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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

#181

Post by masonic »

yellowapple wrote: post #86
Retric wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

  gets people from SF to LA in a couple hours or so
Only if it had zero stops, which would defeat the purpose in the first place. Every stop means deceleration, stop to offload people and freight, then onload people and freight, then reacceleration to speed.

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

#182

Post by masonic »

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…

  we send people to live in exurbs in a literal barren desert
SF was just a windswept array of sand dunes and salt marsh. It produces no resources. All food, water, and materials have to be imported. One of the grandest natural features of the state (Hetch Hetchy valley) was ruined to give SF a water tank.

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

#183

Post by masonic »

rayiner wrote: post #81
landryraccoon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 produc…

  you have said it was a boondoggle
It was in the sense that it was obsolete, proprietary technology, excessively priced, and badly equipped. It's implementation favored only western Alameda county and SF at the expense of everybody else. That's why San Mateo County and Santa Clara County bailed. Contra Costa would have, too, if they had any idea what poor service they would get in proportion to their contributions from the beginning.

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

#184

Post by masonic »

rayiner wrote: post #144
georgeecollins wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $50B, yes. BART will exist in some form for at least a century. It is so hard to understand how valuable it is to make something that so many people use every day for that long but it is really valuable.

How valuable? $50 billion is enough to create a fund that pays out $2 billion annually in perpetuity, or about $15 for every BART ride. That’s not counting ongoing operations and maintenance. Does BART generate $15 in positive value per ride above and beyond ticket cost, relative to driving? I’m skeptical. $3 I’ll believe. Which is why the constant factors kill us relative to Europe. It costs us 3-7x to build the sam…

  That’s not counting ongoing operations and maintenance.
Or debt service.

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

#185

Post by masonic »

philsnow wrote: post #156
rayiner wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How valuable? $50 billion is enough to create a fund that pays out $2 billion annually in perpetuity, or about $15 for every BART ride. That’s not counting ongoing operations and maintenance. Does BART generate $15 in positive value per ride above and beyond ticket cost, relative to driving? I’m skeptical. $3 I’ll believe. Which is why the constant factors kill us relative to Europe. It costs us 3-7x to build the sam…

You haven't taken into account how much the bay area would have needed to spend on bridges and freeways if BART hadn't been built. https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/BARTfactsheet_... says (as of 2017) 70k people go through the transbay tube in each direction during peak commute hours. http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/tollbridge/SFOBB/Sfobbfacts.htm... isn't dated but says that 270k vehicles cross the Bay Brid…

  70k people go through the transbay tube... 270k vehicles cross the Bay Bridge every day
In other words, taking your figures painfully literally, if those vehicles carpooled just one additional passenger each on average, you'd have 4 times the added throughput that BART provides.

But this will never happen as long as we give HOV lane access to cars other than those carrying 2+ licensed drivers... for political reasons.

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

#186

Post by masonic »

amunicio wrote: post #157
rayiner wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How valuable? $50 billion is enough to create a fund that pays out $2 billion annually in perpetuity, or about $15 for every BART ride. That’s not counting ongoing operations and maintenance. Does BART generate $15 in positive value per ride above and beyond ticket cost, relative to driving? I’m skeptical. $3 I’ll believe. Which is why the constant factors kill us relative to Europe. It costs us 3-7x to build the sam…

Let's take your own reasoning and let's apply it and see where the numbers fall. The Bart cost was $1.586 billion (according to Wikipedia) or around ~$10 billion of today's dollars. Let say that back then we had put that money ($1.586 billion) into an annuity in perpetuity and given the money each years to the riders so they will find alternative means of transport. So if instead of building bart back in the 70's we…

  That is less than 50 cents per ride
... if you ignore all the years' operational costs, personnel costs (including benefits and pensions), debt service, etc.... which is the lion's share of the costs.

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

#187

Post by masonic »

steve_gh wrote: post #120
xienze wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.”

Transport hubs encourage development. In the UK look at all the satellite industries around Heathrow and Gatwick. Look at the offices being built close to Paddington and Kings Cross stations in London, or Reading. The sensible thing would be for the city to buy up land round the stations, then build offices and lease them. The income would offset the costs.

  Transport hubs encourage development.
In the Bay Area, compare the degree of development along the BART tracks with development well away from BART (e.g. San Mateo county, Silicon Valley, etc.)

Check out the BART tracks from Oakland to Fremont especially.

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

#188

Post by yellowapple »

masonic wrote: post #181
yellowapple wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

gets people from SF to LA in a couple hours or so Only if it had zero stops , which would defeat the purpose in the first place. Every stop means deceleration, stop to offload people and freight, then onload people and freight, then reacceleration to speed.

With zero stops, it'd be about 2 hours or so in the 200-220 MPH target speed the HSR Authority's mandating. I can't find any published numbers for a proposed timetable/schedule for the SF/LA line, but I'd be really surprised if the stops added much more than another hour.

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

#189

Post by tropo »

masonic wrote: post #181
yellowapple wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

gets people from SF to LA in a couple hours or so Only if it had zero stops , which would defeat the purpose in the first place. Every stop means deceleration, stop to offload people and freight, then onload people and freight, then reacceleration to speed.

I'm saying there should be zero stops.

Privately-run transportation is smarter about stops. The airlines don't make all those stops when going from SF to LA. They do a non-stop flight.

There is no reason a train has to stop, and non-stop trains are still capable of serving all those cities. You buy a ticket, board the train, and it goes non-stop to the destination city. All this requires is that a stopped train doesn't block the other trains from passing through. Put the station off to the side, maybe even a couple miles from the main track.

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

#190

Post by landryraccoon »

masonic wrote: post #183
rayiner wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 produc…

you have said it was a boondoggle It was in the sense that it was obsolete, proprietary technology, excessively priced, and badly equipped. It's implementation favored only western Alameda county and SF at the expense of everybody else. That's why San Mateo County and Santa Clara County bailed. Contra Costa would have, too, if they had any idea what poor service they would get in proportion to their contributions fro…

Didn’t Santa Clara voters just approve a $6B initiative to support Bart service? Why do you think they wouldn’t want to be part of the system if they just voted to be part of it?

http://www.vta.org/measure-b-2016

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