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Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

latimes.com

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Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#51

Post by rayiner »

ebikelaw wrote: post #47
rayiner wrote: post #26

This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business travelers. Which would be fine if the project was paying for itself, but it won’t be. It’ll be state subsidies for high income professionals. That money could be doing so much good (scho…

No, the upper-middle-class robbing the poor has been the history of our highway system, which you can't use without owning a car and paying ~ $0.55/mile to operate it. We have shoveled hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies down the throat of the automobile culture and we did not get a functioning transportation system from doing so. We got a massively regressive, barely functional system and all of its attenda…

That's completely divorced from reality. Even poor people own cars! 80% of people in poverty have access to a vehicle.[1] $0.55/mile is about $120 for an LA to SF trip. For a family of four, this train is $350. Which one do you think a low-income family is going to take to visit relatives for Christmas?

In any case, poor people who don't own cars rely on busses and subways--which this boondoggle does nothing for.

[1] $77 billion would also create a perpetual fund that would be able to buy a $10,000 used car for every household in poverty every 5 years.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#52

Post by stefan_ »

rayiner wrote: post #26

This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business travelers. Which would be fine if the project was paying for itself, but it won’t be. It’ll be state subsidies for high income professionals. That money could be doing so much good (scho…

Where do the US poor travel to?

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#53

Post by ebikelaw »

Agustus wrote: post #27
jboles wrote: post #11

Killing it would be short-sighted. If it gets killed, there would probably never be the opportunity to build it ever again. California is flush with tech money, put some of it to good use.

Killing it would be far sighted. Technology is improving transportation methods, we have buses and planes that can do the same thing as this train at much cheaper rates and without tax dollars to construct or maintain.

There is no bus or plane that can do anything like what HSR can do. That's the entire point of the project. It will triple the capacity of our north-south transportation system at a fraction of the cost of equivalent airport capacity.

This is something that people don't understand when they haven't travelled enough to experience good rail systems. Rail has massive capacity, 100k people per hour per track direction. That's 500 lanes of theoretical freeway capacity, or 1000 lanes under realistic operating conditions, and it's more than the total capacity between all Bay Area and all L.A.-area airports, even if you operated that route solely with widebody jets, which we don't.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#54

Post by mitchbob »

rayiner wrote: post #26

This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business travelers. Which would be fine if the project was paying for itself, but it won’t be. It’ll be state subsidies for high income professionals. That money could be doing so much good (scho…

But according to at least one study (1), the California high-speed rail project would be a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gases. If there were a tax on carbon that reflected the damage that greenhouse gases are doing to the environment, we'd be flying a lot less, and HSR would be a no-brainer.

(1) https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/publication/cost-effectiveness-re...

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#56

Post by kalleboo »

rayiner wrote: post #26

This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business travelers. Which would be fine if the project was paying for itself, but it won’t be. It’ll be state subsidies for high income professionals. That money could be doing so much good (scho…

FWIW, that's about what a ticket costs on the Japanese high-speed rail as well (for a shorter distance even). The difference is that in Japan, driving is way more expensive due to the heavily-privatized nearly fully-tolled highway system

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#57

Post by mc32 »

rayiner wrote: post #26

This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business travelers. Which would be fine if the project was paying for itself, but it won’t be. It’ll be state subsidies for high income professionals. That money could be doing so much good (scho…

Nah, I’m arguably middle class and I’m getting tired of this boondoggle with its delays and ever spiraling costs. I take my vote back.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#58

Post by merpnderp »

jhpriestley wrote: post #45

I think this is a very misleading headline. 49 percent support the high speed rail project in this poll, based on a neutrally worded question. The 31% figure comes from a leading question that starts with "The latest estimates for California’s high-speed rail project are that it will cost up to $77 billion dollars and will be finished in 2033. This estimate is nearly twice as much as the original estimated cost." The…

So leading questions are questions that supply two pertinent facts and a third pertinent if leading fact? Everyone wants a rail system to quickly take them where they need to go. Not everyone is willing to pay that much money, wait that long, or accept mind boggling mismanagement.

For example which question would result in more accurate responses: do you want lower taxes vs. do you want lower taxes if it cuts state budgets by 10%?

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#59

Post by jiggliemon »

When you sell voters the sizzle and not the steak; this disillusion is just a matter of time.

It was sold on an impossible premise; - Minimum 200 miles per hour (320 km/h) where conditions permit - Maximum travel time between SF and LA not to exceed 2 hr 40 min - Financially self-sustaining (operation and maintenance costs fully covered by revenue)

A flight to SF is 1.5hrs from LA (take off and landing). And only costs $150 round trip. If you could reduce the hassle of “security” you have a better, faster, cheaper high speed transit system.

It was supposed to cost $30b. It will cost north of $90b. And it will still need to be subsidized. And it will be slower than 2hr 40min.

If you could possibly deliver what was sold - I’m sure the polling would reflect that. But what the people are getting is a shadow of what they approved.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#60

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #26

This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business travelers. Which would be fine if the project was paying for itself, but it won’t be. It’ll be state subsidies for high income professionals. That money could be doing so much good (scho…

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