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California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete
The California High-Speed Rail Authority announced today that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would total $77.3 billion, an increase of $13 billion from estimates two years ago, and could potentially rise as high as $98.1 billion. They also said the earliest trains could operate on a partial system between San Jose and the farming town of Wasco would be 2029, five years later than the previous projection. Los Angeles Times reports: The disclosures are contained in a 114-page business plan that was issued in draft form by the rail authority and will be finalized this summer in a submission to the Legislature. The rail authority has wrestled with a more than $40-billion funding gap, which would increase sharply under the new cost estimates. The biggest immediate driver of the cost increase has been in the Central Valley, where the rail authority is building 119 miles of track between Wasco and Merced. The authority disclosed in early February that the cost of that work would jump to $10.6 billion from an original estimate of about $6 billion. Roy Hill, one of the senior consultants advising the state, told the rail authority board, "The worst-case scenario has happened." In its 2014 business plan, the rail authority optimistically projected that it could begin carrying passengers in just seven years. But the warning signs of uncontrolled cost growth had already started mounting then, even though until this year the rail authority has vehemently denied that it was facing a problem. The project began having trouble buying property for the route almost immediately after it issued its first construction contract in 2013.
This appears to be part of a general trend, transit costs in the US have been massively subject to "cost disease" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease. However, the effect is much more pronounced for mass transit in the US than in Europe or elsewhere http://trrjournalonline.trb.org/doi/abs/10.3141/2541-01?journalCode=trr. While there are some arguments that how the US treats trains has advantages over Europe http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=11847, the cost difference in new ones is gigantic. In this particular case, it is combining very badly with other issues, including the insanely high prices of land in California.
Take the train from London to Paris.
I’ll take a plane instead.
I have done London-Paris using both modes. Trust me, you would prefer the train. Get in in downtown London, get off in downtown Paris while airport travelers are still dealing with the latest wildcat strike at CDG.
The People's Republic of California could order every component of this bullet train system right out of the Alstom catalog, so technology is not the issue in the Gilded State. It's strictly because of the stupid politics that you will be able to hop a self-driving car to the Hyperloop station before the HSR is finished.
Righto. What did US private enterprise do to the electric trams that had spread across the US by a century ago? They ganged together (look closely at L.A. for one example) to get them destroyed and replaced with buses, selling engines and tires and ... and getting people to abandon them and proliferate private ownership of vehicles, and sell leaded gas. Then they got the government to foot the bill for the Interstate system (socializing the cost, privatizing the profits).
Fast forward a century and what is replacing the carbon-spewing traffic jams? Electric trams, now known as 'light rail'. NOT being paid for by private interests but by the taxpayers. Was that the best possible solution for modern mass transit? NO, but it was best for all of the private contractors ... in the same way that NASA paid out way more than SpaceX. Follow the money ... always.
'Studies' make the costs go up. 'Inventions' make the costs go down. Your choice, folks.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Forget Hyperloop, even traditional tunneling costs are lower than this - let alone the costs Boring Company is looking for. While it's easy to focus on the most expensive, ridiculously priced urban tunnel projects in history, which can be over a billion dollars per mile, most tunnels are far cheaper. The Shanghai River crossing tunnel in China, for example, was $27m/mi. For tunnels in the western world, Westerschelde in the Netherlands was $60m per mile. For 11m diameter twin tunnels.
$10,6B for 119 miles is $89m per mile, primarily in "land acquisition", "relocating utility systems" and "the need for safety barriers" - none of which exist on a per-mile basis for a bored tunnel of sufficient depth. You don't even need improvements in boring technology to make tunnels more economical than this, you just need a reasonable bid on a fixed-price contract at current modern pricing. And if you bore, the number of miles can generally be reduced. It's just crazy that 119 miles from Wasco to Merced costs so much. Look at it on a map; it's just farmland.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"