It won't be killed. Too much grift.
Exactly, the contractors, lobbyists and politicians are lining their pockets. Why would they kill the golden goose?
Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
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Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#12The problem with local infrastructure projects is their responsibility and execution fall to local community leaders (in this case local = state of California). These leaders are far less efficient and impactful than the federal government, a bar which is already way too low. Nearly every city in the US has had recent collisions with corruption, blatant mismanagement, ideological forces co-opting process, etc. and so…
Your theory does not explain why the state of California is capable of discharging $25 billion into freeway construction annually. It obviously cannot be the case that US states are incapable of executing public works projects.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#13One issue with "CA HSR" is that it isn't even "high speed".
We may have happily referred to is as "high speed rail" 30 or 40 years ago but, given a possible completion date of 2035 (or whatever) the 2:40 travel time from SF LA is unimpressive ... and even that will not be achieved:
"California legislative overseers do not expect the 2 hr 40 min target will be achieved."[1]
The simple fact is that the I-5 corridor is the spine of California and should be leveraged for all additional infrastructure build-out ... which would yield economies of scale and network effects for rail, network lines, water transmission, electrical distribution and (eventually) autonomous trucking.
Instead we're spending billions to build a slow, circuitous route to Fresno.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#14The problem with local infrastructure projects is their responsibility and execution fall to local community leaders (in this case local = state of California). These leaders are far less efficient and impactful than the federal government, a bar which is already way too low. Nearly every city in the US has had recent collisions with corruption, blatant mismanagement, ideological forces co-opting process, etc. and so…
> What options are even left at this point? Look at countries that do have high speed rail, which are of similar size to US states, and study what they are doing differently?
they have more efficient central planning, less red tape, and they don't let people like Elon Musk come in and derail the project with dubious and irrelevant alternatives
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#15The problem with local infrastructure projects is their responsibility and execution fall to local community leaders (in this case local = state of California). These leaders are far less efficient and impactful than the federal government, a bar which is already way too low. Nearly every city in the US has had recent collisions with corruption, blatant mismanagement, ideological forces co-opting process, etc. and so…
Calling the leaders of the State of California, the 4th largest economy in the world, "local" and less efficient than the federal government is interesting.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#16This piece seems to concede all of the problems critics of CAHSR (notably Ezra Klein) bring up, and then argues they never should have been problems in the first place or begs their underlying questions. For instance, yes, it took forever for funding to get secured. That's part of the state capacity critique of CAHSR!
Or, for another example, yes, the current Central Valley routing is practically just as hard (per mile) as a direct I5 route which would actually serve the largest population centers in CA. But, the piece argues, this would leave "more than a million people" in the Central Valley underserved. Uh... and? The I5 route would have served over twenty million people.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#17It's absolutely critical that a country with California's GDP learns how to rearchitect itself to build again -- literally critical for America's progression. Nothing in this article makes me feel any better about the prospects of that happening.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#18One issue with "CA HSR" is that it isn't even "high speed". We may have happily referred to is as "high speed rail" 30 or 40 years ago but, given a possible completion date of 2035 (or whatever) the 2:40 travel time from SF LA is unimpressive ... and even that will not be achieved: "California legislative overseers do not expect the 2 hr 40 min target will be achieved."[1] The simple fact is that the I-5 corridor is…
The CAHSR "peer group" which issued that quote is a political commission full of axe-grinding losers, specifically created by state politicians who want to kill the project. Nobody with a clue thinks that the 2h40m target is unattainable.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#19Imagination: Another ~3,800 words worth of "opinion". Reality: Zero miles of high-speed rail deployed. Many such cases. Edit: Downvote all you want, that still won't make the rails appear, lmao.
As the piece points out, the lack of rail is pretty much irrelevant. Once all the guideways are in place, there is a machine that you just drive along that poops out perfect rails at ~1km/hr. It is the most trivial part of the project.
I’ve heard so many business guys running startups say the same thing about their brilliant idea. Once the plan is in place you just do daily standups and your engineers poop out perfect features at the rate of 1 ticket/day.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What options are even left at this point? Look at countries that do have high speed rail, which are of similar size to US states, and study what they are doing differently?
they have more efficient central planning, less red tape, and they don't let people like Elon Musk come in and derail the project with dubious and irrelevant alternatives
It really all comes down to civil vs. common law. In America, anyone can hold you over a barrel in court, indefinitely, for any or no reason, until you agree to their extortion.