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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?

#91

Post by jorblumesea »

HSR failed in California largely because building effective mass transit is a secondary goal. If you look at the route, and how the process unfolded, the focus was mostly on who was going to get paid, and helping out political friends. In the US, large transit projects are mostly about pork barrel politics and spending, and if something actually usable comes out of it, then that was a great but secondary effect. If you look at how other countries build transit, politics is more subdued and the goal is to actually build a functional system. Republicans block most transit projects as it is antithetical to their political views, and the Democrats uses it as a social spending policy and political handouts largely ignoring the needs of an actual transit system.

Basically, US politics just doesn't care to build things properly because the incentives are totally off.

Vox has a pretty good breakdown: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/15/18224717/c...

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

#92

Post by pas »

1123581321 wrote: post #85
rb808 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

OP probably means that very few highway goes through cities in Europe, whereas you have big highway junctions in cities. (Eg Boston Big Dig.)

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

#93

Post by franknine »

trynumber9 wrote: post #37
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.

The same is also true of Taiwan to a smaller degree. They have a populated coast and then a sparse interior. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan#/media/...

Central Taiwan is full of high mountains, tallest one is nearly 13,000ft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_Shan

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

#94

Post by supernova87a »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #89
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.

Oh I do. But you have an existing federal body willing to hide/distribute the cost of that runway, control tower, staff, weather forecasters, etc. Not as much for rail.

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

#95

Post by acollins1331 »

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…

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?

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

#96

Post by MrMorden »

mch82 wrote: post #72
aiscapehumanity wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

600k additional vehicles sounds like a traffic density disaster.

The difference between small, point to point vehicles that operate like taxis and rail is that taxis actually get cars off the road. I attended Hack for LA a couple years back and 1/3 of the traffic in downtown LA is drivers looking for parking. Switching to shared ride transit will decongest the roads.

Charging for parking can fix that problem now.

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

#97

Post by mlyle »

diego wrote: post #90
mlyle wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The initial stage is to connect Merced and Bakersfield, which has no clear payoff. All other stages of the project are indefinitely postponed.

The post author compared San Jose to Bakersfield, as it's the same length as the Taiwan connection.

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

#98

Post by smsm42 »

acollins1331 wrote: post #95
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…

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 goal - that means every single person in California just because couple of thousands bucks poorer just so somebody could be proud of California having HSR. Thanks but no thanks.

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

#99

Post by basq »

acollins1331 wrote: post #95
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…

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?

At this point I just assume anywhere else in the world have better pubtrans than anywhere in the western US.

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

#100

Post by smsm42 »

toastal wrote: post #49
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…

Could that not be a chicken and egg issue? There's no reason to build bus lines to a nonexistent train station. And without the attractive high-speed train option, who's going to take these buses in meantime? Sounds like the train could be a catalyst.

San Jose has plenty of good meeting points for urban transit. It's likely the same points HSR would be using anyway. What it doesn't have is the proper urban transit - the one that exists takes hours instead of minutes to get anywhere and virtually nobody who can afford not using it uses it. Having HSR wouldn't solve any of it.
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