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Examining Costs and Prices For California's High-Speed Rail Project
The L.A. Times features a look at the contentious issue of a publicly funded high-speed rail system for travel within the state of California, which focuses especially on an obvious question: how much would it cost for passengers to ride? This isn't a straightforward answer, though, partly because the system isn't expected to be operational for another 13 years, and the estimates vary wildly for what would be a trip of more than 400 miles that touches on some of the U.S.'s most expensive real estate. From the Times' article:
"The current $86 fare [for an L.A. to San Francisco ticket] is calculated in 2013 dollars based on a formula that prices tickets at 83% of average airline fares to help attract riders. The rail fare is an average that includes economy and premium seats, nonstop and multi-stop trains, as well as last-minute and advance purchase tickets. A premium, same-day nonstop bullet train trip would cost more than $86.
But compared with current average prices on several high-speed rail systems in Asia and Europe, $86 would be a bargain, equating to about 20 cents a mile or less, the Times review found. The analysis was based on a 438-mile route in the mid-range of what state officials expect the final alignment to measure."
How much would you be willing to pay to take a fast train between L.A. and San Francisco?
$30 or so? I can easily drive to SF from LA on ¾ of a tank, which would be about 30 bucks. Why pay more than that? I get parking in SF might be terrible and costly, but depending on whom you are visiting driving is really the way to go.
Sorry, if you have neither a car nor the very reasonable amount it takes to fly, you need to get a life.
This is how much south west airline charges to fly there in less time. This is 5 th grade math government.
Yes, trains are cool, Europe (and much of Asia) knows it, and 500 miles for about 100$ is a good deal - i know the arguments about the population density from the economic point of view, they are correct, but i think California is a right place for trains.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
That's a silly question, since it depends on what airfare for the equivalent trip is. In truth, what I'll probably do is go to ${AirfareSearchSite} and ${RailSearchSite} and compare on a trip-by-trip basis. That would probably include factors uncorrelated to the modality -- like which particular departure times are convenient for me.
It's beyond me why you would want to answer this question in the way it was asked -- as if there was some magical price for the trip as opposed to a comparison with other substitutes.
[ And, of course, the comparison is not just on the fare. Total travel time (including the connection on either end) is a factor, as are possible delays (SFO gets slowed by fog) or comfort (train legroom?). But again, it's a comparison not an absolute ... ]
Put a bunch of numbers on a dartboard, from $50 to $250. Throw a dart. Whatever it hits...thats it. Trying to determine a ticket price for a service that may or may not exist 15 years from now is, as said in the article, "spitballing".
What will happen to gas and airline prices between now and then? Will elec cars be more prevalent? What cost multiplier will be applied to actually building the thing?
More importantly...will it actually get built? What rare riparian environment will be discovered in the proposed path, that will cause it to be tied up in enviro court for years? Or in NIMBY court?
In Europe and Asia, the average population density in cities is typically much higher than the US, where the cities typically have as large a population, but are more spread out. (Fun fact, the only US city that ranks in the top 50 for population density world-wide is.... Union City, New Jersey!)
As such, in the US, car ownership is almost a necessity unless you live in a city like New York with a large area mass transit system. Living in, for example, London or Tokyo, you have to be either borderline suicidal or a regular commuter to areas outside the city, for car ownership to be viable, given the high cost of ownership and maintenance of a car, parking, fuel, and so on. Or you have to be a creature of habit. Seriously, the idea of driving across London at a slower pace than you could walk the same distance actually appeals to some people!
In that kind of environment, the most economical option is often to take the train to your chosen destination (it is quicker, less stressful, and you can kick back with a beer, and avoid the airport security theater and molestation by a TSA agent *cough*pervert*cough*). If you really need to drive, hiring a car at your destination is again usually cheaper than taking your own vehicle all the way.
driving is *much* cheaper. And you have your own vehicle instead of having to rent or pay taxi fare.
After 9/11, the time spent travelling is almost the same, too.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I just drove the I-5 all of the way from LA to San Francisco yesterday as I'd brought a carful of test equipment to an engineer there. I didn't fly because of the freight I had, but in general train transport is better for carrying a lot of baggage. Less handling, less fees for freight.
Also, planes can't compete when there's a good high-speed rail, because of their logistical complications. Airports are usually far from town and require their own train to get to. Nobody takes a plane instead of Eurostar. While Southwest will survive on its many other routes, their SFO to LAX route is doomed.
Having traveled extensively in Europe, and having enjoyed never having to use a car and rarely needing a plane because their trains are so fast, cheap, and efficient, I marvel at the idiocy of our citizens, it's not the government's fault, in not having insisted on keeping and improving rail since the 40's. Americans are total retards about this, they can't ever have any excuse.
Bruce Perens.
"How much would you be willing to pay to take a fast train between L.A. and San Francisco?"
Guess that depends...how much faith do you have in guessing what our economy is going to do in the next decade?
A global economic meltdown and subsequent bank bailouts were the highlights of the last decade, so feel free to sit around and pull theories clean out of your ass as to the value of the [insert new global monetary standard here] in 2028.
Well depending on which figure you use, the real cost is between $87 and $219 and those are IRS numbers. It's probably more.
Don't forget, it's not just gas. It's insurance, gas, taxes, wear and tear on the car. And if you're driving something like a Ferrari, I'd expect the cost to be more like $500.
Currently, the lowest price I can find on plain old Amtrak service from Baltimore to New York is $77 if I leave next week. (Less than half the distance between LA and SF.) Cut that train trip time in half, and I'd pay the extra cost over a Bolt bus.
I just paid that to take the Acela from DC to NYC. And that was a rough, slow ride compared to HSR in China or Europe.
3 hrs on the train with 10 minutes in the station at either end vs 1 hr on a plane with 1.5 hrs of getting to/from the airport, for about the same fare.
Sadly based on past statements regarding high speed rail I would imagine that their ticket prices and revenue projections are highly optimistic. The initial numbers said that the project would cost around $36B, cost estimates have since increased to at least $68B. At the same time the projects ridership numbers have been practically disproved, a peer reviewed study suggested a ridership of between 23.4 to 31.1 million where the "official" numbers were 65.5 to 96.5 million. I love the idea of some level of public transport but it needs to be economically viable.
...shouldn't the price of the ride be based on the cost of delivering the service? What if it turns out to cost $300/person to transport someone from LA to SF on the new rail system?
Isn't the problem with California's high speed rail boondoggle that it is not between Los Angeles and San Francisco? That it is between someplace most do not want to be at and somewhere else most do not want to be at?
It's a waaay better experience than a plane. There's no bullshit security theatre. You don't have to show up 2 hours before the flight. You don't have to have this long boarding process. You actually wind up in the part of the city you actually want to be in, rather than way out in the outskirts of town and then take another 40 minute journey into town. The trip itself is comfortable, and you can use your phone, etc. You can bring whatever liquids or food or whatever you want.
Americans don't understand this because few have traveled in countries with high speed rail. It's just so much better than other forms of travel it's ridiculous. If you think "I'll just take my car and it'll be cheaper!", you're really not understanding the advantages of high speed rail.
Seriously, this is a joke that it is being built. It is a jobs bill similar to SLS for Space.
Hyperloop is where America should focus and push. It is obvious that we can go not only 500 MPH in the tubes, but even higher speeds should be possible.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Ain't got time to take a fast train...
Why not just high speed boats? A hydrofoil can go very fast, around 100mph, without infringing on anyone's precious real estate.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
...as cars in the US aren't allowed to go that fast. In Germany the ICE (Inter City Express, the German bullet train) needs to be really fast to beat the Autobahn.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
Voters were told in 2008 that the project would cost $39 billion. Now Gov. Brown says it will cost $69 billion. And it's still over a decade away. Under the bond measure the state isn't allowed to subsidize the operation of the project. It must be covered by the fares. Since there is so much uncertainty about the cost of the project it makes no sense to try to guess the cost of a ticket.
I very much doubt you will avoid the TSA groping.
You seriously think the TSA is going to miss an opportunity for more security theater just because its a train??
Right now you might not need a TSA groping to get on a train but theres still time.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
What will it cost to build out the needed road and airline infrastructure? What is the cost in terms of pollution and lost productivity by continuing to rely on cars and airplanes?
To talk about the cost of a project without comparing alternatives is meaningless.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
On the low end, they estimate 18 million riders a year. Ok, dividing 18 million by 365 days leaves you with almost 50,000 passengers a day. Divided by two, that's about 24,000 passengers SF->LA, and 24,000 passengers LA->SF each day. If they run 24 trains s day, leaving each hour, that means 1,000 passengers per hour, every hour, every day.
Seems unlikely.
Maybe they'll run trains every two hours, but then they gotta stuff 2,000 people on each train 12 times/day, every day.
Ken
If airlines of 2026 lose 20% of their passengers to a competing service that charges 87% of airline ticket prices, then airlines will not continue to charge those prices.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
2. This HSR will become immensely unpopular after it's first accident or terrorist attack. Using the kinetic energy of a fast train to kill and maim will prove too tempting a target for wacko terrorists, homegrown or overseas.
3. Who ever heard of basing ticket prices on what other transportation costs? This is a recipe for endless taxpayer subsidy. Ticket prices should be based on the operating costs and bond expenses. If we do this, this HSR will be prohibitively expensive.
4. California is different from Europe and Japan. Our *intra-city* public transport is not as nice, requiring the use of a car at one's destination (LA, SF).
5. Feelings towards this HSR project are not a litmus test for Democrat/Republican. It is a litmus test for those who pay heavy taxes and wish to see their money spend wisely, versus those who pay little in taxes and consequently are not as concerned how this money is spent.
Who would be the customer for this high-speed train service? 1. If you're a businessman and in a hurry, you will fly. Southwest Airlines has flights almost every hour. Why bother with the slow train? 2. If you're a family heading to Disneyland or Legoland, and have a few kids, you will drive (cost of gas would be 3/4 tank or $30). It would be much cheaper than paying $30 per each ticket ( 4 persons * $30 = $120). Plus, in LA or San Francisco, you still need a car to get around, so renting a car at $45/day is too expensive. I don't see a solid business case for this high-speed train.
So what do all those people flying from one place to another in the US do? If you need to drive in your destination then you'll just rent a car like you would have if you flew.
The Paris Lyon route, the first high speed rail route in Paris, is on mostly flat, low population density, seismically inactive ground, ie., the type of land cheap to build high speed rail on. I believe France got a construction cost of ~$40 million per km of double track high speed rail on cheap, flat land. California has a lot of mountains, is seismically active. Jerry Brown expects HSR to cost $70+ billion? The Northeast Corridor has rivers, cities, and multiple screwed up state government to deal with. The third high speed rail corridor of choice was Chicago, and Detroit, but Detroit has been in a Depression for the last few decades. So, it is no wonder the United States does not have real high speed rail. Obama's proposal for 80% of America's population to have high speed rail is a bad idea.
Southern Florida has bad land to build on, and a hurricane could wipe the expensive HSR line out. I think Dallas-Houston will be the best place for HSR, because the population is high enough, geography is good for construction, and the state govt might keep the BS down.
Wondering why nobody puts some freight onto the high speed lines. I would think that the courier companies would like an hourly train leaving between major cities instead of flying all of their parcels. The costs wouldn't be that much since you would have to build the track for the passenger service so it would just be the incremental costs for the service. Of course passenger traffic would have the right of way which would be the opposite of traditional rail service in North America. I'm not suggesting that it would be for containers running across the continent (though that would be an interesting experiment).
Why would anyone pay for the train when they will be able to ride in their self driving car with greater convenience, lower cost and almost as quick. 14 years is a long time in hardware and software development. Robotic cars (busses?) will be widely available by then. When you eliminate the idiots driving on the roads traffic will flow much better than today so travel should be faster. You will still need local transport when you get to destination city. You can rent a car or pay for a taxi both up the cost or bring your own.
American rail is made more expensive by urban sprawl, but not quite in the way most people think. If you compare somewhere like South Florida to Germany or Italy and look at how many people are likely to be within 5 miles of a given station, we really DON'T look all that different. Well, except Miami has a lot more skyscrapers sprawled across the entire metro area (even Broward has gotten into the act... witness "Tao" -- two 30-story towers built next to Sawgrass Mills mall whose balconies literally overlook the Everglades).
Anyway, the BIG difference between Florida or California and Europe is that in Europe, once you get out of the city... it tends to become rural & stay that way for a while. In contrast, if you were to build brand new tracks from Miami to West Palm Beach within 5 miles of I-95, you'd LITERALLY be plowing through a hundred miles of solid low & medium-density suburbia almost every inch of the way. In contrast, a comparable route in Europe would pass through at most a half-dozen cities, and run mostly through areas that were farmland or forest.
LAX to SJC via air: $330 roundtrip, $165 one way
~90 minutes in the air each way, ~30 minutes boarding, ~30 minutes TSA (but you generally give ~60 minutes in case of emergency).
So 3 hours each way by air (the Uber/Taxi at the end would be about the same for the train).
LA-er: why do I want to go up to cold, snooty SF/Silicon Valley/Marlin?
SF: why do I want to go to flaky LA/Hollywood/OC?
PER-HAPS this white elephant will be built. But there is absolutely no guarantee. Will bankrupt California be in a position a decade from now to still be pouring money into this hole? Current estimate is $68 billion. Thus if the Boston Big Dig has taught us anything, assuming you were a complete moron and didn't know it already, $68 billion is a hopeless pipe dream that will be no better than 50% of the final cost ASSUMING everything goes letter perfect.
If it were to be completed my guess, which is FAR better than theirs but still only a guess, is for $225 billion with construction completed in 2042. 400% over budget on money and 100% over budget on time. That sounds historically accurate.
One has to wonder what sort of road they could build for $200 billion, or even $100 billion. I envision I5a I5b I5c I5d; each of them 12 lanes with automatic switching so each 50,000 cars would travel a different road. Couple this with I5e and I5f dedicated to self driving cars traveling at 150 MPH and the california bullet train looks like a bigger dinosaur than the F-35-never-to-fly-in-combat USAF boondoggle.
And all this leaves out the fact that in the next 50 years there will probably be some big earthquake that damages the line. Creating a huge infrastructure item with a single point of failure is just plain stupid. Say it all works. It won't. But say it does. Say they ignore primary transportation and funnel all the gas taxes into this thing to the point they have to close I5. Now when anything from earthquake to terrorists to sinkhole breaks it for 6 months, or maybe 18, what the hell are you going to do?
There are currently no DHS/TSA security checks for taking the Acela between DC/NYC/Boston.
About twice as much as in the opposite direction.
I want my free stuff! Make the rich pay for it all.
The fare may be at $86 at first, then when they realized that they are losing money to self driving vehicles and people that want to be able to sight see and go when they want to go instead of when the train is scheduled they will do something about it. Most likely putting tolls on the connecting highways and keep on increasing them until they get the traffic they expect on the rails. Then of course the train fare will be increased to make more money as the fare setting authorities see the power and market value they now have.
After it's finished to much fanfare, and the tax bill is levied, the start of the collection for repairs and retrofitting to repair the damages from seismic activities, aka earthquakes, begins, bringing the cost per mile up JUST a tad.
It should cost no dollars and no cents.
How much more convenient could flying around the state be if they spent $68 Billion making it better? They could build 10 new airports for that amount. They could buy off the TSA special interests and end the security theatre. They could add enough flights to guarantee hourly transit during peak times, so you wouldn't have to book a ticket and arrive early, you'd just show up and get on the next flight. And if there were too many people, they'd just fly a spare plane from the nearest airport, less than 30 minutes away.
If they even spent half the $68 Billion on air travel improvements, you'd end up with a faster, more convenient trip for a lower fare (including subsidy) than rail.
First, nobody will be buying a ticket from LA to SF, because the Brown administration is not building rails from LA to SF. The actual tracks being built are from a town up in the desert north of LA to a town near Sacramento.
Second, there won't be many trains on the route because, after the costs skyrocketed, the Brown administration got them back down by deciding to build one set of tracks rather than a parallel pair - so trains will only be able to go in one direction at a time on large sections of the route.
Third, again due to rising costs, they cut back on the purchase of the actual trains, selected trains that are not capable of traveling faster than automobiles, and are building tracks suited to normal trains rather than high-speed trains.
The their left-leaning hard-core political base, the "High Speed Rail" people in CA are winking and nudging that they will somehow get a massive infusion of cash at some point in the future that will enable them to extend the route to actually reach LA and SF, buy faster trains, rip-up the cheap single set of rails and replace them with two sets of actual high-speed rails, and so forth.... but that's on par with NASA's continual pledge to go to Mars (we're ALWAYS 30 "years away" and just need the money to do it). This is a major scam; the current non-high-speed-rail version being built which does NOT reach LA or SF is costing nearly $70 BILLION, and going back to extend the lines, upgrade them for high-speed, and do all the other stuff someday in the fuzzy future will cost hundreds of billions of dollars which nobody will be willing to spend. The truth is that rail in the US will always lose to planes for consumers who can afford a choice, for many reasons, including the huge distances (which make true high-speed rail, like maglev, too expensive to build) AND California has so many billions of dollars of future obligations to its unionized government workers that this money will NEVER materialize for political reasons on top of any other considerations.
"It's a waaay better experience than a plane. There's no bullshit security theatre. "
This is idiotic - as soon as terrorists blow-up a high-speed train, all the same security as for planes will be implemented. The only reasons security has not yet been tightened are [a] the costs (they won't spend the money until they HAVE to) and [b] in places with government-run rail, they WANT people to ride the rails so the lack of hassle is actually a manipulation. Trains will always be less safe than planes in terror terms both BECAUSE of less security AND because it is on the ground and on a perfectly-predictable path (the rails) for the entire length of the trip. Planes just got the bad terror rap because the 9-11 terrorists tried to get a two-fer (kill the people in the vehicle, while also using the vehicle as a guided weapon). No 9-11 type hijacking will work again, so there's little reason for terrorists now to prefer the much harder mass-murder of planes when the mass-murder of trains is so very easy (you can attack the train, the station, and/or the rails).
The American resistance to passenger trains is NOT out of idiocy, it's out of BRILLIANCE: America relied very heavily on the railroads from the 1800's all the way to the 1950s. The nation is criss-crossed with more miles of rails than most nations. America also invented the airplane, and then improved the airplane year-after-year. Air travel is simply better in EVERY way:
1. Planes are faster (a 500mph plane beats a 100mph train).
2. Plane routes can be changed with no modification of infrastructure or rights-of-way. Planes on a new route use the sky, trains need new rails, bridges, crossings, etc.
3. Planes can be replaced with new types without replacing any infrastructure along the way. New planes with different engines or wingspans or weights use the same sky; trains with different types of wheels or axel lengths or other innovations could need thousands of miles of changed rails.
4. Planes can quickly adapt to demand changes, if people reduce travels between cities A and B and increase travel between C and D, planes just get re-assigned to the other airports and there's plenty of airspace for them, but with trains only one can be on a section of rails at a time and new rails might have to be laid.
5. Planes not flying in a war zone are only vulnerable to attack from terrorists who get on board or during take-off or landing. Trains are completely vulnerable to attack at all times and places
6. Trains are at risk from numerous ground hazards planes do not face: every train crossing is a potential collision with a land vehicle with a possible derailment, and people frequently walk into the path of trains resulting in the train being halted while the death is investigated. Train tracks are vulnerable to everything from being warped by extreme heat, being buried in snow, being washed-out by flood waters - for planes these things apply only at the relatively small patches of land called airports.
For best dollar-per-pound-per-mile for CARGO, trains and ships win every time..... but for best efficiency when TIME matters (which almost always is the case with humans) planes will ALWAYS win. The only possible game-changer here is a train in an evacuated tube (which can approach the speed of a plane while having the efficiencies of a train) which Elon Musk attempted to make more cost- and operationally-attractive with his partially evacuated tube "hyperloop" idea. Unfortunately, California is stupidly pursuing a faux-high-speed-rail project (normal train on normal rails with spiffy pain job) rather than the far superior (in EVERY way) hyperloop.
At that price we could put the money into a giant trust and hire limousines to drive people to their destinations.
I'd rather they reallocate those funds for basic road repair, such as re-painting lane lines and fixing potholes. CA roads have gone to shit since the recession.
Table-ized A.I.
How much would I be willing to pay? That depends. Is TSA going to be there groping or nuking me?
Acela is run by Amtrak, which is government-run. This makes it political. It's routes are designed to serve and impress the politicians who sponsor and protect it (which is why its famous route you cite suits east-coast left-wingers like Joe Biden, who went straight from college to congress w/o ever doing ANYTHING productive). It's also a fully-unionized jobs program which is legally protected from any competition. The result is that its "high speed" is 1/3rd that of a slow plane, it will not ever be significantly expanded, and it cannot even make a profit selling cheeseburgers on board for $9.50.
Amtrak is the primary reason rail travel in the US sucks:
Amtrak was created by the US federal government as a monopoly and were given authority over rail travel in the nation, sort of a ULA on rails - corrupt politicians ALWAYS claim that they will improve prices and service by creating a monopoly, only to be proven wrong later by reality and the basic laws of economics. Just as the ULA monopoly produced ever-increasing rocket launch prices, Amtrak produced over-priced under-performing passenger rail service that withered in the face of many-providers, competition-driven, faster air travel.
When, as a political pork entity they could not "keep the trains running on time", could not generate a profit, and were an obvious red-stain on the federal budget, they were spun-off into a supposedly independent corporate entity BUT they still answer to congress and still have legal control over all passenger service on rails in the US (which is why no other company has arisen to provide passenger rail service - Amtrak bureaucrats simply deny all other approvals or they charge so much for "inspections" and certifications that nobody else can be profitable either). The cheapest way to move a ton over land is on rails, so a family OUGHT to be able to own or rent a sleeper car custom-outfitted like an RV and pay less to go across the country by paying Amtrak to hook it to one of their trains than they would pay to drive an RV...... but nobody other than multimillionaires does this because Amtrak regulations and certifications make private rail cars (which USED to be common in the US a century ago) more expensive than private planes (Amtrak regulations and related costs are actually far worse than those of the FAA).
At this point, only a child who lives in the glass-and-concrete womb of very big city, isolated from the realities the the real world would support this unrealistic and impractical entity. Most such people, regardless of age, are too immature to provide for themselves and are thus beggars; either they beg somebody else to employ them so they can buy the stuff they have no idea how to obtain in their own (like food, water, shelter, energy...) or they just directly beg the government for "benefits" and live off the labor of others. For such fully-dependent infants, most of whom think themselves adult by virtue of having automatically achieved biological puberty, a subsidized passenger train is just another "benefit" they beg for and expect other to provide, and they would be unable to survive on 95% of the planet's surface. Our nation's founders would have seen these people as being about as competent as a 6-year-old.
I can foresee asymmetric travel. In the mornings, you'd have people going north, and in the evenings, people going south, more than the reverse. It's easier to get around the SF Bay without a car than it is to get around L.A. without a car. Thus, a lot of the people coming south are going to drive, because even if a train can get them 90% of the way there, they still have a last mile problem.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
rail is not competing with driving; it's competing against bussing, flying, and the current state of mobility.
it's also not competing against hitchhiking, in case you were wondering.
The whole train was conceived as an infrastructure boondoggle to get federal money into the state coffers.
That is the only reason california even did it. Had the feds not offered them money they wouldn't have touched it. And then you have the usual backscratching where contracts are thrown at campaign donors etc.
Look, we had two means of getting from LA to SF and both was largely superior to the train concept.
1. Airplane. It is a lot faster and for anyone doing a regular commute at that sort of distance... time is money. People that aren't getting their transport paid for by their company or aren't making more than enough to pay for the plane flights out of petty cash are not commuting between LA and SF on any regular basis. If you are just visiting for the weekend or something then the travel cost is not that bad considering that it is not a frequent expense.
2. A god damn fucking car. Let me give people that don't know shit about california a bit of insight here, the drive from LA to SF can be absolutely beautiful if you take the scenic route. Really a great trip and I recommend it for anyone that wants a good time. Beautiful country. Great food. Very nice accommodations. If you want to get from point A to point B faster... then take the highway that goes through the imperial valley. The land is flat and boring... and mostly full of farm fields... but it is a straight uninterrupted highway connecting point A with point B.
Either option is superior to the train.
Airplanes are faster and cheaper than the bullet train. Remember, the train doesn't actually cost 83 dollars a ticket. That is the subsidized rate. The government is DISCOUNTING the ticket to attract your business with YOUR tax dollars. If you actually look at what the train ACTUALLY costs you'll find that it is costing MORE per passenger than an airplane. This is while being slower. Which makes it a stupid form of travel.
Cars are the most economical and most interesting way to go because you can make detours and travel the most scenic way. And even then you're just paying for gas. I can jam six people or so in my car and travel between the cities on 30 dollars of gas. The bullet train can't even begin to compete with that economy.
So what the train offers is speed... and its slower than the plane while being a lot more expensive.
The bullet train is stupid. It was a scam pushed by corrupt politicians and the various people in my state that supported it are mostly unimaginative twats that thought a technology developed in the 70s and only found to be marginally economical under the most extreme of conditions made any sense connecting SF with LA.
Dumb.
A better idea if you want something new and wiz bang is Musk's HyperLoop. That at the VERY least is new and interesting. It might even be cheap and fast. But the "bullet train"... it might make sense in Japan but in Cali? No.
What was further ignored is that in Cali the most successful rail route is not between SF and LA but between LA and San Diego. It is one of the few Amtrak lines in the US that actually make a profit.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Why is the TSA necessary on trains? Once a plane takes off, it's the wild west because it's disconnected from civilization and the authorities, and any terrorist can take control of the plane, take it elsewhere and kill the passengers.
A train, on the other hand, can be centrally controlled and stopped remotely by a central authority. Moreover, a train is sectioned many bogies and trying to takeover all bogies is quite difficult. You can have armed plainclothesmen inside trains if you want to deal with such people.
Say, per passenger transported, wouldn't HSR have less carbon footprint than a plane? Especially for distances 500 miles/ 800 km?
Considering that air travel also needs some rail/ cab transport to/ from the airports, which are often around 20-30 miles from city center.
Hi -
Are the people posting here actually familiar with the proposed route? It is not really high speed rail between L.A. and San Francisco, but via a number of other cities that are a bit out of the way. (It had to be done that way to get the support of some of the California rural politicians.) When you factor in that extra distance and the extra stops, and possible TSA style security up front, will it really be that much faster than simply driving the I-5?
- Tom
So what do all those people flying from one place to another in the US do? If you need to drive in your destination then you'll just rent a car like you would have if you flew.
People that fly from city to city:
And in 13 years "High Speed Rail" passengers will do exactly the same thing.
Ken
Go on, Use a figure of $100 a ticket if you want. The math will never work out.
That's 10 million passengers per billion dollars, and the current estimate is 65 billion in costs. That means you would have to sell a ride to everyone in the United States twice just to break even.
This is like paying $300,000 for solar panels to save $3,000 a year in electricity. Just because it's green doesn't mean it makes economic sense.
You guys are nuts.
I can see NYC to LA costing $80. but in state trips should be far, far cheaper by train. How about LA to San Francisco for $6.?
It is not the "cost" of a one way ticket that is the real issue. The total overall construction and operating cost for the next 50 years is the issue.
68 billion projected budget, 10 billion in state bonds, 3.3 billion in federal money raised to date,( and likely cost overruns in tens of billions). Projected cost of ticket same as airfare, initial service to share same tracks as freight trains so 3 hour estimated time won't be feasible for years or decades until full system built so no reason to ride. Ouch, where does the rest of the 55 billion come from. At 89 bucks a ticket it will take 764,044,943 rider trips at full fare to pay off the full 68 billion. When you do that math using existing infrastructure looks really good. How may people per day will the bullet train carry? I am betting less than 1000 in the initial years when only the middle short section is built.
Simple math is 68,000,000,000 divided by California population of 38,802,500 and it is $1752 for every man woman and child in the state. And that is before interest on bonds, cost overruns and actual costs to run the thing each year are factored in.
You better ride it or else your involuntary $1752 initial contribution is for nothing.
This particular project should not be built and maybe the cash should be spent on fixing existing roads and improving existing transit. Or maybe not spent at all, or just used to pay off existing state debt.
Maybe someone will show me better math on this and I will be changing my mind. For now, stop this boondoggle.
You are right to be skeptical. The only question is how many billions will get wasted until it is stopped. It makes no sense economically under the California law it must operate under. Hopefully it will die early when we have only wasted a couple of million before it is stopped. Knowing California, we will probably get to 15 or 20 billion before it gets shut down.
Only the HSR folks believe their numbers, and nobody else does.
I cannot speak to a desired ticket price, but I am convinced that building the high speed rail link is several magnitudes cheaper than maintaining the CA highway system. Folks get bent out of shape when talk comes to spending once a few billions on sustainable rail projects, but find it quite OK to spend billions each year on keeping the highway system from falling apart. So what if that rail link needs subsidies? The Interstate system needs subsidies as well because tolls alone (if they are charged) cover only a fraction of the direct and indirect cost. Improving regional and even cross-country high speed rail will put the US into a good position for the future. It is also _the_ tool to reduce airspace congestion. A while back I read an article that only three years of Interstate maintenance spending would fund all planned and thought about projects for passenger rail in the US, that includes big projects like closing the Boston gap. Instead politicians decide to keep wasting money on an unsustainable and pollution fostering car/truck focused infrastructure. How about closing all the left lanes on Interstates and putting rails down to run trains? Right of way is not an issue and the rail links will be able to handle tremendously more transport of goods and people than cars/trucks can at a fraction of the energy needed. Sounds like too much of a great plan, right? Is that why nobody wants do it?