California Will Not Complete $77 Billion High-Speed Rail Project (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday the state will not complete a $77.3 billion planned high-speed rail project, but will finish a smaller section of the line. "The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long. There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency," Newsom said in his first State of the State Address Tuesday to lawmakers. "Right now, there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to (Los Angeles). I wish there were," he said. Newsom said the state will complete a 110-mile (177 km) high-speed rail link between Merced and Bakersfield. In March 2018, the state forecast the costs had jumped by $13 billion to $77 billion and warned that the costs could be as much as $98.1 billion.

California planned to build a 520-mile system in the first phase that would allow trains to travel at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour in the traffic-choked state from Los Angeles to San Francisco and begin full operations by 2033. Newsom said he would not give up entirely on the effort. "Abandoning high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises and lawsuits to show for it," he said. "And by the way, I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump."

Comments

As the old maxim goes

[SuperKendall]

Something that can't go on forever, won't.

Or maybe it really should be - sooner or later, you run out of other people's money.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[Anonymous Coward]

Something that can't go on forever, won't.

Well, the state border does come up before Medford. That said, why on earth the project is not a multi-state and multi-nation venture with the line going all the way to Seattle and continuing to Vancouver and optionally continuing towards the east from there in Canada, while branching towards east in Lon Angeles and Sacramento in the US? One step and line section at a time as economically feasible. The stations would spur real-estate and city development around them.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[rtb61]

Too much traffic, easy fix, do it without spending any tax money, just strict regulation, enforcement and major penalties. How to reduce traffic, easy require all major new high rise construction to have the first series of floors as retail and the next series of floors as commercial and then a bunch of floors as residential. All new high rise construction and effectively distribute the flow of people, even live work and play in the one building. This forced through the entire city a 3D planned city. Retail with the most traffic for the first five floors and the commercial with reduced traffic the next five floor and then ten floors of residential, least traffic, as an example in terms of number of floors but the transition should be of similar height throughout in terms of noise transmissions, exposure and privacy and foot traffic flows in terms of elevated walkways from structure to structure, above street level traffic.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[cheesybagel]

Yes, Mr. CONservative. Because building a highway over the Embarcadero would have been better than the high speed train.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[SuperKendall]

Wrong Mr FOOL. Building a tunnel (hyper loop) would have been better and might have worked because they might have had a shot in hell of getting right of way for reasonable routes, eminent domain for something 100 ft under people would not be such a hot potato.

As it was it never stood a chance, and was just a big plan to sponge up government money to give to contractors for essentially nothing. Lots of "planning" sessions.

As it is air travel between LA and SF is not too bad, an actual cost effective way to improve transit would be a few more small regional airports with smaller planes and looser screen restrictions so you could show up just a half hour before a flight. Especially some kind of commuter plane sized drone that can hold a dozen people or so might serve that need really well and cost vastly a lot less than any train (or tunnel).

Re:As the old maxim goes

[Miamicanes]

The main problem with "first floor retail" is that most downtown areas don't have blocks that are large enough. The next time you go to Best Buy, Target, or Walmart, note just how HUGE the store's footprint is... then compare that to the size of an average square block downtown. In most cities, you'd need at least two square blocks... three, after you add in the loading docks, ramps to the parking garage, required means of egress, at least some minimal first-floor lobby for the residential floors above, and service areas for things like trash. And most of the streetscape you end up with will be utterly and completely dead. At BEST, you'll end up with a streetscape that's 95% glass window with stuff behind it, but someone on the wrong side of the building might easily have to walk the equivalent of 2 or 3 current blocks just to get to the store's actual entrance. Retail stores, especially big-box stores, HATE having to deal with multiple entrances and exits... they want to funnel everyone through a single point, because it makes it easier to prevent shoplifting and reduces the cashier staffing demands.

For stores like Target and Walmart, spanning multiple floors is something they try to avoid at all costs. For a store like Walgreens or CVS, the second floor is where they stick the prescriptions and ostomy supplies. Even in mall anchor stores, you usually end up with a situation where the floors that open directly onto a major floor of the mall concourse get lots of foot traffic, and the remaining floors end up looking like a ghost town. In the US, at least, VERY few malls -- even in dense urban areas -- can pull off more than 3 stories before the additional floors look more like virtual ghost towns where they put the bridal stores, tuxedo rental places, movie theater lobby, storefront churches, and other places where people go as an intentional destination instead of casually walking by end up.

Downtown Miami illustrates this problem perfectly. As a matter of law and zoning, every single new skyscraper that's gotten built over the past 25 years has first-floor empty... most of which is in a state of perpetual vacancy because the spaces are too small, or the parking is too inadequate or expensive. In Chicago, there are skyscrapers with big-box stores occupying the basements... but even then, most of those buildings have at least one or two sides that are dead to pedestrians.

In Miami, you'd have a HELL of a time trying to convince a retailer like Walmart to build a store in a skyscraper's basement in downtown Miami, because their insurance costs would KILL them. No, it's not due to the water table... groundwater is a fact of life in almost EVERY big city. Dig a large 25 foot deep hole in London or lower Manhattan, and you'll find at LEAST as much groundwater as you'll encounter in Miami. The REAL problem is storm surge and/or storm-drain failure that leaves the street under a few inches of water for hours or days at a time. It might cause minimal damage to a flooded underground garage that's mostly just bare concrete that needs to drain and dry out, but would cause literally MILLIONS of dollars in damage to a flooded-out store like Walmart full of merchandise. Miami's storm drains fail ALL THE GODDAMN TIME, and half the time it's not even due to a "real" storm... it's because the county doesn't do proper storm-drain maintenance, so the storm drains get clogged with rotting vegetation & trash until we get a week or two of downpours that leave a random square mile with the streets and sidewalks under at least an inch or two of water. The problem is, it might only be an inch of water at the sidewalk, but that inch of water is enough to leave a basement retail store under literally 16-25 feet of water (because once the water gets high enough to pour into an opening, it's going to KEEP pouring in until the water level inside matches the water level outside).

Re:As the old maxim goes

[JohnnyBGod]

I find it amusing how a solution that works just fine the world over somehow can't possibly work in the US.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[mpercy]

"VERY few malls -- even in dense urban areas -- can pull off more than 3 stories before the additional floors"

Mod points for Interesting observation. The mall closest to me has two levels and, except for the food court on the lower level, seems to me to have about even traffic on both levels. But! I also notice that the parking lots are skewed. About half of the parking lots lead into lower-level entrances and about half lead into upper-level. Both sides have a decent anchor store, and both sides connect to a fairly major road.

My group uses the food court regularly to avoid the "what do you want for lunch today" situation...

Re:As the old maxim goes

[mr.mctibbs]

We have first-floor retail fuckin' everywhere in New York City and it works just fine, because we have *smaller retailers*. Best Buy still kicks around but I haven't seen a Target in years and I don't know anyone who lives here that would be caught dead in one. Megastores are not required for good living.

Re: As the old maxim goes

[Miamicanes]

New York stores ALSO generally don't have to COMPETE with stores like Target & Walmart, because you'd have to travel 45 minutes & cross at least one expensive bridge or tunnel to get to one.

That's NOT the case in most big cities. A retail store in downtown Miami isn't competing with other retail stores in downtown Miami, it's competing with at least 4 or 5 multi-million foot regional malls and a few "vertical power centers" with big box stores stacked on top of each other within 10-15 miles, including two malls (Dadeland & Merrick Park) & two VPCs (Dadeland Station & Merrick Park) that are adjacent to Metrorail stations, plus a huge outlet mall (Dolphin Mall) across the street from an equally-large regional mall (International Mall) within a mile of the biggest Ikea store I've seen in my entire life & the usual assortment of big-box stores. And there's still Aventura Mall (the #2 or #3 largest mall in America by actual retail space, the Falls (a large outdoor "Lifestyle" mall), and someday... American Dream Mall (yeah, malls are quite non-dead in South Florida... 11 months of steamy rain is a major factor).

My point is, in a city like Miami, the only way ground-floor retail in a skyscraper district can economically compete with that is by collectively BECOMING "an urban de-facto mall with skyscrapers over the anchor stores". And that's exactly what Brickell City Centre is attempting to do... transform a ~6 square block area into a hybrid regional lifestyle power center with skyscrapers. And part of the reason WHY Miami agreed to vacate so many city streets and radically re-design the surrounding road network was the observed failure of traditional ground-floor retail to thrive (or even subsist) in surrounding buildings. The city figured it had nothing to lose by facilitating BCC's 5.4 million square foot urban experiment. Ultimately, we'll see who was right.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re:As the old maxim goes

[Miamicanes]

> Why do the stores need to be so big?

The realities of 21st-century retail, if you want to compete against Amazon & Walmart without going broke.

Fifty years ago, if you wanted to buy a TV, you'd go to a small store downtown that sold nothing but TVs... often, a single brand of TVs. Distributors bought TVs from the manufacturer for $n, marked them up 100%, and sold them to local dealers for 2 x $n. Those local dealers marked them up another 100%, and sold them to consumers for 4 x $n.

Today, you go to Walmart or Best Buy. They're their own vertically-integrated distributor. They buy a TV from Samsung for $n, then turn around and sell it at a price that makes them a net profit of about $5 per TV... after turning the screws on Samsung and getting them to shave a few more dollars from the price Samsung wanted to charge in the first place. Half the time, a TV on sale at Walmart or Best Buy costs less than someone attempting to emulate the old dealer model would have paid the equivalent of to purchase the TV wholesale in the first place. Instead of trying to make a few hundred dollars from the sale of a TV, Walmart & Best Buy try to make the money by getting you to pay $75 for a 24-cent HDMI cable, buy a service contract you're unlikely to ever use, or purchase $2,000 worth of videogames, Blu-Ray discs, and whatever else they sell over the next few months. You're also spared having to deal with high-pressure salespeople who'd otherwise be trying to sell sand to Bedouins. You'll still have to swat down their attempts to sell you accessories, but at least they won't waste your time trying to talk you into buying an inferior TV just because it's what they were told to sell that week.

I personally *prefer* ambivalent salespeople who don't care what I buy, or even whether I buy it from them... when they aren't clueless, they tend to be fairly honest about pointing out things that aren't necessarily obvious from the marketing materials (like, "oh, you want a TV that can do 720p120 over HDMI? You'll want one of these three... but not this one, because the manufacturer fucked up its HDMI audio passthrough & DD+7.1 doesn't actually work properly... or this one, because their motion-interpolation algorithm sucks for 1080i60 live-action content"). As a practical matter, the salespeople at a store like Best Buy aren't "salespeople", so much as "bright high school and college students who are into whatever department they're working in, and will happily point out the flaws and warts of every TV in stock if you're nice to them".

Plus, every store you shop at involves standing in a different line to pay. It's a lot more convenient to shop at a 500,000 square foot Publix whose meat department is bigger than a typical grocery store was 50 years ago & where nearly every permutation of size and meat I might want is already packed, priced, and laid out for me to grab myself instead of having to wait in line. Plus a "chips" aisle with every permutation of type and flavor known to exist today, in a half-dozen sizes ranging from "individual single-serving package" to "multi-pack" to "normal bag" to "jesus god, where do I get one of the mini-forklifts to load it into my SUV?". Ditto for pasta sauce, breakfast cereal, and everything else. Corner grocery stores might be OK for buying a gallon of milk, but they simply can't offer the sheer breadth and depth of products as a modern suburban grocery store the size of an entire 1960s-era mall.

Hell, even though the dining room sizes have gotten smaller, have you seen just how HUGE an average new McDonalds is behind the counter? Or a busy Pizza Hut or Domino's? The Pizza Hut take out/delivery store by my house has literally four separate ovens and assembly lines, and averages 10-20 people waiting to pick up online on almost any random weekend evening. Sure, they could probably run four smaller locations... but being huge like that gives them the headroom they need to absorb random orders for 24 large pizzas for a bowling league, softball team, or o

Re:As the old maxim goes

[Anonymous Coward]

Your thoughts of putting bigbox retail in downtown highrise buildings makes no sense -- restaurants, coffee shops, and specialized shops and even grocery stores get placed there. Big box retail is best placed within walking distance of further-out rail/subway stops. New developments of these types will mix in low-rise (and sometimes high-rise) residential.

I have a car in Atlanta but use it just to visit family in other parts of the state and to get an occasional oil change, otherwise it sits in place for a week or two. The city is at a comfortable height above sea level but is close enough for weekend drives to the coast or mountains if needed. The recent round of new high-rises here is very much work-live-play and will be nice to see as they all get activated over the next year or two.

If you are looking for a place to move your tech company, look into the new buildings in the Georgia Tech area. If you need to build your own high-rise building, we have space for that too.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[Miamicanes]

You didn't notice my point that, in downtown Miami at least, every new building HAS most of its first floor set aside for retail... and most of those retail spaces are perpetually vacant. They're WAY too expensive for small businesses to afford, not big enough for large corporate retailers to bother with, don't have enough free parking (or even sanely-priced short-term parking) to attract customers who don't live within walking distance, and don't have enough customers within walking distance because even the people who LIVE within walking distance have cars and just drive to Target, Walmart, or Best Buy in Midtown 2 miles north. So buildings end up with mostly-vacant first floors occupied by a few high-end realtors and yoga studios, and little else.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[djinn6]

If you're the owner of a long-vacant retail space, you're making $0 from it. If you lower the rent by 50% and find a retailer, you will be making more than $0. So either the owners are retarded, or there's something else preventing retailers from setting up shop, such as excessive regulations or usage restrictions.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[djinn6]

Personally, I don't shop at small stores because I have no idea that they exist or what inventory they have. But I also don't like shopping at the huge stores because I end up spending a lot of time moving from one area to the next to find what I'm looking for. It's much easier to check out a few shopping websites and accept that it'll take a few days to arrive.

If all of the smaller stores could get together and put their real-time inventory on a website somewhere, then at least I would know what they're selling.

Feature not bug

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> would cost too much and take too long. There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency

That's usually a feature, not a bug, in government projects. How can you pay off your buddies if people can see who's getting paid?

Re:Feature not bug

[Darinbob]

This seems to be the same story in many newer projects in the US. Someone is always anxious to undercut to get the bid and then overcharge later to get the money. Proper long term project planning isn't done so that there's inevitably an "overrun" in time and money. And it makes no difference if the project is in a red or a blue state either. It makes me wonder how we ever managed to get big and complex projects done in the past.

Re:Feature not bug

[ShanghaiBill]

He just doesn't want to say that there isn't enough money, never was, and it was a dumb idea from the very start.

As someone who predicted many years ago that billions would be spent, and then reality would set in and it would be cancelled, I want to take this opportunity to say: "I told you so."

Re:Feature not bug

[slipped_bit]

This is true. A couple of years ago my state decided to completely redo a two-mile stretch of 6-lane interstate highway. Nothing major -- no redesigned interchanges or anything, no new land acquisition, just a complete replacement of the old road (it was needed.) It took two years. Effectively a mile a year. As I drove through the construction zone each day of those two years I wondered: How on Earth did we ever get the national interstate highway system built in the first place?

Re: Feature not bug

[Anonymous Coward]

How do we get back to that?

Stop voting for socialists and liberals. (Sorry if that comment is redundant.)

Re:Feature not bug

[zlives]

didn't outsource it to capitalism. WPA for the win

Re:Feature not bug

[Darinbob]

Lots of reasons, people pick their favorites and think it's the most important maybe. I think there's a tendency to have a pay-as-you-go model so that the entire project isn't funded fully up front and that leads to issues down the road because the project hasn't been fully planned. And full planning isn't done ahead of time because it costs actual money to do the planning. I may be wrong though, but I see these failure in companies at times.

What worked in the past? We had lots of bridges and dams built in the thirties (Golden Gate bridge, Oakland bridge, Hoover dam, etc). But we were also getting out of the great depression as well. Not all of this had federal funding but they did have state funding with broad support of the public. Getting people to work was also seen as a good thing, even if the government paid for it, which is not today's general political attitude where public works projects are usually unpopular. The bridges also had tolls and the dams generated electricity as well. We also had the federal highway system under Eisenhower, but again we had a lot of people back from WWII ready for work. The highway system was a great boon to the economy too, both in building it and having it, so the public was in favor.

Maybe the important factor is to have broad public support (which the high speed rail never had) and to have a visible economic benefit.

Merced and Bakersfield

[Zorro]

Because EVERYONE wants to be in Merded!

Re:Merced and Bakersfield

[HornWumpus]

Merced?

This is a question for philosophers.

Re:Merced and Bakersfield

[LynnwoodRooster]

No, the plan was to start with the only section they actually knew how to build. There STILL isn't any clue about how to get rail from Bakersfield to Los Angeles. The fail here isn't building in the middle of nowhere, it's starting to build without a plan on how to connect to the largest population center in the US, just 60 miles away...

Re:Merced and Bakersfield

[phantomfive]

There STILL isn't any clue about how to get rail from Bakersfield to Los Angeles

Really? Why not just route it over the grapevine, along the freeway? Seems fairly straightforward, to me.........

Re:Merced and Bakersfield

[cheesybagel]

Merced? I thought it was a crappy Intel CPU.

Re:Merced and Bakersfield

[slinches]

Have you driven the grapevine? It's not exactly the best terrain to drive at more than about 80mph over. How much earth movement do you think they would need to do to allow a train to go 200+ through it?

Re:Merced and Bakersfield

[DigitAl56K]

Seriously,

You are going to start in the middle of nowhere and end in the middle of nowhere. If this is the plan, just nix the entire thing.

Re:Merced and Bakersfield

[1ucius]

Cars and trains have very different engineering requirements.

So many other places not served

[SuperKendall]

The really sad part is it won't even make it to Shelbyville.

Re:So many other places not served

[HornWumpus]

The nieces and nephews are hired. Who cares if it's an endless money pit.

IMHO Mothball the right of way and what's built. Finish those things too far along to abandon. Running it will be cost prohibitive.

Spend the rest of the money buying those parts of the whole system right of way that are currently 'easy', then lease them out. Don't worry that you are buying disconnected chunks.

Re:So many other places not served

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

Re:So many other places not served

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The really sad part is it won't even make it to Shelbyville.

With those billions that they wasted, they could have bought e-scooters for everyone in Shelbyville.

And for everyone in San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well.

Then all those folks could e-scooter their way between San Francisco and Los Angeles . . . via Shelbyville.

Re:So many other places not served

[Darinbob]

They had to start building somewhere though. Eventually the finished line would have passed through Merced and Bakersfield. If they had started in San Jose (uncertain, there were arguments about whether it should be a terminus or not) and then it ended in Chowchilla when the funding was cut, it would have been just as silly if not more so.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[saloomy]

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

Cost overruns

[WoodstockJeff]

Ironically, many of the cost overruns are for dealing with things like environmental impact, routing through areas that don't want it, then routing around those areas that have the political clout to get excluded, etc.

China wins again!

[Pollux]

Why can China figure out how to construct 18,000 miles of high speed rail, and we can't even figure out how to connect LA to SF?

High speed rail... dark side of the moon... mass production of consumer goods... America is failing repeatedly, with or without Trump.

Re:China wins again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because nobody but the central planners have any say in the matter. And I wonder if people along the route receive fair compensation for their land.

Re:China wins again!

[Solandri]

China has a bunch of unemployed farmers it can pay $10 a day to work on construction projects. California's minimum wage is $11 per hour.

Re:China wins again!

[saloomy]

The Chinese have the political will to modernize their country, and are relatively patriotic, as a byproduct of their propaganda, and information control. We are more individualistic and put ourselves above the needs of everyone else.

Reminds me of a Milton Friedman quote: "I believe the government spends too much money. We should spend less money on everyone else, and spend more on me - Everyone"

Re:China wins again!

[Jeremi]

Let's just say that China takes a very narrow view of property rights. Obtaining the necessary land is much quicker and cheaper when you can just order anybody off of their property at gunpoint with no due process.

Re:China wins again!

[rogoshen1]

us: lawsuits, red tape, more lawsuits, elections, more red tape
china: prison, education camps, execution.

basically it's way easier to do large-scale engineering projects if you can jail or bury anyone who speaks out.

Re:China wins again!

[LynnwoodRooster]

The Chinese Government owns all the land; there is no private property rights in China, you get - at best - a 75 year revocable lease on your home. And those who protest such "five year plan" keystones tend to end up missing...

Re:China wins again!

[DNS-and-BIND]

You have to admire their firmness in dealing with the deplorables, though. If we only had a leader who had the courage to take the necessary harsh measures against them. But instead he's on their side against us. China's system isn't all bad.

Re:China wins again!

[joe_frisch]

We do have a lot more people in prison than China does.
Otherwise, yes, they are more willing than us to break eggs to make omelets. They built 10,000KM of high speed rail in the time it took us to talk about building it. They now have better roads, more solar and wind, etc.

We have democracy - but somehow a government lead by people who seem widely disliked. We have social programs, but many homeless on the streets. We have human rights but around a million ethnic minorities in prison who have never had a jury trial.

The US has great ideals - and that is important, but the reality tends to fall far short.

Re:China wins again!

[phantomfive]

It's not that easy in China, actually. Check out these nail houses. China has strengthened the property rights dramatically since the 50s.

Although China has a large population, the population density is also high, so there are a lot of wide-open spaces across the country.

Re:China wins again!

[mentil]

Wow, they're both unemployed AND farmers? I bet their farm cats are simultaneously alive and dead, and if you strap a slice of toast with PB to their backs, they spin like a dynamo in midair to power the nation's electrical grid.

Re:China wins again!

[cheesybagel]

I bet if it was to build a Walmart they would have used eminent domain and seized the land just fine.

Re:China wins again!

[cheesybagel]

Actually there are more jailed people in the USA than in China per capita.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:China wins again!

[nukenerd]

No, farming is their business and being unemployed is their hobby.

Re:China wins again!

[nukenerd]

People are comparing USA with China, but those are extremes. European countries find it perfectly possible to build high speed lines, and they are not authoritarian nations.

Re:China wins again!

[mpercy]

Maybe because China can say "This rail line goes here", can displace anyone in the way and eliminate (to use a kind word) anyone who dissents?

Re:China wins again!

[mpercy]

I wonder what the environmental impact report on China rail line looks like? How many "save the snail darter" lawsuits got filed? How many rich people owned ranches along the path and demanded that the line not run through or even near their property?

Re:China wins again!

[smoot123]

Why can China figure out how to construct 18,000 miles of high speed rail, and we can't even figure out how to connect LA to SF?

Could that be because we already have a transportation system which beats the snot out of high speed rail? I'd prefer to fly any day compared to the monstrosity they were building.

I mean, this never passed the laugh test. If you want high speed rail, connect the East Coast. Duh. That's the only part of the country with enough people and destinations the right distances from each other to make HSR worth considering.

As a point of comparison, we were planning a trip to France, Germany, and Austria for this summer. Even in Europe, with it's highly touted rail system, it made no sense to take trains to get around. Flying was cheaper and faster. I was quite disappointed because I like taking trains.

Re:China wins again!

[dryeo]

Somebody posted this up the page, https://www.businessinsider.co...

Re:China wins again!

[HornWumpus]

You link to a story about how people in China game their version of eminent domain?

Nail houses are throw away structures ment to get maximum money from the system when they _take_ the land. Perverse economic incentives result in huge amounts of waste. Every penny spent building nail houses is a misallocated resource.

Re: China wins again!

[phantomfive]

I think you're an angry little nincompoop.

Re:China wins again!

[dunkelfalke]

Possible, sure, but even here it takes years and a lot of NIMBYism, not just from people but also from municipalities.
This one for example took 169 lawsuits.

Re:China wins again!

[dunkelfalke]

Flying is only faster if you neglect the hassle at the airport. I live in Germany and prefer the train for anything below 1000 km.

Re: China wins again!

[HornWumpus]

I don't care. Just so you know you are wrong.

Re: China wins again!

[phantomfive]

Read my post again. I was responding to someone who said "property laws in China are so weak you can remove people by gunpoint." You need to go through the courts first, and it can take a while.

Re: China wins again!

[HornWumpus]

It takes long enough that the previous owner/renter can have a junk building (nail house) erected just so he gets paid more.

Which fucks over those who actually developed their property and wastes resources. But it's the only way they can 'win', losing the property being a forgone conclusion.

Re:China wins again!

[LynnwoodRooster]

Nail homes exist until the local Government decides its too much of an issue - then they go to court, and the 3 judge panel (which acts as prosecutor, defense attorney, and jury) decides what is to happen. Nail homes often live for a year or two until the outrage dies down - then they are paved away.

Re:China wins again!

[DarthVain]

Four reasons mainly:

#1 As folks mentioned, property rights. However probably more importantly is the fact that "people" don't "own" land they lease it, though some leases can be as long as 70 years. The closest thing to ownership is by perfect or communities, however that is more about local land management. Additionally the government also has more rights in terms of expropriation for large nationalized projects. So combined it gives them much more flexibility.

#2 Planning, which in part is a result of a lack of democracy. China does long term planning, like really long term. Forget about 5 year plans, or even 25 year, we're talking 50 year plans. As such they are able to avoid potential pitfalls but anticipating issues. So for example if they expect to run a rail line though an area in the next 20 years, they might decide not to renew land leases in that area which would help mitigate those sorts of impact and conflict.

#3 Lack of democracy, which is linked to the planning piece above. Basically they don't have to worry about an election ever 4 years derailing (pun intended!) large projects for political gain and advantage. This one is particular troublesome when there is also a change in which party is elected, as they tend to want to throw out or destroy whatever their rivals have done or were trying to do to limit their successes for the next election cycle continue ad infinitum etc... Only having one party certainly helps in this regard as they're all on the same "team"... Though I expect there are still personal political shenanigans...

#4 Nationalized industry, again you're not going to be ripping off yourself at every opportunity. While there are likely inefficiencies in a non-privatized implementation, there would be less motivation and risk that you are going to get year over year cost increases where the company is just trying to milk the government for more money. People talk about government waste all the time, but when you get down to it, 99% of that (at least in terms of paid cost) is private companies soaking the government for taxpayers money.

So while yes the Chinese system has many flaws and social issues, it does allow for large mega projects at scales impossible elsewhere. That said they aren't infallible either so when they screw up it is also on a rather large scale, purpose built but empty cities for example, or large population displacements for dams, etc...

Re:China wins again!

[DarthVain]

I suppose the #5 reason I forgot would be the lack of (or lip service paid) to environmental regulations holding things up. There are plenty of examples of things in China that are possible that just aren't when properly enhanced environmental protections are taken into consideration.

HSR is not in American vocabulary

[k6mfw]

I see this as High Speed Rail is simply not in the mindset of Americans regardless of their political alignment. Perhaps how it got this far is something unusual. We have no problem of spending trillions on "infrastructure" in Iraq and Afghanistan with nothing to show for it, but trying to spend a small fraction of that ***here*** on our own country, everyone screams it's so expensive!

Re:HSR is not in American vocabulary

[aaarrrgggh]

The approach was flawed from the outset. To take a "train" today from San Diego to Sacramento you spend 5 hours in a bus, between Los Angeles and Fresno due to the mountains. Your two options are to hug the coast which doesn't provide value to inland communities, or figure out a way through the mountain, which would be about a 40-mile tunnel through a seismically active area. (Yes, tunnels are safe places to be during earthquakes, unless they cross fault lines, which this would.)

But, if they pulled it off, they would suddenly have a tunnel to Antelope Valley/Palmdale, which would provide a huge economic impact on the region and allow for a metric shit-ton of affordable housing with a 20-minute commute to downtown LA. The problem is that just that section would cost about $20-40 billion.

On the upside, once it is done, (and you have presumably purchased the right-of-way to Fresno already) the rest of the project is easy to make incrementally.

Re:HSR is not in American vocabulary

[novakyu]

Egh. Who wants to live in Lancaster?

Re:HSR is not in American vocabulary

[aaarrrgggh]

Oddly enough people that housing is being built there and the communities are growing, but it just proliferates more sprawl rather than being a sustainable community. If your mortgage is half what it would be in the basin, a number of people would do it.

Re:HSR is not in American vocabulary

[fropenn]

If the commute were easy, housing prices would skyrocket.

Re:HSR is not in American vocabulary

[novakyu]

My parents used to live in Lake Hughes (job related). Lancaster had tons of empty houses. Although, this was around 2008, 2009, so maybe things are different now. I hated just how hot it was there, every time I visited my parents and had to go to Costco in Lancaster with them.

Re:HSR is not in American vocabulary

[aaarrrgggh]

Yeah.... now Moreno Valley is a "desirable" place to live too. 2008-9 isn't a good time to judge by.

Why can't any government entity

[bobstreo]

create a contract that penalizes the other party for late delivery? If you give the contractor 5x the base price and still have nothing to show for it, you should be jailed.

Government contracts are not supposed to be an endless trough of money.

Re:Why can't any government entity

[alvinrod]

You assume that some of this isn't by design. Government contracts are a convenient way for politicians to kickback some of the bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign contributions that politicians receive from various companies, unions, etc.

The other side of it is that sometimes its other parts of the government that are responsible for the holdups. I'm sure that this thing has been hit with the environmental impact report stick so many times it's cross-eyed.

Re:Why can't any government entity

[stikves]

This is a cycle designed to keep politicians in power, and their cronies in charge of contracts.

The base rate is never enough to finish the work. However if the company continues to support the politicians, with very legal campaign contributions, they will continue to get piecemeal funding.

On the other hand, if the politicians keep granting the same companies newer (and more lucrative) contracts, they themselves will receive ongoing support.

This is a vicious cycle. Any entity earning the contract, but not supporting the politicians will go bankrupt (since the funding will not increase), and politicians not playing this game will not be (re-)elected.

This event is actually one of the good occurrences, where the losses are cut, and the public will no longer support (this particular) expensive project.

Re:Why can't any government entity

[Hodr]

What you describe are fixed-firm-price contracts. The contractor must meet the price even if they lose money. If they fail to do the work, they can be held legally responsible.

That said, there are two primary reasons many government contracts are not FFP. Government projects have way more regulations (why does an aircraft GPS need to survive a 40g shock and be waterproof to 30 meters?) and crazy make-work meetings. This makes it hard for companies that do a lot of commercial business to properly estimate the cost for government projects.

The BIGGER issue, it that the government is not structured such that a single person/entity is in control of most "contractable" efforts. When a committee of rotating people with different agendas are in control of the purse strings you get a LOT of requirements creep. So a projected that would have cost $1M with the initial requirements, and might have cost $2M with the final requirements, ends up costing $10M because it had 15 contract iterations between them.

Re:Why can't any government entity

[1ucius]

I suspect they do this already, but there are clauses for delays caused by the government.

Re:Why can't any government entity

[HornWumpus]

Pelosi didn't make 200 million dollars while never earning more than $200k/year honestly.

Saw it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon Musk proposed a far better and cheaper plan and they ignored it. I hope he tweets mad S about it now to rub it in their faces. Stupid bureaucrats.

Re:Saw it coming

[Streetlight]

Upon reading the OP, I was going to post, "Maybe Elon Musk could step in and do a better job for a reasonable route for such a high speed tunnel LA to SF."

Re:Saw it coming

[nukenerd]

Elon Musk proposed a far better and cheaper plan and they ignored it.

Get back to us when he has his idea actually working and with actual cost figures - ones which he has not pulled out of his backside.

Re:Saw it coming

[doom]

Elon Musk's shall we say, fanciful, hyperloop notion was widely regarded as one of the distractions that undermined this project and killed it. So we get no high-speed rail, and we certainly don't get any hyperloop, because Musk has moved on to new gosh-wow announcments to seize the newscycle and keep his fans happy.

Musk has become the Trump of tech.

Re:Seriously? Spite Trump?

[saloomy]

"In January 2017, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office said by several measures California is, indeed, a donor state, but just barely. It receives $0.99 in federal expenditures per dollar of taxes paid"

So, it's about dead even. Since California based companies and individuals have written off so many state and local taxes on their federal income tax returns for so long, they effectively short out the federal government in favor of state and local taxes. Since the TCJA, there has been a cap on the SALT (state and local taxes) deductions you can make. So it will likely change in the future.

Before TCJA, if you made $100,000 a year and you lived in California, you paid to Uncle Sam less than if you made $100,000 a year and lived in Kentucky (since Kentucky had lower state and local taxes). In fact, California is the highest SALT state, so it paid the lowest to Uncle Sam, all else being equal.

Now, it's closer to normal.

But don't let \ stupid little things like facts keep you from getting angry.

Badly planned from the beginning.

[whoever57]

The original route: Sacramento/LA. Why? California's two big population centers are LA and the SF Bay Area. That should have been the target route from the outset.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[HornWumpus]

Your not going HSR fast in the Bay area. The urban part is just the Caltrain route, just upgrade that. Besides unless you repurpose the golden gate. SF is a dead end. Even if you do the golden gate, that puts you in Marin, good luck with those nuts. Also note: HSR already paid SF huge bucks to build a terminal. Straight up bribe for political support. Bet the money is gone.

There is already Amtrak commuter from Oakland to Sac, connecting to BART and Sac light rail (kind of expensive vs just driving to the end of BART). Sac has a clear shot north and is already the rail crossroads.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[PrimaryConsult]

This phenomena manifests itself in a lot of rail projects. For some reason, they build less important segments first, under the mistaken notion that no one would cancel it before they get to the meat. Here are some examples:
1. San Juan (PR)'s Tren Urbano - Doesn't go to the airport, the tourist district, or the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean (Plaza Las Americas). The latter two locations are traffic nightmares. Hell most visitors to San Juan have no idea it even *has* a metro!
2. New York City's massive 2nd avenue subway project (the variant begun in the 1960s). They dug tunnels at the extreme north and south ends of the line. They also constructed a double deck 63st tunnel under the river for both subway and LIRR, but built absolutely nothing that would connect to an existing line before the money ran out. The subway level eventually opened as a stub connecting Manhattan to a single stop in Queens in 1990 (later connected to an existing main subway line in Queens in 2001 to make it less useless), and the LIRR level will open in 2022, pathetic timeline for a tunnel that was largely completed by the mid 1970s.
3. Toronto - Sheppard Subway - there was a lot of ambition intending it to connect multiple subway lines, but what ended up getting built was only 4 stops through purely residential areas on the outskirts of Toronto.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[aaarrrgggh]

Caltrain actually has daily ridership already; spending money on it made and makes sense; the improvements boosted system speed and throughput and as I understand has improved ridership, until at least when the transbay terminal beam cracked.

The goal has to be long-term, with meaningful steps forward. The money squandered in the central valley is what is lost.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[cheesybagel]

Caltrain is lame. The line is not electrified, it has loads of at grade passes, I doubt it uses modern electronic signaling systems. But I agree that it should be improved.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[aaarrrgggh]

And the money to be spent was primarily to electrify, address at-grade crossing safety, and shift the terminus to a point where connections to BART and Metro could be made, as well as to a point where a higher percentage of passengers could walk to their final destination.

Caltrain has a number of huge flaws and challenges, but it is far better to start with something and go from there. Look at Eurostar as an example— two thirds of the travel time to Paris was originally getting through London when it opened, but now it is pretty much what it should be.

Perfection is the enemy of good, and all that crap.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[HornWumpus]

Realistically, the money currently allocated to Caltrain was to cover the first 10% of NIMBY lawsuits and endless environmental impact studies.

The problem was that treating Caltrain like a separate problem/connecting line wouldn't have paid enough bribes to SF politicians to deliver their support. So it was called part of HSR and money was funnelled to the usual scumbags (gotta wonder how much Pelosi pocketed personally). One good thing, that's now done, they will just squander the current money then complain.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[byteherder]

Actually, the second biggest population center in California is San Diego.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[smoot123]

The original route: Sacramento/LA. Why? California's two big population centers are LA and the SF Bay Area.

Sacramento is a 1-2 hour drive from the Bay Area (depending on which part of the BA you're talking about).

In concept, San FranciscoSan JoseLong cruise stageMultiple LA stopsSan Diego might make sense if you really optimize for travel time. You're competing with flying (about 45 minutes in the air) and driving (5 hours from the south bay to north LA, and you have your car there to boot). Routing it via Fresno and Bakersfield was just too expensive in terms of travel time to make it work. In addition, the only travel-time-feasible routes through the Bay Area (through the middle of San Jose and up the peninsula, 200 MPH the entire way) were not politically feasible so this was never, ever going to actually work.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[whoever57]

Actually, the second biggest population center in California is San Diego.

Citation? Because official designations shows San Diego as the 17th most populous metropolitan area, while the SF Bay area is ahead in 12th place, and the definition of the latter doesn't encompass much of the East Bay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[whoever57]

So join it to BART in San Jose. No need to go all the way to SF.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[smoot123]

So join it to BART in San Jose. No need to go all the way to SF.

The budget was 60 minutes from LA to SF. Just taking BART from San Jose to SF is going to take longer than that so that's not an option.

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[whoever57]

Since San Jose has a higher population than SF, perhaps that was a stupid goal.

Airports impose a lot more delay than just the flight time. If they could get a city-center-to-city-center route that was 3 hours, that would actually be competitive.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[pgmrdlm]

Sucks to be you where you can't write off your local and state taxes. Oh no, what are you going to do now.
Have more working/tax paying people move out? More illegals move in.

Sucks to be you! ;o)

so many mistakes

[supernova87a]

As much of a fan of high speed rail as I am, this project from the beginning was plagued by many issues:

- Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point
- Lots of intractable property rights issues along the route (and lack of political willingness to exert eminent domain for a more reasonable route)
- High required labor and engineering cost (union requirements)
- Backwards approach to do the easiest part / least useful segment first
- Management team that kept moving the target (or was deceived) on cost, geotechnical feasibility, political backing

As a result, I concluded that despite how good it would be as a showcase project, this was not anywhere near the top of the list of cost-effective things you would invest in to improve CA transportation issues. And now they've had to embrace reality.

I would even say, the whole thing should be canned rather than continuing to dump money into a stupid central valley rail that no one will use. Bakersfield to Modesto? Tell me who's going to take that train...

The worst thing is that this will set a bad example / leave people burned and resistant to trying it again. Sometimes, we really do need authoritarian-style government to clear out resistance when a good project is identified but individual interests bog it down.

Re:so many mistakes

[Ichijo]

Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point

Unless you're trying to get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco during rush hour!

despite how good it would be as a showcase project, this was not anywhere near the top of the list of cost-effective things you would invest in to improve CA transportation issues.

That's true, variable congestion tolling the I-5 and the 101 would be a MUCH cheaper (and permanent) way to eliminate the traffic congestion.

Re:so many mistakes

[Etcetera]

Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point

Unless you're trying to get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco during rush hour!

You can get that flight for $100 on a good day through Southwest.

Re:so many mistakes

[jrumney]

Add to that, they are doing it ass backwards. The sensible approach would have been to build high speed rail San Diego - LA and San Jose - SF first, then once people get used to the idea, build the longer distance link in between. Building the link between two minor cities first for cost reasons is just going to doom the project from the start, as there will never be enough demand for that service to pay for the route (even if that route is much cheaper per mile than the more densely populated routes).

Re:so many mistakes

[HornWumpus]

They can call the authoritarian project to clear out resistance 'The Great Leap Forward'.

You've identified yourself as among the group of people who should never have power.

Re:so many mistakes

[drinkypoo]

Unless you're trying to get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco during rush hour!

You can get that flight for $100 on a good day through Southwest.

If your flight is on the ground in downtown San Francisco, you are not having a good day.

Re:so many mistakes

[LynnwoodRooster]

Southwest Airlines out of Burbank, to OAK - round trip for $200. Burbank and Oakland are great airports because they are small - fast TSA, easy to get into/out from, etc. And traffic isn't bad to drive from LA to Burbank especially in the morning because it's a counter-commute.

Re:so many mistakes

[Ichijo]

Unless you're trying to get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco during rush hour!

You can get that flight for $100 on a good day through Southwest.

Try booking that flight during rush hour in downtown Los Angeles, then leave immediately for the airport and see if you can get to downtown San Francisco faster and cheaper than the train would have been!

Re:so many mistakes

[slashdice]

Bakersfield to Modesto? Tell me who's going to take that train...

Homeless meth addicts looking for a place to sleep.

Re:so many mistakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Train has many other advantages. There's no checked luggage - you simply have enough space for your suitcase to be carry-on. Much less security and lining up. Departure and arrival in town (not at the outskirts.) No 'checking in' as such.

It's a lot easier and faster to get onto the train and ready for an on-time departure than it is to get onto an aircraft. You basically just walk on.

Re:so many mistakes

[cheesybagel]

Just make sure to bring your own earplugs if you use BART from SFO to SF.

Re:so many mistakes

[Ichijo]

They aren't planning to run service between two minor cities. The route straightening and grade separation allows all Amtrak trains to run faster up and down the Central Valley, probably up to 125 mph through the new right of way depending on the trainset.

Re:so many mistakes

[houghi]

Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point

It is less than Paris to Marceille, southern France. The extra advantage is that it can go from city center to city center. Depending where your airport is, you need to deduct that time to get to and from the airport, as well as early arrivalk at airports.

I have taken the Boston to NYC train (part of the route) and that thing was slow. In Europe that would be high speed all the way and most would be 4 tracks as well. 1 train from Boston to NYC with perhaps a stop in the middle and then commuter trains that would be "only" going 100MPH (160KMH).

Re:so many mistakes

[edi_guy]

I wish they would start with regular speed rail. See if people will actually use it, and then start talking about the multi-billion dollar TGV/Shinkansen options. Granted the current state of rail, aka Amtrak is abysmal. Really terrible. So you would have to do something different.

My idea is to run express trains from SF Bay Area to LA (Union Station) to San Diego. We're talking 80-90 mph, existing tracks, and perhaps upgrades to crossings. There is existing rails used primarily for freight, but the idea is to build 'passing lanes' of track in certain areas, where the freight trains would need to pull over, letting the passenger trains go past. This can/should be all automated so you don't have to rely on a conductor looking at a signal. We might have to end up paying the freight companies for the right to do this, but that's fine. So there is money involved, bit nowhere near the $77-100 billion a new system would cost. And if people really start using this train a lot then you can start talking about the expensive version.

A smaller scale version could be done on the Oakland to Truckee route...I would love to be able to take the train to Tahoe.

Re:so many mistakes

[HornWumpus]

You can take Amtrak from Oakland to Reno. I don't think there is a Truckee stop.

You don't want to.

Re:so many mistakes

[grinob]

> - Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point

Are you sure of this? Paris-Marseille is 862km / 535 miles stretch that can be traveled in as little as 3h07 on the french TGV train. In comparison, SF-LA is only 614 km / 382 miles...

And that's exactly what should happen...

[Balial]

whenever a taxpayer funded operation is, ahem, railroaded into poor planing, cost overruns and all the other excessive wastage. Burn that fucker to the ground and walk away from it. It's not worth another cent.

Re:And that's exactly what should happen...

[HornWumpus]

This mess is owned 100% by the Ds. The ones whose mantra is 'The government is great, you can trust us, just give us more money and power!'

It sucks to be us

[AlanObject]

Every modern country I ever visited has extensive passenger rail systems that everybody uses. But we can't afford it.

Military adventures in the Middle east costing hundreds of billions? No problem. But no new infrastructure. That's socialism or something.

Re:It sucks to be us

[jandrese]

Keep in mind we're talking about a project that's roughly the same length as Paris to Liechtenstein. It's not a trivial undertaking.

Re:It sucks to be us

[DogDude]

Again. Compared to invading and occupying Middle Eastern countries for decades, that's still, relatively, pretty small potatoes. It's rail track. It's not a fucking trip to the moon.

Re:It sucks to be us

[Locando]

California's not like the rest of the West. From Sacramento on down there's a lot more developed here than in any of the states on the other side of the Sierras. And a lot of the land that is sparsely populated in California is just straight-up mountains. The flatter parts in between are pretty packed in by American standards, hence the awful traffic even in lots of spots outside the city centers. (And I'm saying this living in one of the less populated regions of the state, which is nowhere near the proposed HSR.)

Re:It sucks to be us

[Confused]

Keep in mind we're talking about a project that's roughly the same length as Paris to Liechtenstein. It's not a trivial undertaking.

Indeed. Paris - Zürich is about only 100km short of going to Liechtenstein, but you can board a TGV for this trip today. The main reason it stops at Zürich is that nobody cares to go to Liechtenstein.

As the next poster mentioned, Paris - Marseille is fully operative. Same with München - Hamburg or Paris - Berlin. Those are all high-speed trains covering a comparable distance. And they were build through densely populated areas by countries where the opposition can't simply be thrown into jail.

Or did you mean that on your side of the Atlantic only trivial undertakings have a chance of success?

Re:It sucks to be us

[thegarbz]

You can start by not tearing down a democracy and replacing it with a dictatorship because you want some more oil.

'Muerika!!!!!

Re:It sucks to be us

[Anonymous Coward]

That's incredibly dishonest.

1. Social security is paid for by a dedicated tax. If you scrap the program, you must scrap the tax as well, otherwise you're just a thief trying to steal my retirement. Federal revenues will decline by $1.7 trillion -- more than the cost of the program.
2. The Federal unemployment appropriation was under $1 billion. You'd have to spend that amount for 1700 years to equal a single year of Social Security tax revenues. Bringing this up truly reveals the depths of your ignorance on this topic.
3. Medicare is also paid for by a dedicated tax which brought in $705 billion in 2017. In fairness, the program spent $710 billion that year, so yes, Medicare is costing the federal budget ... $5b out of $4147b spent. Big savings here, boys!
4. "other benefits". I'm not sure what you meant by these, other than "Hur dur the gubmint wastes too much moolah". Taking SNAP as an example, the total cost in 2018 was $65 billion. Okay, that's significant -- it would pay for the next four aircraft carriers being built. OTOH, SNAP kept 40 million people from starving. That works out to $135 per person per month. Evenly distributed over the remainder of the population, that's under $20/month per person. Are you donating $20 per month to your local food shelf? If not, perhaps you might rethink your "local charity" rhetoric.

Further reading:

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/index.html

https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/legacy-files/budget/2019/CBJ-2019-V1-06.pdf

https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/ReportsTrustFunds/Downloads/TR2018.pdf

Told Ya So

[Jarwulf]

I told a bunch of idiots that were all for it at the very beginning years ago that this mess wouldnt work and of course they wouldn't listen to me.

Re:Just toss 'em into orbit

[HornWumpus]

Trebuchets/parachutes for shorter range ballistic commuting.

I bet you could really fling someone with a carbon fiber and kevlar Trebuchet. Wingsuit for fine targeting.

Re:Seriously? Spite Trump?

[ravenshrike]

There goes a third of their fresh water supply. Well, I'm sure those other states adjacent will be happy for their increased water allocation. Then all those tariffs on things like almonds.

It's called a boondoggle for a reason...

[The Original CDR]

After construction for the first half of BART finished nearly 50 years ago, the BART extension to the South Bay will finally open in the next year or two. Here's a picture of President Richard Nixon riding BART in 1972.

Re:It's called a boondoggle for a reason...

[slashdice]

GOATSE WARNING!!! That's the biggest asshole I have ever seen.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[Solandri]

The idea that the 1% has all the power is a myth. The IRS tax stats are freely available for anyone to see and analyze. The 1% (everyone making approx $500k per year or more) only accounts for 19% of total income in the U.S. The vast majority of economic power in the U.S. (64% of all income) rests with those making $50k-$500k per year.

This is also why the fantasies about giving the 1% a 90% tax rate won't really accomplish much. The 1% simply doesn't make enough money. If you taxed them at 90% (which with certain state tax rates would be a 100% total tax rate), that would only bring in enough money to pay for about a third of the Federal budget. Paying for the Federal government at its current size requires a significant tax rate on those making $50k to $500k, and increasing Federal spending means the taxes on those people has to increase to pay for it.

That said, the ineptocracy happens because currently 61% of the adult population makes less than $50k, and 43% of adults make less than $30k. If you don't flatten income distribution so a majority of the population makes the majority of income, the majority of the population will simply vote to take via government programs what they're not being paid enough to buy on their own. And the end result will be an ineptocracy.

Green New Deal!

[markdavis]

Looks like this so does not bode well for one of the cornerstones of the Green New Deal which envisions cris-crossing the USA with high speed rail. Next on the Deal's list for red pill economic reality - the paying for those who are "unwilling to work."

Which Rush Hour??

[SuperKendall]

Unless you're trying to get from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco during rush hour!

I've got some good news for you, since it takes about six hours to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco (yes I have done this) you're only going to be in one rush hour.

Re:California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that there is no geographical representation of California. The coastal cities have 100% of the power, with the countryside east of the coast having zero voice. Well, except for Federal lawsuits.

We can look at things like the Salton Sea, where nothing is done about it until the mass fishkills are so great, LA smells it, then once people have to deal with the stank (people who actually have sway over the state), then stuff gets done. Or, the general water crisis where you have rice paddies on one side, perma-droughts on the other.

California should be split up. Let the coast be one state, let everything east of it be another. That way, someone might see something from the state government other than higher taxes, more middle fingers from Sacramento, and more feel good laws. It is amazing how little that state does, with the highest tax rates in the US, be it the highest income tax, highest property tax, and highest salex tax.

No wonder why hick towns like Austin get 300 Californians a day moving there, and there is a diaspora going on away from that state.

When a recession hits, where will that state get their income? They won't be touching the well-heeled people, and the proles are already taxed out, causing more people to flee.

CA's politics amaze me. Can the politicos do any more to run people out of that state?

They already have rail for San Jose - SF

[SuperKendall]

Not sure about San Diego - LA, but they already have OK commuter rail between San Jose and SF - well at least it seemed OK the few times I've taken it, maybe it had issues for more regular users. a high speed rail line to somewhere north of Oakland would probably be a great idea, that has a subway but frankly it sucks, is slow, and is SUPER packed at rush hour so it could really use another channel of service that was as fast to get from the north end of Oakland down to SF. It would probably have helped Oakland out quite a lot as well.

Re:They already have rail for San Jose - SF

[jrumney]

To make a start on high speed rail, you need a non-stop (or perhaps one stop at SFO) service on dedicated tracks San Jose to San Francisco, not commuter rail.

Re:They already have rail for San Jose - SF

[SuperKendall]

To make a start on high speed rail, you need a non-stop (or perhaps one stop at SFO) service on dedicated tracks San Jose to San Francisco

But how much faster would it really be, that's my issue.

Looking at transit directions I see the existing train part takes longer than I thought - almost an hour. But that's not terrible (for California). And I can't imagine a worse area to actually try and get a newer high speed rail through than all the land between San Jose and SF...

Re:They already have rail for San Jose - SF

[dtremenak]

San Diego-LA is currently served by Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner (not really commuter service). San Diego-Oceanside commuter rail is the Coaster, and Oceanside-LA commuter rail is the Metrolink Orange County line...if you want to go between San Diego and anywhere in the LA area outside of Orange County you pretty much have to change trains either two or three times, on a minimum of two different tickets. HSR between the major metro hubs (SAN and LAX, and probably stopping in Anaheim at least) makes a lot of sense, not that anybody will ever do it...they're too busy building in the middle of nowhere.

So how many billions...

[kenh]

So how many billions were spent to 'rocket' people between Bakersfield & Merced, California?

Who will pay to shuttle between those two locations, let alone pay a premium to do it 'high-speed'?

Re:So how many billions...

[OrangeTide]

I know right, I had no idea there was so much demand to go to Fresno.

He's an idea, add a bus lane along the Golden State Freeway for a tiny fraction of the cost. Pile up the rest of the $77B and burn it. You'd end up with something that would at least be done on time and not over budget.

Re:So how many billions...

[roc97007]

...and generate some heat...

Re:So how many billions...

[Miamicanes]

The HSR tracks between Bakersfield won't JUST be usable by HSR running between the two cities... it'll also be usable by Amtrak (and almost beyond doubt, Virgin Trains... I think it's safe to say they've been meeting with officials on a regular basis for quite a while now).

Most people don't realize that every single railcar in active use by Amtrak is ALREADY capable of 110mph operation. Most of Amtrak's existing rolling stock COULD be upgraded and recertified to at least 125mph, and ALL of Amtrak's NEW railcars are required to be certified for at least 125mph.

Acela trains RUN at 150mph (max) right now... but they were actually DESIGNED for 220mph. The main limit back then was regulatory... there were literally no rules allowing trains over 150mph, and Amtrak didn't want to delay Acela by 5-10 years waiting for the regulations to get updated, so it just took 150mph at face value and went with it. That said, the current Acela rolling stock would be prohibitively expensive to run in the NEC at 200-220mph because the tracks are too curvy. Acela railcars are basically rolling bank vaults because they have to be capable of surviving a head-on collision at max speed with a mile-long train carrying coal or limestone. They can tilt to keep drinks and laptops from flying off tray tables on curves, but the wheels themselves are still grinding horizontally AND vertically when it races through curves at high speeds, causing EXTREME wear and tear on both the tracks and wheels. They'd also need to increase the number of powerheads on each train... and AFAIK, they don't actually HAVE enough powerheads to do it.

On the plus side, because CalHSR's new tracks through the central valley are being built for HSR, they're straight & relatively flat, so running Acela-type railcars at 180-220mph wouldn't destroy them and the tracks the way it would in the NEC.

The main catch with Acela in California is electrification. The central valley HSR tracks will be electrified... the tracks into LA and SF (AFAIK) aren't. So, to run Acela, they'd have to either electrify all the way, or get Bombardier to build them a few "JetTrain" powerheads that were originally designed for Florida HSR 15 years ago. They could probably even tweak the design so that it could run from overhead catenary power where available, and only fire up the turbines when leaving the electrified stretch through the central valley. The main drawback of JetTrain is that turbine engines aren't very efficient for anything besides long rural stretches... acceleration is poor, and fuel consumption is relatively constant, so they'd have to be designed to provide enough power for acceleration AND would burn that amount of fuel the whole time the turbine was running.

All things considered, it would probably be cheaper to just electrify the tracks all the way into SF and LA. In theory, they could probably get someone to build them hybrid diesel-catenary locomotives that could run from overhead power where available, and conventional diesel power at both ends. I believe LIRR actually HAS dual-mode locomotives that run from diesel and third-rail power, but I'm pretty sure there's no current source for NEW ones, and LIRR itself is in a race to finish electrification before its current fleet wears out.

Either way, the new tracks will probably cut Amtrak's LA-to-Oakland travel time in half, even if no improvements at all are made south of Bakersfield or west of Merced, simply because the current UP tracks between LA and Oakland are so congested.

Time for an autonomous-only roadway?

[virtig01]

As a replacement, how about an autonomous-only limited-access highway? 100 mph, autonomous cars only, on ramps and exits only at major cities. Much lower construction cost than rail.

Re:Time for an autonomous-only roadway?

[Locando]

But just how much cheaper is limited-access highway compared to high-speed rail? Feel free to include the savings in land acquisition costs given how much narrower freeways are than railroads.

And heck, why not factor in maintenance costs as well, I'm sure that'll make your numbers look even better!

Re:It’s not YOUR money asshole

[slashdice]

California had a constitutional amendment over it. I shit you not. There is, literally, no shit in my pants right now. I can't promise what will happen in the future, but right now, there is no shit in my pants. Anyhow, 2008 prop 1A authorize 10 billion in bonds for high speed rail. If I had a dollar for every time I shit my pants, I would have to shit my pants 10 billion times. Think about that. And my underwear would probably look a lot like the California constitution, what with all these fucking retarded amendments.

Re:Rainbows and unicorns

[sysrammer]

I call your rail line to nowhere and raise you a bridge to nowhere, slick. Also, you forgot "fairy farts" in your subject.

Did gov. Newsome...

[kenh]

Did gov. Newsome really brag that he's going to piss away snother $3.5BN in federal money on a train from nowhere to nowhere because he's opposed to giving it back to/not taking it from "Trump"?

Re:Did gov. Newsome...

[JaredOfEuropa]

Isn't $3.5B more or less the amount Trump still needs to build his Wall? This is going to be a fun fight...

The Airplane people win again.

[TigerPlish]

Now, I really love aviation, I'm a frustrated pilot that never got his wings, I love flying a little nothing that's made of sticks and rags, but... we absolutely need hi-speed rail in the US. Maybe not so much in tightly-packed metro areas, but it sure as hell can work long-distance.

But as long as the Airplane (and to some extent Car) manufacturers have any influence, rail is a non-starter.

Excuses, excuses

[Pollux]

Three words: Interstate Highway System.

It's not the lack of Chinese authoritarianism that's preventing us from making it work. It's our inability to align all our interests and resources to make it happen.

Back in 1956, we passed something called the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. In 35 years, we constructed over 48,000 miles of dedicated highway, three times as much Chinese high speed rail in only double the time. How did it all come together? Simple: the threat of war. Eisenhower was inspired by the national highway system of Germany and how it served as vital military infrastructure for them during World War II. Investing in that infrastructure for the homeland would be a strategic military asset in case of invasion. So far, it's yet to be used that way, but it's contributed tremendous returns to our nation's GDP.

The only thing preventing us from making it happen is a lack of will.

Re:Excuses, excuses

[nukenerd]

Highways made it possible to travel and transport goods in a way that wasn't previously possible. This high-speed train aimed to replace one mode of transportation with another.

Pre-historic tracks such as the Icknield Way in the UK made things possible because there was nothing before them. However every type of "highway" in the broadest sense since then (paved Roman roads, canals, Eisenhower's highways, railways, high-speed railways) have only been improvements on unpaved tracks.

There has been nothing transported that was not previously possible on a dirt track (ask the guys who transported the stones that made the pyramids). The difference is that later modes replaced earlier modes with something more efficient and/or faster. Taking a balance of speed and fuel efficiency*, railways win hands down.

* Walking is unbeatable for fuel efficiency.

Re:Excuses, excuses

[1ucius]

... It wouldn't have enabled any growth to occur at all. I would have just been an expense.

It's arguably worse than that...to the extent that high speed rail interferes with our existing, world-class(!!) freight rail system, it might be negative growth. Most plans rely shared infrastructure to keep costs down, and so, will require priority.

But more generally, I agree. High speed rail lacks a killer app. We already have a faster mode (air), a cheaper mode (bus), and a more flexible mode (car). Why would one pick rail over those?

Re:Excuses, excuses

[djinn6]

There has been nothing transported that was not previously possible on a dirt track (ask the guys who transported the stones that made the pyramids).

It's impossible to transport the fully assembled space shuttle from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad on a dirt path. There would be multiple problems: it's too wide for a dirt path, it's heavy enough to sink into the dirt*, and it's tall enough to topple over if one hits a patch of unevenness**.

*Or the swamp on either side if the wideness issue isn't resolved first
**Or when one side sinks more than the other if weight issue isn't resolved first

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

The 1% (everyone making approx $500k per year or more) only accounts for 19% of total income in the U.S.

19% of income and yet 50% of wealth. It's almost as if a lot of them are only paying capital gain taxes.

This is also why the fantasies about giving the 1% a 90% tax rate won't really accomplish much. The 1% simply doesn't make enough money. If you taxed them at 90% (which with certain state tax rates would be a 100% total tax rate),

Got any numbers/examples to back that up that 100% tax rate?

PS - I don't necessarily agree with a 90% tax rate or that it'd be effective, but your inteptocracy argument is stupid. People can't magically be paid more money than companies are willing to pay and those that pay less have the competitive advantage to make more mistakes. Couple that with automation shifting the vast majority of people into lower paying service jobs, and you have a situation where in many locations you simply cannot as a group better your position. Oh, and all that automation is there precisely to feed the "inept". Get rid of their ability to consume those things and many those factories will collapse from multiple boom/bust cycles being able to produce the proper amount of goods.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing wealth with income. Most people become very wealthy when their investments, such as stocks, increase in value. While shares can provide yearly income in the form of dividends payed out by the company, the majority of the value resides in the shares themselves. Until the shares are sold it is not considered income nor does it get taxed, even then, if has been held for more then a year it only gets taxed at the max capital gain rate of %20. Amazon has never paid a dividend so if Bezo's didn't sell any shares (and ignoring other sources) his income would be just his salary of $82.000.

(raises hand...)

[roc97007]

So, um, where did the money go?

Re:(raises hand...)

[dtremenak]

A lot of studies (environmental impact, economics, engineering, earthquake, etc), a bunch of lawsuits, and building a short length of very nice (but ultimately useless) above-grade high speed rail between two small cities, neither of which wanted it.

Re:(raises hand...)

[roc97007]

A lot of studies (environmental impact, economics, engineering, earthquake, etc), a bunch of lawsuits, and building a short length of very nice (but ultimately useless) above-grade high speed rail between two small cities, neither of which wanted it.

So, it sounds like business was really good, for some people.

what a joke

[WindBourne]

California have it in their grasp to be able to put in a TRUE high-speed with hyperloop. It would bring jobs, provide the fastest land transportation, and yet, these idiots are playing within tinker toys from other nations.
What a bunch of maroons.

Re:what a joke

[pauljlucas]

Hyperloop is delusional. Aside from having to deal with exactly the same right-of-way and environmental things conventional rail has to deal with, if you get a single seal failure (of the thousands that must exist) in the depressurized tube, the whole thing comes to a grinding halt. Laying the concrete ties and steel rail of a conventional rail system is the easy part and it requires much less maintenance than thousands of seals.

Re:what a joke

[mentil]

Much of the testing/work is being done on 'loop', which is not evacuated. It's not nearly as fast, but it avoids all those problems. It's often called 'hyperloop' because that's better-known. Loop systems could be designed to be upgradeable to hyperloop later down the line.

Re:what a joke

[serviscope_minor]

California have it in their grasp to be able to put in a TRUE high-speed with hyperloop. It would bring jobs, provide the fastest land transportation, and yet, these idiots are playing within tinker toys from other nations.

Hyperloop: doesn't exist yet.

Successful high speed, high capacity railways: tinker toys.

wut.

Re:what a joke

[squiggleslash]

California have it in their grasp to be able to put in a TRUE high-speed with hyperloop.

No, they don't. Hyperloop doesn't exist, it's a theoretical project with some extremely limited proofs of concept built that, currently, don't even prove it can run faster than HSR. If it's viable at all it'll be 20 years or so before we can see it, and in the mean time it suffers ABSOLUTELY EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM THAT HSR DOES.

Yes, I said it. Remember how Musk pretended it was "cheaper" than HSR? He did that by connecting two points that were 50-100 miles away from LA and SF, and by only "connecting" (if you call building stations 50-100 miles away "connecting") those two cities. He also handwaved about the costs, and ignored the fact that many of the things he proposed such as some way of building cheaper viaducts would also improve the costs for HSR if they were actually practical and cost that little.

Add to that the reality that it's probably a horrible way to travel even if it works, and ultimately it's not easy to understand why so many people are for it, beyond misunderstanding it and/or having the classic American prejudice against HSR because it's what those damned furry-ners do.

Musk was never proposing Hyperloop because it was a good idea, he was proposing it because he's a fucking car manufacturer.

Re:what a joke

[nukenerd]

California have it in their grasp to be able to put in a TRUE high-speed with hyperloop. It would bring jobs ....

Hyperloop would have exactly the same problems with legal and environmental battles about land usage, and that's what the main costs have been. (Don't BS us with claims that land-owners would be OK as long as it passes over on stilts). Hyperloop has not even been properly demonstrated yet.

these idiots are playing within tinker toys from other nations. What a bunch of maroons.

I think that Musk is the one who can't grow out of his toys. The USA could learn a lot from other nations about railways; the image of railways in the USA seems to be slow freight lines that are constantly de-railing. I have worked in the UK railway industry and I am shocked at what I see and hear about railways in the USA, so far behind they are.

Re:what a joke

[nukenerd]

Much of the testing/work is being done on 'loop', which is not evacuated. It's not nearly as fast, but it avoids all those problems.

Are you proposing the Loop underground, or overground? Overground runs into the same property issues as conventional rail. Underground - tunnelling is very expensive whatver BS Musk comes out with - otherwise High Speed lines would all be put underground where there was environmental opposition (sometime they are at great expense).

Trains were a major element of Green New Deal

[Applehu Akbar]

No new technology is required. All they have to do is define and grade a right-of-way, acquire strips of land where needed, and order existing components made in Europe and Asia. Land csots could be mitigated by using existing routes like the broad median of I-5 in rural areas.

If Democrats can't reclaim the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt and finish this project, they can't finish anything.

Re:Trains were a major element of Green New Deal

[WoodstockJeff]

The point isn't to finish things, it's to spend money not finishing things. Things that are finished don't provide as many jobs as not finishing things.

It's just so much easier when you can blame those rascally Republicans for why things never get finished.

Re:Trains were a major element of Green New Deal

[dtremenak]

It's worth noting that we aren't allowed to order rail components from Europe or Asia, thanks to the Buy America Act of 1982. ALL rail components must be built in the USA if ANY federal dollars are spent on the project.

Re:Trains were a major element of Green New Deal

[b0s0z0ku]

There are ways around this dumbassed law. It's possible to get a waiver, and relatively easy.

Also, the fixed infrastructure (rails, ties, signals) doesn't cost more when sourced in the US. Land acquisition and fixed infrastructure the the major costs here. The actual trains aren't expensive by comparison and can be acquired using state funds. New Federal regulations actually make it easier to run lightly-modified European train cars in the US -- they've weakened crash regulations that were absurdly tight.

Re:Trains were a major element of Green New Deal

[JaredOfEuropa]

New Federal regulations actually make it easier to run lightly-modified European train cars in the US

Whatever you do, don't buy them from Italy like we did. We wanted high speed trains to run on our shiny new track, but of course the people with experience in high speed rolling stock - France, Germany and Japan - weren't up to spec or deemed too expensive, so we went with a firm with zero experience in high speed rail, but with a track record (ha ha) of delivering trams and trains that break down in icy conditions. We got our trains, and they broke down when it got cold. Now we have rail but nothing to run on it.

Re:Trains were a major element of Green New Deal

[Applehu Akbar]

I remember the city of Phoenix buying Japanese trainsets for its one urban rail line, and it got some federal funding.

Re:Trains were a major element of Green New Deal

[dunkelfalke]

Our Siemens trains had their fair share of problems as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

They probably have to return the federal money

[magzteel]

Which makes sense since it was supposed to finance a small percentage of the full project, not a bigger percentage of a scaled back project.

From http://nymag.com/intelligencer...

"The San Joaquin segment was supposed to be finished by 2022, and the whole enchilada by 2029. But it’s not looking good, and if that first deadline is missed, the state could be exposed to the clawback of up to 3.5 billion in federal funds awarded the project in 2010 as part of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus program."

SF to LA should be routine

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are the facts:

Paris to Marseille is a 482 mile drive, compared to 479 miles to Liechtenstein. Today I can buy a Ouigo TGV ticket for 35 euros that will take me from Paris to Marseille in 3h21min.

For comparison:

• SF to LA is 381 miles.
• A regular Amtrak train from NYC to Boston takes 4 hours, for a distance of 216 miles, and the Acela is only marginally faster (3h35min). This is in the "Northeast Corridor," with a population greater than 50 million (compared to France's total metropolitan population of 65 million), and triple France's population density.

Compared to the developed world the US is doing poorly in this regard. We have no excuse for these failures other than incompetence and corruption.

Probable solution...

[b0s0z0ku]

(1) Let the corrupt US contractors build from Merced to Bakersfield. (2) Use existing tracks from Oakland to Merced. Electrify them. Extend from Emeryville across the Bay Bridge to a terminal in SF. (3) Hire a French, Japanese, or Chinese company to build from Bakersfield to LA Union Station. They know what they're doing as far as high-speed rail and will get it done at 1/4 the cost of "buying American."

Re: California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[Anonymous Coward]

At the rate of California plates I see I my state I would say they are doing a fine job of running people out. Problem is they didnâ(TM)t learn from their stupidity and are doomed to repeat the same mistakes... here.

Technology of the 1800s can't compete in the 2000s

[Dereck1701]

While it makes sense in a few niche cases, rail/subway public transport is a technology who's time has come and gone. It requires too large of a footprint, is too complicated to administer, and to expensive to maintain. The future is going to be more fluid and decentralized transport, something like driverless bus and large vans tied to some kind of automated route management system. Think of something like Lyft/Uber, only with driverless vehicles of various sizes and MUCH more prevalent. A transportation system that costs tens of millions per mile with stations that run into the tens/hundreds of millions of dollars each has no chance on even footing with a system that costs tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle and has no stations necessary.

Unknown

[JimSadler]

If China made less money would cruelty decrease or increase ? Can we effectively demand more civil liberties in China by threatening loss of trade with the US? And although communism sucks can anyone name a time in which any other form of government in China has been better than communism ? Vietnam is now far better off as a communist nation than it ever was under different kinds of government. In the US we are not supposed to notice these things. But can it be that in certain places under certain conditions that communism is the best real choice for a nation?

Because it's a boondoggle?

[raymorris]

> why on earth the project is not a multi-state and multi-nation venture

Because other states and countries don't want to waste billions and billions of dollars on something that isn't working?

Re:Because it's a boondoggle?

[Ichijo]

What are you talking about? High speed rail is wildly successful in every country that builds it. It always makes an operating profit within a few years after it opens (even Taiwan's), even our nation's own Acela Express makes "a profit of about $41 per passenger."

So on what basis do you claim that it "isn't working"?

and WAR

[bussdriver]

The USA needs WAR to get them to pay for anything. I should have figured that the highway system was a form of military spending.

Re:Technology of the 1800s can't compete in the 20

[b0s0z0ku]

By your standard of rail being 1800s technology, wheels on roads are 10th century B.C. technology. The neat thing about rail is that it stays on the "road" at 150 mph or more, regardless of weather conditions. It's also easy to power electrically, since steel rails provide a current return path with no worries about charging batteries or maintaining them.

The ideal system would actually be a hybrid of your system and rail -- driverless vehicles to bring passengers to stations, where shorter (2 or 3 car) driverless trains would run frequently between stations. Low-speed buses for shorter trips, higher-speed rail for longer hauls. Trains should be long enough to have a bathroom, some food service, ability to get up and walk around between stations, etc.

So how much more is going to be wasted?

[hambone142]

I understand what the total cost has increased to but how much money is going to be thrown down the hold on the Merced to Bakersfield boondoggle just to finish it?

My sister lives in Bakersfield and there is absolutely zero reason she would want to take that stupid train to any city between Bakersfield and Merced.

What's worse is the stupid California voters voted for this thing (yes, I know they only allowed 10B).

Rail is Great! If you are going where it goes

[WoodstockJeff]

But if you aren't, well, you should relocate, because Rail is Great!

Wisconsin, when it was last under all-Democrat control (like California), tried to do "kind of high speed" rail, connecting not-quite-Milwaukee to within sight of the Capital building in Madison (routed over mostly-disused freight tracks) to not-quite-St. Paul. Why? Because there was federal money available, and HSR was all the rage with people important to the Democratic Party.

It wasn't practical, it wouldn't even move as fast as cars driving the shorter route, but federal money was available. And it was HSR, after all, so long as you defined "high speed" as 50-60 MPH between stations. (Commuter trains in the Chicago area move faster.)

Fortunately it got stopped before $millions became $billions. California isn't so much stopping as deciding to spend as much as they can, even if it is useless.

Holy shit! A bridge too far? For Commiefornia???

[Chas]

I didn't think I'd EVER see it.
A "public works" project like this, where they pull back "because they're spending too much".

I think the GND kinda shat in their cornflakes.
It either shook some sense into them (unlikely, I know) or they're now living in mortal terror of the backlash on the "rail to everywhere" idiocy in the proposal.

Re:Merced to Bakersfield line will have few riders

[b0s0z0ku]

Here's what's going to happen. Merced-Bakersfield is going to get built -- too much money invested in the project. This route will be connected to Oakland via existing tracks used by Amtrak between Merced and Bakersfield. These tracks will be electrified to allow running of HSR trains between Oakland/Berkeley/Emeryville and Bakersfield. Meanwhile they'll be electrifying the existing Metrolink line to Lancaster as far north as Santa Clarita and hiring a Chinese consortium to build from Santa Clarita to Bakersfield via the median of I-5.

Caltrain got their improvements

[phantomfive]

Caltrain still got money for their improvements, so Pelosi doesn't care.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[mentil]

Your supporting points don't actually support your thesis statement. Economic power != income.

Re:California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[novakyu]

California should be split up. Let the coast be one state, let everything east of it be another. That way, someone might see something from the state government other than higher taxes, more middle fingers from Sacramento, and more feel good laws. It is amazing how little that state does, with the highest tax rates in the US, be it the highest income tax, highest property tax, and highest salex tax.

I foresee no problem, no problem at all with issues like water rights in that case. No sir-ee!

Here's what will REALLY happen

[Miamicanes]

This is just posturing and political chess.

The governor is hoping this will put an end to the seemingly intractable squabbling among San Jose's leaders by causing them to panic & rapidly coalesce behind a station location and route to connect Caltrain to Merced.

Once that's done, the governor will announce a deal with Virgin Trains whereby California builds the tracks connecting Caltrain @ SJ to Merced, while Virgin procures its own trains, builds the stations, and operates them along existing tracks into LA and SF at current speeds, and runs along the new tracks at high speed. By offloading the station construction and rolling stock onto Virgin, and initially scrapping the service to Sacramento and San Diego, CalHSR's official cost will be reduced to something that the plurality of Californians who live in LA or the Bay Area can stomach.

Virgin will limp at 50-79mph from Union Station to northeastern LA, 110mph to Bakersfield, 150-225mph between Bakersfield and Merced, and Merced and San Jose, then jog at 79-110mph along Caltrain's tracks into SF itself.

The HUGE battle will come 15-20 years from now, when there's public demand to improve the last 50 miles into LA, the last ~80 miles into SF, extend the route to San Diego, and extend the route to Sacramento... but not enough money to do all of them. My guess is that the tracks into L.A. Union Station will "mostly" get upgraded to allow 79-110mph all the way through the city, lots of band-aids will get applied to the existing tracks between San Diego and LA to allow 79-110mph, and HSR from Modesto to a station at the outskirts of Sacramento (with plans to someday finish it as HSR all the way to within a few blocks of the Capitol that will never actually happen unless the state manages to acquire and preserve the corridor BEFORE so many years and so much new development has occurred, the whole thing would have to go in a bored tunnel and be UNFATHOMABLY expensive), but nothing will ever solve the Bay Area's NIMBY problem enough to permit 180+mph all the way into SF.

Completely-useless route

[Dave Emami]

The remaining route is pointless. There isn't a lot of commuter traffic between the two endpoints (Merced and Bakersfield). The majority of traffic along that axis is between Los Angeles metro and the SF Bay area. To use the remaining planned rail for that route, you'd have three about-equal-distance segments: drive from LA to Bakersfield, train from Bakersfield to Merced, then drive from Merced to SF. As a time reduction, the rail's benefit would be negligible, since the traffic it would be bypassing would be reasonably free-flowing rural, not freeway-as-parking-lot urban.

I'm generally not a fan of government rail projects, but if they're going to build it, they should at least build it where it will do some good. A line running from the Sacramento metro to the nearest outlying BART station (SF's metro rail, for those unfamiliar) would actually be useful and probably reduce a lot of commuter traffic. It would also be much shorter: about 60 miles from downtown Sacramento to the outlying BART stations, as compared to 110. As for the Merced-Bakersfield line, they should just admit that their sunk costs are sunk, and ditch it.

Re:Every modern country?

[cheesybagel]

I don't know... China?

The mountains in the Californian coast look like molehills compared to those in Japan.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[AmiMoJo]

Except that California is one of the wealthiest states with the highest wages, where as the poorer ones where most people are making under $50k are the ones that vote Republican, i.e. for tax and benefit cuts.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[Hognoxious]

And look what happened as a consequence - the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor and homosexuality became compulsory!

Froth froth gilded age froth froth free market chunter chunter.

Re:Seriously? Spite Trump?

[Hognoxious]

You probably meant "flouted", not "flaunted".

But when I say "fucktard", like I'm doing right now, that's exactly what I mean.

Re:Ha ha ha... yes, but no

[Applehu Akbar]

We could stop using coal for power if we went nuclear, but AOC will only support unicorns.

Maybe it should "go back to Donald Trump"

[melted]

He seems to know how to get shit done for half the budget of the Democrats.

Re:Maybe it should "go back to Donald Trump"

[thegarbz]

By the time he's finished renegotiating the deal he will have spent billions on government shutdowns and secured an even more expensive project with even less funding for it.

#theartofthedeal

Re: California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[reanjr]

Grant water rights to whoever holds the water. West CA can buy water from East CA at rates cheaper than desalination. This is good, because otherwise East CA will be an inpoverished wasteland.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

When you calculate that wage value, does it include all the pension plans that CA has no way of paying for and willfully ignores on a daily basis?

Re:Most important question

[RoccamOccam]

Not on your life, my Hindu friend.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[MMC Monster]

The idea that the 1% has all the power is a myth. The IRS tax stats are freely available for anyone to see and analyze. The 1% (everyone making approx $500k per year or more) only accounts for 19% of total income in the U.S. The vast majority of economic power in the U.S. (64% of all income) rests with those making $50k-$500k per year.

Who care about income? Wealth is where the power is.

The top 1% in net worth in the U.S. hold 40% of the nation's wealth. The bottom 50% in net worth of the U.S. population combined hold 1% of the nation's wealth.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (First paragraph and first chart.)

Re: knew it

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like socialism. If only we had tried harder it would have worked this time!

What is wrong with people who will not be served by the train not wanting it going through their communities at 200 mph making noise at all hours? Was it going through yours? No. You dont even live here so stfu.

Re:Technology of the 1800s can't compete in the 20

[nukenerd]

rail/subway public transport is a technology who's time has come and gone. It requires too large of a footprint

Do you even know what a subway is? It is under the ground - footprint zero. As for surface rail, it requires a far smaller footprint than equivalent road. Each London Underground track for example can carry the equivalent of a three lane motorway, comparing both at full capapcity.

Cumulative wealth of Forbes 400

[mpercy]

Based on 2107 numbers, if you confiscate all wealth of all 400, you would pick up $2.7 trillion, enough to run the US government for about two-thirds of one year.

Once.

Of course, there's the issue that virtually all of that wealth is in equities, which would have to be sold to covert to spendable dollars, and who are you going to sell $2T of stock to once you've just confiscated 100% of the wealth from the people who could afford to buy it?

no different than some medieval kingdom

[mpercy]

And the various levels of state and local governments there seem hell-bent on running in that direction as fast as they can.

And this is exactly why...

[erp_consultant]

California is going bankrupt. I knew this thing was doomed to failure right from the beginning and have called it out on here many times only to be ridiculed by these big project rail supporters.

Doesn't really bode well for the Green New Deal now does it?

Re:And this is exactly why...

[thegarbz]

California is going bankrupt.

I knew it!. I mean all those economists and finance guys are saying otherwise, but thankyou for confirming it internet man.

Re: California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[novakyu]

Grant water rights to whoever holds the water.

So, what stops East CA from building dams all over the place to stop West CA from continuing to have water that they have now? It's all ... unnecessary strife—the issues we have to deal with as a single state are dwarfed, nay, little-personed by the issues that are foreseeable if it's two sovereign states squabbling.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

How does Amazon stock valuation lower the wealth of the poor?

Re:Ha ha ha... yes, but no

[mpercy]

We'll need Reardon metal, then, to build all those railroads to be run by TOP MEN, is what you're saying?

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[pgmrdlm]

Can't wait to see you begging in the streets for scraps of food.

Re:any numbers/examples to back that up that 100%

[wiggles]

The problem with your argument is that it fails to take into account marginal tax rates. While I agree with your point of view - there is a lot of overlap between our world views here - the facts are that you are confusing effective tax rates with top marginal tax rates. A 90% top marginal rate on income over $1M means that the lower brackets apply to the first $X of income. That 90% only kicks in against money after the first $1M. So if total taxable income is $1,000,001, that 90% marginal rate only applies to that single dollar.

Regardless, though, your argument is reinforced by this - it will pull in even less money than your argument referenced a few posts ago.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[smoot123]

Most people become very wealthy when their investments, such as stocks, increase in value.

Where I live, Silicon Valley, many people get pretty wealthy because their house appreciated in value. "Pretty wealthy" in this context means fully owning an asset worth over $1 million. For a lot of people, this seems to be their retirement plan: retire, sell the house, and move somewhere where housing prices are vaguely sane.

I don't have any numbers to back that intuition. Do you know of any studies showing the net wealth of American households and what assets that wealth is in? I'd be curious to understand better.

I don't think you understand how R&D work.

[Brannon]

If you wait until you're done before you start, then you'll never start.

Re:California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[rahvin112]

The Salton sea is manmade, it was created by a canal failure. It shouldn't even exist.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[smoot123]

Except that California is one of the wealthiest states with the highest wages.

I'll have to look this up but California, being so large, is a microcosm of the entire US. We have rich, liberal areas. We have poor, bright red areas. We have everything in between.

The state tends to seem bright blue and that's not wrong. There are enough urban elite liberals that they dominate state politics. But don't believe that means the entire state feels that way.

Re:knew it

[NickDngr]

Bullshit. The railroad would have been cost effective. If the Chinese can make a line from Beijing to Shanghai cost effective so could you. Heck, the line to Urumqui was built and it's literally from nowhere to nowhere and twice as long as Beijing to Shanghai. The problem was typical California. NIMBYism and inflated right of way land costs.

Not in California, where every construction project comes with multiple lawsuits and environmental policies will bankrupt you before the first shovel hits the ground.

Re: California politics always an alterior motive

[Miamicanes]

Keep in mind that highway construction costs count the land & pavement, but little else. Rail projects count rolling stock purchases & station construction in the costs as well. If a highway's cost estimates included budgeting for the prorated purchase, insurance, maintenance, and operation of the cars that run on it, plus the cost to build & maintain the parking facilities, the per-mile costs would be quite a bit higher.

That's not saying rail construction costs in the US aren't worse than anywhere else on earth... China builds 5 miles of elevated tracks on viaducts for less than we spend adding a second track with grade crossings to an existing corridor.

Part of the reason is that in other countries, you have "railroad builders" who are cross-trained in a variety of construction disciplines. In the US, where every rail project is a one-off once in a lifetime project for the region, we instead hire armies of general contractors with workers who have narrow trade expertise & spend most of their time waiting for OTHER trades to do their thing so THEY can continue. In China or Europe, workers are cross-trained to minimize downtime.

They also tend to combine projects, like building a new freeway with retained-earth foundation that's wide enough to just add the tracks later, with geometry that's appropriate for HSR & bridge spans that are wide enough for the tracks to pass under without having to tear down & rebuild 40 bridge spans to make room for the tracks someday.

This is one reason why Virgin Trains/Brightline is so willing to extend its Miami-Orlando route to Tampa at its own expense. Back when FDOT rebuilt I-4 10 years ago, it made a point of leaving room for HSR everywhere that they had to rebuild everything ANYWAY. It added little to the reconstruction cost, and MASSIVELY reduced the cost to add HSR later, because NOW, Virgin just needs to finish the job & lay track instead of effectively rebuilding I-4 in addition to building its new track.

That's also why CalHSR's budget costs appear so high... they're combining it with simultaneous freeway improvements they wanted to make anyway & lumping the costs of BOTH under "HSR construction budget". That's why an audit is REALLY needed... to properly itemize the costs & make it clear that it's not "$100 billion for hsr", it's ~
$x billion for track infrastructure, $y billion for road improvements incidental to the track that would have eventually gotten done anyway, $z billion for rolling stock, $w billion for station improvements benefitting multiple projects (eg, transbay terminal), etc.

A good example was the cost of extending Metrorail to Miami International Airport. Detractors claimed it cost "a billion dollars". Supporters claim it's more like $150 million. The truth is, it depends how you count it. If you count land already owned by governmental entities at its highest plausible market value, the entire construction cost of Miami Intermodal Center, and its peoplemover... it's about a billion, give or take. If you factor out the percentage of MIC used by the rental car center, Tri-Rail, and Amtrak, count gov't-owned ROW as a long-sunk cost already accounted for by the airport expressway, and factor out the reconfiguration cost of LeJeune Road as something FDOT & Miami had planned for decades ANYWAY, it's more like $200 million.

Re:any numbers/examples to back that up that 100%

[mpercy]

I didn't make an argument a few posts ago I just responded to your request for proof of 100% rates. Nor am I confusing effective rate with marginal rates. A hypothetical federal marginal rate of 90% on income over $1M plus a current state marginal rate of 13.3% on income over $1M means a combined marginal rate of over 100% on income over $1M.

The overall effective rate actually approaches 100%, the higher the income is (assuming 100% on income over $1M). E.g., even if we assume a 0% rate for all income below $1M and your $1M + 1 example indeed means that 100% only applies to the last dollar producing an effective rate of 0.09%. But an income of $2M would have effective rate of 50%, $3M would be 66%, $4M would be 75%, $5M would be 80%, $10M would be 90%, $20M would be 95%, $50M would be 98%, $100M would be 99%...

Re: California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[1ucius]

So, what stops East CA from building dams all over the place to stop West CA from continuing to have water that they have now?

That's exactly what water rights do.

A lot of it is about geography

[Koreantoast]

We do have a robust passenger rail service in the one section of the country that has sufficient density to support it (Washington DC - NYC Corridor). Even then, with tickets ranging up into the hundreds, a lot of folks still opt to drive or take buses instead. The rest of the country simply lacks the density and has such large geographical space that rail just doesn't make sense - instead, we use our robust air travel network to support it instead. So let's say you want to go from NYC to Atlanta, about 900 miles and assume you have sufficient traffic to justify building the track (which is a big if). Even a high speed rail, going at 150 mph, would take a good six hours when you could just fly for two. That six hours also assumes you've got a direct train and one that isn't slowing down and stopping in Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, Richmond, and Charlotte on the way down. Also, can you imagine the cost of trying to eminent domain the land through all those major cities to build upgraded track? Not just buying it, but the environmental studies and lawsuits that will take place?

Did Anyone Bother to Read What Was Actually Said?

[careysub]

No, I don't mean Newsom's top line rhetoric. I mean what are the actual changes that are being made to the project?

Is funding being cut? No.

Are any of the construction and land acquisition activities being planned over the next several years being changed? No.

Is the current route under construction, and due to be built over the next decade going to be changed in any way? No.

Newsom announced that the $28 billion or so currently appropriated to build a line south from San Francisco as far as Bakersfield will continue as planned, and all of the environmental and land acquisition planning for the route south from Bakersfield to LA will continue unchanged.

So what did Newsom actually declare? That he is not, at the moment, willing to rhetorically support the eventual goal of reaching LA - although it will not require changing any decisions for at least his first full term of office, and probably his second, if he is re-elected. But everything is proceeding as before.

Re:Technology of the 1800s can't compete in the 20

[1ucius]

Yea, anyone with any sense would start with some form of 'personalized rapid transit' nowadays. The only complicating factor is existing investment legacy systems; I could see older cities concluding they should stick with subways/trains for awhile.

That said, this train seems more like a new project than an expansion project. The planners here blew it

(and yes, PRT has been know for decades)

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[HornWumpus]

The bottom 50% hold some negative % of the nation's wealth. Being net debtors and instant gratification, shiny loving morons. Sucks to be them, don't.

Re: California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[HornWumpus]

That's the history of western American water rights law, wrapped up in one question.

In practice, it's cheaper to blow up a dam than build it. So the law is: If someone downstream is using the water, you can't divert it, because when it was allowed it led to literal range wars. e.g. LA's right to the Colorado river legally prevents Coloradans from collecting rainwater.

Re:Seriously? Spite Trump?

[Jahoda]

I find delicious irony in someone speaking sanctimoniously about "facts" in a discussion about tax legislation based on the idea of trickle down economics, and that slashing taxes for corporations results in higher wages for employees. What do they call that again? Voodoo economics? Have a great one, champ!

Re:knew it

[John Napkintosh]

The Chinese use it as a tool to exert authority over the populace under the guise of unification. They didn't run a line out to Urumqui because it would ever be profitable - they don't like autonomous regions.

Headline, Shinkansen, and Analysis

[Raven268]

Someone missed the opportunity for a headline: "Newsom Shoots Bullet Train."

More seriously, the first high-speed rail line in the world, the TÅkaidÅ Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka, began operation in 1964. It runs approximately the distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

A good analytical piece on the history and problems of the California project comes from David Dayen; you can read it here: https://prospect.org/article/c.... Does anyone else feel like they're living in a technological backwater?

Re:California SHOULD be a tax donor state

[djinn6]

It is amazing how little that state does, with the highest tax rates in the US, be it the highest income tax, highest property tax, and highest salex tax.

Check again. CA has neither the highest property tax nor highest sales tax. Property tax is actually in the lower 1/3 of all states.

Re:knew it

[djinn6]

That's ridiculous. If the CCP wanted to, they could've made it non-autonomous at any time. The army doesn't need high speed rail to get there.

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