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Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

latimes.com

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Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#81

Post by romwell »

rayiner wrote: post #61
stefan_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do the US poor travel to?

They travel to visit family just like U.S. rich people! You can travel from say Spokane to Boise in about 7 hours by car, for about $215 in gas and wear-and-tear. That's affordable for all but the poorest people.

They also travel to see places and experience nature, because you don't have to be rich to go to a National Park, for example. Showing one's children what the world outside of looks like is not an inherently unaffordable activity (although it certainly is more available to people with money, and on a different scale).

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#82

Post by jdavis703 »

hadrien01 wrote: post #28
jdavis703 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask your representatives in parliament to consider implementing less internationally expansive laws or use a VPN.

Ask your newspapers in the U.S. to consider respecting user privacy.

I can't vote for the executives of the newspapers here in the U.S. (that right is held by the board members of each of those companies). You can vote for your EU parliament representatives. If there's things you don't like about the law you and your fellow citizens have the chance to change it.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#83

Post by ebikelaw »

rayiner wrote: post #73
ebikelaw wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cherry-picking a favorable example for the car. It's always better to take your car when you fill it up with people, compared to other modes that charge per person. It's true locally - always cheaper to drive from Oakland to San Francisco vs. four round-trip BART tickets - and it's true regionally - cheaper to drive the whole family than to fly, if you don't value your time. Of course both of those assume that…

It's a highly relevant example. What are the reasons a lower-income person might travel from LA to SF? Traveling to visit family is probably the primary reason. You can see this play out with the Acela on the east coast. It's almost all business travelers or nicely dressed professional looking people. People who can't afford $100+ per ticket take the bus ($35). Likewise, even lower income people traveling alone aren'…

Speaking of disconnected from reality, you seem to be claiming that poor people travel, which they don't. In yet another example of American inequality, the bottom income quartile of families are quite stationary; they can neither afford to move about nor do they have "days off" as such because an American is not legally entitled to any.

The supermajority of American families cannot even afford an unexpected $500 expense; they sure as hell aren't going to blow hundreds to drive to LA.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#84

Post by Patrick_Devine »

basementcat wrote: post #23
jessaustin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every big public project is a massive boondoggle. Should we just stop doing things?

The Golden Gate Bridge was finished ahead of schedule and under budget.

Maybe, but the Bay Bridge wasn't, and they were built around the same time. http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/entry/dont-forget-...

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#85

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jhpriestley wrote: post #45

I think this is a very misleading headline. 49 percent support the high speed rail project in this poll, based on a neutrally worded question. The 31% figure comes from a leading question that starts with "The latest estimates for California’s high-speed rail project are that it will cost up to $77 billion dollars and will be finished in 2033. This estimate is nearly twice as much as the original estimated cost." The…

For any given X, there are more people who want the government to do X than there are people who want to pay for the government to do X. But since it's government, we're going to pay for it.

It's a bit leading, but not heavily. To be non-leading, it should also say that the high speed rail will take you from SF to LA in Y minutes, and tickets will cost $Z. Then it's non-leading; it's merely supplying additional information that not all poll respondents may know.

But it's not all that leading of a question. The cost and completion date, while they reflect badly on the project, are not irrelevant to peoples' opinion of it...

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#86

Post by jessaustin »

mikeash wrote: post #29
jessaustin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every big public project is a massive boondoggle. Should we just stop doing things?

No, we should stop fucking up public projects. Nothing says we have to.

There are massive vested interests saying just that. They have the ear of all the relevant public officials, because they pay for that ear. Boondoggle public works projects are a transfer of wealth from the public to those interests. We might as well say, "let's spend less on the military!" Yes that would be great, but what we have is what the system produces.

The easy way to do this better would be to pick out a firm who had done a good job on a similar project overseas, and tell them to do the same thing under the same rules with the same workers, except over here, and we'll pay a 25% premium to cover relocation expenses. Hell we could pay a 50% premium and still come out way ahead. This would never happen, but it's instructive to think about all of the different levers the system would pull to prevent it.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#87

Post by dragonwriter »

rayiner wrote: post #26

This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business travelers. Which would be fine if the project was paying for itself, but it won’t be. It’ll be state subsidies for high income professionals. That money could be doing so much good (scho…

> This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business travelers.

Which is saving the poor money, since otherwise:

(1) The state will pay entirely out of tax money, largely funded through regressive fuel and consumption taxes, with no private component to expand capacity via freeways instead of HSR,

(2) the state will spend the same kind of public money with a partial private subsidy to expand capacity by adding (and replacing existing freeways with) tollways, which not only will taxpayers who don't take trips pay for, but those who do drive will pay more for.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#88

Post by jessaustin »

ebikelaw wrote: post #83
rayiner wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a highly relevant example. What are the reasons a lower-income person might travel from LA to SF? Traveling to visit family is probably the primary reason. You can see this play out with the Acela on the east coast. It's almost all business travelers or nicely dressed professional looking people. People who can't afford $100+ per ticket take the bus ($35). Likewise, even lower income people traveling alone aren'…

Speaking of disconnected from reality, you seem to be claiming that poor people travel, which they don't. In yet another example of American inequality, the bottom income quartile of families are quite stationary; they can neither afford to move about nor do they have "days off" as such because an American is not legally entitled to any. The supermajority of American families cannot even afford an unexpected $500 exp…

'rayiner seems to have argued you in a circle here. He is the one claiming the poor aren't going to ride this train; you hardly contradict him when you argue they aren't going to use cheaper transportation either.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#89

Post by dragonwriter »

slg wrote: post #63
ebikelaw wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the upper-middle-class robbing the poor has been the history of our highway system, which you can't use without owning a car and paying ~ $0.55/mile to operate it. We have shoveled hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies down the throat of the automobile culture and we did not get a functioning transportation system from doing so. We got a massively regressive, barely functional system and all of its attenda…

That $0.55 / mile is dropping with EVs (which also help address some of the other problems you mentioned) and would crater if driverless cars become a reality in the next decade or so. A driverless EV should easily be able to beat $86 for a 400 mile trip from SF to LA. Which makes we wonder if the time for high speed rail has come and gone.

> That $0.55 / mile is dropping with EVs (which also help address some of the other problems you mentioned) and would crater if driverless cars become a reality in the next decade or so.

Driverless cars increase congestion, which increases cost of human travel, once the taxes needed to pay for road construction and maintenance are factored in.

Re: Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train

#90

Post by dragonwriter »

slg wrote: post #70
ebikelaw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between HSR and driverless EVs that can go from SF to LA is the former has existed for 50 years and the latter has literally never been demonstrated.

And another difference is that the development of a rail line requires billions in additional public funds (and also takes years if not decades to build) while the development of driverless cars is being paid for by private businesses. Wasn't your initial argument about saving money?

> And another difference is that the development of a rail line requires billions in additional public funds (and also takes years if not decades to build)

So does building the same capacity in roads. And, even moreso, so does building that plus the extra capacity required for the increased load required to handle on-demand driverless vehicles.

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