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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.
Anyone who didn't know this was a giant fucking scam before it even got off the ground has to be a fucking idiot.
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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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.
"Oh, goodness. Look at my wrist, I have to go." "But what about your clothes?" "I don't love these."
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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... I can state two things:
- it's buying the land that shifts the schedule. Definitely true, to the extent the south-east is not covered by our 'bullet-trains' 20 years after going operational elsewhere (TGV is for 'hi-speed-train' in french, over 300Km/h)
- when the rails are done, then, it's over for train/airplane competition. Definitely. 90% of the air traffic switches to rail.
Even when the rail stations are not close to cities.
When adding every delay, car/parking/x-ray/plane and the same at the other hand, generally the bullet train is at least as fast, and way less of a bother (no X-ray, you can take metallic objects, load your computer, walk and get decent coffee in a decent train bar...)
So, to me it's a matter of patience but the switch is unavoidable. The only thing is, for people in their fifties like me, one has to be aware this in some places is just an investment for our children, not for us.
Using your logic, we should never do anything. What the hell, if might not come out perfect or on budget - so we shouldn't do it. And it's not like this project would create good paying jobs or that those people would be paying into our tax coffers, no, none of that makes any difference.
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.
Christ, if we had listened to people like you throughout history, we'd still be living in caves. Get a grip.
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)
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
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".
Years ago, BART in San Francisco was able to tunnel through the same tectonic plate boundary - underwater. A century ago, Switzerland built high tunnels through the Alps like the ones being contemplated here to connect Germany, France and Italy. But because those tunnels required trains to spiral up into the mountains to reach one end and then spiral down from from the other end of the tunnel, It is now driving a series of straight "base tunnels" underneath the entire range. These will allow bullet trains to rip through as though the Alps didn't exist.
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.
Ah, the all-too-common Godwin-baiter who sees Godwin everywhere. The poster you are replying to is very likely talking about FDR. "Almost every community in the United States had a new park, bridge or school constructed by [FDR's WPA]". The WPA provided paid jobs for 3 million unemployed at its peak. Most of the facilities constructed are still in use.
Or he might have been talking about the magnificent Moscow Metro, and the USSR's collossal program of dam and railway building. There is no tie-in to the feared N-word or H-word there either.
The Japanese got it to work but they connected larger population centres than Santa Fe and Albuquerque - just as the Californians are going to do.
It is a bit annoying that the last time a train did 100MpH near where I live was a century ago - on steam FFS.
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.