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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

#71

Post by Rebelgecko »

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…

I don't think you can even get a (new) 10 seat plane for less than $10,000,000. And I doubt that a plane built using technology that doesn't exist yet will be 70% cheaper than ones you can get today. Even if you can find 33,000 planes for that cost there will be significant infrastructure costs (if you want to multiply the # of planes in the air in California by 10, you'll need more ATC, more runways, more hangars, more parking garages, and probably more airports).

Upfront costs are just a small fraction of the price of flying planes around. That 3 (or 10) million per plane quickly gets subsumed by maintenance, staffing, and other recurring costs.

I don't know how loud these hypothetical electric planes are, but if they're like traditional ones I doubt that they'd beat a train in terms of noise (even though HSR can be 10-20 decibels louder than slower trains). I would question that there would actually be an advantage in speed or convenience, at least between highly populated areas.

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

#72

Post by melling »

kochikame wrote: post #46
melling wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China built 17,000 miles of high-speed rail in 15 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China There’s another 8000 on the way by 2025.

It's easy to do when you can just forcibly move people and don't have to listen to what the locals think before you start laying track

That’s a great excuse for getting right of ways.

However, that doesn’t explain how they can build 17,000 miles of track and we can’t build 800.

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

#73

Post by imh »

This kind of ballooning makes me think there should be a rule for propositions (and maybe most funding in general) that when allocating funding for XYZ, there must be clear criteria upon which the funding is removed.

Like if the proposition had said "It'll probably cost $33B and take under three hours, and will be canceled if the estimated costs exceed $50B or the estimated duration exceeds 3 and a half hours."

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

#74

Post by gedy »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #31

Should have given the project to the French company that put forward the proposal or hire a Japanese firm from the start. Leave it up to a bloated agency with a misaligned agenda to royally screw things up at the cost of the taxpayer. If you think this is bad, you don’t want to know where your federal tax dollars go to. Reading this makes me sick.

But then they wouldn't be able to hand out favors and buy political clout with big construction firms and unions, which is sadly probably the main goal for the current project..

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

#75

Post by vadym909 »

cco wrote: post #37
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…

What the heck is the train line doing near Fresno? Why is it not following I-5 and making zero stops in between the South Bay and LA?

Fresno to Silicon Valley is very bad road route (single lanes, towns, redlights) with no major highway and very poor Greyhound/Amtrak connection. It will be great to have an HSR instead of the 3 hr drive.

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

#76

Post by Retric »

tropo wrote: post #51
Aloha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's supposed to link the whole state, not just LA to the Bay

We can do both. Put all the stations on sidings so that stopped trains do not block the main track. Trains operate point-to-point just like aircraft, with everybody getting on and off at the same time. This means that there is little downside to adding more stops. The trip time for other stops is unaffected. There is no energy or time wasted on intermediate stops.

Only if the route is unchanged. Looking at a map it’s not going to be a straight line which increases travel time for every detour.

http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Newsroom/Multimedia/maps.html

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

#77

Post by fspeech »

yellowapple wrote: post #61
scythe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

He wants to go to Ventura. Bakersfield has or had oil, but no beach!

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

#78

Post by rayiner »

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…

> 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.

Anyone who didn't expect a California-run HSR project to not be wildly over budget is a fool.

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

#79

Post by xienze »

landryraccoon wrote: post #65
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…

> IMO people consistently underestimate how much public infrastructure is worth.

I think you mean “politicians consistently lie about how much public infrastructure projects will cost.”

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

#80

Post by gtdawg »

trashguy wrote: post #44
classichasclass wrote: post #23

> A comparatively small amount of state aid to LA Metro would do far more for California’s environment and economy Like finishing the Green Line to @#$&ing LAX, maybe. It's ludicrous how bad the public transportation options are to what is arguably the most important airport on the west coast. Meanwhile, on my monthly sorties through the Central Valley, the Authority continues with its gigantic monuments to bloodymin…

Or any improvements on the 405 for us poor souls who live in the Valley+ and work in Santa Monica :(

We just spent a lot on that. [1]

Are you not seeing results?

What additonal work would you like to see?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/us/los-angeles-drivers-on...

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