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The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

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Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#101

Post by ido »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #13

It's a pity that the United States didn't embark on a concerted effort to build a high speed rail system back in the 1950s and 1960s, when we had more money and a smaller population. And fewer lawyers. Instead we wasted a couple trillion (adjusted for inflation) on Vietnam. Think what we could have done with that money not to mention thousands of lives saved. It seems to me that California's highway problem is one of…

California is less densliy populated than a lot of quite pleasant, developed countries. Not just the dense Japan and the UK (which are actually quite nice too) but also France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and even the bucolic Austria.

There is plenty of room even without population transfers to neighboring states.

Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#103

Post by jack9 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #63
yummyfajitas wrote: post #5

I'm pretty sure the people calling it a boondoggle are correct. Obama included $3B in the 2009 stimulus package for it back in 2009. Not a single yard of track has been laid. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/high-speed-train-in-ca... http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/263782-obama-high-s... The project is hoped to finish in 2029, which is 12 years from now. For comparison, China build the Qinhuangdao–Sheny…

> Not a single yard of track has been laid. True but misleading. Actually laying track is the cheap and easy final part of construction; building the viaducts, grade separations, etc., and doing the other construction which prepares the route for track to be laid.is the time consuming, expensive part, and plenty of that has been done and is being done in the initial segment. > Here in India, we've built an entire cit…

> California's done a lot more than explore the idea of construction.

That's irrelevant. There is no planned path, just patches and the project is going to be scaled back to an absurd degree (or sold off, which is basically the same thing).

> Anyone who thinks that a statewide high speed rail system in California should be $2-$4 billion dollars in 4 years is fundamentally unserious.

The project start, Prop 1A, was for almost 10 billion in 10 years (procedurally discussed, not legislatively enforced).

Much like Federal budgets and projects, anything extended beyond the current administration's term limits means it's someone else's problem. Putting people on Mars and this project, should become a reality about the same time.

Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#104

Post by pmorici »

enraged_camel wrote: post #66
rjeli wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reminded of Thiel's op ed in the Wapo[0]: "Our government used to get things done [..] Our newest fighter jet has already been under development for more than 15 years and it costs more than 15 times as much as the Manhattan Project (adjusted for inflation), but last year it lost a dogfight to a plane from the 1970s [..] Instead of spending a fortune, Trump won the primaries by saying things that made sense to v…

>>Instead of spending a fortune, Trump won the primaries by saying things that made sense to voters. I'm afraid Peter is misinformed. Trump did spend a fortune to win the primaries. $63.3 million, to be exact. Only Ted Cruz spent more than him, at $85.8 million. You can look at the numbers by the Federal Elections Commission here: http://www.fec.gov/press/summaries/2016/tables/presidential/...

He isn't talking about only the republicans. Clinton spent something like 3x Trump to win the Democratic primary. She also spent twice as much as Trump in the general election.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/hillary-clinton-spent-three-t...

Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#105

Post by wankerrific »

baron816 wrote: post #3

I love public transit, but there is no doubt that this is in fact a boondoggle that shouldn't be built. That money should be used to expand commuter rail in LA and SF, or better yet, implementing BRT. When we have driverless cars on the horizon, and the possibility that the hyperloop could work out, sinking what will likely turn out to be $100 billion into yesterday's technology makes absolutely no sense.

That money is being used to improve commuter rail. The first bits of spending are to electrify CalTrain and make grade separation improvements which will increase capacity.

That sounds a lot more tangible and useful than an imaginary hyper loop or putting more "self driving" cars on the road.

Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#106

Post by [deleted] »

baron816 wrote: post #3

I love public transit, but there is no doubt that this is in fact a boondoggle that shouldn't be built. That money should be used to expand commuter rail in LA and SF, or better yet, implementing BRT. When we have driverless cars on the horizon, and the possibility that the hyperloop could work out, sinking what will likely turn out to be $100 billion into yesterday's technology makes absolutely no sense.

[deleted]

Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#107

Post by kalleboo »

akiselev wrote: post #57
kalleboo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chuo Shinkansen is a very special kind of expensive, since something like 80% of that 268 km is going to be tunnels they have to drill. It works well to illustrate the point that you need some more nuance to compare costs.

Chuo Shinkansen hasn't been completed yet so at best that's the minimum bar for what it will actually cost. Until they know for sure that they won't find any underground surprises, that estimate will continue going up. The reality is that estimating underground rail construction costs is significantly harder and riskier than above ground [1]. According to the AACE's classification system for cost estimates, the curre…

Tunneling estimates can go both ways... in Sweden the Citytunneln project ended up under cost and under time due to the tunneling being less complicated than expected. The Japanese certainly have experience, all their mountains are swiss cheese of highways and shinkansen tracks. I'm not sure how much American studies apply here since there's a different culture of trying to underbid to win the contract there.

Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#108

Post by stuaxo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #63
yummyfajitas wrote: post #5

I'm pretty sure the people calling it a boondoggle are correct. Obama included $3B in the 2009 stimulus package for it back in 2009. Not a single yard of track has been laid. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/high-speed-train-in-ca... http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/263782-obama-high-s... The project is hoped to finish in 2029, which is 12 years from now. For comparison, China build the Qinhuangdao–Sheny…

> Not a single yard of track has been laid. True but misleading. Actually laying track is the cheap and easy final part of construction; building the viaducts, grade separations, etc., and doing the other construction which prepares the route for track to be laid.is the time consuming, expensive part, and plenty of that has been done and is being done in the initial segment. > Here in India, we've built an entire cit…

Yup, compare to HS2 in the UK £55bn for 225km, it actually sounds like not bad value.

Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#109

Post by maattdd »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #5

I'm pretty sure the people calling it a boondoggle are correct. Obama included $3B in the 2009 stimulus package for it back in 2009. Not a single yard of track has been laid. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/high-speed-train-in-ca... http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/263782-obama-high-s... The project is hoped to finish in 2029, which is 12 years from now. For comparison, China build the Qinhuangdao–Sheny…

I think you are a bit off for the average price of this kind of project in developed countries. Let's take France which have a strong history in HSL (thus a lot of experience, which helps reducing the costs): the new Tours-Bordeaux line (302km) will cost 8B euros, for a line which is "simple" on an engineering point of view (no mountains, no urbanized area) for 6 years of work.

Considering the length and difficulty of the HSL in California, you can multiply the cost at least 3 times, so something around $30B. You add the fact that the US labor is more expensive than France (contrary to common knowledge), the fact that it's the first HSL in the US..etc.. and the $64B figure is not too crazy anymore.

Your estimate of $2-4B in 4 years is imho absolutely unrealistic.

Re: The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

#110

Post by blisterpeanuts »

kurthr wrote: post #23
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #13

It's a pity that the United States didn't embark on a concerted effort to build a high speed rail system back in the 1950s and 1960s, when we had more money and a smaller population. And fewer lawyers. Instead we wasted a couple trillion (adjusted for inflation) on Vietnam. Think what we could have done with that money not to mention thousands of lives saved. It seems to me that California's highway problem is one of…

Although I agree with your conclusions it's worth considering that Japan's bullet trains run 2000 passenger trains both directions every 3-5 minutes ( That is very conservatively (2 passengers/car) 1000 cars every 5 miles with on 125ft spacing equivalent to a perfectly functioning 10 lane freeway. More realistically (1 passenger/car) 2000 cars every 3 miles on 250ft spacing is equivalent to a 60 lane normal freeway.…

Undoubtedly if built it will get used. However: it's a nice fantasy; but in an over-committed region of a debtor nation, the implementation requires beggaring other vital programs or putting the country another couple hundred billion in debt for a public works project that employs a few thousand people to build, a thousand or so to run, and will deliver questionable economic value in a state that is already overcommitted in so many ways.

The problem with this California idea is that its proponents evoke the Bullet Train but it will never be the Bullet Train. The Japanese built that thing in 1964, which is when we should have started modernizing our own railways but didn't because GM decreed that its buses and trucks should replace railroads, which they largely succeeded. The resources for a huge project existed then; they don't exist today.

It's also worth pointing out that California is in the political dog house post-2016 elections. They backed the wrong horse, their dominant party is in the minority nationally, and they are not going to get a lot of sympathy in the Congress or from most other states who are going to be asked to foot the bill for this turkey. If the people of California want to build this thing, go right ahead; no one's stopping you. Just don't ask the rest of the country to pay for it.

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