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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

#81

Post by rayiner »

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…

> 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?

And what would BART cost today to build? $50 billion? Would it be worthwhile at that price? The problem is that costs for public infrastructure are ballooning much faster than inflation. That puts more pressure on public infrastructure projects to produce benefits that justify the investment. I fully expect many public infrastructure expenditures today won't ever justify themselves, for example DC's silver line.

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

#82

Post by yellowapple »

fspeech wrote: post #77
yellowapple wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Might be cheaper to melt the ice caps and give Bakersfield a beach.

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

#83

Post by captainperl »

For the people reading these postings, I noticed there's some misunderstandings about California HSR ...

1) It's not for transportation. It's a jobs and pension program for appointees. State leaders are willing to spend $100 billion (or more) of taxpayer money for $1 billion of pork.

2) The state cannot even manage Caltrain well, which is only 50 miles long (SF to Gilroy.) There's no way they can manage a route 400 miles long.

3) Domestic airlines do a good job of intra-state travel already.

4) There was never an affordable model for building HSR. It never made any sense financially for California.

5) Residents of Palo Alto and Atherton will sue the state into oblivion if they don't bury the HSR. And the state won't because tunnelling is $2 billion per mile.

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

#84

Post by eloff »

richk449 wrote: post #68
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…

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.

There was a plane featured on HN this week with those exact specs.

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

#85

Post by rangibaby »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #43
illvm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the environmental impact to consider. Air travel has a much larger emission profile compared to train travel, and train travel has a much larger capacity. Plus, rail station are often in the center of the city rather than on the outskirts like airports are. e.g. traveling by train from Boston to NYC vs flying is almost a wash time wise due to travel to/from the airport + buffer time for security.

Getting to the city center, though, is often problematic. You either follow the existing railroad lines, which often have tight curves, or you build your own, which involves ripping out a long path through the already-existing city.

if Japan can manage it America can

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

#86

Post by yellowapple »

Retric wrote: post #76
tropo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, but we're talking about a train that gets people from SF to LA in a couple hours or so. That's already pretty awesomely fast.

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

#87

Post by captainperl »

illvm wrote: post #33
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…

There is also the environmental impact to consider. Air travel has a much larger emission profile compared to train travel, and train travel has a much larger capacity. Plus, rail station are often in the center of the city rather than on the outskirts like airports are. e.g. traveling by train from Boston to NYC vs flying is almost a wash time wise due to travel to/from the airport + buffer time for security.

> There is also the environmental impact to consider. Air travel has a much larger emission profile compared to train travel

I'm not sure that's true.

Heavy locomotives require a lot of fuel, and aircraft turbine engines are fairly efficient these days (airplanes roughly get 1% more efficient per year, compounded annually.)

Railroads also divide the landscape, which has a highly negative impact on wild-life roaming and migration patterns.

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

#88

Post by richk449 »

eloff wrote: post #84
richk449 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was a plane featured on HN this week with those exact specs.

For sale for $3M?

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

#89

Post by yellowapple »

rangibaby wrote: post #85
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting to the city center, though, is often problematic. You either follow the existing railroad lines, which often have tight curves, or you build your own, which involves ripping out a long path through the already-existing city.

if Japan can manage it America can

The more relevant comparison would be California specifically instead of all of America.

Still, given that if California were an independent country it'd be right behind Japan in terms of GDP, if Japan can manage high-speed rail, we should be able to.

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

#90

Post by DuskStar »

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 :(

A Sepulveda Pass-LAX subway is supposedly coming eventually!
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