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Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

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Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#81

Post by bobthepanda »

rb808 wrote: post #62
yongjik wrote: post #42

I think any talk about HSRs in the US should be able to explain US highways. American highway system is arguably one of the best in the world - it's also a gigantic government project, and it's constantly being extended. So how come America, with its proven track record of great highways, is totally impotent with high speed rails? The answer can't be just "American government doesn't work" or "the country is too big.…

> American highway system is arguably one of the best in the world No, I'd say the German Autobahn system is the best in the world, followed by France (expensive) then UK, before USA. USA is good because they tend to go to central cities, where European motorways deliver to a ring road. You can commute to work on a US motorway, but between cities they aren't special.

> USA is good because they tend to go to central cities

This is great if your only metric to measure is "could I possibly get there in a car."

This is terrible for pretty much every other factor, including

- neighborhood desirability: highways are terrible neighbors to live next to due to all the air pollution, noise pollution, visual impacts, and traffic impacts

- transport capacity: roads become congested far faster than other modes of transportation. Another issue is that pre-automobile neighborhoods are generally designed to distribute traffic across a grid, not concentrate it at highway exits and offramps.

- public health: the prioritization of the highway has caused a lot of asthma in high-density, low-income areas. The absolute primacy of the car and the creation of car-centric environments have also decimated active modes like walking and biking, or walking to transit, and this is probably a big factor in why Americans are less healthy than other developed countries' citizens.

- equity: highways today mostly run through low land value areas, because they were the cheapest to build and the citizens living there generally had the least political power. This was also intentional; many cities had the policy where bulldozing and splitting existing poor or minority neighborhoods to build highways was an "improvement" to remove "urban blight". As such, the impacts of highways in the US tend to fall disproportionately on the poor and minorities.

Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#82

Post by mch82 »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #61
mch82 wrote: post #54

High speed rail is a bad investment. Rail systematizes discrimination, typically loses money, and struggles to provide a last mile solution. $60B can buy at least 600,000 electric vehicles with 3 million seats. Semi-autonomous vehicles are already capable of operating as a “train” in a dedicated freeway lane and autonomous operation is likely by 2033 (when California’s HSR would begin operation). This solution could…

> autonomous electric vehicles Not to argue, but this doesn’t exist. Not really. Not on the market. Rail, however does exist. Further, what is the mileage equivalent of cars vs rail? I don’t know, but I think it would favor mass transit rail. You also compared electric cars to taxi drivers - that’s odd. > Rail systematizes discrimination Can you expand further on this?

> Rail systematizes discrimination

Railways are fixed route. People who rely on rail can only go where the rail goes & have limited freedom to access other destinations. The people who pay for rail (via taxes) are often not the people who use it (since people with extra money tend to purchase cars). Wealthy people tend to not want heavy rail in their back yard, so lobby to have it other places. That means wealthy places lack rail access.

Edit: For example this case in Seattle asking if building light rail above ground discriminates against poor communities when rail is built below ground in richer communities. They dropped the suit because they couldn’t afford to keep fighting. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...

Caveat, I did my primary research for a single grad school course in 2006, so new data may be available.

Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#83

Post by Gibbon1 »

_delirium wrote: post #60
mch82 wrote: post #54

High speed rail is a bad investment. Rail systematizes discrimination, typically loses money, and struggles to provide a last mile solution. $60B can buy at least 600,000 electric vehicles with 3 million seats. Semi-autonomous vehicles are already capable of operating as a “train” in a dedicated freeway lane and autonomous operation is likely by 2033 (when California’s HSR would begin operation). This solution could…

$60B can buy zero autonomous vehicles, because there aren't any working ones! And won't be for years, regardless of the wrong predictions [1] Elon Musk keeps making. [1] He promised in 2016 that Tesla vehicles would have level-5 autonomy by 2017: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-every-tesla-car-will-be-fully...

Autonomous vehicles won't solve the congestion problem and would likely make it worse. The fundamental attraction of autonomous vehicles is to externalize the cost of congestion. It's like cars in general, great it's just you. Not great if it's everyone else too.

Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#84

Post by jedberg »

jseliger wrote: post #58
jedberg wrote: post #39

The California HSR has a lot of problems not matched in Taiwan. Firstly, once you get from San Jose to Bakersfield, then what? We don't have good public transit in LA, much less to Bakersfield. But even if the train went all the way to Union Station in Los Angeles, you'd still need to rent a car to get anywhere useful, or take Uber/Lyft. And same thing on the other end. What happens when you get to San Jose? You stil…

We don't have good public transit in LA, much less to Bakersfield. But even if the train went all the way to Union Station in Los Angeles, you'd still need to rent a car to get anywhere useful, or take Uber/Lyft. And same thing on the other end. Have you used LA rail recently? It's a lot more functional than it used to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Metro_Rail although it still has a ways to go.

I have. It's very comparable to BART now, where it works like commuter rail except in downtown. But you still need to drive to a station or take a bus that doesn't run on time.

Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#85

Post by 1123581321 »

rb808 wrote: post #62
yongjik wrote: post #42

I think any talk about HSRs in the US should be able to explain US highways. American highway system is arguably one of the best in the world - it's also a gigantic government project, and it's constantly being extended. So how come America, with its proven track record of great highways, is totally impotent with high speed rails? The answer can't be just "American government doesn't work" or "the country is too big.…

> American highway system is arguably one of the best in the world No, I'd say the German Autobahn system is the best in the world, followed by France (expensive) then UK, before USA. USA is good because they tend to go to central cities, where European motorways deliver to a ring road. You can commute to work on a US motorway, but between cities they aren't special.

What is the difference between a bypass highway and a ring road?

Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#86

Post by supernova87a »

Simply put, even if all the environmental / lobbying / no-car-at-the-destination issues were resolved, the distances of California (and population densities) would still make it economically challenging to have HSR a slam dunk compared to flying.

HSR breaks even with flying at about _200-300 miles_ journey. That is, if the planned journey is within that range, for similar pricing, people will choose 50-50 rail over flying (in aggregate, in Europe, Asia). New York to Washington/Boston distances. Greater than that, flying has the advantage. (People will incrementally choose flying the longer the distance). This takes into account typical traffic, getting to the airport, check-in, all that stuff.

San Francisco to Los Angeles is 380 miles. Add to that the destination rental car issues, etc. And we haven't even talked pricing yet.

Even if you got that all out of the way, flying is still often better than rail. Even on Tokyo-Osaka route, one of the pinnacles of HSR, there are almost comparable flights serving the route as shinkansen.

I know we all wish for high speed rail as a demonstration of our technological prowess. But in recent years even I've soured on it for California, given how incompetent we seem to be on top of rail's structural disadvantage in the state. The money would bring far more benefits if spent elsewhere to solve our traffic, commute, suburban issues.

Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#88

Post by seb314 »

ardit33 wrote: post #47
jedberg wrote: post #39

The California HSR has a lot of problems not matched in Taiwan. Firstly, once you get from San Jose to Bakersfield, then what? We don't have good public transit in LA, much less to Bakersfield. But even if the train went all the way to Union Station in Los Angeles, you'd still need to rent a car to get anywhere useful, or take Uber/Lyft. And same thing on the other end. What happens when you get to San Jose? You stil…

This argument just doesn't make sense. You can make the exact point about airports as well. What's the point of an airport? It is hard to get there, you have to rent a car, parking is expensive, too much trafic, busses are not that often... etc... etc.. Build the train, and have stations close to downtown, while local government can start/extend local transportation as well. Ideally you have both local and inter-urba…

I think local public transport might be just a lot more efficient than longer-distance HSR. So if there isn't even a basic solution for the local transport, it seems odd to start with HSR. That impression is mostly based on comparison to Germany though.

Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#89

Post by Gibbon1 »

supernova87a wrote: post #86

Simply put, even if all the environmental / lobbying / no-car-at-the-destination issues were resolved, the distances of California (and population densities) would still make it economically challenging to have HSR a slam dunk compared to flying. HSR breaks even with flying at about _200-300 miles_ journey. That is, if the planned journey is within that range, for similar pricing, people will choose 50-50 rail over f…

> economically challenging to have HSR a slam dunk compared to flying.

Ever priced out a runway extension project? Know how much that costs? You have no idea.

Re: Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

#90

Post by diego »

mlyle wrote: post #79
diego wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nonsequitur. The California coast is pretty dense, the rest of the state has large amounts of empty space and national parks. Nobody would build a high-speed rail through Yosemite or Death Valley.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan#/media/... vs. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:California_populatio... The reddest areas on the California map would be orange on the Taiwan map. A San Jose to Bakersfield route (comparable in length to the Taiwan route) has a huge low-population density area around the middle, so basically there's no prospect of using the rail for shorter trips. And the nu…

It's still grasping at straws. The idea is to connect SF and LA, which are much larger than Taipei and Kaohsiung. In-between stops are a bonus.
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