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California Going Ahead With Bullet Train
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the NY Times:
"[California state leaders] have rallied around a plan to build a 520-mile high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, cutting the trip from a six-hour drive to a train ride of two hours and 38 minutes. And they are doing it in the face of what might seem like insurmountable political and fiscal obstacles. The pro-train constituency has not been derailed by a state report this month that found the cost of the bullet train tripling to $98 billion for a project that would not be finished until 2033, by news that Republicans in Congress are close to eliminating federal high-speed rail financing this year, by opposition from California farmers and landowners upset about tracks tearing through their communities or by questions about how much the state or private businesses will be able to contribute."
Having the costs "triple" to $98 billion when the bond measure was for $98 billion should be a surprise to anyone. Of course with boondoggles like this, it's no wonder that California is a fiscal crises.
The first transcontinental railroad took less than 10 years to build -- considerably less. Before doing something like this, figure out why the hell it's going to take 30 years, and fix that first.
Just say'n
Damn the reality! Full speed ahead!
The tax and spend express is getting ready to leave the station!
Why not just subsidize aircraft flights? Really, 98 billion dollars could get you a lot of sorties and they could begin immediately.
Between the x-ray powered strip searches, the paranoid interrogations, and sexual molestations by abusive, angry pedophile wannabe mall cops, only masochists and boot lickers will want to ride in what could have been a beautiful piece of engineering. I'd rather drive in relative freedom than take a bullet train and be humiliated, brutalized, violated, and treated like an inmate. To quote the Elephant Man, "I am not an animal!".
If the TSA could be kept away, then it would be great. But that isn't going to happen.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
What about Los Angeles to Las Vegas? I am sure that the Las Vegas hotels and casinos would love to invest in something that would make it easier to get people to their city.
some fucking ambition, good luck to em.
Is there a chance the track could bend?
This again? This train will *never* be built. And it's a stupid thing to build. Passenger rail hasn't made money since the mid 1800's, going faster won't make it any more viable.
Can someone explain how it is crowded countries like Japan or Germany can manage to get land for high speed rail, but the US can't?
Especially since Japan seems to have such problems getting land for airports that they have to build artificial islands just to house them.
Yeah but no, but yeah. But no.
build a 520 mile-high speed rail
it gives great views from up that far - plus the pumping music and free drugs is certainly something I'd get behind.
I was just recently looking into buying tickets from Philadelphia to MA for travel. Guess what? It's cheaper to fly. By a factor of 3. So, before we get ahead of ourselves and try to build something, why don't we look at existing infrastructure: it sucks. Amtrak is an inefficient organization. Although trains are slower than airplanes, the idea is that they are less expensive; however, this is clearly not the case when Amtrak is running the show. Projects like these strike me as a massive waste of resources. If a real need for such a thing arises, the government will probably not be the ones to fund it.
The total cost is $11 per square foot. Or, to put it another way, since the proposed corridor is 100 feet wide, $138 per foot of rail (there will be 4 tracks for a total of 8 rails).
I'm no expert, but that seems a little high. On the other hand, maybe it's not, in which case we're fucked, since if this is the cost to build one railway imagine how much trouble we'll have replacing every single bridge, overpass, and tunnel in the country as they reach the ends of their lifetimes.
Forget this railroad, what infrastructure project can be built in the US anymore that is of any substantial size? Any current project that has the potential to significantly change the economy of a state or region?
I will certainly ride this train if it actually gets built. But it's a really, really dumb idea, and what we're likely to end up with is a train that goes from nowhere to nowhere because public support evaporated when the bill came due.
And remember, this is the state that cancelled dental insurance for poor people because it ran out of money.
That's what they're building. No, we actually don't have the money. But when has reality stopped backers of High Speed Rail?
I thought private space combined with 3D printing was going to revolutionize everything? I was thinking private 3D printed sub-orbital transports, flights leaving every half hour, FILLED with people! We can't even sustain Concorde, but what's a few thousand dollars per ticket?
And use it to subsidize flights throughout California for the next 20 years, and you'll move more people more quickly than this ridiculous project. Talk about a vanity project....good lord...do the math...how many tickets will have to be sold at what price to even make this monstrosity even remotely cost neutral?
You can object to TSA practices - the violation of privacy, the ineffectiveness, and the rare but flagrant acts of sadism or molestation - without the pointless exaggeration. To hear you talk I'd be much safer and more comfortable wearing a "Democracy Now!" through Pyongyang Station than I would be boarding a California bullet train.
Blathering about pedophilia, fascism, and interrogations just makes your objections sound like paranoid ravings. Yes, you must be persistent, passionate, and creative in protecting your rights and protesting their violation, but above all you must be rational.
Your words are nothing but a disservice to anyone fighting for the Bill of Rights: it makes their job much harder when their rational objections become conflated with the rampant hyperbole and absurdly loaded language of people like you.
This doesn't make sense. A rider arriving in LA is going to need a car when they get off the train, unless they fancy spending a lot of time waiting for on Metro (formerly known as the RTD - Rough, Tough, and Dangerous.) Total boondoggle.
It would make a hell of a lot more sense to link the Portland-Seattle-Vancouver, BC corridor with high-speed rail, since these are all cities where one can actually get around reasonably well without a car. It'd be a game-changer to have TGV-speed rail on that corridor - one hour between the downtown cores of Portland and Seattle, or Seattle and Vancouver? I've had regular, daily intracity commutes longer than that.
Oh well.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
.... is because a train trip cost more than DOUBLE the cost of a flight and it takes one day per flight hour to get to your destination (with multiple transfers).
A lot of people will gladly take the train if the cost was 1/3 of the fight. The extra time would be viewed as part of the adventure if the cost was right.
What they need is a monorail.
The Admin and the Engineer
California is a walking bankruptcy, and they are doing this? To what? Help people leave as fast as possible?
We can go to the moon for less, hell a whole new space program on that kind of dough. This is the problem with the US. We can't do a damn thing without it costing so much. How about fix your border problem, highway congestion, instead of building a rail road? $100 billion will pay 16.6 million trips (@ $200 per flight) for the next 30 YEARS!
California is already over 2 billion short on the budget this year and is long overdue for a serious financial wake-up call.
Hope all the other states are taking notes on "what not to do"... Projects like the "high speed" rail just dump gas on the fire.
Way to go spendthrift voters of California!
The reason why we have so many airports, so many highways, and so few trains already is due to the current subsidy structure.
We already have High Speed Rail, they are called AIRPLANES and can actually go places that a single track cannot. Like Burbank to Oakland, LAX to SFO, Ontario to Sacramento etc etc.
And it costs a lot less to build and maintain that infrastructure than the boondoggle that HSR is gonna be.
If you do the math, you could GIVE everyone a plane ticket a year on Southwest and come out ahead. Someone needs to put up the reality check of what it actually costs per Resident per year to build and then operate.
Of course, the UNIONS are all for this crap, as it will have to be built with Union Labor, who then funnels the dues back to the DNC who support HSR. We used to call those Political Kickbacks. I guess if that is how you have to buy votes ....
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The reason people don't travel by train in the USA is because a train trip cost more than DOUBLE the cost of a flight and it takes one day per flight hour to get to your destination (with multiple transfers).
The reason a train trip costs a lot and takes a long time (for most trips outside of the Northeast Corridor) is because we haven't invested in the railways to make it otherwise. I reluctantly agree that long-haul high-speed rail in the United States is probably a pipe dream and will probably never be a sufficiently cost-effective compared to the other options. But regional rail (like the Northeast Corridor) generally is useful and cost-effective (relatively speaking - all transportation infrastructure loses money; that's why the government does it and not the private sector). California is one of the few places where regional rail makes sense in my opinion - there's a lot of churn between the major cities.
(Side note: Please don't start your post in the subject line, it's very confusing to follow)
Yeah, I too would like to believe, but the track record is abysmal and getting worse.
There is a cigarette paper between rationality and rationalisation.
They even made a movie about the case Larry Flint won, but nobody else has his courage.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Look at amtrak. It costs less to fly from nyc to dc than to go via rail. Why would the new line be any cheaper per ride
Pfft, as though anyone would want to go to LA. This is to help people escape.
Aren't there several hundred miles of canals and such that need to be rebuilt and replaced all over California?
Also outside of earthquakes can't they just build two tunnels using boring machines? The Swiss ran 2 35miles tunnels for around/under $10billion hell so did Japan with the Seikan and England and France with the Channel Tunnel so why can't they do the same in Cali? If they can have a subway they can build a damn underground high-speed rail way. Besides wouldn't a tunnel be more Eco Friendly then a bunch of above ground stuff then again we're probably to inept to bother.
You can't take a train from San Francisco to San Diego without getting on a bus.
They will only need to operate for 300 years at full capacity and no costs to pay for it
Consider any project financially unsound enough that the locals would never pay for it. Then add matching federal funds so the cost is cut in half, and all of a sudden it gets the local vote to go ahead, now that it is half financed by distant federal taxpayers. Problem for the locals is, the distant taxpayers have some dumb project in their own backyard also. This is the way dumb things get justified all over the country.
- it's dead, but it will take a while for its body to realize it...
Yes, high speed rail is going to be expensive. Yes, it's now projected to cost much more than the original estimate. (The cost has largely increased due to delays (the longer it takes to build a project, the more it costs), particularly fuelled by NIMBY appeasement ("We don't want the train passing near our house!" "But it is much quieter than standard trains and will increase your property values by being near an HSR station." "Build a tunnel!" "Okay, we'll build a tunnel." "The costs on this project are ballooning!").)
But you have to compare the cost to the alternatives. California's freeways and airports are jammed. With increasing population and mobility, something to move people around will have to be built. And the estimated costs to add volume to airports and highways is estimated to be $100-billion as well.
And, to top it off, high speed rail runs on an operational profit. (This means that yearly revenues are higher than yearly costs.) Everywhere. Yes, high speed rail lines run an operational profit in Japan and France, Spain, Russia, Taiwan and car-loving-and-train-hating America. In Britain all rail is private, and for-profit companies are in fierce competition to pay for the rights to run rail services, which are barely at HSR levels if at all. It's a strongly held misconception that rail travel is unprofitable: HSR makes a profit all over the world, and it usually subsidizes local and regional rail transport (which the US has much of).
And though only the Tokyo-Osaka and Paris-Lyon line have paid off all their construction costs, that's because they're the oldest HSR lines; others are on track to in the future. Which modes of transportation don't pay off their construction costs? Oh, that's right, nearly all roads. Remember Carmageddon/The Carpocalypse, when an overpass outside LA was torn down, shutting traffic for the weekend? That was all so they could widen the highway through a mountain pass. Were the anti-HSR people asking for ridership studies for the Sepulveda Pass? Were they asking for the expansion to run an operational profit, let alone an overall profit? Of course not; only rail is subjected to such standards.
Add to this that a train is much more efficient in transporting this number of people, from an energy, environmental and economic perspective, and this is using studies that are assuming that gas prices will be relatively stable over the next few decades.
Obviously there still has to be overview of the project, making sure money is being spent efficiently and for best value. But the entire transportation sector needs to be looked at from this viewpoint. Airlines can work with rail to transport their passengers on their "last mile", freeing up their planes for more profitable medium- and long-haul routes, like done in Germany (Frankfurt Airport has two train stations). Road funds can be diverted to repairing our existing infrastructure as opposed to building more asphalt that needs to be maintained. And everyone will get to where they are going sooner. If this is done, North America will look back 20 years from now, not wondering "How could they do this?", but instead "How did they wait so long?"
I'm curious how a state in as bad a financial state as they are can afford this?
Even if the feds borrow this $90b at the 3% rate, it will still cost over $2b a year to service this debt.
This is more than two times the total *revenue* of amtrak on northeast corridor, a service area with a higher population
Having lived in California, you must not know much about the fault lines.
See, the majority of the fault lines aren't capable of causing much damage. They're too fractured.
The only problems are directly around SF and LA.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Right, that's exactly why no one would ever build a high speed rail system somewhere like Japan where they are also prone to earthquakes. Obviously a train getting derailed is the biggest concern in quake prone areas.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
And it costs a lot less to build and maintain that infrastructure than the boondoggle that HSR is gonna be.
Yes, because of course the government hasn't subsidized the airline industry and airport infrastructure for 75 years...
Here's a fun fact: Amtrak's funding is less than 1% of federal spending on transportation, and many rail lines in the US are privately owned.
High speed trains are electric, and electricity can come from renewable resources or nuclear. They don't require much energy to keep rolling, and they can use regenerative braking (like many public transit lines already do.) You know all those commercials on NPR about how cheap it is to move freight by rail? They're RIGHT.
Airplanes generate enormous amounts of pollution, and they put it in the worst place possible. Remember how nice the weather was for several days after September 11th? Turns out we affected the weather pattern when all air traffic was halted:
http://articles.cnn.com/2002-08-07/tech/contrails.climate_1_contrails-cirrus-clouds-david-travis?_s=PM:TECH
Did I mention that airports require huge amounts of space, have to be located outside of cities instead of passing through them, and generate massive amounts of noise and pollution?
Meanwhile, if you stand 2-3 blocks away from a high speed line, all you hear is a whooshing noise.
Please help metamoderate.
The only problems are directly around SF and LA.
...which happen to be at either end of this little rail line.
Speakin' of which, given the ungodly size of both metro areas, how the hell are they going to avoid having to tack on at least another hour or two at each end just to negotiate the traffic, comply with speed and noise regulations, impositions tacked on by every burg that surrounds SanFran and LA, etc etc etc etc etc. ?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If we actually had $100B to spend on California transportation infrastructure we should
1) Improve the 7(!) airports between the Bay Area and LA.
2) Improve commuter rail as the previous poster suggested. Grade separated BART down the Caltrain tracks, BART to San Jose, Geary Ave Subway (and those are just the Bay Area projects).
The flights are quite fast at roughly an hour in the air, and there are few weather delays. The local rail projects would vastly improve the commutes of many and make it enjoyable to be car-free in may parts of the Bay Area.
You have your cause and effect reversed.
Sounds like the health care bill. No one wants it, we can't fund it, small businesses will be severely impacted by it but the government wants to do it anyway.
Project Code Name: Pliskin?
The measure was sold to voters as requiring profitability of every segment before another was built. Basically, the whole endeavor is fraud.
to blow shit up.
Something tells me that the state government of California isn't particularly interested in building a railroad for Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Instead of this idiocy, spend a fraction of the money on upgrading the long, straight, boring sections of I-5 to support unlimited speeds, as on Germany's Autobahns. Wouldn't be a bad idea to upgrade the San Francisco area's infamous Bay Area Drivers, too.
Except for extremely busy corridors, trains make little environmental or economic sense. I frankly doubt that this is a sensible way of spending the money for California. And while one might say that it will stimulate the economy, building something more useful will stimuate the economy even more. And this system will probably be in need of tax payer support indefinitely.
On the other hand, trains are actually a really nice way to travel, so in that sense I hope they will be building it.
Don't travel at all. It's the cheapest and pollutes the least.
And since you mention European passenger rail systems, they are increasingly in trouble as well.
In 20 years, we'll probably have self-driving cars, and we'll be wondering why we wasted that much money on rail.
Id much rather see my state invest in energy programs than this rail system. Or improve the roads. Or maybe fund charging stations for electric cars and trucks. Or fund stations for filling hydrogen powered cars.
But a train? No. Not a good use of money I think.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Good idea but given the recent track records of American projects, this is going to end up being another pork barrel disaster (hope not, but the record is not good).
Yes, Japan has a high speed rail system. But they built it before the 1964 Olympics! They aren't trying to build it right now in 2011 when the whole country is filled in the way it is now (and the way California is in many spots).
We already have Federal subsidies orders of magnitude larger for trains as compared to air. If trains can't compete with literally 40 times the subsidies to air travel, then the solution isn't to tax air travel more - it's to made train travel much more efficient.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
HSR is great, but our biggest need right now is within our cities, not between them. LA's economic growth has hit a ceiling determined by how many cars we can physically fit there, not how many people we can move between LA and San Francisco. Our state and national economies would benefit a lot more if just a tenth of CA HSR's price was spent on transit within Los Angeles.
Let's run the Red Line out to Santa Monica, and get rid of that gridlock on the I-10. Let it turn left at the coast, and run right into LAX. While we're at it, let's run the Green Line all the way into LAX, instead of stopping a mile or two short! Let's finish the Gold Line to Pasadena and beyond. How about a new line down the 405, connecting West LA to Orange County?
While we're talking about Orange County, how about connecting our major employment centers and points of interest with the Metrolink trains? UC Irvine, Newport Center, Anaheim Stadium, Disneyland, UCI Medical Center, airport business district -- all nowhere near a train station, with no buses to make that connection. How about bike-ped connections? We just spent hundreds of millions on a new terminal at John Wayne airport. Two major hotels and a major business district are right across the street, yet YOU CAN'T WALK THE 200 YARDS TO GET THERE.
HSR to Las Vegas? Have you ever driven through Las Vegas -- a city of nearly 2 million people -- at rush hour? Forget HSR from Orange County -- how about expanding the monorail down both sides of the strip, and to the airport? Why not loop in the old downtown too? Rental car and cab companies wouldn't like it, but it would save billions in continual highway upgrades.
Let's work on moving people -- not just cars -- for the trips they make every day; not just the occasional, inter-city ones.
Here's a fun fact: Amtrak's funding is less than 1% of federal spending on transportation, and many rail lines in the US are privately owned.
Here's an even more fun fact: passenger rail subsidies are 40 TIMES that of commercial aviation subsidies, on a per-passenger-mile basis. We pay a LOT of money to move people by train, compared to moving people via airplanes...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
A tenth of a trillion dollars to build this?!? A round trip flight from LA to SF costs about $100, which means you could provide just under one billion round trip flights between LA and SF for the same price (and reduce travel time to 1.5 hours).
Let's say for the sake of argument (and because I don't know the real figure) there are 10,000 people who travel between LA and SF each day. For that same tenth of a trillion, you could fly each of these people return, every day of the year, for almost 274 years.
Like all things managed by government, the economics come from bizarro land. It's like reading articles that a government is "investing" $300,000,000 in order to fulfil "short term housing needs" by providing 1,500 "permanent beds" for homeless people - make you wonder why they don't just give these 1,500 people $200,000 each (except that $290,000,000 ends up spent on the bureaucracy to "support" the exercise).
The state of California is populated with a bunch of morons who keep trying to vote themselves unicorns and rainbows and the idiots in Sacramento don't have the balls to actually do their jobs so the budget never gets balanced and the taxes keep going up. California has the highest overall taxes in the entire country. One of the highest state income taxes (about 9%), one of the highest sales taxes (about 8%), one of the highest corporate taxes (about 9%), and excessive fees for just about everything. Because so much money is predestined for someone's pet project (because of stupid ballot initiatives), there will NEVER be enough money to pay for the necessities. The train is just par for the course. The initial track will connect two places that no one in their right mind ever wants to go to, and the remainder will probably not be built in our lifetime.
I was born and raised in California. I'm still here because I'm a tech worker and this is where most of the tech jobs are concentrated. I've watched my state get shoved into the waste bucket by the people who live here and am sick of this shit. For years I've lived by a simple rule when it comes to the ballot. I vote no for anything that forcibly allocates money. No exceptions. I also vote no on all bond measures as I do not believe it is moral to pass the big fucking bill to our children. I also vote no on all tax increases because we're already paying too much (see above).
-- Will program for bandwidth
As it happens, my cousin Vinny is looking to branch out into the rail industry.
That takes costs, and divides by passenger mile. The primary usage of trains in the US is freight
Have ou ALREADY forgotten the topic under discussion is high-speed rail which is targeted primarily at PASSENGERS?
Someone is being deceptive for sure, only it's not who you were responding to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Each airplane "ride" has this annoying process called "boarding and deplaning". It's the whole reason why you have to show up 1 hour early to the airport, and while your flight arrives at maybe 2pm, it still takes you 30 minutes to be on your way out of the airport.
Easily solved via a "Clear" style pre-screening for any regular passengers, not to mention lowering screening standards for smaller planes.
"There is no viable HSR system" is obviously not the case when the rest of the world continues to expand passenger rail services
Hidden far away are the VAST subsidies they enjoy in the EU. Within even a year I really doubt you will be seeing a lot of rail expansion continuing as it cannot support itself - even in the denser EU countries.
Air travel makes WAY more sense because it can get more people to more places. Those little towns that want a train, spend a tiny bit of the money you would have spent on TrainDoggle to build out regional airports and subsidize small plane taxis to those places.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Much of the proposed funding is federal stimulus money.
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Our local government built an "intermodal" center recently. It cost $16.1 million. $11 million came from federal stimulus package money, about $4.5 million came from state government, and remainder was paid for by local government. The federal money came from the Inter-Modal Surface Transportation Enhancement Act.
The project damaged 5 adjacent properties, including the city's oldest business, which was forced to close from the damages.
The project was intended to provide both train and bus transportation. The local railroad was supposed to roll in during the ribbon cutting ceremony. $16.1 million later, there are no train tracks even running to the station, and there never will be. The tiny local bus transportation company moved it's operations to the center. So now we have a grandiose 16 million dollar empty bus station for an existing bus company. There is no train. There are no new consumers flocking here to spend money at local businesses. It was a complete failure, and a complete waste.
Why did they do it? It was stimulus money = find somewhere to spend it or lose it. So, a few lucky contractors made a fortune. A few folks were temporarily employed.
... 25 years in fighting off all the complaints from various parties.
5 years in actual construction work.
Stupid godamned fucking sacks of pig shit.
This is your fault, you fucking asswipe progressives.
I wish there really was some sort of hell for you dograping, government cock sucking filth.
go to Japan, test it on the line Tokyo-Osaka-Kyushu. The lines have to be chosen carefully, but if you connect megacities with it, then it can be a major economic factor. 100 billion dollar may sound a lot, but it actually isnt. it its operated over 30 years, then this is $8 million per day which you have to get in or subsidise. If you hav 500000 people per day using it, then thats $20 per ticket. 500000 Is the number of people riding per day on the Tokaido Shinkansen. $20 means (at my current rate) that the train has to save me 15 Minutes of my time. And hell, yeah, it did that when i liven in Japan. Going to the next airport (always outside the city), onto a previously booked ticket, waiting for a delayed flight with unreasonable security waiting lines, to the destination city and then have restriction when to travel back was a lot more troublesome than just stumbling into the train station whenever i want, catch a train withing the next 20 minutes without booking before, going many times close to the city center, and returning whenever i wanted.
The economic meaning of the shinkansen for the cities between is incredible. Cities which would otherwise suffer a never-ending drain of companies and young people into the two megacity area are sustainable *only* because of a shinkansen stop nearby.
Yes, but if Washington and Oregon were to submit a proposal such as you describe, wouldn't it have gotten those same stimulus money?
This doesn't make sense. A rider arriving in LA is going to need a car when they get off the train, unless they fancy spending a lot of time waiting for on Metro (formerly known as the RTD - Rough, Tough, and Dangerous.) Total boondoggle.
That also means that all flights between SF and LA don't make any sense because any airplane traveler arriving in LA is going to need a car when they get off the train, unless they fancy spending a lot of time waiting for on Metro (formerly known as the RTD - Rough, Tough, and Dangerous.) Total boondoggle.
Sacramento is populated by absolute psychopaths. The various power lobbies have hooked up IV tubes full of money to the politician's arms. They don't *care* if this shittrain to fuckheadville is practical or not. Practicality and reason are so far off the radar for these criminal scum they might as well be on the moon. We need to just wall off Sacramento. Isolate it and excise it like a cancer tumor.
Populations of Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver are less than Los Angeles alone-- almost less than San Francisco metro area.
For California, the rail project could make living in godforsaken places like Fresno or Bakersfield viable for more people, reducing stress on other major metropolitan areas and encouraging economic growth.
Specific to Los Angeles, they need to expand Metro and create more local transportation hubs. This is independent of any inter-urban transportation projects. Maybe things like zip cars can form a bridge if nothing else is done in 30 years, but one doesn't stop the other.
Barrier at some point where people travelling by foot will be searched or asked "Pappier bitte".
Maybe in the time it takes them to build the railroad L.A. can build a functional public transit system.
Or, you know, they could just have rental car agencies at the train station. I realize that this is a novel idea that no other form of intercity transit has tried, but I bet it would work.
Airports are surrounded by vast parking lots and rental car facilities. LA Union Station, not so much. Anyhow, if you're going to deal with the hassle of car hire, might as well fly.
I say this as a Californian: No train will ever transform Fresno or Bakersfield into non-shitholes.
The first continental railway wasn't going 300 miles per hour. Basically, anywhere they could put tracks at an inclination that was feasible for the locomotives to haul carriages over, was good enough. Now try making tracks that won't bump a train off at 300 mp/h. You need a lot more precision for that. That's why it will take longer to build. Sure, you can accelerate that by adding more monkeys to the equation, but the amount of extra money that would take, would make the project even more expensive. You can't just hire anyone to lay tracks for this kind of thing, so "cheap foreign labor" used for the first continental isn't going to solve this. In fact, you'll be needing expensive foreign labor for it as it is now, because if you were to use only US nationals, you wouldn't have enough qualified people to do it in the 20 years that are planned for it as it is.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Probably, but it would never go down that way.
This is the Pacific Northwest you're talking about - the plan they submitted and got federal money for (to the tune of about $780 million) is to marginally increase the speeds on the existing line, shaving 45 minutes to an hour off a 3.5 hour trip by 2023. (Not kidding, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest_Corridor)
Way to shoot for the moon, guys.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
You know, cabs exist as well. You don't absolutely need your own car. Also, a rental will work just fine for people spending more than a business day visiting just one or a few customers. You'd still save time, money and environment by using this train, as opposed to driving up there yourself. By your logic, the airport would be just as useless as a train station.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
You are forgetting cab fair from and to the airports. That's four cab rides, more than double the amount you're spending on the plane ticket. Also, what makes you think that air fare will will still be that cheap in the years to come?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
It's been shown otherwise for over half a century in Japan and France.
Unions?
Ah, I get it - satire! You are obviously pretending to be a clueless reactionary now that I take a closer look. You really had me going there for a while and I thought you really were that stupid. Well done.
According to census.gov 2000 population was 33,871,648 and 2010 population was 37,253,956.
So, doing an estimate for 2030 is rather easy. P2030 = P2010((P2010/P2000)^2) = 45,065,536
But, your point is still valid. Just wanted to add some numbers to your argument, it looked better that way.
And for those who refute the growth, since when has mankind solved problems with overpopulation with moving from an area in such a large extent that the population has decreased?
Otherwise the money to build it has been misallocated and would have been better used elsewhere. For the children etc.
Deleted
You realize this isn't going directly to the heart of the city right..This will connect most likely at the end of the BART line in San Fran and North LA above the city. No where near the fault lines. And why haven't we had these problems with Amtrack or freight trains..
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
HSR is an investment to the post peak oil future. When Jet A1 fuel costs $5 per liter only the extremely wealthy can afford to travel by air. I hope you Americans are not counting on that, everybody is rich in future? :) Meanwhile the others (and you!) are landlocked either to low speed electric-hybrid cars or low speed trains, that is if you don't start building HSR now . The question here is that do you Americans want to continue your lifestyle of affordable travel after the fossil fuels are out of question, or do you want to isolate yourselves and remove the last of your competitive features: affordable movement of people and goods?
But then again - "Americans, yes they are that stupid".
What would happen if USA neglects building heterogeneous transport networks and stays on the current trend of fossil fuel automobiles and planes? It is not the end of the world after the oil gets too expensive for transportation. If only you can keep the agriculture running you will not starve and private enterprises will built HSR and electric induction roads very fast. The bad thing is that at that time the rest of the world have those and you are late, so very late that I am afraid someone else has the technological and political leadership in this world. As a North European I wouldn't like to see that happen. America(USA) means a lot to me and I want see you leading the world in the future too.
The FUD label applies neither to the GP nor to the fact that your brain can't handle sarcasm.
this is a money sink program that will make some connected people richer and it will create worthless jobs, like any make shift jobs program, it will not benefit the economy in any way.
Creating work for the sake of work does not benefit the economy, these jobs don't produce anything of value to trade with for with those, who trade with you. Any project like this only makes sense when the economy needs it and then the private forces must step in and do it and if they don't, it means the economy does not need this.
Of-course this breaks down when the wrong alternatives are subsidized by the government intervention (roads, cars, bank loans, various insurance frauds perpetrated by the government, all of the moral hazards).
The government destroys the incentives for the market to search for profitable ways to go forward by providing large amounts of "free" money to various preferred monopolies, and this does end up destroying the economy.
What I am saying is that this is a WRONG WAY TO GO - have government do any project like this. What I am saying is that the New Deal stuff was the WRONG WAY TO GO.
It only worsens the depression, doesn't solve anything, creates work but no real economic value and misplaces the capital, land and labor into unproductive part of the economy.
You can't handle the truth.
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how the hell are they going to avoid having to tack on at least another hour or two at each end just to negotiate the traffic, comply with speed and noise regulations
Probably the exact same way that high-speed rail in Europe has managed to solve the exact same problem. There's already train stations in SF and LA, so the new high speed rail will likely connect with the existing tracks and the trains will just slow down at that point.
I haven't seen the plans, but: Tunnel?
Around here the trains go underground when they reach the city.
No sig today...
san fran if all those jerk wads from LA head north :-( sadface for real !
They should just use prison labor for fuck's sake. Chain gangs have worked for centuries, too many sissies in this country get upset when prisoners aren't treated like kings with their air conditioned rooms and cable TV. Put the damn prisoners to work, it will be done in one tenth of the time at one tenth of the cost. Prison system in this country costs too much to run, this would finally make the damn thing pay for itself. This country finally might be able to catch up with the progress seen in China and India.
Any public works project that's scheduled to take over a decade is pretty much doomed. There might be rare exceptions, but on the whole this is a bad plan, especially if your starting point is $100 billion and a bit over 20 years. Just think how many different governors, senators, local politicians, employed officials, etc the state will go through in that much time. Every one of them will have his own personal chance to screw this up and cause additional time delays or costs, even if it's just through negligence. Then there's the winds of political change over 20 years: how many of those same people will decide to oppose this on political/budget grounds during all of that time and again, delay or cancel it? Oh and the people? The whims of the voters will change drastically. How many ballot propositions to axe the project can it withstand over 20 years?
Of course even if all of that weren't a factor, any 20y 100b government project is bound to overrun to 30y and 300b by the end of it all. And on 20-30 year timeframes, it's hopeless to try to estimate the benefits of the train. Maybe in 30 years this sort of bullet train will be completely outmoded by AI-driven hyper-energy-efficient 600mph personal flying machines. Who knows.
Yes, it is the LARGE POPULATION, and the subsequent high utilization, that makes high speed rail worth building in the first place. With California's population approaching that of the Northeastern corridor, high speed rail will become viable for California, as it is for the Northeastern United States.
Zealous HSR advocates, like Biden, would like to reach 80 percent of the US population, which is quite nutty.
The LA model of freeway car based suburban sprawl has it's days numbered. The credit crunch and real estate crisis has put a stop to urban sprawl already, and high oil prices make it unlikely to take off again. So the only way to grow the working populations of cities like LA in the future will be to have higher density housing built within them, not by ever expanding free-ways and exurbs. This high density living will make it easier to couple with an increase in public transport provision, which will help to counter high oil prices. In the end the model of a large american city in the future will be New York high density living with public transport, and not LA with the low density sprawl and free-way car model. The later being the favoured model of urban development in america for the last 70 odd years.
LA will survive but will have to be reshaped drastically. Other sun-belt cities based on continual suburban sprawl in the south and south-west will decline economically due to the lack of real industries past "warm place to retire" and no hope of reshaping the city into something that can work when car transportation costs to much for normal individuals because of a lack of a real economy to fund and drive it.
Texas (Downtown Dallas) wouldn't let me do this but LA might. Start a business renting small electric vehicles (golf cart style) to people getting off the train.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Time savings? Probably not.
First, you have to drive to the terminal and park. Figure its probably 30 minute drive. Next, you probably ought to be there 15 minutes in advance of the scheduled departure time to get your bags checked, and then it takes you 2 hrs 38 minutes to get there. Fine. Then, you have to wait for your bags to be retrieved, which at airports is usually 30 - 45 minutes. Then, you have to go rent a car, which is about another 30 minutes, including walking or busing to the car. Then you have to drive to your actual destination, probably on average another 30 minutes from the terminal. Almost 5 hours to make the train trip with all the delays involved with scheduled service, as opposed to being on course for your final destination as soon as you leave your driveway. And of course the price of driving is the gasoline, as opposed to downtown parking rates associated with rail terminals downtown in order to leave your car, and then rental car rates on the other end in order to get where you're ultimately going. Plus, of course, there's the train fare itself.
So, how many people are going to pay all that money to save maybe 1 - 2 hours? Probably not many.
I'm surprised no one brought it up but the comfort level of a west european train ride is amazing. You get leg room, you get a tabletop in front of you that is nothing like the plastic pos on a plane. You can walk about, visit the toilet and go get a meal whenever you feel like it. You get plugs and often internet for your laptops. If it's an overnight ride you can get a sleeper. A well organized train ride basically means the travel time is not wasted at all, in some sense rendering the journey free as in time. You actually can continue living on the train, with rest, food and work available. How does that compare to being stuffed in economy class or wasting away behind a wheel?
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
Here's a fun fact: Amtrak's funding is less than 1% of federal spending on transportation, and many rail lines in the US are privately owned.
Amtrak also accounts for less than 0.1% of passenger miles traveled in the United States.
Taking all bets! Will this train ever be finished? Or will it lie incomplete after California defaults and has to pay 38% on the bonds to resume construction. Don't get me wrong, I like the use of trains, but how can they afford this given all their other problems?
Liberalism on display.
Did I do something wrong, or is not 98 billion dollars divided by 520 miles 188.461528 million dollars per mile? I mean, really? REALLY? Holy cow...
I think the idea that LA is going to maintain its current sprawling vehicle-centric layout past, say, 2040 is a pipe dream.
Who's going to pay for the fuel?
This fucking place has really gone downhill. It's like the Huffington Post, except more arrogant.
You realize this isn't going directly to the heart of the city right..This will connect most likely at the end of the BART line in San Fran and North LA above the city. No where near the fault lines. And why haven't we had these problems with Amtrack or freight trains..
That sort of destroys the point of even building a high speed rail link. At least LAX and SFO are pretty close to the urban centers of the respective cities.
As for Amtrack and the freight trains, those go right into the urban centers even closer than the airports. CalTran has a stop that is right next to the stadium that the Giants play at and is in walking distance to Fisherman's Wharf (sort of... a bit of a walk but not too bad). Amtrack goes into the heart of Oakland just on the other side of the bay. Then again that Amtrack line was put in over a century ago when the population of the Bay Area was significantly less and mostly farmland.
Stop this development. This train will only make sense ten years into the future if not even later By then who knows what the world would look like. I mean, I'm 33 years old, in ten years I'll be, erh, ehh... like a lot older. We can wait and build it then. No need to do it today.
>>Yes, because of course the government hasn't subsidized the airline industry and airport infrastructure for 75 years...
And we pay 50c/gallon for gas and $20 per airline ticket, too, in usage fees, which cover a great deal of the costs of these types of infrastructure. Don't try to pretend otherwise.
>>High speed trains are electric, and electricity can come from renewable resources or nuclear.
Here in California? We already have an overburdened electrical grid, and a moratorium on new nuclear plants. (With plans to shut down our existing plants, because our legislature is fucking nuts.)
About half our production is from Natural Gas (53% http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html) a couple points are from coal, the rest from green sources (16% nuclear, 16% hydro being the main two).
>>Turns out we affected the weather pattern when all air traffic was halted:
Sure, but it's possible linear contrails actually add a net cooling effect (it's disputed).
I have traveled from New York City to Washington DC, Providence, RI and Vermont by Amtrak regular speed trains. Those rides were a great pleasure even though going to Vermont, the train sometimes goes 25 mph due to defered track maintenance. Air travel has become an ordeal due to TSA, the almost unavoidable 2-airplane system and flights canceled due to one empty seat. Then there are charges for carrying a suitcase . . . Trains can take one downtown, sometimes in walking distance of one's destination. Driving, while it affords some freedom, requires hours of attention to traffic, frequent stop-and-go conditions and finding a place to put the car at journey's end. Environmentally, trains can be powered by wind and solar. I hope we, in the USA, can grow an enlightened relationship to train travel.
Didn't we do this whole thing over 100 years ago?
And for 98 billion as a 'stimulus' - why not just drop bags of $20 bills from a helicopter? It has the same effect and less bureaucracy.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I would get too excited by this news; I have to assume that it is just a scam to score some Federal bucks and will never see the light of day. There is nothing that local governments like better than pointless construction contracts for well-connected contractors.
Hmm, SuperBus could do this in about the same time: http://superbusproject.com/
From the site:
Superbus was shown on Daily Planet of Discovery Channel. You can find the show on http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/#clip555332 The Superbus feature starts at 7 min 20 sec.
San Fran doesn't have a problem, they're going to follow the existing rail lines and upgrade them. In some places they'll be tunneling to avoid existing traffic crossings. Not sure what they're planning for LA, but probably similar. There's a significant amount of low-speed rail in LA for shipping.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Just call it the John Galt line.
Man, I remember the last time I was on a train and got stopped by a red light. That was a real bitch.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
You're not thinking fourth dimensionally Marty! By 2033, the progress with self driving car and other services will have advanced beyond what we have now, so who knows what the situation will be.
Stupid... cost is high, value is minimal, chances of it being maintainable are negative.... How about spending a few billion giving Los Angeles a decent subway system to cut down on smog and traffic? Or spending the money on better water treatment facilities to keep our oceans clean? Or just saving the money since both state and federal debt is out of control? *sigh* Thank goodness we have "stimulus" programs like this.... NOT.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
If modern construction machinery is less efficient and effective than forced labour, then whoever designed such shoddy machinery should be the first in line to receive a shovel.
Never mind the construction time what I would like to know is how a 520 mph train manages to have a travel time only half that of a car which implies an average speed no more than 25% of its maximum. Either there are a ridiculous number of stops, the train's acceleration is incredibly low or someone got their numbers wrong.
By 2033 when this thing is SUPPOSED to be done, which will likely turn out to really be 2040, the self-driving car will have become a reality, the freeways will be exclusively for self-driving cars, and their speed limits will have been removed. A self-driving car will carry you at maybe 120 - 150 mph with an electric motor and a battery, and will leave your house with your bags packed in the trunk, where they will be when you get where you're going. You won't have to go to downtown LA or SF if you don't want to, and if you do, you won't have to worry about the traffic. The highways will be 2X - 3X as efficient as they are now because computer-controlled cars will be able to tailgate a few feet apart with perfect safety, and run at the aforementioned high speeds. By 2033 - 2040 all our new electric will likely be solar or geothermal, so transport by battery-car will be 0% pollution. We'll get door-to-door by car as fast as this bullet train, and OBTW the self-driving car will be available 24/7/365, while I'm betting the bullet trains will be all closed if you want to get to LA for sunrise services on Christmas day with your Mom at whatever time sunrise occurs on Dec. 25 in LA.
Cars are always going to win the desirability award in the USofA when it comes to transportation, so the sooner that realization hits home, the sooner people can start planning the ROAD SYSTEM to take care of future generations.
I keep hearing that "we just don't have the money to fund education, the students have to bear some burden"; here my legislature is ready to fund a rail project mainly for the sake of creating (shovel) jobs, instead of increasing access to and the quality of education so that more people in the state have the resources to create jobs themselves through their business and innovation.
Then I read that these "leaders" have no idea where the money's going to come from, but they're hoping we'll be generally more prosperous later, in a state that spends more on prisons than it does on higher education.
"At least LAX and SFO are pretty close to the urban centers of the respective cities."
SFO is the second-to-last stop on that side of the BART. If by "end of the BART line" the poster means Millbrae, that's a very short ride from SFO. Millbrae is also a Caltrain station.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
(this text is to bypass slashdot's lameness filter)
Allowing private cars to be driven onto a rail system such as this would be much more useful, as long as the individual railcars were handled individually like a personal rapid transit, so people could get on and off at numerous rail stations and the train would not have to slow down at all when they did it. That would mean if such a train ran at 100 mph, it would make a 520 mile run in 5 hours and 12 minutes, but messing around parking, walking to the train, checking baggage, waiting for baggage claim, and renting a car at the destination would be eliminated. You could sit in your car for the trip, elect to stop anywhere along the line at a whim, pack all your bags in the car trunk and they will be there when you arrive. The expense of parking at the departure station and car rental or taxi fare at the end point will be eliminated. If you are a workman driving a van full of tools and, say, replacement auto windshields, you can still use the rail transport. What's needed is a switch to remove a single railcar individually without slowing down the train, and I know how to build that. The whole thing would be electric, and even if you drove a '60's muscle car with triple carburetors, or 454 cubic inches, or a model T, etc. it would be a zero emissions vehicle for the duration of the trip. At 100 mph average, you could go coast to coast in about a day and a half, again emitting zero pollutants if the system is solar powered.
If I had a mod point, it would be yours.
I dream of autonomous cars.
1. Reintroduce carrying out acts of violence against land owners who won't sell their land to you at a price you the train company finds acceptable 2. Reintroduce brutal working conditions and very low wages for workers 3. Repeal all health and safety legislation introduced since the last hundred years (so no safety glasses, ear protectors, safety lamps for workers, handle dynamite for blasting without safety gear, don't provide any medical help for injured workers past 19th century style medicine and first aid
I think that will help you get closer. Now, would you like to sign up as one of the labourers for building this line?
People can pontificate about the efficiency of trains, but the reality is people love their cars. Particularly Americans, especially in California. We love them because we wanna go where we want to go, when we want to go there. And we don't want to wait on other people. Moreover, carpooling and their allocated carpool lanes are a waste because most people are going to different locations.
So how do we square this reality with some kind of innovation that solves the problem of congestion and improve efficiency?
If I were president or governor, I would re-purpose the carpool lanes for autonomous vehicles to something seen in the highway exchange system in the film Minority Report. Essentially, when you arrive at a highway onramp your car switches into autonomous mode and you are whisked into the designated lane with perfect precision. The lane would be packed tightly and at a constant rate of speed. Some further problem solving would be required to make it all work, but overall this would balance the reality of people who will always love their cars, and provide a more efficient transportation network. Over time I would designate more highway lanes for autonomous traffic.
That also means that all flights between SF and LA don't make any sense because any airplane traveler arriving in LA is going to need a car when they get off the train,
Flying trains indeed.
Milbrae BART only runs to SFO after 7pm. Before that, you transfer Caltrain -> BART north to San Bruno, then transfer again BART south to SFO. If they can't even get that right, how the heck will they manage high speed rail?
I hate to say this. I really do. But it needs to be said:
"Woosh"
Round trip New York / Boston on the Acela Express (Amtrak's high-speed rail) is $198. Round trip from San Jose to San Francisco on Caltrain is $17.50. At that rate per mile, SFO to LAX would cost about $190. SFO to LAX by air on Southwest is $59.
The reason why it costs so much must be because they plan on inventing and creating the technology as well.
Why not re-use a proven design? Oh noes, they're either French or Japanese!
Even with HSR the only city commutable from Fresno or Bakersfield is LA, which is also a god forsaken shit hole.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
not.gonna.happen.
You fail to mention that the cost of building, expanding, and maintaining airports and now the TSA are not put into you cost equation.
cutting the trip from a six-hour drive to a train ride of two hours and 38 minutes.
...and it's still longer than the one hour flight. And at a cost of $98 Billion, you would be better off just using that money to pay for the airfares of everyone flying from SF to LA. And that assumes that it will actually still cost 98b by the time this thing is done.
Here's an even more fun fact: passenger rail subsidies are 40 TIMES that of commercial aviation subsidies, on a per-passenger-mile basis. We pay a LOT of money to move people by train, compared to moving people via airplanes...
Which is easy to understand as you don't really have train passengers. Quick googling gives me 30 million train passengers a year, against 750 million airline passengers. After a bit more googling, I got the train passengers for Finland: Around 60 million train passengers a year. When you don't have an infrastructure you won't have users either and it will be more expensive. Considering the energy cost of moving stuff through air, I'm pretty sure that you are paying a LOT of money by moving people via airplanes.. (And yes, I realize that United States is huge. But apparently you somehow manage to create roads between the cities, the rails aren't all that much more difficult)
It is what it is.
The key point of your statistic is "per-passenger-mile". It's high for Amtrak because there are fewer passengers for Amtrak. Why? Because Amtrak generally sucks! If rail travel in the US wasn't so utterly miserable to start with, I think more passengers would opt for it and the cost would come down accordingly. To get a sense of how much of an effect that has, look at the difference in number between Commercial Aviation (3.03 in 2001), which is the category for a typical commercial airline, and General Aviation (89.72 in 2001) which is everything else (personal aircraft, charter, skydiving, etc). Also, Amtrak could probably offset it's costs a bit if it carried mail and freight, much like most of the commercial airlines. Passengers are expensive, and it's hard to make money if that is all you are doing.
Oh god, that reminded me of the recent update to the Portland area transit, the Westside Express Service.
The use of Federal funds meant that they had to buy trains from a American manufacturer, unlike the Candian and European trains used on the other local systems. The American trains suck, and the company went out of business after delivering the units to WES. Should have gone with Bombardier instead...
Also, they mandated use of an annoyingly loud horn throughout its travel, like a fucking freight train. This made those living near the tracks complain and limited the times the train can be used.
I suppose the Feds are part of why American rail fails.
Say... didn't we just see what happens when you build expensive devices upon which human lives depend in an earthquake zone?
And kiddies... know what happens to really heavy trains full of people when they're going 520mph and the earth shakes like a pissed off hound dog? DEATH.
That's why they don't have trains in Japan. Oh, wait... they do. I guess they must have figured out a way to deal with it, eh?
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
It's easier to make LA or SF airports a step in going to distant cities. Trains are more suitable to short and mid-length trips. Fast trains are lily-gilding.
Faster trains from LA to San Diego make some sense. On the way, you can stop in Orange County for business or pleasure (Disneyland). The cities between LA and SF (Bakersfield, Fresno) are just not comparable.
Parking is typically abundant at airports (although in major cities, it's not cheap.) There's not much parking near the train stations in LA and San Diego.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Will they allow bicycles on this train? Here in Portland, the MAX train has hooks on which bicycles can be hung. Will this train have the same hooks? There was no mention of this in the article.
Most Respectfully Yours Mark Allyn Bellingham, Washington
they build it on the East side of the San Andreas fault. It'd be a bummer to build it and then watch it fall into the ocean.
Build that too. I'd love to go from Vancouver to TJ by train.
The rest is untrue. I take the Metro Red Line (Subway) to work every day, and its expansion to the Westside will be finished before this will. Add the flyaway bus to LAX, Rapid Busses, and taxis and there's no reason you couldn't arrive in LA without a car with less hassle than from the airport.
It's defeatist attitudes like this one that will help Europe and China to leapfrog America in standard of living and infrastructure.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
California should announce independence form USA IMHO. USA is a bankrupt.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
That's "net federal subsidy," which is expenditure minus tax income. What that graph is really telling you is that the federal government collects more money from the gasoline excise tax than it spends on highway funding.
Basically, that data is saying that the government is taking tax revenue from the gas tax and applying it towards air travel and rail. The government is still shoveling mountains of money into highways, they're just offsetting it with taxes. Saying they spend "40 times as much per passenger mile" on railways is disingenuous.
Look. America's getting it's first high speed train!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIcurjtKZLI&t=146
Just kidding! (or am I!)
... to enjoy your work?
what about costs of driving?
With one person, train/bus tickets are cheaper. with two, maybe.
driving would make more sense costwise if you can carpool, perhaps switch between drivers to alleviate fatigue
I can't drive anyway (don't have enough practice/experience)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I frequently fly from South Bay to LA. The flight is approx 1 hour. A 2 hour 38 minute train ride isn't going to be a convincing alternative unless it comes at a significantly lower cost ( think half or less ). However, from San Jose to LA I think the ride is significantly less than 2 hour 38 minutes and it is appealing. It's the travel within the population centers where the HSR fails. Taiwan's and Japan's HSR do not travel on the surface within major population centers - they are underground and thus can maintain their high speeds.
It's easier to make LA or SF airports a step in going to distant cities. Trains are more suitable to short and mid-length trips.
Given that going from Los Angeles or San Diego to San Francisco (or even Sacramento) is a mid-length trip, and that these are big population and economic centers, I'm glad you agree that this route is perfect for trains.
Fast trains are lily-gilding.
No. Fast trains make all the difference. Currently going from San Francisco to Los Angeles using regular trains takes a minimum of 9.5 hours which means an average speed of 40mph. Even taking into account just the portion actually traveled by train, from Emeryville to Bakersfield, the average speed is 44mph. Going by car is faster so it's no wonder nobody takes the train! What they propose is to reduce that to just 2.6 hours which becomes much faster than by car and that makes all the difference in the world.
Parking is typically abundant at airports (although in major cities, it's not cheap.) There's not much parking near the train stations in LA and San Diego.
Moving around in San Francisco, or even the Bay Area, is not that much of a problem thanks to the buses, CalTrain and light rail. In Los Angeles you could still take the bus, or a cab if you hate public transportation. Remember that unlike tourists who move around a lot, most business travelers just go to a single destination for their meetings and back, for which a cab is just fine (and if you have shuttles from the train station to Universal Studios or Disneyland, that will be quite enough for a lot of tourists too).
I cant see the states agreeing to the necessary standards if they all had their own mass transit toys. It would require federal regulation of a state matter (a state railway system) in order to crack it, and somehow I cant see that not being unconstitutional.
The new Gotthard was built for USD 10 bln, took 20 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
This is not a high speed rail system, this is a long term millionaire making boondoggle on the backs of the overburdened taxpayers. If they were serious they would do the obvious. The problem is NOT the speed of the existing amtrak trains, but the implementation. I suggest they take a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time, and use existing hardware updating existing rail lines to provide high speed trains from the Los Angeles hub.
Amtrak has a speed limit of 70mph, but a top safe speed of 125mph. We have existing rails to San Diego, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, which are all 1-3 hours by express train traveling 125mph. BUT with these express trains, you can have them operating at a slower speed immediately (not 10-20 years from now), operating hourly instead of daily, and have the operating cost offset by light freight (UPS, USPS, FEDEX).
The implementation is simple, take a fraction of the money, order trains for express service 5 trains for the SD to SF routes (use the coast and the inland routes is possible too), 5 trains for the LA to Vegas route, 2 trains for the LA to Phoenix route. Buy numerous Metrolink trains (medium rail 70mph max speed) for local service to feed the express service. In more desolate areas expand the railroad right of way using existing tracks as sidings as you bring new high speed (125mph) tracks online.
Then they should use the additional slush funds to build large secure parking structures at the train stations (free parking), build small rental car areas to make traveling by train user friendly and putting more trains on the track.
This will allow service to being within a year or two, allow offset to operating costs by adding freight cars (and decreasing trucks on the road), in the end this would be more effective then the uber expensive ego feeding "high speed" dinosaur funded.
why not lead the nation into getting out of them?
I live in Europe now, and I can say that personally speaking high speed trains are great.
Living in Paris, I can go to London or Brussels (and even Amsterdam if I get up early enough) for business meetings and be back for dinner without the hassles of air travel.
There are high speed trains all over Western Europe now, with more lines coming on line regularly. Any time that I can take a train I will, even if the train is an hour or two slower than a flight.
I can work on the train with decent cell and Internet coverage (except the 20 minutes under the English tunnel) and, on top of the relative convenience and work productivity, Eurostar and Thalys both claim some degree of carbon neutral travel.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Look out China the US railways are coming after you TheUSADebate.com