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California's $68 Billion Bullet Train Project Faces Major Hurdles (latimes.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the just-knock-them-over,-hurdles-don't-weigh-much dept.

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.

19 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. People still don't know? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Anyone who didn't know this was a giant fucking scam before it even got off the ground has to be a fucking idiot.

    1. Re:People still don't know? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The graft and corruption is the purpose of such mega government projects. The bigger it is, the more skimming you can hide.

      All the prime drivers need is some True Believers to offer meme rationale. Most other politicians, if they think of it at all, think "Cool! Lots of union construction jobs!"

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    2. Re:People still don't know? by zippthorne · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The purpose of an infrastructure job shouldn't be the construction jobs that will result from creating it. The purpose should be to reduce cost (in time or resources) of transportation of people and goods to points within the covered area.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    3. Re:People still don't know? by Harlequin80 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Right...... Because the private sector will always allocate resources into areas that are needed for society to function.

      Seriously even the most crazy anti-government person has to admit that there are places where the needs of a community and the needs of corporations don't align and hence a government is required to divert funds towards projects that the private sector would not have built.

  2. I can't help but wonder by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    who's this for? By the sound of it It's going to be so expensive that if I could afford to take it I'd just take a plane instead. Maybe if we didn't all have cars, but again if you can afford to ride this you can afford a car, and you're probably going to prefer that. If it's just pork I'm surprised it made it though.

    --
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    1. Re:I can't help but wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      who's this for?

      Union workers?

      If there's no other visible explanation for a government project, odds are good that it's a way to funnel taxpayers' money to unions or bankers. I don't see the gain for bankers in this one.

    2. Re:I can't help but wonder by Hadlock · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's for the people who come after us, for the next couple hundred years, either until Earth becomes uninhabitable or we build a better more comfortable transport technology. I know it's hard to think more than 15 years in to the future, but the first rail lines from the 1850s are still in continuous use 170 years later, NOW, and I don't hear anyone talking about the death knell of rail. We gave highways a whirl and while they're super convenient, it's obvious that they don't scale nearly as well as we had imagined they would. And also we realized that most people are too dumb for flying cars, so we're back to rail. Unless you come up with something else, a long term transportation solution needs to be put in place. Right now it's looking like high speed electric rail between population centers, and then self driving uber/google/apple cars between the high speed rail and your final destination. But first we need that high speed rail. It works pretty fantastically over in Europe, you should try it some time.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    3. Re:I can't help but wonder by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      By the sound of it It's going to be so expensive that if I could afford to take it I'd just take a plane instead.

      This project will take decades to complete. By then there will be self-driving battery powered buses on I-5, for 1/3 the price of a ticket on this train. If you divide the likely cost of this train by the number of seats, it will cost about $500,000 PER SEAT. That is just the construction and capital cost. The operating cost will add even more. Nobody will be able to afford it without big on-going subsidies. Meanwhile, for the cost of a single train seat, you could buy several buses with over a hundred seats in total.

      The solution is obvious: We need to ban the buses.

    4. Re:I can't help but wonder by jcr · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The People's hatred and fear of government is well-earned.

      And regrettably, it's far too mild.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    5. Re:I can't help but wonder by KenDiPietro · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It would be nice to see socialists actually build something for a change, the way they did in the Thirties.

      Now, that's amusing.

      Feel free to list out all of the stunning projects that Conservatives have built.

      Let's see, there was the Star Wars missile shield, the Operation Iraqi Liberation, and we don' have any more Welfare Queens driving their brand new Cadillacs to pick up their Welfare checks (But hey, at least they drove American cars!)

      And while you're listing these wonderful accomplishments out, let's try to remember that Eisenhower would be a liberal if he were to be measured by today's conservative movement.

  3. Ridiculous claim in summary by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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,

    This is absurd (and not an argument presented in the article, because the author isn't a moron). You can't just act like all tunnel building costs are the same per mile, they vary by orders of magnitude. The East Side Access project is to go through some of the most valuable, infrastructure-heavy, densely populated real estate in the US and to merge into Grand Central Terminal.

    --
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    1. Re:Ridiculous claim in summary by Bartles · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Show me a tunnel project that finished ahead of schedule and under budget. For that matter show me a tunnel project that finished on time, and met it's budget. It's absurd to think this tunnel will be different than every tunnel ever built in human history.

  4. America: Not allowed to dream big anymore by Hadlock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fucking build it. We excel at building giant projects. This is an infrastructure project that will pay off in spades over the next 200 years. It's not like the zombie apocalypse is going to come through and wipe out 2/3rds the population of California every 25 years. Long term this is absolutely needed. Just cough up the dough and move forward with it. Dig those tunnels, lay that track.
     
    Big projects need big vision, and if we don't have that kind of vision in America anymore, I don't want to live here anymore, we're just any other country.
     
    P.S. Even Morocco has high speed rail now. Let's try and keep up with Northern Africa perhaps? "Oh it's such a big project we can't handle that". Well fucking fire that guy let's put someone in place that actually believes they can do their own damn job. You don't hire a guy who's afraid of heights to do your balancing wire act at the circus.

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    moox. for a new generation.
    1. Re:America: Not allowed to dream big anymore by CQDX · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If they wanted to have a chance for this to work, and to have some reasonable number of passengers, they should have built it along the coast along the Coast Sub route connecting LA, Simi Valley, Oxnard, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, up to Monterrey and into San Jose. There is splits to SF and Sacramento. There are already tracks there that used to be the main passenger route when trains were king. Today there is little freight or passenger traffic north of Santa Barbara. There are fewer and shorter tunnels so the work is probably orders of magnitude easier.

      Additionally CA should be upgrading the Hwy 5 corridor in the SJ valley. It's two lanes each way but with the amount of commercial traffic it should be 4.

      Finally, spending money on expanding the reservoir system should be the top priority. Often times we get a decent amount of rain but it just runs off into the ocean. Are main reserve is the snow pack in the Sierras but if global warming is true, there is going to be less and less each year.

  5. Final bill by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Initial estimate - $68 billion and completed by 2022
    Final bill - $250 billion, and completed by 2045.

    Or, never...But they will spend that $250B.

    1. Re:Final bill by russotto · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And while you whine about a 35 miles project, the Chinese are looking at building a similar one to connect Chine with the North American mainland. This project will have almost 9,000 miles of high speed track of which more than 100 miles would be a tunnel under the Bering Straights.

      No environmental impact statements, no lawsuits from every NIMBY group along the way, no union problems, no Federal Railroad Administration applying 100-year-old rules, and no worry about worker safety. Relaxing the constraints make things much easier.

      Of course this tunnel will never be built because the US isn't about to allow it (and it's a dumb idea anyway)

  6. Compare to the Cost of Highway Projects by McGruber · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here in Atlanta, we are spending $1.1 Billion on widening just one highway interchange: Contractors vying to build $1.1 billion Ga. 400/I-285 interchange

    IMHO, that makes the $68 billion California is spending seem like a bargain since they'll be getting 36 miles of tunnels, plus "300 miles of track, dozens of bridges or viaducts, high-voltage electrical systems, a maintenance plant and as many as six stations".

  7. Only the beginning by Dereck1701 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The cost overruns they're noting here are almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg. It was originally only said to cost around $34 Billion, they've barely gotten started and its already ballooned to at least in the neighborhood of $70 Billion but even the Authority admits it "may" go up to almost $120 Billion suggesting it will probably hit that and quite possibly go even higher. Even at the ~$70 billion number it is almost double the cost per KM as similar European systems. At the same time the anticipated ticket prices will be below that of world counterparts (20%), specifically set to try to attract airline passengers. And even at that rate its not expected to compete very well with car/truck transportation costs.

  8. Re:They don't always come if you build it by xaxa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I found the schedule: http://riometro.org/rio-metro-...

    That's a joke of a service. Fewer than one train an hour and a huge gap during the day — I'm not surprised hardly anyone uses it. The top speed is 79mph, so presumably (including stops) it's slower or similar to driving. Europeans wouldn't use a service like this, and I think we're often used as a comparison for projects like this.

    If they want people to use it, make it at least every 30 minutes (preferably 20), throughout the day. Then you don't need to worry about missing a train, and aren't stuck if plans change.