...)

A bullet train can also help reduce highway travel and associated spending, whose capital outlay is comparable on a cost-per-passenger mile basis.

Just because it is a lot of money doesn't mean it is a bad investment...

Re:Why?

[plague911]

Your assuming that there are going to no stops other than the big cities? With cities as large San Diego to San Francisco we could easily see 1000+ wanting to travel the whole distance each and every day. Plus we have people who would want to do part way trips. Also the "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" 30 dollars one way is crazy cheap... like crazy crazy cheap. The train from Albany to NYC is 150 miles and costs 30 bucks minimum. That is also a lot cheaper than driving considering the cost of gas. Plus it will also save you probably around 16 man hours a trip. I would gladly pay 200 bucks for a round way trip if it would save me 16 damn hours... over driving AT LEAST assuming 0 traffic

Re:Why?

[mosb1000]

A lot of people commute daily from San Diego or the the other cities to the south into LA, so you'll get a lot more use out of it by adding that stretch to it. Actually, it doesn't make a lot of sense to connect San Fran to LA, I don't know anyone who makes that commute (I hope no one makes that commute!).

Re:Why?

[uncqual]

Are you thinking that each trip only takes 1 person? Now that would be a boondoggle!

This is California after all. Probably some work rules will sneak into the Amalgamated Transit Union contracts that prohibit more than one passenger per train.

Re:Why?

[stmfreak]

Can you imagine the impact a mag 7+ quake would have on a bullet train traveling 200mph?

Re:Why?

[tknd]

Yeah, because a magnitude 7 quake wouldn't have the same effect on a major interstate junction or a large building. I love how everyone loves to "poo poo" alternative transportation other than Autos in the U.S. It is like everyone here is brainwashed by Detroit.

I tell you what. I live in southern california and I already know that driving sucks. I can't fall asleep, I have to buy and maintain a car, and cops get randomly pull over people and tag them for DUIs if they wanted to at the right times. The only viable travel is by car and don't tell me "move next to work" or "move next to the bar". The bar is located in one area and the office is located in another area. Unless I work at the bar, I'm SOL.

The other thing is I'm currently visiting Tokyo, Japan. The metro system they have built is amazing. People sleep on the trains. People read books on the trains. People text on the trains. And they don't get others killed for riding the train. Their culture also makes it so that there are no "crazies" on the trains. When you get on a train, it is generally pretty quiet and none of the people yelling into their bluetooth headsets like in the states. That may never fly in the states because people would get all worked up if you told them to shutup no matter what they're doing. Americans just can't stop talking.

But the other major difference Japan has compared to the states is that a huge percentage of normal people use public transit. Kids, adults, families. They all can be seen on the trains.

Sure, the density of Tokyo is really high. The trains aren't free and they aren't nearly as convenient as cars. But you tell me how else we're going to keep growing out cities into the higher densities without implementing such a system? The system works and cities will be forced to build it to keep growing. If people are willing to sit in traffic for hours, they probably won't mind sitting on a train for an hour either.

The other interesting thing about Tokyo is that although there are a ton of people here, the roads generally don't have that many cars. In fact it is the other way around. When I was leaving Akihabara, the police had to control pedestrian traffic just so a couple cars could leave a parking garage. But the benefits are obvious. I walk no more than a block (or what would be a few houses away) to get to a convenience store. I walk for maybe 5 to 10 minutes to get to the subway station. Now if only they'd figure out that their system of Wards instead of street names is the dumbest thing ever, then people wouldn't get lost nearly as much, but that's another topic.

Since I'm on the topic, the other interesting thing is tokyo is there are signs to help control the flow of pedestrian traffic. I'm not just talking about cross walks but some signs and implied rules to allow people to get around faster. For example in many subway and train stations, there will be signs and lines showing you on what side you should walk to keep pedestrian traffic flowing. Generally you walk on the left side such that people going through hallways and up and down stairs don't run into each other. Another implied rule is that if you're standing on an escalator, but you aren't walking up the steps, then you stand to the left. This leaves the right side of the escalator open so that people who do want to walk up the steps (to get around a little faster) can. There are also rarely sidewalks (except for large roads) but it doesn't matter much because the roads are dominated by foot traffic, not car traffic.

Re:Why?

[TheRaven64]

In 2004, the Japan was hit by a magnitude 6.9 earthquake. As you are probably aware, Japan has an extensive Shinkansen system, with trains running at around 200mph. One train derailed near a station but there were no fatalities (154 passengers). The eathquake warning system, introduced in 1992, can detect the early tremors around ten seconds before the main shock and and automatically bring trains to an emergency stop before it hits in most cases (deceleration of 9m/s/s; just under 1g). Presumably good old American engineering can replicate something that the Japanese could do almost two decades ago.

Re:Why?

[E IS mC(Square)]

If you think that number is too high, here is something for reference: "NJ TRANSIT provides nearly 223 million passenger trips each year."
Agree, NJT runs multiple lines and buses. But if you think 94M is too many, you are wrong.

Re:Why?

[jim_v2000]

Meh, it should be a federal project and go from San Diego to Seattle. THAT would be a worthwhile project.

Re:Why?

[pommiekiwifruit]

Presumably good old American engineering can replicate something that the Japanese could do almost two decades ago.

If that were the case the USA wouldn't have needed to bail out all those car manufacturers recently, so I would guess not, unless they import some engineers from Japan or France, or hell, China (which has the fastest in-service train at 268mph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train) although that is just willy waving rather than useful, and German designed anyway).

Re:Why?

[dsgrntlxmply]

This only works if you have a closely spaced network of seismometers, and the computing power to rapidly assess whether a large quake is beginning. There aren't any real precursors to many large quakes. You can detect a strong P-wave with seismometers placed at close intervals along known faults, and use that to electronically transmit an alert signal.

Your only advantage here is that electronic communication can outrun earthquake waves, that propagate at 5000 m/s or less. The more destructive S-waves and surface waves also propagate more slowly than the initial P-wave, yielding a little extra advantage as distance increases from the epicenter.

None of this is worth much if the quake hits near where a train happens to be operating.

An amusing demonstration for me came after the Loma Prieta quake. I (fortunately) was out of town for the main event, but returned during a time when aftershocks were still fairly frequent.

I was listening to a call-in radio program one evening where the quake was the topic. An aftershock occurred, and a caller on the line from near the original epicenter said "oh no, there's another one!"

I did a quick mental calculation for around 160km, waited that number of seconds, and felt a small jolt and shaking at my location.

By contrast, a few evenings ago there was an M2.9 centered only a few km away from me. There was zero warning, only a sharp shove of a cm or two and a booming sound. Because that same fault system is the most likely serious threat here, my most likely warning for the M6.5+ that studies suggest as its typical large quake, will be zero.

Re:Why?

[maglor_83]

Presumably good old American engineering can replicate something that the Japanese could do almost two decades ago.

Hahaha! Good one!

Re:Why?

[Phil_At_NHS]

Yes It will just make stops in the big cities. A train hat never gets up to 200 MPH because it has to stop every couple of minutes is not a high speed train, just an over priced barf inducing carnival ride. It is perhaps cheaper then driving, but few people drive that distance on a regular basis every day, unless they are moving Cargo. Practically speaking, when you add in the cost over runs and every cost associated with it, you would need thousands of full cars running every day just to break even.

Re:Why?

[Phil_At_NHS]

This high speed train will not "save" money. You are looking a a high speed money pit where there will be no recourse for the inevitable cost over runs and ongoing maintenance issues.

Re:Why?

[Phil_At_NHS]

The biggest problems with your numbers even if your analysis is correct? The 4.7 billion is a pip dream. Cost overruns and construction delays will likely double it. You forget the cost of personell, ongoing maintence, etc which will take most of that 60 dollars per fair. By the time yu got even close tp paying it off, all of the trains would need to be replaced. I do not believe such a thing will ever pay for itself.

Re:Why?

[Phil_At_NHS]

That is is a Tokyo station. MASS Transit is the key there. There is not a MASS of people wanting to go from San Francisco to San Diego on a regular basis. You can not compare local train traffic and subways to long haul routes.

Re:Why?

[Phil_At_NHS]

"Are you thinking that each trip only takes 1 person? Now that would be a boondoggle!" I was not suggesting each train held one person. A trip is one person. "Now let's say it's mildly successful, mostly used as a commuter train and there are 6 trains a day going each way... thats 12 trains a day, (whereas hugely successful would be more like 12 trains per hour)." You do not have that many people "commuting" 400 miles each way. This is where the whole idea breaks down. This is why you will not have that kind of ridership. For me to use that train, I would have to drive 2 hours to get to San Francisco. If it was as busy as you suggest, there would be no place to park my car. When I get to the other side, then what? This massive tain will only take me one place, so I will have to rent a car or deal with more "mass transit", which is useless for most people. Until the entire state of mass transit is better, meaning it actually goes WHERE people want to go, WHEN people want to go, without having to make 50 connections or wait between changes, and this just is not going to happen as long as governmetn runs it.

Re:Why?

[Phil_At_NHS]

Just because it is a lot of money doesn't mean it is a bad investment... True, but becasue it is a governmetn sponsored source of a lot of money, it IS a bad investment. there will be no competition, so it will be just like the DMV. Taxed to hell and back simply because it is there, unreliable, rife with incompetence, and another financial sinkhole. Find some way to contract it out so that the state of California does ot get bent over a barrel if things go wrong, and I am for it. Good luck finding anyone who would take that bet.

Re:Why?

[Phil_At_NHS]

NJ Transit moves people a few miles at a time. You just don't have that kind of traffic going that distance on a regular basis. Those that do need cars on both sides. Yes, it will get som euse, if they ever managed to get up a functioning service, but it would never pay for itself, the taxpayers will be taxed for it every year forever, driving more and more business OUT of California. Hell, just think of this: BART, is the local By area subway. It took DECADES before the brought bart to SFO. SFO was BUILT with a subway terminal way back from the get go, but the IDIOTS who run this thing, instead of bring BART right to the airport, decided to have the last stop miles away, so everybody has to get off of BART with theer baggage, a big enough pain in the ass, and then GET ON A BUS with thier baggage. It is this kind oa basic blatant incompetence that would be magnified from the millions for BART to the BILLIONS for high speed rail. I may just be cynical, but show me one large expensive project that California has done right. Just one.

Fly Southwest

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Fly Southwest

[tirerim]

Amtrak is subsizided by the feds. There IS a way that this could compete with airfare, just not fairly.

Airlines get subsidized by the feds, too -- consider all the airlines that have been bailed out in the past twenty years (some of them multiple times), plus federal funding for airports.

Re:Fly Southwest

[zippthorne]

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.

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

Re:Fly Southwest

[s73v3r]

And this train is supposed to go from LA to SF in about 2:40. Which is much faster than the plane you just mentioned. Besides, trains typically are a lot more pleasant to ride than airplanes, mainly because they actually have legroom.

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:Fly Southwest

[Frosty Piss]

Crossing california is not practical on trains.

Works fine in Europe, with all those mountains and such...

Re:Fly Southwest

[tonydiesel]

Per the CA high speed rail site Sacramento to San Diego would take 3 hours 35 mins and cost $68.

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/map.htm

Granted, you may not trust those numbers, but still, I'd say that's comparable. Plus, you don't have to deal with the cattle-car rush that is the boarding on a Southwest flight. I'd take the train in this case... similar price, reasonable speed and none of the hell that comes along with modern air travel...

And, this will be a train from San Diego to LA as well...

Re:Fly Southwest

[frosty_tsm]

Also, he's not factoring in the 1-2 hours to get to the airport early.

Or dealing with TSA.

Or waiting for his checked bags to arrive at the baggage claim (something that takes 30-45 minutes in San Diego's tiny airport).

Re:Fly Southwest

[vijayiyer]

My fiancée used to routinely commute from the SF Bay Area to to SoCal (Orange County) in 2 hours and 10 minutes door to door. We'd leave the house at 5:50, get to the airport at 6:05, use the express check in, and make the 6:30 flight to Orange County. She'd land at about 7:30, and be at work by 7:55. And this would cost $120 round trip if purchased in advance, or $240 the day of the flight at full price.
The tens of billions of dollars this would really cost, which is real money that we all have to pay, simply doesn't solve a real problem. Go price a train out in Europe on high speed rail to travel ~250 miles. It's not cheap (comparable to that $240 of the flight).

Re:Fly Southwest

[captnbmoore]

I do believe that southwest is the only airline to not do a bankruptcy. All the rest file like clockwork it seems.

Re:Fly Southwest

[an unsound mind]

If by "comparable" you mean "not even close".

$150 round trip on the day in Finland, for example, and Finland's both sparse and expensive.

Re:Fly Southwest

[71thumper]

Actually, airlines pay substantial fuel taxes which not only pay for ATC but get siphoned off into the general fund. Then they pay landing fees at many airports as well.

No major airport in the US is run at a loss. Some of the smaller airports may be, where the city feels that the benefit of the airport outweighs the cost, but all major airports pay their own way.

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

[Jesus_666]

The AC said "1:25 minutes". 85 seconds from Sacramento to San Diego is pretty damn fast. That's an average speed of 5.94 mi/s or 21388 mph - about Mach 32. Given that the plane has to start and land, I'd put the actual airspeed somewhere closer to Mach 90.

However, the train still wins in the comfort department, especially as it doesn't subject you to body-liquefing g-forces.

Re:Fly Southwest

[coaxial]

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.

And that's EXACTLY WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT! 1 hour 18 minutes.

Re:Fly Southwest

[Jesus_666]

Depends on when you order your ticket. In Germany you can get fairly cheap tickets if you book early (the cheap tickets are made available in low numbers, although the third-cheapest version is often still available), also the Deutsche Bahn sells various variants of the "BahnCard", a rebate card that automatically cuts your fare by 25/50/100 percent (only for normal tickets). While it's not cheap (a second class BahnCard 25 is ~60 EUR/year) it's fairly useful if you commute by train or expect to do a lot of traveling.

I'm just speccing out the price for a second class ICE (our bullet train) ticket from Bremen to Nuremberg, that's about 430 kilometers; roughly 265 miles. Travel time is four hours. If I want to go on monday at 9:00, I have to pay the full price (106 EUR, ca. 151 USD). If I go on the 2nd of November I can go for 59 EUR (ca. 85 USD); if I go in December I can get the second-cheapest ticket for 39 EUR (57 USD). In theory there is also a 29 EUR ticket but I've never see those in the wild.


In short: At least in Germany, 240 USD is a pretty steep price for 250 miles unless you want to go first class and don't have a rebate card. Just print yourself a ticket and take the train instead.

Re:Fly Southwest

[oldhack]

Three letters: TSA.

I'd kill an extra hour (or two) to spare me the aggravation that is airport and TSA.

Re:Fly Southwest

[__aazsst3756]

The federal funding for airports comes from an airplane fuel tax, and a ticket tax, not the general fund.

Re:Fly Southwest

[clarkkent09]

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

That's as silly as saying that trucking companies are dependent on government because they don't build their own roads. A few extreme free market zealots (probably an appropriate term in this case) aside, almost everybody agrees that it's a proper role for the government to provide basic infrastructure where it is impractical for private companies to do so. I don't have a problem with government built rail network any more than I have with government built airports, roads or ports. That doesn't mean that the government should subsidize the companies using that infrastructure. The problem with rail companies is that in almost every case I know of, at least in the USA, the rail companies are either outright owned by the government (as in the case of Amtrak) or simply wouldn't be viable businesses without constant government subsidy. As for airlines, yes they too have asked for and received taxpayer money (though they are not dependent on it anywhere near as much as the rail companies) in case of near bankruptcies and that is wrong too.

Re:Fly Southwest

[Alomex]

Actually, airlines pay substantial fuel taxes

No they do not. Tax rates for jet fuel are $0.04 per gallon (federal) and about $0.06 including state taxes. Compare this to $0.184 per gallon of gasoline (federal) and an average of $0.40 including state taxes.

No major airport in the US is run at a loss.

Construction is usually heavily subsidized, so the fact that operational costs are covered in no way refutes that airports are subsidized.

Re:Fly Southwest

[johncadengo]

I do believe that southwest is the only airline to not do a bankruptcy. All the rest file like clockwork it seems.

The reason is obvious, right?

Southwest has the best flight attendants in the air. :).

Re:Fly Southwest

[Drathos]

Amtrak competes very well along the DC<->NYC route.

No hours of security theater to go through at the train stations, trains roughly every half hour, are far more comfortable, AND are cheaper. Yes, the train takes longer to get from station to station than a plane takes from airport to airport, but the train station doesn't have security theater which can sometimes take 2 hours to get through during peak travel hours. That time going through security can make the total trip time roughly the same.

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:Fly Southwest

[4D6963]

GMAFB

Get My Ass.. Fucked... Backwards?

Re:Fly Southwest

[snaz555]

Go price a train out in Europe on high speed rail to travel ~250 miles. It's not cheap (comparable to that $240 of the flight).

Paris-Marseille, TGV, 489 miles (783km). 163mph avg, 3 hr.

I just checked, and they currently have P-M specials for 83 euro. So that's roughly the same as your $120 special.

While the French government owns the rail network and makes major construction, TGV is operationally self sustaining.

There's no reason rail wouldn't work here. As someone who regularly commutes about the same distance SF-LA I'd love to have the legroom of first class air for coach fare, a nice quiet cabin, electrical outlets and internet access, a smooth ride, and a cafeteria car. Above all, I couldn't be happier if I never had to stand in an endless security line again or sit around for hours because there's a blizzard in Colorado and the entire system is backed up.

Re:Fly Southwest

[divide overflow]

In Japan, the bullet train does not appear to be very effective in competing with airlines for legs of more than 4 hours, which agrees with your sentiment. It is very attractive at 2.5 hours (Tokyo-Osaka route), winning large market share even though train fare is higher than discount air fare.

That's probably a function of the number of stops the train makes. Japan has a lot of densely populated cities along its bullet train routes. Considering that there are very few large cities south of the SF Bay Area and north of Los Angeles I would expect that California would probably have, on average, many fewer stops per an equivalent number of miles traveled.

Re:Fly Southwest

[evilviper]

I'm amazed at the downtown location of Vegas's airport.

You mean the casino with the big white birds out the window?

Re:Fly Southwest

[Leebert]

none of the hell that comes along with modern air travel...

I don't know how long that will last, truly. I have heard rumblings that TSA is really eyeing up Amtrak as a great expansion to their mini empire. Ah, yes, a few years old but: http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/press_release_0401.shtm

I'm waiting for the first train to get blown up in the US. I suspect the only reason it hasn't happened is because no one rides trains here.

I can't wait until the federal government decides to try to build fencing around major rail corridors.

Re:Fly Southwest

[uncqual]

No hours of security theater to go through at the train stations

Only until someone figures out an interesting way of getting a 220 MPH train to derail by blowing up the right part from inside.

Re:Fly Southwest

[uncqual]

total government expenditures (federal, state, and local) on highways were almost $100 billion [...]. Please, please try to tell me that this doesn't constitute a massive subsidy [...] to trucking and other industries that depend on highways for their existence.

Just curious, did you happen to think to look up usage based revenues like gas tax, registration fees, etc.? Just asking...

If the government built the water system you get your water from and funds its construction and ongoing maintenance with a "per gallon used" fee, it's not a "subsidy".

Re:Fly Southwest

[bazorg]

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.

I don't know anything about USA geography but I'd be surprised if these airports you are using are conveniently located inside the cities in question. The train stations usually are.

Re:Fly Southwest

[SonnyDog09]

What makes you so certain that the TSA won't have checkpoints at these train stations by the time that this gets built?

Re:Fly Southwest

[jabuzz]

Eh, far easier just to chuck something on the track mate. For an example of what can go wrong with a high speed train

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster

Though that was down to a failure of the wheel.

Re:Fly Southwest

[uncqual]

I am working on the (I fear, incorrect) assumption that the entire line (all x00 miles) will be protected by effective fences, motion sensors, cameras etc. If not, I personally would be very hesitant to get on a train going 220 MPH.

It's much easier and less intrusive (albeit, expensive) to exclude the public from an area than to verify that only "safe" people are in a public area. It's fairly easy to exclude unscreened people from the tarmac at LAX and that process intrudes little on the end user (i.e., passengers). The same can not be said for the interior of the plane.

Re:Fly Southwest

[ChrisMaple]

I don't know the current prices, but about 1990 a one-way flight from LA to San Diego cost $75. This was in part because a 14 passenger plane required both pilot and copilot and an expensive timeslot at LAX.

In contrast, the round trip train fare was about $40. And I could get off at Disneyland if I wanted to.

Re:Fly Southwest

[Stuntmonkey]

I agree. Trains for long-distance travel between two point destinations make no sense for the typical traveler, compared with an airline. In other words we could build it, but the people would not come. Long-distance trains have been popular in Europe, but that popularity is declining quickly since the introduction of low-cost airline flights there (which the US has had for some time, but Europe has had only recently).

The REAL transportation problem to solve is metro commuting. This is where all the man-hours are wasted. For example, extending BART into the South Bay would be a much higher-impact use of the money.

450000 permanent jobs created?

[gyepi]

California High Speed Rail Authority officials said the train network would generate 600,000 construction-related jobs while it was being planned and built and that it would create another 450,000 permanent jobs during its operation.

450,000 new permanent jobs sounds an awful lot. Are they going to pay people to travel on the train or what?

Re:450000 permanent jobs created?

[dunkelfalke]

Railway companies employ lots of people. For example Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) employs 240 thousand, SNCF (French Railways) employs 165 thousand, and RZhD (Russian Railways) employs 1.3 million (!!!) people.

Re:450000 permanent jobs created?

[CodeBuster]

Are they going to pay people to travel on the train or what?

Who knows, but stranger things have happened in the California political system...

Re:450000 permanent jobs created?

[uncqual]

450,000 new permanent jobs sounds an awful lot.

Agreed.

Will the train entice people who were not previously traveling to do so? If not, then the train must be MORE labor intensive than existing means of transportation that are being displaced -- remember all the jobs that would be lost by reduced auto and air travel must be replaced before the first net job is created by the train.

Presumably, with the reduction in car and air miles caused by the bullet train, people in many jobs will see layoffs. This would include aircraft mechanics, flight attendants, baggage handlers, fuel truck drivers, auto mechanics, new and used car salespeople (cars that are not driven as much last longer), gas station attendants along Hwy 5.

Maybe a passenger mile on the train, suffering under union work rules, will require a lot more manpower than a passenger mile on an airplane or car, but then I somehow don't think the "per trip" fare estimates seem all that reasonable.

Oh well, maybe California needs their own Big Dig - but we can do Boston one better because our project will have much higher operating costs! Cool!

Re:450000 permanent jobs created?

[SonnyDog09]

... and it will probably be 450k new union members, paying dues and voting for democrats.

$45 Billion? With a B?

[black3d]

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.

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:$45 Billion? With a B?

[WindBourne]

Land in China does not cost the same price as in CA. Likewise, most places have stable land. This will require special construction to keep the train from jumping the track when one of their earthquake comes. And it costs money to build new stations. I suspect that if you look in EU, you will find that trains there who build on new lines costs more than 25B euro/mile.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[black3d]

Presuming elevation the entire length, that would set it back around $9 million per mile. Take into account land purchase and you'd see a sizeable increase on that. I'm simply disputing that $56 million per mile is necessary for both construction and upkeep. I'd have to wager a very large portion (50-60%) must be earmarked for beauracracy.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[magarity]

56 million dollars per mile
 
In California this breaks down to:
10 million per mile for environmental impact studies
20 million per mile in lawsuits related to the environmental impact studies
20 million per mile in kickbacks
56 million per mile in construction costs thanks to union labor wages
 
These will be the actual per-mile costs due to lowball estimating in order to get the project started and to take on a life of its own so it will be completed no matter what the final costs.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[black3d]

Seeking clarification only - do you mean 25 million per mile rather than 25 billion? That's claiming USD$36 billion per mile. Do you have any sources on that? I'm unable to find any European rail costing more than EUR 15 million per mile. And that includes the stations.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[tonydiesel]

Actually, it hasn't been kicked off of the SF Peninsula... http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/map.htm Quite the opposite, in fact.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[geekoid]

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.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[black3d]

Indeed it's not my area of expertise, but that doesn't mean I can't take out a copy of JoTE and compare the costs in column A to the costs for a similar project on column B and then put an aghast look on my face and wonder where all that extra money is going! ;)

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[black3d]

Addendum: TBH, I can't be bothered arguing any more. I'm simply dismayed that what other countries are constructing in similarly built up areas with a total cost of $5-15 million per mile here is going to set us back $56 million. It's difficult to fathom.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[Marcika]

Land in China does not cost the same price as in CA. Likewise, most places have stable land. This will require special construction to keep the train from jumping the track when one of their earthquake comes. And it costs money to build new stations. I suspect that if you look in EU, you will find that trains there who build on new lines costs more than 25B euro/mile.

I hope you meant 25 million euro/mile... Which is still a bit high. The most recent and most modern track I know of is the French LGV Est which cost EUR 4bn -- about 16.7 million euro/mile, plus 800mn for the trains.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[lobiusmoop]

You think that's bad? Here in Edinburgh, Scotland, 12 miles of trams (street cars) is coming in at 750 million pounts, or $1.2 billion, $100 million a mile! (and rising).

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[uncqual]

Also, I'd wager that where the bullet train is going to share right of way w/CalTrain, the construction costs will be increased substantially just because they need to keep CalTrain running nearly continuously while they "build around" it. I don't know how they plan on doing it, but I suspect one will see various temporary realignments of tracks and the like while the final thing is built.

Re:$45 Billion? With a B?

[Geminii]

Heck, I'll build it for half that cost, supply my own labor, and even extend the line a couple of miles for free. As long as you don't mind the first station going up in Tijuana...

Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[stomv]

Acela isn't as fast as that, but it's arguably a bigger security issue, as it runs through Boston, NYC, Philly, and DC downtowns.

It works just like a commuter rail train. You arrive at the station. The train pulls up, you've got a few minutes to get on, tops. You get on the train, grab a seat, throw your suitcase overhead or at the end of the car, and relax. Pull out your laptop, make a call, or sit in the quiet car for relaxation.

Everything in your scenario is pure FUD. I'd bet the ridership will match that of Acela on the East Coast -- lots of business riders, often going to and from on the same day.

Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[wrook]

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.

Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[caluml]

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

You call a 110 mile journey for £45 expensive? Try traveling from Bristol to London (about the same distance) - you'll pay £70-80 for second class - Lord knows what it is for first class these days - well over £100.

I don't know why rail pricing can't be done logically: Say, £0.4 per mile, with a multiplier of say 1.3 for peak hours.

Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[Artifakt]

It's a terrorist's dream.

The Terrorists are gonna drive it into the pentagon?

Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[PRMan]

I don't know why rail pricing can't be done logically: Say, £0.4 per mile, with a multiplier of say 1.3 for peak hours.

Supply and demand?

Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[caluml]

It's such an important thing for the country's infrastructure that I can't see how they can let that become an issue. If more is needed, the government should just pile money in - same way as that it would increase funding for any major system that is important for the country.

Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[GrantRobertson]

Though I believe you are correct for the Acela train on the East Coast, I also believe the Anonymous Coward has a point. While train travel is not currently as difficult as they say, it could easily get that way. While a new long-distance, high-speed rail system would create lots of jobs, I feel that a disproportionate portion of the money spent would go to environmental studies, and lawyers rather than actual construction. this will be a natural result of the limitations imposed by keeping the vehicle on the ground the entire trip. A continuous line from one city to the next must be certified, rebuilt, or newly created for that train to run on. However, many places that the train runs right past will not have access to it, just like a plane. Therefore, it seems the dollars would be better spent by simply increasing airline capacity. Airline capacity, once increased, is very flexible. That extra capacity can be used to service more flights to and from anywhere, rather than just the one or two cities that a train goes to.

All in all, it seems a long-distance, high-speed train is more of a boondoggle than anything else. It appears to be new and innovative, so it gets more attention, but in the end it just wastes more money than actually goes into the regular community economy. I am sure I sound like a terrible cynic here, but it seems as if the plan was devised to put even more money into the pockets of the wealthy rather than anything else.

Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[Philip_the_physicist]

Main-line rail rates for everything in the UK used to be specified in pennies per mile, according to a big book of rates, with specially approved short miles for expensive infrastructure (like the Severn tunnel).
This was abandoned because it didn't allow for demand based pricing (which is reasonable), and special deals with the operating companies (which is not so good). It also meant that the cheapest price between two stations might actually cost more to provide, because it could well be made up of lots of very short, slow legs.

Even so, I agree that walk-up prices are do seem too high.

Re:Writen like someone who's not riden the train

[maglor_83]

And the advantage Japan has is that once you get to the city you're going to, you have excellent rail service around it as well, so you can easily get to the place you actually want to be. I've never been to America, but I've heard you don't have that, particularly in LA.

Originally...

[CannonballHead]

... it was supposed to cost $10 billion ...

Re:Originally...

[Martin Blank]

Oh, no. That was the bond measure for the first part of it. The cleverly-written initiative left that part out unless you looked at it very closely.

Also, it's not supposed to go fully online until at least [i]2030[/i], and that's without factoring in any construction or litigation delays. Most people familiar with the project believe a more realistic timeline is 2040, if it ever gets that far.

Re:Originally...

[CannonballHead]

I didn't look at it too closely, I just voted against it. ;)

I don't know, air fair is pretty cheap.

[voisine]

Air fair from san francisco to san diego is $29 each way. That travels at 300+ mph.

Re:I don't know, air fair is pretty cheap.

[geekoid]

but takes longer when you count standing in line and security.

Re:I don't know, air fair is pretty cheap.

[an unsound mind]

Despite you thinking that what you fly in is an exhibition (admittedly, somewhat justified by airport security), even the dumbest citizen of the United States should understand just how much the government has to do with the prices.

Re:I don't know, air fair is pretty cheap.

[debrisslider]

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.

Re:I don't know, air fair is pretty cheap.

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Thanks. I don't like the pain of flying up and down.

We need a high speed MagLev train from Hong Kong to Rio de Janeiro. That will sure benefit the entire west coast.

Re:I don't know, air fair is pretty cheap.

[TheRaven64]

Modern aircraft get quite good fuel economy when measured per passenger mile, so I wasn't sure what the saving would be. In terms of energy cost, the TGV uses 0.15 MJ/passenger-km, aircraft average around 1.4 MJ/passenger-km. Something like the A380 gets a higher efficiency, closer to 1MJ/passenger-km. So, you are right; the train is likely to be around an order of magnitude more energy efficient, if you ignore the infrastructure costs of both (I don't have energy costs for laying train track or for building jet liners, so I can't factor these in).

The proposed track is around 800Km long, giving a total energy consumption of 120MJ, or around 33.3kWh. The retail cost of electricity in California is under 15Â/kWh, making this around $5 of electricity, maybe a bit more if you factor in transmission losses. That leaves the rest of the fare to cover capital repayment, track and rolling stock maintenance, and employee costs.

Trains are a great idea; for a full SYSTEM.

[Anonymous Freak]

Trains can be an excellent means of transportation. But, as AC post 29622359 points out, the current system is broken.

If you have a well-integrated public transit system already in place; with the train station is a well-served, centrally located place in the city; on BOTH ends, then it would be great. Taking a train between Seattle and Portland is great. Both cities have excellent public transit systems, and both cities' main train stations are located in well-served areas of downtown. If a bullet got put in place between Seattle and Portland; the few dozen daily airline flights between the two cities would probably drop to just a handful.

Obviously, a good rail system is not a replacement for driving, when having your own car at the other end is important; but a properly designed and run rail system CAN be a truly cost-competitive replacement for airline travel in many instances.

The problem is that there is now no way we will get a properly designed and run rail system. Maybe in short spurts (The Pacific Northwest corridor, the Californian corridor, etc.) But not nationwide. We will *NEVER* see a transcontinental bullet. Hell, I think we'd see the pie-in-the-sky (or under-the-ocean, as the case may be,) trans-Pacific underwater vacuum-tube rail line before we see a transcontinental high-speed one.

Re:Trains are a great idea; for a full SYSTEM.

[s73v3r]

The public transportation problems you mentioned currently exist with flying too.

And I think trains are better for regional travel anyway, not cross country.

Re:Trains are a great idea; for a full SYSTEM.

[Anonymous Freak]

Well, my Seattle public transit knowledge is a few years (*cough* decades *cough*) old; has it gone downhill that badly?

yeah, just like amtrak

[daninaustin]

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.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[Ma8thew]

Amtrak actually makes a little money. Unlike, say, the massive socialist US interstate system.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[caluml]

And what's wrong, exactly, with realising that things that your country need to keep running (power generation and distribution, roads, rail, public transport, fire, police, hospitals) should simply be tax funded and subsidised, and if they lose money, so what?

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[couchslug]

"Unlike, say, the massive socialist US interstate system."

Which facilitates massive movement of goods and people in a way rail never can.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[russotto]

Amtrak actually makes a little money. Unlike, say, the massive socialist US interstate system.

...which makes a LOT of money (mostly from gas taxes), some of which is then spent on subsidizing Amtrak and mass transit programs.

And of course despite your Insightful rating, Amtrak loses money, over a billion dollars a year.

http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/08financial.pdf

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[Alomex]

Which facilitates massive movement of goods and people in a way rail never can.

Except that it can.

Now that rail companies have started to care about customers instead of behaving like the monopolies they once were, their traffic volumes are going through the roof. This is why Warren Buffet is so heavily invested in rail. His company Berkshire Hathaway owns major stakes in Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern and Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[IWannaBeAnAC]

So what? Every mass transit system on the planet loses money. Transport does not by itself generate wealth, rather it is a net drain on the economy. At best it only facilitate economic development. Travelling from A to B costs money, energy and resources and the only way to make a net economic gain is if by travelling to point B, you can do something useful at the end.

By comparison, how much money does the US interstate system make every year? Isn't it some huge negative number that dwarfs the Amtrak budget? I don't believe your claim that it makes money through gas taxes. To measure that properly, you can only count the additional revenue from the extra gas that is spent because the interstate system exists; gas that would have been used anyway, even if the interstate was not there, doesn't count. Nor does vague "net economic contribution" estimates, that include many things other than the direct transport infrastructure and running costs (unless of course you find a similar comparison for the railway network, so we can compare apples with apples).

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[snaz555]

"Unlike, say, the massive socialist US interstate system."

Which facilitates massive movement of goods and people in a way rail never can.

Rail currently handles 40% of all goods shipping in the U.S. Before NAFTA this figure was much higher, close to 75%, but it has dropped because of the difficulty rail has crossing borders. So you're wrong; rail is a very efficient method for massive movement of goods that has lost ground to more expensive truck freight because of political restrictions on its use.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[Anonymous Coward]

No; while that used to be the case, the interstate highway system for about the past decade has run a deficit that's made up from general taxes. As Wikipedia summarizes:

About 70% of the construction and maintenance costs of highways in the U.S. are covered through user fees (net of collection costs), primarily gasoline taxes collected by the federal government and state and local governments, and to a much lesser extent tolls collected on toll roads and bridges. The rest of the costs are borne by general fund receipts, bond issues, and designated property and other taxes.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[Ma8thew]

Nothing, I totally agree with your stance. I was using a technique called sarcasm.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[Ma8thew]

Wrong. If you look at efficiency, it takes surprisingly little power to tow dozens of containers with one engine rather than each container having its own truck. Think of it as the equivalent of container ships on land. It makes no sense building boats which carry just one container when transporting goods hundred of miles. Of course, roads are required for the last few miles, but that doesn't mean rail can be used for the bulk of the journey.

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[caluml]

Aaah, I don't know if the "massive socialist US interstate system" makes money or not (not being American). However, when I re-read, I probably should have detected it anyway :)

Re:yeah, just like amtrak

[Ma8thew]

My point was that the interstate system is just as subsidised (if not more subsidised) as Amtrak. I used the word socialism because for some reason it has negative connotations in the USA.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

'We're traveling on our trains at the same speed as 100 years ago,' the governor said.

So trains traveled 5 mph a 100 years ago?

Trains Are Amazing

[Goalie_Ca]

Just trying to get through San Francisco during rush hour takes longer than the train that can make it all the way to san diego!

Too expensive

[tsotha]

There comes a point when 'let's add another lane' is no longer a viable option!

No, actually, if you're willing to spend 45 billion dollars you can add lanes pretty much indefinitely. Why the hell does it cost this much to build a few hundred miles of track? The Chinese were able to build maglev track for about the same cost per mile.

Maybe we should have the Chinese build it. What the hell, they did okay building railroads the first time around.

Re:Too expensive

[Martin Blank]

if you're willing to spend 45 billion dollars you can add lanes pretty much indefinitely

Not really, no. At least not in California. New freeways here cost $1 billion per mile, and that was an estimate from ten years ago. A project to add one lane in each direction to the 91 freeway between the 71 (a freeway) and 241 (a tollway) is nearly $100 million for a mere five miles, and that's in an area where not much has to happen in the way of eminent domain. When you get into city areas with houses and businesses, the numbers skyrocket.

Re:Too expensive

[geekoid]

for 45 Billion dollars you can get infinite amount of space~

"The Chinese were able to build maglev track for about the same cost per mile. "

So?
Are you implying we should employ people at a dollar an hour to do all the work?

It's a dramatically poor comparison for economic reasons.

Add to the the most expensive part of any train is laying the road. And with magLEV you still need to do that.

You do understand that magLEV don't just go anywhere and need to be above a track, right?

Re:Too expensive

[tsotha]

Add to the the most expensive part of any train is laying the road. And with magLEV you still need to do that.

But maglev track is an order of magnitude more expensive than the track designed for conventional high speed rail because it requires much, much tighter tolerances, has more restrictions on grade, and is more sensitive to the sorts of small shifts you get whenever you build something on the ground. Originally the Chinese intended to build a maglev track from the Shanghai airport all the way to Beijing, but after building the segment from the airport to downtown (well, not even downtown, really), they decided maglev was just too damn expensive and will build out the rest of the line with conventional track.

Re:Too expensive

[tsotha]

A billion per mile? That seems utterly ridiculous to me, since those are the sorts of numbers LA was getting for tunneling a new subway. I find it very difficult to believe you couldn't build a second level on a freeway for far less money than a billion per mile.

Re:Too expensive

[fiannaFailMan]

There comes a point when 'let's add another lane' is no longer a viable option!

No, actually, if you're willing to spend 45 billion dollars you can add lanes pretty much indefinitely.

Even if that were true, it still wouldn't make traffic go any faster in the long run and you'd still have to do the driving yourself. Gimme a train any day, I'd rather sleep, read, or get work done than have to waste my time concentrating on driving.

Re:Too expensive

[Martin Blank]

Building a subway doesn't require much eminent domain aside from the surface stations, and those can be quite small. Freeways wipe out anything through their path.

Second levels are hard to do. First you have to get support for building that second level. Ever since the collapse of a portion of the Nimitz Freeway in the 1986 Loma Prieta earthquake, where 42 of the 57 fatalities attributed to the quake occurred, Californians have been haunted by the images of the cars that were crushed, their occupants killed. Despite a far better understanding of the effects of seismic waves on such structures, this has led to the refusal of voters to support such projects, and occasional threats of recall of politicians that support them.

As for the cost, in 1991, the estimated cost of double-decking a portion of I-5 running only a few miles was around $1 billion. Elevating a 10-mile stretch of the 91 from the 241 to I-15 is estimated to have a price tag of $4 billion -- if it can get past all of the legal hurdles and the certain political challenges.

Re:Too expensive

[evilviper]

A project to add one lane in each direction to the 91 freeway between the 71 (a freeway) and 241 (a tollway) is nearly $100 million for a mere five miles, and that's in an area where not much has to happen in the way of eminent domain.

No, not much eminent domain... Just a damn mountain that needs to be removed...

Re:Too expensive

[tsotha]

This is wrong. I grew up in Southern California - they added lanes all the time. When a lane was added it really would solve the problem on that freeway for a short time. Of course the congestion came back, but the reason was people kept moving there from other places. "Induced demand" is only real if by that you mean "we created a nice place to live so people have come from other places to live here, and now there are too many of them for the infrastructure we have."

In point of fact I agree with you about trains - they're a much more pleasant way to travel. For a lot of reasons. But if we're going to spend $45 billion dollars on transportation in California, I'd rather see the LA subway finished than a rail line that will only be marginally better than flying.

Re:Too expensive

[Martin Blank]

It doesn't have to be removed. It only needs to be chipped away a little bit, and that's if they don't narrow the lanes.

Re:Too expensive

[fiannaFailMan]

The congestion that "came back" is exactly what I'm talking about.

Re:Too expensive

[tsotha]

Population growth at the time was such that if you didn't add lanes traffic would simply continue to get worse. I guess if the solution is to let things get so unbearable that nobody wants to live there, then of course you have a point.

Re:Too expensive

[fiannaFailMan]

Or things get so unbearable that municipalities do away with the silly single-use-zoning ordinances that cause so many car journeys.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

31.914893617021276595744680851064

Re:Big mistake to do a French version

[Ma8thew]

What? Both those rely on constant electricity. If the flow stops (due to, say, an earthquake) the train crashes down to the tracks. Whereas a conventional train can brake harmlessly to a halt.

Re:WTS: Transrapid

[Tmack]

cheap cheap!

Siemens

PS: There seems to be something wrong with the numbers. 4.7b is correct, but that's for 25miles not 800 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid).

highspeed != maglev

The proposal is a standard wheels-on-rails rail line with bullet trains, ala the japanese bullets. see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[HiThere]

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.)

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.

This makes a lot of sense

[RanBato]

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.

Re:This makes a lot of sense

[jcr]

Putting public money to work to build a railroad network is a good way to invest public money.

You know, Tricky Dick Nixon promised us that Amtrak would only be living on the public teat for a couple of years, and then private investors would buy it. Didn't work out that way.

it's a hell of a lot better than subsidizing bankrupt companies.

Yeah, poking your eye out is better than cutting your throat from ear to ear. What's your point?

building the whole system will provide a lot of meaning full jobs.

Nope. It shifts jobs from productive activities to wealth-destroying government waste.

-jcr

Re:This makes a lot of sense

[RanBato]

Tricky Dick Nixon promised...

Yes, free roads to the auto industry and almost free planes to the airlines will make sure nobody invests in a railroad.

Yeah, poking your eye out is better than cutting your throat from ear to ear. What's your point?

The point is: Putting money to work for something useful is better than throwing it away on artificial jobs in government or subsidized industry.

Nope. It shifts jobs from productive activities to wealth-destroying government waste.

nope: it will shift jobs from wealth-destroying government waste to a productive activity. Government is subsidizing and regulating almost every aspect of the economy already. I don't like it. You don't like it. But of all the ways to throw away money, putting it to work to build a railway is not that bad.

Re:This makes a lot of sense

[coaxial]

You know, Tricky Dick Nixon promised us that Amtrak would only be living on the public teat for a couple of years, and then private investors would buy it. Didn't work out that way.

Which was obviously bullshit, because the railroads were getting out of passenger rail service because it was unprofitable. This is different because it's a proven technology being applied to a known market.

I've ridden on both Amtrak and high speed rail (Deutsche Bahn ICE), and there is simply no comparison. Amtrak is slow and cramped, and a throughly frustrating experience. The fact that it's faster to drive than ride, shows just how worthless Amtrak is. Amtrak should die, but doesn't because the reps from all the rural states (ironically, the ones that rail the most against "big government" and "government waste") continue fund it as being necessary. As the Amtrak Commissioner said back in the late 90s, they lose money on every run. They lose money on the capital expenditures on the high traffic Northeast Corridor, and they lose money on every trip on everywhere else. DB ICE on the other hand, is FAST and comfortable. I'd prefer it flying any day. Big seats. The ability to walk around. Tables. It's great. An American would say, "This is the future of travel!", while everyone else in the world would say, "It's 20 years old, jackass."

building the whole system will provide a lot of meaning full jobs.

Nope. It shifts jobs from productive activities to wealth-destroying government waste.

Oh come on. Public infrastructure as always provided jobs, and promoted investment. There's already significant travel between SF and LA, and Cal HSR simply takes advantage of this situation.

Oh, and the people of California want it. How do I know this? We put it to a vote.

Re:This makes a lot of sense

[jcr]

Putting money to work for something useful is better than throwing it away on artificial jobs in government or subsidized industry.

Then why are you advocating taking money away from the uses that we put it to of our own free will, and spending it on a government boondoggle?

-jcr

Re:This makes a lot of sense

[blind biker]

Don't forget the greatest subsidy of all: subsidized gasoline. How did automakers pull THAT one off, I will never understand. But, summa summarum, USA has one of the cheapest gasolines in the world.

Re:This makes a lot of sense

[uncqual]

free roads to the auto industry

Please share with us the secret of how you're avoiding fuel taxes, registration fees and the like - neat trick to make those roads free.

Re:This makes a lot of sense

[kdawgud]

I had the joy of riding on the Deutsche Bahn ICE last month for the first time and I agree 100%. It was the one of the most convenient and comfortable public transportation systems I've ever ridden. It would be great if we had a similar alternative to flying here in the US. The incredible ease of boarding (no check-in, security) and connections (5 minute layovers!) left me in awe.

Oh, for crying out loud.

[jcr]

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

Re:Oh, for crying out loud.

[Toreo asesino]

There also comes a point when "let's have another horrendously expensive tax-sucking boondoggle" is no longer a viable option.

Look at Spain's high-speed rail network for an example of how it can only pay for itself, but actually earn a decent profit too. The AVE in Spain is the perfect case-study government funded decent rail infrastructure can really work out really well for everyone except perhaps the airlines - they charge x2 what airlines charge because they know they can fill trains after train even without coming close to competing on price.

High speed rail really is the future if you have the vision to invest in it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8268003.stm

Re:Oh, for crying out loud.

[PachmanP]

There also comes a point when "let's have another horrendously expensive tax-sucking boondoggle" is no longer a viable option.

Frankly sir, that mere idea is offensive and un-American!

Re:Oh, for crying out loud.

[romiz]

Much of the AVE network was payed by European cohesion funds - it is also the case for the highway network of the country. From 1993 to 2003, Spain was the largest recipient of those funds, with 16 billion euros obtained on the period. The rule was simple: for one euro provided by the Spanish government, one euro was provided by the cohesion funds. So the Spanish network may pay for itself, but it is easier if you only pay half the price for it.

And a counter example for this is the Japanese network. All those Shinkansen lines have not been payed by the companies that run the trains: the lines were payed by the original Japanese National Railways, which were split in 1987 between the regional JR companies of today, and a national infrastructure company which was supposed to reimburse the debt, including construction. The final result is that the construction debt has been finally completely absorbed by the Japanese state along with other debts from the JNR, for the ludicrous value of 280 billion dollars !

Re:Oh, for crying out loud.

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

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

I looked at the pricetag and my mind boggled.

Yet, by your logic - if applied a long, long time ago, there would be no rail or roads whatsoever - unless they were profitable.

It seems really unfair to damn this proposal, when it seems to be so similar to what works very well in Europe over similar distances, and with - I would expect - similar projected passenger numbers.

At the stated journey time, you are definitely going to get to your destination faster than even flying - unless you have a private jet standing constantly ready to go. You will miss the drawn-out paranoia-induced security procedures that make the time from arriving at the airport to getting on the plane hours. Not to mention, the environmental cost - you do know planes use a hell of a lot of expensive fuel?

Re:Oh, for crying out loud.

[OFnow]

There also comes a point when "let's have another horrendously expensive tax-sucking boondoggle" is no longer a viable option.

-jcr

Hmm. Pretending that the highway system is somehow not a tax-sucking boondoggle, are we?
All transportation is government funded and how we do it impacts the choices people make.
Make rail fast and affordable and it could save Interstate 5 from being an 800 mile long parking lot.

Re:Oh, for crying out loud.

[jcr]

Yet, by your logic - if applied a long, long time ago, there would be no rail or roads whatsoever - unless they were profitable.

You say that like it's a bad thing. If a transportation system is profitable, then it's serving an actual need, not a political end.

Google for "Great Northern Railway". Turns out that even in the days when the US government was grabbing land and giving it to the railroads, there was another way to get a railroad built.

-jcr

Re:Oh, for crying out loud.

[jcr]

Pretending that the highway system is somehow not a tax-sucking boondoggle, are we?

We? I don't know what your position on the highway system is, but I wasn't discussing roads. Since you bring it up though, I am in favor of privatizing roads.

-jcr

Airports and airplanes make way more sense

[SuperKendall]

Why tear up land for something like this? I've used trains a number of times, and although interesting rail is just not as good a solution as buses or, especially, air travel.

And here I'm not just talking big planes. I'm talking regional airports that, if funded to the same level, could provide an amazing degree of flexibility in travel, to places all over and not just two fixed points.

Airplane travel is not even that much different in terms of fuel consumption than trains, and could be improved if we spent R&D money on that instead of more train follies. For a nation as spread out as America, it's more important to cover more area.

Re:Airports and airplanes make way more sense

[divide overflow]

Why tear up land for something like this? I've used trains a number of times, and although interesting rail is just not as good a solution as buses or, especially, air travel.

Trains use much less land than highways to transport an equivalent number of passengers and are more energy efficient than other forms of transportation.

And here I'm not just talking big planes. I'm talking regional airports that, if funded to the same level, could provide an amazing degree of flexibility in travel, to places all over and not just two fixed points.

Regional airports in California aren't equipped to handle large planes nor additional air or ground traffic. They have issues with noise and safety issues and are typically underfunded. They also have insufficient linkage with the local public transit systems.

Airplane travel is not even that much different in terms of fuel consumption than trains, and could be improved if we spent R&D money on that instead of more train follies. For a nation as spread out as America, it's more important to cover more area.

We're not talking about putting bullet trains all across America...only through California's highly populated, highly trafficked west coast transportation corridor. This is one of the busiest transportation corridors in a state with a population of 36,756,666, over 12% of the U.S. population.

Operating airplanes and airports is VERY expensive. Airplanes require carefully formulated, costly, high energy-density fuels. Bullet Trains operate on electricity which can be generated through many technologies. Airport terminals are expensive. Airplane baggage handling and safety precautions are expensive. Many existing California airports are overtaxed and cannot easily be expanded. Our air traffic control system is old, dangerously out of date and frequently understaffed and overstressed.

Re:Airports and airplanes make way more sense

[aaarrrgggh]

Air works great until you get people in the flight path restricting operations. Check out John Wayne Newport Beach, or Santa Monica airports for good case studies.

It also works great until you need to expand for additional capacity. Take a look at Lambert St. Louis airport for a classic failure story there... Or ORD, IAD, and LHR... Relevant to this story, also take a look at SFO, LAX, and SJC runway expansion plans and explain to me how that is a better investment.

Trains in dedicated right-of-ways work extremely well in comparison.

Re:Airports and airplanes make way more sense

[BZ]

How trains compare to air travel is really a function of distance traveled and how both are structured in terms of passenger interaction.

Some basic things that trains as they exist now have over airplanes as they exist now:

1) Comfort (more legroom, ability to get up and move around any time you want, can bring
        your own food and drink if you want).
2) Power outlets (some airplanes in the US have these; most don't).
3) Not having to deal with the farce that is airport security, and the resulting ability
        to show up 10 mins before your departure time, not an hour or more before.
4) Much quieter (for the passengers).
5) Terminals tend to be in more useful locations (compare getting somewhere in the DC
        area from Union Station to doing the same from BWI or Dulles; National is one of the
        few exceptions to this problem of airplanes).
6) System-wide delays are much less common (though as Amtrak exists delays on any given
        trip are not that unlikely and can be horrendous).

On the NY to DC route, for example, a 100mph train that doesn't make too many stops should be able to make the trip in 2.5 hours without problems. An airplane requires about 45 minutes flight time plus whatever your taxi times are, plus boarding and deboarding times, plus dealing with security. In the end, the train is not much slower, if at all. So it really comes down to whether the above problems with airplanes are worth the cost of creating such a train (the Acela doesn't fit the 100mph bill; it's a 3.5 hr ride from NY to DC).

If we want to address the shortcomings airplanes have instead, great. But some of the above are pretty difficult to address without significant fare increases (e.g. comfort) and some are impossible to address for not-unreasonable safety reasons (e.g. the ability to get up and wander about anytime one wants). I'll grant that the fare issue is a big unknown for high-speed trains, of course.

Re:2 Hours and 40 Minutes!

[HalWasRight]

And what can I do now that I couldn't do before with an airplane?

Sigh. Never been to Europe or Japan, eh? What you can do is show up at the train station and just get on. No miles and miles from where you park or get off of mass transit because the train station is smaller than an airport. This is America and the terrorists have won so we'll probably have security theater, but it won't rise to the stupidity of what you have at airports -- you can't hijack a train and fly it into a national monument. I guess it is hard to explain just how much more convenient train travel is compared to airplanes to those who have never experienced it.

What happened to Proposition 1A...

[g-doo]

and the $9.95 billion of general obligation bonds?

Re:What happened to Proposition 1A...

[mosb1000]

They spent it on other stuff.

Re:2 Hours and 40 Minutes!

[Fulcrum of Evil]

And what can I do now that I couldn't do before with an airplane?

Carry a soda bottle to your seat. Get there without 2 hours of security theatre. Not pay $50 for your luggage.

Re:Big mistake to do a French version

[geekoid]

If I remember correctly, Maglev comes to a safe stop as well.

Monorail would also just slow to a stop.

Re:Boondoggle

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Cue the Simpson's Monorail song!

Cue the jackasses who actually think The Simpsons is a meaningful guide to transportation development.

(Closely akin to, and often the same as, the jackasses who think Jurassic Park is a guide to paleontology, or Gattaca is a guide to genetics.)

The Simpsons is a cartoon. It's fiction. It's a satire. It's a joke. Marge, Homer, Bart, and the rest are not real people. Springfield is not a real town. Reality does not work the same as animation. Does this help clear things up AT ALL?

Monorail Monorail Monorail

[huiwe]

Nothing on earth Like a genuine, Bona fide, Electrified, Six-car Monorail!

Re:Great (not really)

[geekoid]

That's right, stay way but keep giving us money.

Selfish prick.

Re:Here is how it will work

[interkin3tic]

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.

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The DOT doesn't own those lines, so good luck with that. If it were my call, I'd build new lines specifically for Amtrak (no freight), put high speed rail on that built to euro spec, and increase ridership. We already have decent intracity transit on the east coast, so regional links make sense. West coast gets funding for intracity transit if they can come up with a decent plan. I don't really see california as having good transit now - they tore it all down in the 50s.

Re:2 Hours and 40 Minutes!

[geekoid]

People keep sdaying that, but I can get from the train station in LA, to Huntington Beach* via bus. So why is it so horrible?

*any place in OC, I just used it to get to HB.

Don't feel bad guys

[Lemming Mark]

The British invented the passenger railway and yet our rail networks are still horrible.

They're not the worst in the world, just a source of continual mild disappointment. The best thing about them is that we get to moan about them. It's a bit like our weather, really, except that we didn't invent drizzle (that I know of).

Re:Don't feel bad guys

[Colin Douglas Howell]

Hell, you invented rail transport, period, not just the passenger railway. It's sad for me to hear the troubles inflicting present-day British passenger rail.

And people (both in the U.S. and abroad) tend to forget just how impressive the U.S. rail system was (and still is, when it comes to heavy freight). By the early twentieth century the U.S. had the most powerful locomotives, heaviest rolling stock, and strongest rail in the world, and it needed all that to handle the enormous volumes of traffic carried by American lines. We also had more miles of track than anyone else. Our rail system played a big part in making this country an industrial colossus.

Re:Don't feel bad guys

[Lemming Mark]

Before making my assertions I double checked the history of railways on wikipedia and got a bit confused, which was why I stuck with the conservative "passenger railway". Apparently the Ancient Greeks (who else!) used rails to haul carts around; once I read that I decided that it wasn't the time to get into the specifics of who invented what and decided to assert something safely minimal!

British railways are better than they were a decade ago. We went through a phase of having so many railways that you could pretty much use them like buses, since they connected to every tiny village. There are villages near here that must have only a few hundred people now, having probably expanded - they had stations. Dr Beeching cut out most of the tiny branch lines, as well as some fairly major lines. It was meant to improve efficiency, I think. The railways became quite poor and were privatised on what I understand were some fairly dodgy competition assumptions - I think part of the idea was that train companies would compete on the same line but that's not how it's implemented, so the "market" only exists at all when the franchise is up for tender. The trains are back to a state of being reasonably reliable, though they're quite expensive (it's not as much cheaper than flying as you'd hope, depending on when you book tickets - a bit crazy in a country this small).

In Europe they're doing much better than us. At least France and Germany, possibly others, have a separate high speed rail network. Our only high speed line is for connecting London with the tunnel to France; they're just now bringing that line into commuter use for people who happen to live along it. There's been talk of a longer stretch of high-speed, Europe-compatible line to perhaps serve commuting and the channel tunnel. An article in Private Eye magazine (a satirical and investigative journalism mag - but I digress) mentioned that we used to have a high speed, European-compatible line to link to the Channel Tunnel, which was built by a crazy businessman in the late 19th (yes, really!) century (long before the tunnel was built). It got shut down, now we need a new one :-(

Some of our fast trains are still quite fast, just not up to European standards. My experience of travelling by Amtrack in the States was actually very pleasant compared to British trains, to be honest. I understand that the rail service in the States is somewhat patchy, though, so this seems unlikely to be representative of the rest of the country. It is a sad decline indeed since days of the railroads as a way to open up the Wild West. I think a high speed rail network, if it ever happens, would be a good thing for the US. Sometimes flying or driving is just necessary but it seems a shame to do it when a train could do it faster, cheaper and with less energy cost. But then, I don't really know anything about the US-specific issues. I just hope that some Federal oversight (or inter-state co-operation) can be applied so that any high speed links are suitable for joining up at a later date.

Re:Big mistake to do a French version

[Scrameustache]

Or any regular rail system. The last place that I want to be is in a train doing 150 MPH when an earthquake hits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen

As Japan is situated in a volcanic zone along the Pacific deeps, frequent low-intensity earth tremors and occasional volcanic activity are felt throughout the islands. Destructive earthquakes occur several times a century.

the myth of Massachusetts

[SuperBanana]

I think you may be mistaking California for Massachusetts.

And I think you may have your head up your ass and have no idea what you're talking about.

MA is 23rd as of 2008. Damn near dead average.

Re:the myth of Massachusetts

[misexistentialist]

That was before MA increased sales tax by 25% (regressive taxation being a real triumph of Democratic hypocrisy). The competition is fierce though, so MA might still only be in the top 20.

Re:the myth of Massachusetts

[haruchai]

Kindly remove the SuperBanana that is clogging yours up.
The fact that he made a statement that's no longer true about
Massachusetts doesn't warrant a "head up ass" remark.

Your point would have been made just as well by, for example,
"Not True for a long time! See link: "

Autotrainamabahn

[istartedi]

We should just build a central track down I-5. Drive your car onto the train, shut off the motor. Let the train go 200 mph there. Drive off train.

Either that, or we should just build an autobahn down the middle of I-5, separated from the trucks and grannies. Require a special license, like you need an M-1 for motorcycles, require an A-1 for the autobahn. Minimum speed 120 mph in the right lane. Maximum 200 mph in the left. Problem solved.

The Europeans will probably come up with a way to equip cars with 3rd rail pickups and for them to form into trains that are controlled by computer. We'll sink all our money into 20th century tech. Feh. If we're going to fork over that much dough, I want to see something really new--the kind of thing we used to do; leading not following.

Re:Autotrainamabahn

[__aazsst3756]

Interesting idea. Could even spec the requirements for cars to ride (i.e. max size, attachment points). New cars could have big ugly stickers on them "bullet train capable". This would make high speed rail to areas of lower population density areas, and thus poor public transportation systems, viable. Could add electrification to operate climate controls on the cars (another requirement) to eleviate the need for separate passenger compartments for short rides.

Re:Autotrainamabahn

[Stephan Schulz]

[Cars on trains]

Sure. But from a global economic perspective, in most cases there is no reason why you should lug two tons of vehicle around on the train. Also, staying in the car would would lose much of the comfort advantages of a train. Shared or rental cars at the stations would be more economic - but they miss the "mine" factor, of course.

Re:Autotrainamabahn

[spitzak]

Cars on trains is not a new idea, and is used quite a bit in the Chunnel, there was also the Amtrak service down to Florida (not sure if it is still running).

My impression from how much these are used is that it is nowhere near as popular as you think it might be. Loading/unloading the train is a serious time sink.

.9149th of a train

[PylonHead]

I'd hate to be riding that .9149th of a train.. I mean, you'd have plenty of time to get up to full speed before the track suddenly ended...

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[fiannaFailMan]

(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.)

DOT, a government-run body, does a better job of maintaining its right of way than Union Pacific, a private company. Hmmm...

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[commodore64_love]

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."

Re:Boondoggle

[russotto]

The Simpsons is a cartoon. It's fiction. It's a satire.

Yes. And the satire part is where the references come in. Why come up with original ways to poke fun at an expensive rail boondoggle when the Simpsons have already done it oh so well?

Train to nowhere?

[HornWumpus]

Typical Bay Aryan.

You are the chosen ones.

In fact all that high speed rail needs to do is hook up with CalTrain or BART.

Just send the bay area people down Amtrack to BART from Sacramento and call the project complete if the bay area non-sense is taking too long.

The best part about the central valley route is it's relative cheapness and flatness.

I can't see a route more or less down I-5 costing as much as (much less more then) a route in fucking France (spit).

Land in Europe is insanely expensive and every square inch is someones ancestral home.

You can't plant a garden, much less run a rail line, without hitting ancent relics.

Re:Train to nowhere?

[greeneggs2000]

I don't get it. What is the point of building a train line to where nobody lives? You can already fly from San Francisco to LA in an hour. Sure, add thirty minutes to get through security and thirty minutes to get to the airport. Planes run constantly, probably a hundred a day. If you reserve early, you can do it for $50. Now you want to build a train that will take two transfers and at least two hours just to get to, before even starting? Add another hour or two because of the transfers, and then three or four more hours to get to LA. Why?

Re:Train to nowhere?

[LordZardoz]

I would assume that if the rail project is done correctly, it would be competitive with air travel.

As for those transfers, I do not suppose you get a direct flight to your destination? When you get off of an airplane, your either catching a Taxi, haivng someone pick your ass up, or you are getting your own car out of parking.

Those two transfers would probably be from the high speed line to the local transit system line. Assuming anything even close to competently implemented mass transit, and you will be able to get a whole hell of a lot closer to your intended destination before having to call a taxi.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Train to nowhere?

[Temporal]

That's not even a remotely fair comparison:

* Airlines now generally require you to check your bags 45 minutes in advance. I was once told that I could not check my bag because I arrived 43 minutes in advance. So your idea of spending 30 minutes between arriving at the airport and takeoff is bogus -- it's more like an hour. Meanwhile, trains do not require the same level of security (you can't hijack a train and drive it into the World Trade Center) nor the same ridiculous bag-checking rules. I'd guess the time between arriving at the train station and departure would be more like ten minutes.

* SFO -> LAX is 1:20 flight time (source: southwest.com).

* You are comparing the time to drive to the airport with the time to take local mass transit to the train station. It takes me 30 minutes to drive to SFO, but it takes an hour and a half (with two transfers) to get there via caltrain/BART. Meanwhile it would take me 15 minutes to get to the proposed Palo Alto / Redwood City bullet train station via Caltrain.

Of course, I'm only one data point, but since there will be many more train stations than there are airports, presumably it should always be easier to get to the train station than the airport.

Given the above points, my guess is that taking the train will actually be *faster* for most people. It will probably also be cheaper, provide more legroom, and/or have better service. Therefore, I don't see why you would *not* want to take the train.

California is $25B in the hole....

[barzok]

and they want to build a bullet train? Which, if it's actually completed, will not even come close to the promises made.

Priorities!

Re:Boondoggle

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Well, the easy answer is that a joke that's funny the first time, or the tenth, isn't necessarily the funny the hudredth, or thousandth.

But there's more to it than that. If this specific project is a boondoggle, fine, make fun of it any way you want. The problem is with people who assume, in all seriousness, that because a fictional rail project in a sixteen-year-old cartoon was a risible boondoggle, a real rail project will be too. In short, people who can't distinguish between fiction and reality.

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[Idiomatick]

:/ In Japan I could travel 600km in 3hours for 120$. With no ticket before hand and trains leaving every 15minutes. The whole time I was there I probably traveled 2500km on local and high speed lines. Likely 30 trips. And I spent a large amount of time in train stations for all these trips, In every station there are boards saying whether the trains are late or on time delayed. So I probably saw times for nearly 500 trains. I only saw one delay the whole time. The timer said it would be 48seconds late due to weather.

Being used to transportation in North America, this amazed me more than any of the technology involved in the trains. Also the things were sparkly clean. I think it comes down to respect. They are willing to keep the trains and buses clean out of respect. I believe they make sure they are on time for the same reason.

We aren't incompetent or too corrupt to get it done. North America simply isn't respectful enough for public transit.

It Should Never Happen

[sixwings]

A huge amount of money is spent around the world for new environmentally friendly transportation and energy production technologies. This all well and good but all this money is being wasted. There is a much better way and here is why.

We are on the verge of a breakthrough in physics because there is reason to believe that we are swimming in a huge sea of squeakly clean energy, ready for the taking. A recent reevaluation of our understanding of the causality of motion leads to the inescapable conclusion that we are immersed in an immense lattice of energetic particles. Soon, we'll have vehicles that can move almost anywhere at tremendous speeds and negotiate right angle turns without slowing down and without incurring any damage due to inertial effects. Floating cities, earth to Mars in hours, New York to Beijing in minutes... That's the future of energy and travel.

You don't understand motion even if you think you do.

The Problem With Motion

Re:It Should Never Happen

[DrLang21]

Tesla? Is that you?

Never happen

[Ralph Spoilsport]

They will take the money and use it to plug the holes in their budget. California is nearly bankrupt, and they will do ANYTHING to keep themselves afloat.

Why? Prop 13 and a state full of taxpayers instead of citizens.

RS

Re:Great (not really)

[HornWumpus]

Do you like water? (turns spigot)

800 Miles?

[corychristison]

According to Google Maps, it is 501 miles driving. Source.

Someone needs to check their facts. :-)

Just sayin'.

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[ASimPerson]

Planning has been underway since before the vote last year. The HSR will have its own right-of-way and will require building new track. Am I confident it's going to happen? Eh, maybe. But the idea is that it will be true high-speed rail, and with that requires specially constructed track and all the trappings thereof.

Re:Here is how it will work

[Miamicanes]

> First of all it's going to be a high-profile target for terrorists.
> So, expect check-in situations exactly like the airport.

One big difference, though. It doesn't take much explosion-wise to kill lots of people on a plane. American trains, by comparison, are rolling bank vaults. A bomb detonated in a passenger car would kill ~50 people, max. Passengers in adjacent cars would barely notice the muffled thud. Sure, lots of terrorists could try to pull off a synchronized event... but then the complexity goes way up, and the "bang per terrorist buck" is still pretty low compared to much, MUCH softer targets... like a McDonalds across the street from an elementary school, or a high school/college football stadium at homecoming.

I *would* like to know, though, how in god's name a trainset consisting of two locomotives and 3-5 passenger cars ends up costing more than a f***ing brand new 777. I tend to support rail projects, but someone first needs to figure out why anything involving a train in America ends up costing more than the goddamn Apollo space program did. It somehow cost more money to double-track Tri-Rail from Miami to West Palm Beach -- through an existing rail corridor that USED TO *BE* double-track at one point in the past -- than it cost to progressively tear down and rebuild I-95 in Broward County, taking it from a 6-lane antique to a fairly impressive 12+ lane modern freeway in the process. Yeah, they built *a* new bridge for Tri-Rail. Big deal... they built two more, each 3-4x as wide as the new rail bridge, right next to it as part of I-95's reconstruction.

I really think that half the problem is that American states send people to study trains in Europe and Japan. Really, they should be going to INDIA to learn how to build and run a huge train network that's relatively fast, dirt cheap, at least as reliable & on-time as American air travel is, and genuinely useful to millions of people every day. Personally, I'd kill for hourly 100mph service from Miami to Orlando, with the ability to do rental car paperwork on the train & walk directly to the parking garage -- key in hand -- once the train arrives. It's a nearly ideal intermediate-speed rail route... farther than anyone really wants to drive, but not *quite* far enough to be worth the cost, grief, and "hurry up and wait" stress of air travel. The problem HERE is that every time FDOT gets ready to build something useful and sane, the HSR monster rears its ugly head, and derails the whole thing for another decade or two.

Seems like a waste of money...

[Archfeld]

How many people travel from San Diego to SF on a regular basis ? Not many, and stopping at all the places in between will slow it down to the point of uselessness. I'd think 4+ billion could be better spent on developing 'reasonably' priced air travel ?

Re:Seems like a waste of money...

[bstender]

How many people travel from San Diego to SF on a regular basis ? Not many

there's probably a few thousand people travelling btwn LA and SF every day. A bullet train has the advantage of saving tons of fuel, tons of cash, and dozens of minutes. go train go!!!

You are missing the point: Airport Capacity

[californication]

California's airports are approaching capacity. The HSR is supposed to relieve the airports of intrastate flights to free up room for more interstate and international flights. A secondary benefit is the connection between main airports like LAX and overflow airports like Ontario International (in San Bernardino County, not Canada). Also, HSR is not as much of a target for terrorism as planes are because HSR is on the ground and follows a strict path. Last, building it will make it easier for other connecting HSR lines to be built, potentially by the private sector. There is a company called Desert Xpress that has been trying to build a HSR line from Las Vegas to Victorville just to cut down on the weekend traffic. If HSR passed through Palmdale/Lancaster, it's a clear path from there to Victorville and ultimately Las Vegas.

San Diego's airport is tiny and voters rejected building a bigger airport elsewhere. Orange County passed on turning El Toro into an international airport and instead are turning it into the largest park in the country. All flights that have to be turned away because of overcapacity are lost business. California may be ok for now, with the recession reducing all forms of traffic, but when the rubber hits the road again we're going to have the same problem.

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[root_42]

The rail lines right-of-way is owned by the freight haulers. They put their priorities first, and passenger trains regularly get delayed.

High speed trains like the german ICE (used in a variety of countries, including China), the french TGV or the japanese bullet trains do not run on regular rails. Rails for speeds exceeding 200km/h need to be specially built. In Germany we have a high speed rail network, next to rails for slower moving trains. Similarly to a highway, you sometimes have 4 rails next to each other. Two for every direction and high or low speed. In cases where there are only 2 rails, the rains usually only go slow. So there should be no delay by freight trains or other slow trains on the high speed network.

Re:Monorail!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And Gulliver's Travels was a childrens book.

Re:Big mistake to do a French version

[IWannaBeAnAC]

What? Do you have a citation, anything at all, to suggest that an elevated train is "fairly easy to isolate from an earthquake"? That is really astounding!

CA is broke

[MSTCrow5429]

They should cut spending and live within their means, not reach out with a vampiric claw at the taxpayer's wallets.

Re:CA is broke

[freedom_india]

But it is perfectly OK for AIG and BofA to extend their vampiric claws to get $50 BILLION?

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[JimboFBX]

Yes, because thats 1 trillion dollars we set on fire and said to all the other nations "dont worry about it, we lost it for good"

Its not like that 1 trillion went to some of the hardest working US citizens who in turn stimulated the economy with it.

Re:Great (not really)

[PRMan]

We don't like you guys much, either. Why don't we just split into 2 states?

Re:2 Hours and 40 Minutes!

[snaz555]

And what can I do now that I couldn't do before with an airplane?

Sell your noise canceling headphones. Stretch your legs. Use your phone. Meet up with your coworkers to discuss upcoming meetings and presentations over a beer in the restaurant/cafeteria/coffee shop/bar.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[DrLang21]

While I do not disagree with your suggestion, $150 billion is chump change compared to what this government takes in in taxes. And as I have done virtually no research into this topic, I'm somewhat surprised it's that low.

Re:Here is how it will work

[an unsound mind]

Frankly, the trains work efficiently in Japan and Europe too.

This is something that fails exclusively in the United States.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[DrLang21]

Had we never invaded Iraq, we would have been virtually done with this by now.

All such simple, simple problems..

[msimm]

This has been complicated by being "tough on crime." Things like Three Strikes laws have dramatically increased California's prison population in recent years. This has resulted in an increase in funds that must go to prisons.

Don't you see it? California penal pot-farms! Spawn a whole lucrative industry using cheap possibly experienced labor! In fact if the state took over pot clubs and replaced them with state operated dispensaries (ala state run liqueur stores in Washington) we probably have to work to create another budget short-fall anytime in the near future (but unfortunately we might be too stoned to care if we successfully did). Invest in junk food stocks now!

Working while riding...

[tlambert]

Working while riding...

"You waste 45 minutes driving while your boss could be working while he is sitting on the train, because he isn't driving."

Cool. Call me back with train tickets as soon as the time I spend working while on the train there and back counts as work hours instead of personal time.

-- Terry

Re:Working while riding...

[scotch]

Sound like you need a new job. The point stands, time sitting on a bus or train or in a carpool is not wasted in the same way as driving yourself somewhere. Work, read a book, surf the web, do your nails, or maybe spend the time looking for a job where your employer doesn't treat you like shit.

you're insane

[circletimessquare]

put 50 people in a box on a track, put 50 people in an aircraft fuselage. you're going to tell me moving that box on a track horizontally is as anywhere remotely as costly fuel wise as launching it into the air?

furthermore, even if the airplane moves 5x as fast as the train, downtown to downtown service still beats, timewise:
1. taxi schlep to the airport
2. queue in security line
3. fly
4. taxi schlep to downtown

for la-san fran, and for boston-dc, the quantity of people, at the speed, at the convenience, at the fuel savings... high speed rail makes so much damn sense. it's really odd to me the anti-rail sentiment and where it comes from. is it expensive? yeah, sure...ONCE. so is an aqueduct. then it lasts you forever and is indisputably indispensable for modern society

china gets this, japan gets this, europe gets this

what the fuck is wrong with americans they are so fucking braindead about the blindingly obvious superiority of high speed rail?

expensive yes, at first, once

[circletimessquare]

then its just maintenance

and certainly not a boondoggle, unless you actually want to submit there's no obvious benefit from high speed rail. that would pay for itself over time

meanwhile, if you want an expensive boondoggle, try relying forever on a mode of transport which depends upon a fuel source you get by paying countries that are hostile to you, at a forever increasing price rate

Re:One Passenger Per Trip?

[mdmkolbe]

Operating under the assumption of each train carrying 400 each trip, it would take 235,000 trips at a $50 fare per passenger.

How many trips a day do you plan for this train to take? As many as 30? It would still take 21.5 years to pay it off. And keep in mind that night-time and non-rush hour trips won't be all that filled. And we still haven't accounted for upkeep costs.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[jlarocco]

Stop having so many wars... they're expensive! Iraq and Afghanistan, ~$150 billion a year. How many bullet train systems could you buy?

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.

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[CodeBuster]

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.

Which is about par for the course here in California with Amtrak. To pull over onto a side track and wait for an hour so that one can watch a freight train loaded with sugar beats go by is annoying to say the least (wasting the time of hundreds of passengers for freight doesn't bother the freight companies in the least). Almost without exception, the only people who ride Amtrak are those who either (a) haven't already done so and vow never again after their first trip or (b) want to travel between northern and southern California as cheaply as possible AND don't care how long the journey takes. The last time I rode the Amtrak here in California was back in my college days when I had plenty of time and little money. It would be cheaper for the government to give away free bus tickets to college students returning home for the holiday breaks than to continue subsidizing the terrible Amtrak passenger service.

How about for non violent pot offences?

[LordZardoz]

I doubt that anyone would advocate that you kick loose dangerous offenders to reduce the prison population. It is one thing to decide to reward criminals. It is another to decide that perhaps they should not have been locked up in the first place. And it is yet another to decide that keeping them locked up is just not justified when you consider the expense of it.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Trains today are slow compared to yesterday...

[Colin Douglas Howell]

125 mph sounds exaggerated, since regular running above that speed with steam traction would have challenged or broken Mallard's record. But the basic point is valid--the fastest U.S. passenger trains in their heyday were much faster than they are today. The railroads were highly competitive, and passenger and mail service was important to them, so they did all they could to move it fast. It was the growth of air and highway transport which made those services no longer economical. Today's Amtrak trains are slow because they are usually the lowest priority traffic; the way the system works now, they mostly run on tracks owned by freight railroads and are nothing but an inconvenience to them.

However, rail travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles has never been especially fast. The main line runs through the Coast Ranges, a twisty route with lots of grades, so the sort of speeds possible in the flat Midwest were out of the question here.

Tax and Spend vs Borrow and Spend

[LordZardoz]

From what I understand, under Bush and the Republican dominated congress, the system was Borrow and Spend. And for all those people who like to bitch about Tax and Spend, what are the alternatives?

1) Tax and Spend: Collect Taxes and then spend those taxes.

2) Borrow and Spend: This is like saying buying with a credit card is not really spending money.

3) No Tax and No Spend: Some people think that they would like this system. I suspect that they would quickly discover it is not quite so great to either have no services / infrastructure, or to be billed directly by a corporation who has no hesitation of cutting you off when you do not pay your bills.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Here is how it will work

[Leebert]

An airbus A340 seats up to 800

I think you mean an A380. An A340 seats maybe 350ish?

Kicked off the Peninsula? Who says?

[Colin Douglas Howell]

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.

Probably can't reach SF fast

[Animats]

There's a real problem reaching San Francisco. There's no good right of way for high speed rail. The I-5 route to Sacramento looks OK, but reaching Oakland or San Francisco looks tough.

The only existing right of way to San Francisco is two tracks wide and used for commuter rail. There are houses up to the tracks on both sides, and much grumbling since the rail line got an upgrade a few years ago, with over ten trains an hour and higher speeds. The idea of stacking an elevated high speed line atop the existing commuter line has residents annoyed. (The commuter line is at grade, with dozens of railroad crossings.)

There's a big issue in San Francisco over whether to build a train terminal "downtown". Getting the last half mile into downtown San Francisco is very expensive. It would be much cheaper to stop half a mile away, at the existing station. Actually, "downtown" is migrating towards the existing train station, and most new construction is closer to the existing station than "downtown". So this could work out OK.

Re:Probably can't reach SF fast

[isorox]

There's a real problem reaching San Francisco. There's no good right of way for high speed rail. The I-5 route to Sacramento looks OK, but reaching Oakland or San Francisco looks tough.

In London, they built a 12 mile long tunnel from neat the terminus out to the industrial wastelands of the east.

Re:Probably can't reach SF fast

[Animats]

In London, they built a 12 mile long tunnel from neat the terminus out to the industrial wastelands of the east.

I know about that. It was surprising how much construction was necessary, considering the amount of rail right of way going into London.

London has about ten times the population of San Francisco. It's not clear that San Francisco can generate enough traffic to justify the connection.

There are some wealthy communities on the San Francisco peninsula bitching about having high speed rail zooming past their houses. But they don't want to pay the costs of tunneling themselves.

Because

[Aloisius]

Los Angeles to San Francisco is the busiest air corridor in the United States with an estimated 60 million passengers per year expected by 2020. It is one of the top 20 corridors in the world.

The airports can't handle much more traffic and it costs a substantial amount of money to build new ones (upwards of $20 billion), connect highways, etc.

So high speed rail makes real sense. There isn't even a place to put another airport in the bay area unless you stick it way out of the way.

The links to San Diego and Sacramento don't cost anywhere near the price of the main segment of LA to SF and are just there to complete the system. I don't even think they are part of the first stage and may never end up being built.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[ryanov]

Lots of examples to prove that war begets war... so... I have to wonder why he needs proof in the reverse...

Not quite right there...

[dfenstrate]

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.)

The freight companies own the rails, not the Federal Government or Amtrak. It's not a matter of senseless federal fiat, but of economics and property rights.
Also, Airports charge user fees to land or take off planes there. Whether or not that covers all the capital cost and operation of the airport is something you'd have to check airport by airport.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[amRadioHed]

That's right. A lot of it got sent to Iraq on pallets that disappeared, or went to the executives of companies like Halliburton who get to charge whatever they like for faulty wiring that electrocutes our soldiers because of the no-bid contracts.

Next to burning piles of money to make smores, the war in Iraq has probably been the least effective use of our money that one could conceive of.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[Wildclaw]

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.

Re:Here is how it will work

[jrothwell97]

Ha ha ha.

I have no idea how inter-state rail works over there in the US (I'd imagine not very well, since public transport seems to be an alien concept to the majority of Americans and a simple journey from South to North usually requires a twelve-hour change at Chicago) but... it'll be just like a 'normal', commuter train.

As in:

• Catch the bus (or heck, walk to the station) - no more than thirty minutes.
• Buy ticket from the ticket office or from the self-service machine (don't even bother with this if you have a season ticket - instead concentrate on perfecting the art of waltzing through the ticket barrier in one fluid motion.) Note: no security checks apart from the ticket barrier.
• Wait for the train (thirty minutes, tops).
• Board train.
• Wait for train to reach destination or station where you need to change.
• Alight.
• Walk or get bus to your destination.

Perhaps you don't understand this concept, but it works perfectly well in the UK. (And we generally consider our public transport system to be terrible - the French and the Spanish do it best of all.

Also, security checks at stations are practically non-existent - the most I've ever heard is a pre-recorded announcement over the station intercom saying "do try to keep all personal belongings with you and do not take photographs of the security equipment: if you see anything suspicious, please tell a member of staff or hit the Emergency button on the Help Point."

I speak as someone who commutes by train every single working day (albeit over a shorter route.)

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[h4rm0ny]

Yes, because thats 1 trillion dollars we set on fire

Indeed, that's not a bad analogy for money spent on bombs. More blew up than burnt, but anyway... Don't confuse Money with Wealth. Money is an abstraction. You can print as much as you like, it's value remains backed by the wealth of the country (ultimately, anyway) which is why you can have US$1 = 47 Indian Rupees. When the GP points out that a trillion dollars has been spent on military adventures, it doesn't matter so much that a lot of the money bought things from american arms companies, paying soldiers' (and mercenaries') wages, as much as it represents that portion of the country's wealth which is represented by 1 trillion dollars being ploughed into unreclaimables such as keep a navy active in the area, building temporary bases, firing ammunition and detonating bombs, flights, supply deliveries... oh, and medical care for the many wounded US soldiers.

So no, the government didn't set money on fire - that would actually increase the value of the dollar. Instead, they effectively set a lot of your country's wealth on fire and thus devalued the dollar even more. In real terms, yes, you would have retained wealth better if you had invested it in infrastructure such as trains, rather than in flying hundreds of thousands of people back and forth around the world.

I'd go into the ethical side of the Iraq invasion - the lies about WMD and how Saddam was a threat to the US, the thousands of deaths resulting and the pillaging of a foreign country's natural resources under threat of military action, but I think the economic argument is the only one that will resonate with some people.

Here's the source

[tkrotchko]

http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/2181.html

It's a year newer (2009) and has a lot more interesting information. Including the fact that most of the high income states are in the northeast. Except for Wyoming.

Re:Here is how it will work

[isorox]

So the high-speed train goes 220 MPH. Big deal.

Hell of a lot quicker than a car

Here is how a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles would actually work for this train.

First of all it's going to be a high-profile target for terrorists. So, expect check-in situations exactly like the airport.

Just like the London Underground, which is a target for terrorists? There are ticket barriers though.

- Drive 30 minutes minimum to get to train station.

Depends where you are, my work is a hell of a lot closer to the city's train station than the airports.

- Ride bus from train station parking lot to terminal. 15 minutes

- Check-in/security check/board time (just like an airport terminal). 60 minutes minimum.

Even Eurostar, which has passport checks, and is a bigger "target", with the fact it goes under 30 miles of see, has a minimum check-in of 30 minute (10 for first class)

- Travel high speed to Los Angeles (approximately 440 miles). 120 minutes or two hours.

- Gather bags checked, you don't think they are going to let your average family going to disneyland carry big bags onto a passenger car now do you? 30 minutes.

Whyever not?

- Ride rental car shuttle bus to rental car location (includes wait time for shuttle bus). 30 minutes.

- Drive to Disneyland (or where-ever else in the Los Angeles area). Assume 30 minutes.

Total elapsed time is 315 minutes if my math is right. Or 5 and 1/4 hours. And this assumes there are no intermediate train stops along the way. Do you really think the train will pass by the largest city in the SF Bay area of CA (San Jose) without stopping? I don't think so, therefore add some station time.

Eurostar adds about 5 minutes per stop.

Time to drive a car from San Francisco to Disneyland (which I have done many times) is about 6.5 hours.

So, what have you saved? About an hour of time.

No, real timings based on real high speed rail in backwards countries like the UK
1) Get to st pancras -- 45 minutes from suburbs, 30 minutes from anywhere in the city. Tube or taxi.

2) Check in, 30 minutes

3) Travel to Disneyland Paris -- 2h30

4) Disembark and get to park gate -- 10 minutes.

Total time, under 4 hours. You'll be lucky to get to Dover by then if you're driving, and if you go by plane you'll still be in the air.

A fast train is pie-in-the sky thinking. It's not going to solve anything.

It's not meant to solve the problem of getting fat tourists to disneyland for cheap. It's meant to solve the problem of getting buisnessmen to and from a nearby city for a lunchtime meeting, without losing any time being away from a phone or laptop (with power).

Just fly larger aircraft. An airbus A340 seats up to 800 and will do the same trip in 75 fewer minutes.

No, it wont.

Save the billions spent on the proposed rail line and add a runway or two to the necessary airports at a much lower price.

There is plenty of airspace and capacity, use it properly.

Here's a little tail about the realities of high speed rail vs air. Two people need to get to Brussels for 9AM GMT.

A) Depart house at 05:30
B) Depart house at 05:45

A) Arrive Heathrow at 06:00
B) Arrive St Pancras at 06:30

A) Checked in and security at 06:50
B) On train reading paper at 07:10

A) Board plane at 07:30
B) Finish breakfast and paper at 07:45

A) Land in Brussels at 08:45
B) Fix issue back in the office via VPN at 09:00

A) Leave airport at 09:15
B) Arrive Brussels at 09:30

A) Arrive office at 10:00
B) Arrive office at 09:50

High speed rail 25 minutes faster. The plane doesn't have any fully productive time, but breakfast on the plane might just about work. The train has 1:30 productive time and another 30 minutes of no mobile signal.

Total cost of trip, booked 12 hours earlier
A) £450 return
B) £80 return

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[jabithew]

As a further proof, I point people to the UK's comprehensive spending review. Before the current crisis, we spent about the same servicing our national debt as we did on the whole of Defence. For comparison, that's about a fifth what the British Government spends on paying people not to work, in some form or other.

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[resqu]

High speed trains like the german ICE (used in a variety of countries, including China), the french TGV or the japanese bullet trains do not run on regular rails.

Not correct for the ICE: it can run on 'regular' rails - however, only with a reduced speed; indeed, for "high speed" it needs special rails. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercity-Express#Route_planning_and_network_layout)

Too bad rail can't compete and is not efficient

[ericlj]

Actually, adding more lanes does work, compared to the real world numbers of high speed rail.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10170

Re:Too bad rail can't compete and is not efficient

[OFnow]

Actually, adding more lanes does work,

Casual calculations will show that rail takes way less land for any given
traffic density and way less energy per person-transported (than cars).
Making your comment basically irrelevant even if we assume that widening
freeways is feasible.

I'm imagining a 12-lane freeway south from San Francisco. Full of cars
traveling 75mph. This would likely be a nightmare.

Build the bullet train!

Re:Big mistake to do a French version

[TheRaven64]

The Shinkansen is tied into the Earthquake early warning system (in this context, 'early' means 'about 10 seconds before the quake hits) and can be automatically stopped within this window. For people too lazy to read the linked article, there have been no deaths as a result of accidents on the Shinkansen (although some people do commit suicide by jumping in front of them. Fewer since the families of the deceased were made to pay for the damage caused) since its inception 50 years ago, in spite of several large earthquakes in that timeframe.

On a related note, when did the American attitude go from 'we can create a transcontinental rail/highways system / put a man on the moon / become the world's largest economy' to 'engineering is, like, hard.'

Re:Here is how it will work

[herojig]

Not sure why you did NOT add in the time it takes to recover from a major derailment when the engineer screws up while texting little boys and slams into an oncoming freight train.That's at least 210 hours laid up if you survive. But seriously, while this is a worthwhile project for Cali, how are they going to pay for it...are they going to raise more taxes on soda pop & porno mags? But if it could be done without bankrupting my mother, it would be grand for those that have to fight the crowds at LAX.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[EQ]

Actually, unjust peace begets war - look to Wiemar Germany and its aftermath. And peace just for the sake of peace is an idiot's argument: take for example the "peace" of Pol Pot's Cambodia. Properly fought, wars tend to end wars - c.f. Germany and Japan in WW2 and behavior afterward, US Civil War, etc. War never stopped anything except fascism, communism, slavery...

the pony is paid for

[jipn4]

If you look at how much money Californians pay in federal taxes and how much less they get back, this "pony" has been paid for many times over.

In fact, much of the infrastructure of the whiny Republican heartland has been paid for by the liberals in California, NYC, and New England.

Re:Why? is making money an issue?

[OFnow]

.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!

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[theaveng]

Except money is not an abstraction. That 1 trillion dollars, if you assume the average American earns $15/hour, translates to about 60 billion labor hours. If we had not fought the Iraq/Afghan war, those 60 billion labor hours could have been spent elsewhere on more-productive pursuits.

Gas taxes and fees don't come anywhere close

[bigtrike]

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but it appears that total gas taxes and fees in the US amounted to about $29 billion in 2008. Presumably the actual cost per mile is closer to what you'd pay on a toll road. For extra fun you could add in public health and pollution costs, as automobiles are extraordinarily dangerous and dirty.

So, it's almost definitely a communist style subsidy.

Re:Gas taxes and fees don't come anywhere close

[uncqual]

Externalities work both ways - both negative and positive.

There are many beneficial externalities of a robust road system.

For example, it gets food to market cheaper and faster and reduces spoilage. This means that people spend a smaller percentage of their time working to feed themselves and can pay for things like education or, at the limit, just be able to afford necessary nourishment. The reduction in spoilage means the labor that was devoted to raising that food that was wasted can instead be directed at other pursuits such as medical care.

Similarly, a robust road system helps make it practical to deliver a variety of products at low prices to retail outlets near your home as part of an efficiency of scale strategy that reduces the labor content of both manufacturing and delivery processes. While some people don't want any material goods, most people do want some and feel that they benefit from the availability of these at lower prices.

And, remember to count the lives saved when someone can be transported to a well equipped hospital in an emergency more quickly on roads than being dragged on a sled by hand over muddy dirt trails.

Phoenix to Tucson

[kondor6c]

Wasn't the same thing just proposed by Arizona to go from Phoenix to Tucson?

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[HiThere]

Yeah, but "High Speed Track" comes with high expenses. What's needed is good modern track, well maintained, and which passenger trains having priority over freight. (The density is rarely high enough to justify separate grades for passenger trains and freight trains.)

Even ordinary rail lines are expensive to maintain. They're cheaper than highways, but that's not saying enough. The freight handlers can get away with relatively shoddy maintenance as little that's time critical goes by rail, so they can have the train sit there while they repair things. (That's expensive, and they try to avoid it. But they don't try hard enough to satisfy a passenger centric system.)

More than hyper-speed trains we need good, cheap, passenger trains. These only happen in small corridors with dense passenger traffic. (Note that the SFBay BART system is, in effect, a high speed passenger line. But it only has something like 20-30 stops in the entire metropolitan area. It uses buses and cars as feeders, and the parking lots are full, but it's got a lot less penetration than is needed. Partially BECAUSE it's a high speed rail system. (The stops need to be far enough apart for it to pay for the train to pick up speed.)

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[HiThere]

Amtrak is so terrible be cause the system is controlled by the freight lines, which don't want ANY passenger trains on their system. But we NEED decent trains. Who knows what airplane fuel is going to cost next year? A replacement system is mandatory. These "High Speed Trains" are only reasonable where there's a LOT of excess demand. Moderate speed trains are the reasonable choice in most places. They could generally be made to work by upgrading the current rail maintenance program and giving passenger trains priority over freight. And who cares that they only average 50 mph when you look out and see freeways being used as parking lots. A steady 50 mph looks a lot better. (I understand that this is standard on the East Coast, but I haven't been there since I was eight, so I don't know for sure.)

FWIW, when I first came to California the train service was both better and cheaper than it is now. But then the companies that owned the lines were paid by the passengers. Now Amtrak is paid, and it doesn't own the lines.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[h4rm0ny]

I think that you might have misread my post. I am in agreement with your conclusion. Only the first sentence is where we differ - I called money an abstract way of representing the nation's wealth in order to draw attention to the flaw in the OP who seemed to think that so long as the money was spent somewhere, it didn't matter where. The invasion of Iraq is, as you say, a disgusting misdirection of America's resources. As well as an ethical failure resulting in great suffering both domestically and abroad.

Regards,
H.

Re:Big mistake to do a French version

[sznupi]

But consider that the most serious cause of problems for a train during earthquake would be partial destruction of the tract / obstruction.

For normal train that means derailing, which are, contrary to popular perception, very survivable in high speed trains (as evidenced by multiple occurences of derailings...)

Monorail would be harder to engineer around it.

In Maglev obstruction would be probably catastrophic (we have an example from Germany; perhaps it has something to do with a need to be much more leightweight, comparatively, for a Maglev)

Re:SHOULD it happen? I'm not convinced.

[Idiomatick]

In Japan, Hachinohe(.25m)-Morioka(.3m)-Sendai(1m)-Fukushima(.3m) is 250 miles. Population: 1.8million in these cities.

Boston to Washington is 400mi, Contains Providence, NYC, Baltimore and Philly. Population: Probably over 30million if you count the urban area, City centers alone will put you well above 15m, 8.3m in NYC alone.

So comparing a current shinkansen line in japan to a possible line in the US there is possibly 1/10 as many people. But it is impossible because US population is so sparse? REALLY? You might be right that the comparisons are unfair because northern Japanese shinkansen have to deal with such sparse spread out people, in the US they are all clumped together in giant populations. I didn't say connect California to NY did I.

Re:Why not Maglev?

[jabuzz]

Because 200mph+ high speed rail is a proven technology, with billions of passenger journeys already undertaken. On the other hand maglev is basically an experimental technology. I would also point out that the TGV has been experimentally run at 357mph, though to do this for an operational service would require more development.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[shutdown -p now]

Bailouts are loans though, whereas money spent on bombs is literally wasted.

Is that your blog?

[HornWumpus]

If it is may I say: 'well done Sir.'

I await your demonstrations eagerly.

Don't let those that mock you slow your roll.

They will all rue the day they made fun of you when you float by overhead.

I haven't read your entire blog but suggest one possibility: Motion is discreet because the universe is a computer simulation. If we can find one unchecked buffer we can p0wn it and fly.

How about making state services FUNCTIONAL first!

[plasmacutter]

In their efforts to balance the budget, the state govt of california utterly gutted many essential services.

Perhaps they should focus on restoring those, particularly those associated with education, medical care, and consumer protection, back on their feet first.

Absolutely ridiculous!

Country of not possible

[Hebetsubeach]

The US has become a country of "we can't do it here". It's a shame. People in this country have no idea how backward the US has become. For example, take two cities in Japan, Fukuoka and Hiroshima, cities about the same size as Portland, OR, and Seattle, WA, and about the same distance apart, 175-180 miles.

Between Fukuoka and Hiroshima you can travel by plane, train, or car. As far as the trains, there are 150 trains going between the cities each way every day and the trip takes 62 to 72 minutes city center to city center. It is impossible to travel between Seattle and Portland at that speed. If you are very lucky, you might be able to get between Seattle and Portland city centers in 90 minutes, by traveling out to the airport, going through security, and then back to downtown on the other end. But more than likely it will take at least 2 hours. And then your choices are limited. There aren't 150 flights going each way every day. The train between Seattle and Portland takes over 3 hours and get this, the bridge over the Columbia near Portland is a draw bridge and if there is freighter going up/down the river with a load of wood chips, the freighter has the right of way. The draw bridge opens and the train has to wait twenty to thirty minutes for the freighter to go by. Even though the train is a scheduled passenger service, river traffic takes precedence! To drive between the two cities takes three to four hours depending on traffic.

Between Fukuoka and Hiroshima, you don't even have to think about planning ahead if you want to travel between the two cities. If you suddenly need to get from one city to the other for business or other reason, there is a train leaving every 5 to 15 minutes and you can purchase your ticket on your cel phone while you make a dash for the train station. Such convenience is simply impossible in this country. Having high speed rail between cities makes all kinds of things possible which are unthinkable in the US.

There are so many advantages to having fast rail between city centers. It beats out flying and vehicular travel and is the greenest way to go. It certainly is the most comfortable and safest way to go.

The US could have been the world leader in this technology, but we are sadly to say a country of can't do it here and so we keep falling further and further behind. Don't even talk about comparing rail in other countries to Amtrak. In Japan ticketing is so automated that on some trains, conductors don't even disturb you to ask to see your ticket. Their handheld computers indicate which seats in the reserved cars should be occupied and they won't bother you if you are sitting in your seat. And the train schedules in Japan are so reliable that if trains leave or arrive even a minute or two later on certain days, those one and two minute differences are noted on the train schedules. We should be able to have such reliability and accuracy in the US. Sadly, this country is hopelessly falling further and further behind.

Re:Why? is making money an issue?

[ChrisMaple]

The concern about making money is touching

Ooh, sarcasm.

All human activity has costs. When we are required to pay for those costs, we help ensure that resources are not being wasted, because people don't like to throw away their own money.

That said, the per-unit costs of operating a major superhighway like I-5 or I-95 are quite low. In Connecticut, moderate tolls were removed from I-95 and Route 15 because (among other reasons) the roads had been paid for many times over. Fuel taxes easily cover the costs of operating the road.

With regard to airlines, subsidies are more or less irrelevant. Just as taxes are passed through to the consumer, so are subsidies. The long-term unprofitability of the industry as a whole is more an issue of fools supporting losing enterprises than any inherent property of airlines that makes them money-lowers.

Even Turkey has its bullet train project underway.

[unity100]

good luck catching up behind the world. and thank those conservative morons who ran your country for the better part of the last 60 years for this.

Never Happen.

[Hasai]

The back-to-the-trees types that the Left Coast is infested with will throw up roadblock after roadblock, until Arnold either gives it up or all the money ends up lining lawyer's pockets.

Re:Even Turkey has its bullet train project underw

[Hasai]

Apples and oranges: The average Turk is FAR more pragmatic than the average Left Coastie.

Re:Yeah, the US govt is just rolling in money...

[toddestan]

Yeah, and Keyes is also the guy who would be for plowing under crops and killing livestock while the people starved (see: The Great Depression). Sure, war may be good for the economy, but you're not counting in the human costs of going to war, the costs of using up supplies of limited resources (such as oil), and costs to the environment. Another example of this kind of thinking is the whole "Cash for Clunkers" fiasco - just how exactly are we supposed to be better off by destroying useful assets then paying people to build replacements?

Sometimes, if you simply can't find anything productive for someone to do, you're just best off justing giving them money and telling them to stay home.

Re:Why? is making money an issue?

[Phil_At_NHS]

"Why do we expect basic transport to make money? " I don't. I just don't think the state of California needs ANOTHER stupid project to sink billions of HARD EARNED TAX DOLLARS into. We need to cut spending and reduce taxes, and all this will do is increase taxes and spending. "and a sensibly priced choice will do that " "California government" and "sensibly priced" like matter and anti matter. IF they ever came together, the entire planet would explode.

Re:Big mistake to do a French version

[spitzak]

The last place that I want to be is in a train doing 150 MPH when an earthquake hits.

Yea, that's why they never use trains in Japan!

no

[unity100]

average turk doesnt know shit about pragmatism. and votes with his ass rather than his head.