Slashdot Mirror
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.
No, this isn't good math.
Eurostar train tickets between London and Paris are usually more expensive than flying low-cost airline. People splurge on train in preference over air, not the other way round.
True, train take s 2.5 hours of moving and fligth 45 minutes of flying. But I can get to Kings X in 10 minutes on tube and be there 20 minutes before departure and on the other end I am at Gare du Nord, smack in the centre.
When flying, it takes me 1 hour min to each airport, then I need to pay the terrorist task by queing for another hour. Then we fly and then it is again 1hour min from Orly or CDG to get where I want.
Flying is a pain in the ass. You need to go to an airport, get groped, wait an hour until you can board, sit in an uncomfortable seat, get fed a tiny drink if you're lucky when they want to feed it to you, use a bathroom that's tiny and uncomfortable, and wait for another 40 minutes for your luggage afterwards.
A train is just a much better experience. You can show up 2 minutes before departure, get on without a strip search, get a nice big seat, have a dining car, can get up and walk around at will, and just grab your luggage on the way out.
For a short (say 200 mile distance) its actually just as fast as flying when you figure in airport waits. For 400 its slower than an a plane, but a much less stressful experience. And with 180 mph bullet trains you can actually get to same coast cities in a reasonable time. I'd take one any day of the week over a plane for anything under 600 miles.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Either you're one of those super-privileged people who live close to the center of London and Paris, or you need to add 1-2h at either end to get from your suburb to the high speed rail station.
Kings-X St Pancras has truly huge suburban, urban, intercity and tube connections. I don't think Stevenage counts as super-privileged, but you know, tastes vary. From Stevenage, which isn't event he same city the difference isn't much more. Leave a train in hand ( + 30 minutes), 40 minutes to Kings-X, then hop on the eurostar and off you go.
Or from anywhere in south London served on the thameslink route.
Or you know, you can keep on denying reality and insist that flying from somewhere near London to Paris on a low cost airline doesn't suck compared to the train. Or you can take the word of people who have done both multiple times.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
If that is what they build then you have a whole set of other problems.
Go and clone the Japanese Shinkansen though and none of what you say if true. FFS all the shinkansens I have been on in recent years even have standard powerpoints for you to plug your laptop / other charger in.
Because I've done it in Europe for years. This isn't a new mode of travel.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
You're (apparently) a computer scientist living within commute distance of central London; of course you are privileged relative to most Brits.
You seem to revel in your ignorance. Go live in Elephant. It's a total shithole and pretty cheap. It's closer than I live. Among the many busses, trains and tube you can even walk into central London from there pretty quickly. Contrary to what you believe, London is a complete city and contains people working in all sorts of jobs. Fun fact: pretty much everyone in London commutes to their jobs including all the low paid cleaners, office temps, and even golf sign holders. Are you really going to claim they're among the privilidged few?
You're absolutely right that trains are the most pleasant way to travel around Europe (and I have likely been doing it a lot longer than you). What you have failed to explain is why large numbers of taxpayers who do not benefit from HSR should subsidize it.
Because they do benefit from it. Infrastructure leads to a functional country which improves the GDP. It's the same reason I benefit from living in a functional country which means I'm happy to have my tax fund motorways around Liverpool even though I've never been and I'm not likely to go there in forseeable future. Hell, I'm happy to have my tax money fund roads on Orkney. And guess what? I've never used the Millwall tunnel. Should I bitch and moan about how my tax is funding drivers in some place I never drive?
And before you climb of your awfully high horse, you may wish to consider how the net flow of money is out of London to the rest of the country which means I do (and am in fact happy to) effectively subsidise the rest of the country.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
Most autobahns on Germany have speed limits, pretty low limits actually, around 120km/h.
Autobahns are build in a meander way to connect as many towns/cities to the Autobahn. So they don't give you a 'straight line' from Munich to Hamburg.
A fast car does ~200 km/h, but you won't do that constantly. A very fast car does 250 km/h. A high speed train in Germany does 325 km/h in France they do 375 km/h - that is 233 mph.
There is no car that beats on a serious distance a train, sorry, not even a slow train.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Depending on country, high speed trains run every hour, or every second, splitting direction after certain distance to either A or B. .A is on even hours and everything that goes to
So everything before the split is every hour, and every thing that goes to
b on odd hours. To still reach A on odd hours you change train at the split point.
Even not so popular routes like mine from Karlsruhe to Paris go every second hour, with a short change to 3 hour gaps around 12:00, and back to 2:00 later.
There are no checkpoints.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In terms of their estimates, the jump from $36 billion to $68 billion was unfortunate, but I see it as the difference between an unrealistic estimate and a more realistic one. The earlier estimate did not take the full cost of grade-separated tracks into account.
Another thing to keep in mind here is that this isn't simply an LAX-SFO train. It's a plan that will upgrade commuter and metro trains in both the bay area and SoCal and will connect both of these areas with cities in between and Sacramento. So you're getting a lot more than a single track out of that $68 billion.
I agree that there's a danger of money being siphoned off, but this project will proceed in phases and involves many different contractors, so that spreads the risk out some.
As for all of your ideas about streamlining airport access and waiting times, I agree with most of what you said. By the way, improved public transportation access to LAX is currently being planned, which is a good thing. But all this still isn't a replacement for the CHSR. The I-5 and CA-99 already have heavy traffic, not to mention the permanent gridlock around the I-405 and I-10 anywhere within 10 miles of LAX. Future population growth will only make these problems worse.
You make some good arguments, but then totally undermine your credibility by name-calling anyone who responds to your posts. I thought we were having a civilized discussion?