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

desertsun.com

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

#111

Post by thrower123 »

ralphie02 wrote: post #63
almost_usual wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because we already have highways and our car culture is hard to change. Highways were also originally built for national defense with the economic benefits as a secondary force. Defense projects traditionally get tons of funding in the US. Convincing a generation that witnessed two world wars to back a massive defense project wasn’t difficult.

Can you elaborate on the national defense? How is the highway useful with defending the country? Defending from who? I can only think of highways as secondary runways for planes but I'm unsure as to how much that helps your case.

The only reason that I-95, for instance, extends as far as it does, is because of the Strategic Air Command bomber base in Limestone, ME. A lot of the other more nonsensical routings of the interstate system make sense when you take into consideration where strategic bases were located in the 50s and 60s.

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

#112

Post by bobthepanda »

ghaff wrote: post #71
ralphie02 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the national defense? How is the highway useful with defending the country? Defending from who? I can only think of highways as secondary runways for planes but I'm unsure as to how much that helps your case.

Evacuating cities in the event of an atomic attack was also cited as a reason though that obviously seems questionable as well. As I wrote in another comment, the defense justification was probably mostly just a way to get the help get the act passed.

Katrina and Harvey showed that at best, evacuating cities with highways is an extremely long, drawn out process that will most likely leave the most poor and destitute (who don't have cars) totally stranded.

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

#113

Post by dyslexit »

smsm42 wrote: post #98
acollins1331 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been to Taiwan? All the problems you just listed exist but even worse. You think Taichung has better public transportation than San Jose?

So the argument would be "they tried it in Taiwan and it ended up with all the problems opponents predicted it would have, so we have to reproduce it in California"? Having HSR is not a goal. It's a tool. The goal should be having efficient (both monetarily, time-wise and people suffering wise) means of getting people from point A to point B. If California spends $100b of taxpayer money and doesn't get closer to the…

The article gives a good reason for why it works in Taiwan, despite its problems:

> Taiwan’s high-speed rail system proved reliably profitable — and popular, with 64 million riders last year.

Aside from talking about the (potential) cost, you didn't make any other point for why there shouldn't be a HSR. It's fine if you don't think we should have one because it's becoming too expensive, but I don't see any argument for why it wouldn't be useful.

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

#115

Post by ghaff »

bobthepanda wrote: post #112
ghaff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evacuating cities in the event of an atomic attack was also cited as a reason though that obviously seems questionable as well. As I wrote in another comment, the defense justification was probably mostly just a way to get the help get the act passed.

Katrina and Harvey showed that at best, evacuating cities with highways is an extremely long, drawn out process that will most likely leave the most poor and destitute (who don't have cars) totally stranded.

Yes. Basically you can't rapidly evacuate cities. Maybe highways help a bit but, if you can barely handle commuter traffic on a given workday, you're certainly not going to completely and quickly evacuate a city if there's some threat--and that's before you even get to the issue of people who don't own cars.

So the idea that highways would be useful if there were an imminent threat of nuclear attack looks pretty silly.

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

#116

Post by chongli »

narrator wrote: post #26

I think it's because in the U.S absolutely anyone can tie up this stuff in the court systems for years. There are a lot of environmentalists who have been working overtime to stop this thing. For example: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/10/24/high-speed-rail-l... . There are seven environmental lawsuits against this thing. How much do you think the legal bills are? There will likely be many more. Edit: There are…

Are these environmental lawsuits really about protecting the environment (fighting climate change) or are they NIMBY lawsuits taking advantage of environmental laws/ordinances? In general, I would expect environmentalists to be among the major proponents of high speed rail, with the goal of getting more cars off the freeways.

This calls to mind the Faculty of Environment at my university, whose primary focus is on the urban planning degree program. Urban planning as a rule seems to be all about politics, stakeholders, and NIMBYism; not so much about fighting climate change.

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

#117

Post by jariel »

diego wrote: post #29
aodin wrote: post #20

For an article with quite a few numbers, it seems to be missing some basic ones: * Taiwan, area 36,197 km^2, population density 651 / km^2 [1] * California, area 403,932 km^2, population density 97 / km^2 [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...

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.

It's not a non-sequitur, it matters a lot in the end it implies on average considerably longer distances through less density.It matters in the calculation.

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

#118

Post by thrower123 »

Mindless2112 wrote: post #101
all2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our collective experience with public transportation on rail is AmTrak, which is demonstrably bad compared to other country's rail systems.

Or lack of experience. Want to go from Denver to Albuquerque? The shortest route goes through Illinois. I'd love to take Amtrak -- there's even a station in my city -- but anywhere I want to go, it's faster and cheaper to fly.

Even in the northeast corridor, it is usually slower and more expensive to Amtrak than it is to drive, let alone fly.

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

#119

Post by briandear »

chongli wrote: post #116
narrator wrote: post #26

I think it's because in the U.S absolutely anyone can tie up this stuff in the court systems for years. There are a lot of environmentalists who have been working overtime to stop this thing. For example: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/10/24/high-speed-rail-l... . There are seven environmental lawsuits against this thing. How much do you think the legal bills are? There will likely be many more. Edit: There are…

Are these environmental lawsuits really about protecting the environment (fighting climate change) or are they NIMBY lawsuits taking advantage of environmental laws/ordinances? In general, I would expect environmentalists to be among the major proponents of high speed rail, with the goal of getting more cars off the freeways. This calls to mind the Faculty of Environment at my university, whose primary focus is on th…

> Are these environmental lawsuits really about protecting the environment (fighting climate change)

“Protecting the environment” isn’t “fighting climate change.” Regardless of one’s position on the effects of CO2, that’s like suggesting that ensuring health should be entirely about how to prevent influenza. Protecting the environment includes protecting habit, stopping (actual, toxic) pollution. Climate change isn’t the end-all be-all of environmentalism. Climate change is being used at an almost religious level to justify pretty much anything climate activists deem necessary — regardless of any unintended (or subversively intended) consequences.

Environmentalism doesn’t have to also mean “obsession with climate.” Some of us care deeply about the environment but also don’t have the audacity to think that the climate is changing because of humans. The climate has been changing for 4+ billion years.

Of course, downvote away. Heresy is expected to be punished here. It is important that the point was made: caring about the environment can be independent of the climate change gospel.

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

#120

Post by wenc »

Side observation, non-related but was brought up in the article:

"Taiwan is a far poorer place than California — with median household income just one-fourth of ours — but still it managed to afford high-speed rail."

The author seems to be ignorant of some context when describing Taiwan in this way -- I learned recently that wages in Taiwan were artificially and structurally depressed in order to enable a competitive export economy. Taiwan is actually not a palpably poorer place except maybe in an absolute dollar sense. Taipei has top notch infrastructure, superior to every large U.S. city in my view (I've visited and seen for myself) The highways are beautiful. They don't skimp on infra spend.

Notwithstanding the fact that median household income is rarely good indication of how "poor" a place is, especially when comparing across countries because of local cost of living assumptions.

If we compare poverty rates, Taiwan's is 1.78% whereas California's is 18.2%.

Taiwan's GDP per capita (PPP) -- not household income -- was $53k in 2018. California's was $66k in 2016. Not that different.

Looks like the author was trying to use a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand there to make his point.

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