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California's $68 Billion Bullet Train Project Faces Major Hurdles (latimes.com)
New submitter willworkforbeer writes: The proposed US$68B high speed rail project in California faces extraordinary hurdles, both in terms of budget and timeframe. Even Einstein (no, not that one; Herbert Einstein, an MIT civil engineer and top tunneling expert) says the schedule is probably not possible. "Having looked at a number of these long tunnels, [the California] plan is aggressive," said Einstein, who has consulted on a 35-mile-long tunnel under the Swiss Alps. "From a civil engineering perspective it is very, very ambitious — to put it mildly."
New York's 11-mile East Side Access tunnel project is 14 years late and about 2.5x its original budget. If California's 72 miles of tunnels (twin tunnels of 36 miles) go like New York's, that would be over US$160B spent, with an opening date sometime in the 2030s. The article goes through a number of complicating factors for the tunnels, from the major faults they must cross to the melange of rock types they must drill through.
New York's 11-mile East Side Access tunnel project is 14 years late and about 2.5x its original budget. If California's 72 miles of tunnels (twin tunnels of 36 miles) go like New York's, that would be over US$160B spent, with an opening date sometime in the 2030s. The article goes through a number of complicating factors for the tunnels, from the major faults they must cross to the melange of rock types they must drill through.
High speed rail is built to such exacting standards, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility to throw some LIDAR down by the wheels and flag anything that throws up a yellow flag for repairs. If they're not doing that already. Generally in Japan after an earthquake they will run the trains at reduced capacity, only 50-70% advertised speeds while repairs are made. As Mitch Hedberg famously said, "we apologize, your escalators are temporarily stairs"; high speed rail can still run at regular speeds without issue. Heck, if you're willing to slow down to 5mph you can run a train over some pretty gnarly looking rails that aren't particularly flat, and then speed back up once past.
moox. for a new generation.
The article sounds remarkably like the articles written when the Anglo-French Channel Tunnel project was proposed. Various aspects of the project were allegedly impossible when digging began, including concerns about the nature of the rock under the Channel and that the air in the tunnels would overheat because of the absence of ventilation tunnels under the sea. The project did run over-budget, but it worked, and is still working, and has transformed the way people and freight travel along that route.
Virtually serving coffee
Nowadays, tracks are usually inspected with track inspection vehicles, which are fitted with a number of sensors and can inspect tracks at speeds of up to 50 km per hour (last time I checked).
High speed rail tracks may be inspected several times per week, during the night.
It is common for government to tax the hell out of things that compete effectively with their overpriced, boobdoggle, unionized government employee-loaded Peoples' Great Works.
So watch out for that. Detroit Metro airport built a giant parking structure and long-term parking lot that could not compete with private lots miles away that had to shuttle people in, so they slapped a 30% surcharge on those lots.
They also made it illegal for local hotels to let customers leave their cars in their hotel lots. Lots of outstate people would drive in and spend the night before flying out the next morning, and free parking was a service the hotels gladly provided. Now that is illegal.
The People's hatred and fear of government is well-earned.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Here's another one, in the heart of Europe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I live in CA too, and have yet to meet anybody who will admit to supporting this gravy train of pork slop.
The people in CA who live in the biggest handful of cities are generally very far to the left (as are the citizens of most Democrat-run mega-cities) the people in the smaller cities and rural areas tend to be to the right of center. The State USED to be "up for grabs" in elections with either party able to win it, but after the 1986 Amnesty the combination of the huge uptick in legalized Hispanic immigrants and the huge wave of children they've had since, most of whom vote Democrat have made the state permanently Democrat (and thus created the illusion that the state is one massive unified far-left state). Oh, and the election of Ahhnold to run Kahleefornia was a fluke - he was a celeb and pretty far left within the GOP (a member of the Kennedy family at that time).
This train was put to a vote in CA under false premises; the voters were promised 4 things that were all false:
1. It would cost $33 Billion. Critics said it would cost more and were branded "liars" in the press out here which is entirely Democrat-run.
2. The federal government would foot much of the bill. It will not, but this was at the time of the Obama Trillion dollar stimulus bill when many people seemed to think the skies had opened and it was raining free money.
3. It would link the entire state. It will not. The train will not even link the major cities of SF, Sacramento, LA, and San Diego in the foreseeable future.
4. It would be "high speed". It will not. They are building the rails for the type of trains they are buying and the trains they are buying are just moderately-fast (slower than many cars).
If CA really wanted affordable high-speed mass transit, it could go with Musk's Hyperloop which would be VASTLY superior to the pork Moonbeam Brown is building. CA will NOT build Hyperloop because it would operate without the need for a big unionized labor force (vital Democrat constituency group), and would cost a lot less to build (which has less opportunity for fraud and kickbacks.
I addressed his point and covered additional issues. I don't think it's destined to go the way of Amtrak, which shares lines with Freight. Dedicated commuter rail is fast and on time. More astute way of putting it would be to say it's like European high speed rail, or Uber, where the convienience of it drives further adoption. Everywhere high speed rail is installed, it drives adoption. People said what you said about the DART rail system in Dallas, and it beat is ridership projections by 5x in the first year.
moox. for a new generation.
It's worse still. At $50/ticket you need 274k daily riders.
If you assume a modest 5% maintenance cost, and $100b price tag. You need revenue of $5b/year to operate and maintain this abomination.
So, 5,000,000,000 / 365 = $13.7m/day in revenue required
at even $50/ticket that's 274k riders per day.
And this is i'm confident way below what the actual costs will be. tax payers will subsidizing this thing forever.
population LA : 3.9m
population SF: 837k