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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."
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.
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.
Is there a chance the track could bend?
The bond measure was never for $98 billion. It was for about $10 billion out of allegedly $40 billion. I do not know where you got your facts. Source: http://www.ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition_1A,_High-Speed_Rail_Act_(2008)
I'm Peggy.
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.
The bond, Prop 1A from 2008, approved roughly $8.5 billion to begin the project, with a total budget of $33 billion to be used if the project could be shown to be able to run without subsidies from the government. The most recent estimates, which still show a ludicrously high number of riders (between 60 and 90 million per year) show that the budget will need to be $98, which is roughly triple the $33 billion original allocated for the project.
The project is in no way feasible for a state as deep into the red as California. The *only* logical explanation of why this is still going through is to allow those already riding the $8.5 billion gravy train to keep it going for another $90 billion.
There's a reason there is no "Disagree" mod...
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.
In twenty years, California will have swollen to perhaps 50million people, many of them taking the I-5 or US101 route from LA to the Bay area. I-5 is pretty much clogged now: imagine what happens if you have to continue to resize Oakland, San Jose, SF, Burbank, LAX, John Wayne, Palm Springs, Sacramento, and all of the other regional airports to accommodate grown-- along with the freeways. Something's going to give. Invest now, and the infrastructure is there. Don't invest, and it's going to get uglier than it is now.... much uglier.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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.
It could have a little something with Californians voting on propositions to put caps on their taxes.
Seriously, it's like telling people who are filling out their tax returns, "Just pay whatever you want".
Of course, they still demand all the services.
Plus, Californians send a lot more money to Washington in Federal taxes than they get back. Somebody's got to pay for the "Texas Miracle" after all. All those government jobs Rick Perry created don't come free.
You are welcome on my lawn.
California is a walking bankruptcy, and they are doing this? To what? Help people leave as fast as possible?
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.
Both Texas and California send more money to the federal government than they get back; what Miracle are you speaking of?
moox. for a new generation.
As someone who just moved to California for a tech job, I am getting a kick out of your reply. I don't know why I'd want to leave, unless I didn't want to be employed.
Amen.
before I was forced to retire due to ALS I had need to go down to a remote office in LA multiple times per month from the SF Bay area. Airplanes are quick once you leave the ground but the absolute living hell that is air travel made me dread the trip. Having a fast train is something I dreamed about since the month I spent in Europe on business. Totally stress-free "commute". Tie the fast line into municipal light rail like the widely used BART and San Jose light rail and you have a very successful merger of two huge metropolitan economies.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
As a proud native Californian, I say get the fuck out. You probably took that job from a Californian because you are cheap, and now you're just one of those inbred, cornfed assholes driving up the property costs.
U.S. out of California!
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.
Did you expand your analysis to the energy/pollution savings? And how does the cost/benefit stacks up against other ways to reduce energy consumption or pollution.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
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?"
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
As a proud native Californian, I say get the fuck out. You probably took that job from a Californian because you are cheap, and now you're just one of those inbred, cornfed assholes driving up the property costs. ... or, as the rest of the country says, "Welcome!"
As a Californian transplant, I say you should get the fuck out. You haven't done a fucking thing with this place in decades. Make way for those of us that will, you lazy asshole.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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.
Since when were transportation systems supposed to break even? Did you include all the money saved by:
Only then can you measure its true value to taxpayers.
I like airplanes. I really do. Someday I'll fly one myself. But beyond that, air travel has it's own set of problems. 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. And that's all IF things go smoothly. Chances are a bag gets lost, somebody holds up the security line, etc.
No matter how hard you try, you can't argue against that. A transfer in a large sized airport will need at least 1 hour to make it assuming things go well. But usually you plan on a 2 hours between transfer just incase you're delayed for whatever reason. It doesn't matter where you are, this seems to be the norm all over the world for air passenger travel.
A train transfer on the other hand can be as short as however fast you can run to the next train. There's also none of that take-off and landing stuff. You can even line up outside the door as the train comes to a stop. A ticket purchase can also be made minutes before the actual departure. It is quite a trip to see a good working train system in action. I recommend it. We don't have much of it here in the states.
Now on the to the cost. There are certainly a lot of dumb reasons why the California HSR project is getting inflated. It basically boils down to two groups that I'll call "Not in my backyards (NIMBY)" and "Please in my backyard". The first is easy to explain, but it is mainly rich people and people like yourself that think the project is useless. So these people band together to prevent any meaningful progress happen. I'd say their strategy is akin to that of the GOP's strategy in congress (whine as much as possible so that nothing gets done). Rich people obviously don't want the project because it will change their communities along the proposed track lines. People like yourself don't want it because you don't think it is economical.
The strange thing is the farmers and small towns along the valley DO want the train. In many studies when HSR is built, small towns that get a trains stop actually see population and economic growth due to more people having access to the town. So this becomes a lot of bickering and whining for stations, some which may not even be worth the hassle in the initial segment.
Finally there's a lot of freight companies and FRA standards that make absolutely no sense. Not only does this affect HSR, but it also affects local passenger rail services. Our passenger rail trains are generally overweight due to "safety" rules enforced by the FRA on minimum weight.
So if you combine all of those factors, what we have is a lot of unnecessary needs to address factors just so that everyone in their municipality or interest can benefit. That means unnecessary tunneling where it is perfectly viable to be at grade. Unnecessary extra tracks. Unnecessary stations. Unnecessary train specifications.
But of course people like you have to make this political, make it black-and-white. "There is no viable HSR system" is obviously not the case when the rest of the world continues to expand passenger rail services. This project is obviously overweight, I agree with that, but let's at least understand what's wrong rather than fill it up with logical fallacies. It's quite obvious that's how many things are working out in this country. Everyone seems more interested in throwing up own straw-men rather than working together to do what's reasonable.
Fun observation, the interstate highway system is probably the most expensive public works project in history. Should that have been considered a boondoggle? From wikipedia: "The initial cost estimate for the system was $25 billion over 12 years; it ended up costing $114 billion (adjusted for inflation, $425 billion in 2006 dollars) and took 35 years."
If I had to run the project I'd certainly look at implementing a shorter initial segment with less oppositio
Exactly, California all by itself is the 8th most productive economy in the world..
California suffers from 2 things, the money that goes out through taxes to help the other 49 states (shouldn't someone scream communism ? ^_^), and stupid voters that want to pay less taxes all the while keeping the level of public services intact.
The first one can't be fixed short of a new civil war, the second problem on the other hand can be fixed. There just is no political will to do it.
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.
Various reasons - energy efficiency, trains are more likely to be able to go _right where you want to be_ rather than some flat spot 30 miles out of town, etc. And if we assume that one more transport-class airport would have to be built, that's more land area than the entire rail system required. (Case in point - Dallas/Fort Worth Airport is, IIRC, more acreage than a four-lane freeway from Dallas to Washington DC. Same with the big one in Montreal.) Also trains are more comfortable by at least an order of magnitude.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
"A Nation Derailed", Lewis McCrary
The above quote was written by a conservative arguing for rail. Your "Damn those liberals and their lying propaganda!" line is, I'm afraid, very often accurate. It is sad that so many on the right are so ready to defend the federal highway systems and automobiles against all other alternatives. Certainly, there are many things to recommend cars and good highways, but currently the funding of these systems is a subsidy for corporations who rely on externalizing the cost (on taxpayers) of long distance transportation, e.g. Wal-Mart, to the detriment of local businesses and small competitors. I call this sad because conservatives, and on this account I will accept the appellation myself, claim to favor traditional patterns of life and to be skeptical of the kind of federal subsidies which support business models which might otherwise fail. The loss of rail and the rise of cars was a blow to small town civic life. Thereafter, the bypass ("It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses!") and the big box stores, always by externalizing their costs and frequently with the help of imminent domain laws, further eroded civic life and economy.
No kiddin. They *still* haven't finished that bridge over Eastwood Ravine. Maybe by 2015.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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
... 25 years in fighting off all the complaints from various parties.
5 years in actual construction work.
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.
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.
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.
You are correct... The Prop 1A only accounted for California's contribution. The $98-99 billion represent the "new" projection for the TOTAL project. The original $37-40 billion price tag was based upon the CHSRA original 2005 cost projections. It took pressure from the California legislature demanding new cost projections to force the CHSRA to admit to a $98-99 billion price tag in 2011 reality. The fact that California is "fiscally challenged" and Washington is not in the spending mood, make the HSR project a questionable proposition (albeit, not dead).
It is a misconception that the increase in the cost estimate was due to delays. Not true - two independent business school studies projected a much higher price tag quite a while ago. There is some truth to the NIMBY effect. However, there is no evidence to support the argument that property values will increase near the HSR. And, contrary to one of the other posters, the CHSRA has told more than one city, that it (CHSRA) would NOT fund any tunnels. So, that higher price tag has little to do with "tunnels".
>The "Miracle" where Rick Perry used federal stimulus funds to balance his states budget and increased unemployment by hiring a lot of minimum-wage and government workers. You hear it called the "Texas Miracle" on AM Radio talk shows to indicate that Rick Perry's flavor of socialism is far superior to the one we have in Washington.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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)
The original $33 billion estimate was in 2008$. The current estimate of $98.5 billion is in year of expenditure dollars, which is the same as $65.4 billion in 2010$. So the price has only doubled, not tripled. The original submitter made the same mistake.
Meanwhile, the alternative to spending this $98.5 billion (YOE$) is spending $171 billion (YOE$) to build an additional 2,300 lane-miles of highways, 4 runways, and 115 airline gates just to move the same number of people! So the only thing more expensive than building high speed rail is not building it.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Given the sheer number of representative and electoral votes they represent at the federal level, they certainly do get it back in quite a few other ways, no?
You just brought out one of the worst problems in our system of democracy and made it out as if it were a good thing for California (it's not). California gets the same proportion of representatives in the lower legislative branch as every other state in our nation. That means the voters in the state have no more power/representation than any other voter in any other state. However, California only gets 2 representatives in the upper house (the senate), where as Oregon gets 2 representatives in the upper house as well. This means every 250,000 voters in Oregon get their own senator, where as every 20,000,000 voters in California get their own.
The proportional power of a voter in Oregon is approximately 80 TIMES more than a Californian's (in the Senate). Another way of putting it: California, the most populous state, contains more people than the 21 least populous states combined. This means the population of those 21 states each individually have as much power as the population in California.
I don't understand how you made that out to be a benefit to California. On a side note, this disproportionate representation is a factor in why our nation is categorized as "conservative" or "center-right" - because the majority of power in the Senate is held by rural populations.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.