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Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

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Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#61

Post by yellowapple »

scythe wrote: post #52
niftich wrote: post #17

While this article finds an issue with the way the Tejon Pass route was eliminated in favor of the Tehachapi Pass route, Tejon Pass route would skip a station in Lancaster/Palmdale, which would be a mistake. As the article acknowledges, these are rapidly growing exurbs that are refuge from the exorbitant land prices in the LA Basin. There is existing commuter rail service between there and Downtown LA, but a HSR is a…

> these are rapidly growing exurbs that are refuge from the exorbitant land prices in the LA Basin. What kind of country are we building where we send people to live in exurbs in a literal barren desert -- I'm not exaggerating, I was in Palmdale a few weeks ago, and it could have inspired Solzhenitsyn -- with a fast train into the city, lest the petit bourgeois of L.A. be forced to live in - ugh - townhomes? There ar…

The CHSR indeed does have a Phase 1 stop in Bakersfield (among other inland cities).

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#62

Post by porpoisely »

niftich wrote: post #17

While this article finds an issue with the way the Tejon Pass route was eliminated in favor of the Tehachapi Pass route, Tejon Pass route would skip a station in Lancaster/Palmdale, which would be a mistake. As the article acknowledges, these are rapidly growing exurbs that are refuge from the exorbitant land prices in the LA Basin. There is existing commuter rail service between there and Downtown LA, but a HSR is a…

Saw "There Will Be Blood" the other day. Thought I recognized Tehachapi and looked it up. Turns out that movie was based in California and not in Texas as I assumed. Excellent movie btw.

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#63

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

A negative article on HSR from a conservative think tank? I'm shocked! :P

The price tag in real dollars has increase since Prop 1A was passed in 2008, but the author is misrepresenting how much costs have increased compared to the initial estimate of $40 billion in 2008.

The absolute cost has increased because the estimated completion date has been pushed back by a decade or more and the construction estimates are in year of expenditure dollar, not current dollars or 2008 dollars.

I wrote a comment about it here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16560843

Granted, I hate to see funds being poorly managed and contractors committing fraud with no accountability, which appears to have happened, but I also hate hit pieces where someone compares 2008 dollars to year of expenditure dollars like they're the same thing.

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#64

Post by sundaeofshock »

masonic wrote: post #54
russellbeattie wrote: post #47

Why does it seem that the U.S. has become incapable of building large projects in a reasonable amount of time and budget? It seems every major bit of construction is always years late, and billions over budget. Whether it's the Bay Bridge (half of it), or a new Space Shuttle replacement, or just fixing our bridges and other infrastructure, I've never read of a large public project actually coming in on time and on bu…

the U.S. has become incapable of building large projects in a reasonable amount of time and budget? Private projects come in on time and on budget, or nearly so, all the time. It's the public sector projects that are layered in graft. The last major public project that came in near the original budget that I can recall is the San Jose Area (now SAP).

Private projects come in on time and on budget all the time? Do you have any evidence to support this? I’ve seen plenty of private projects gonoff the rails. The difference is that private projects can keep their budget information, well, private.

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#65

Post by landryraccoon »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #11

As someone who voted for this project, I'm really bummed with how it's actually turning out. The actual costs are so much more than what people voted for, yet no one's being held responsible. At the same time, I don't really have a solution to this problem. We need to invest in large scale transportation initiatives for the future — projects just as forward-looking as BART once was. Yet not even NYC can pull it toget…

The 1976 BART cost $10B in today's dollars to construct. If you were alive in 1976 would you have said it was a boondoggle and the project should have been killed?

IMO people consistently underestimate how much public infrastructure is worth. The US highway system was sold at a cost of $27B [1] but cost over $100B and has cost nearly $500B today [2].

Does that mean the US Highway system wasn't worth it? Of course it was, the public just doesn't understand how much it had to cost. The Iraq war cost trillions for zero benefit for future generations, even if 50% of the cost of HSR is waste it's still a better deal by far.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#66

Post by gumby »

Aloha wrote: post #39
niftich wrote: post #17

While this article finds an issue with the way the Tejon Pass route was eliminated in favor of the Tehachapi Pass route, Tejon Pass route would skip a station in Lancaster/Palmdale, which would be a mistake. As the article acknowledges, these are rapidly growing exurbs that are refuge from the exorbitant land prices in the LA Basin. There is existing commuter rail service between there and Downtown LA, but a HSR is a…

I'd love to know the rationale in choosing Pacheco over Altamont.

Pacheco is southern enough that the line can continue up through San Jose and up through Silicon Valley to SF. Altamont is far enough north that it would bypass SJ/SV, plus would require a bridge.

Also the land further south is a lot cheaper.

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#67

Post by RRL »

zcbenz wrote: post #35

In comparison, the Chuo Shinkansen connecting Tokyo and Nagoya (286km in distance), which runs at a maximum speed of 505 km/h (314 mph), costs about 45 billion US dollars.

Thanks for the context.

So the Chuo Shinkansen = ~ $253,218,691/mi.(9 stations)

Est. CA HSR (Stage 1) = $190,384,615/mi (15 stations)

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#68

Post by richk449 »

eloff wrote: post #50
ummonk wrote: post #14

I used to support the HSR project on the grounds that connecting the state (both LA / Bay Area and the Central Valley towns) would yield long term economic benefits due the increased flow of people within the state. Decreasing the effective distance between people by making travel faster and cheaper has a lot of value in the information economy. Nothing beats face to face communication. I now no longer support the pr…

For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes with 10 person capacity and 600mi range - not quite anything like that on the market yet mind you - but it seems close at hand. You could cover nearly the whole state, not just LA SF, and have 330,000 person capacity. By what measure would this train be better? Certainly not economic, noise, land-use, speed, convenience, coverage, or flexibility. Pro…

Very impressive. But in just three minutes, I thought of an even better plan: put a $10M wormhole between LA and SF and have near instant travel. Wormholes don’t quite exist yet, but they seem close at hand.

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#69

Post by eloff »

landryraccoon wrote: post #56
eloff wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes with 10 person capacity and 600mi range - not quite anything like that on the market yet mind you - but it seems close at hand. You could cover nearly the whole state, not just LA SF, and have 330,000 person capacity. By what measure would this train be better? Certainly not economic, noise, land-use, speed, convenience, coverage, or flexibility. Pro…

Your plan has never been done before. It might completely fail for risks you and everyone else has never considered. For all of rail's faults, we are certain it is possible. It's been done many times before. Maybe it can be done cheaper or more efficiently but there is no question that if we build it it will actually work.

Ok I'm sure it's a horrible plan. But I'm also sure if you think a little out of the box you could mop the floor with this rail project. Being too risk averse is also a risk, it's a risk of settling when you could have had better.

Re: Fast Train to Failure: California’s Mismanaged High-Speed Rail Project

#70

Post by marcell »

rukittenme wrote: post #58
marcell wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s interesting to me is that the federal tax cuts passed last year cost around $150B a year. I know you may not support this either, but that would pay for the construction of 1 and a 1/2 HSR’s a year, even with the cost overrun. Reminds me of PG’s essay about how it’s easy to loss lots of money on bad investments, even for people who are normally frugal on luxuries.

Tax rates were cut; tax revenue was not. The federal government is expecting $26 billion more in tax revenue than in 2017.

That’s a bit semantics as it’s looking at just one year, and in any case doesn’t look at the delta from the old law.

Edit: IIRC the law had some incentives to onshore money at special tax rates, which may cause a one-time bump in revenues.

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