this project will never be complete; they will finish the central valley and stop there. There is no way to get a high speed train all the way to SF on the same two tracks that caltrain uses, even after electrification. It will be a miracle if they get to Diridon.
I take it you haven't been from Tamien to Gilroy. Those tracks are worse than everything else from SJ-SF. (HSR would likely cut over somewhere around Gilroy, so taking those tracks up would make sense, but they would all need to be redone.)
Crazy idea: We could have a train corridor from Sacramento to Oakland, then San Jose and Los Angeles, then run a ferry between SF and Oakland.
Oh wait, we had exactly that, and then ripped it out / prioritized freight on it.
I don’t see why they don’t just imminent-domain the tracks, and straighten them so the existing amtrak trains could run at their top speed on them (125mph vs today’s 60mph if I remember right).
They could even run frequent commuter trains within cities at rush hour.
Later, they could upgrade the trains and tracks, until it’s ratcheted up to modern speeds (> 200 mph) in remote areas.
It's a rule that all infrastructure projects will be behind schedule and over budget. A correlary to this is, like a vacuum, a project will always use the money and time that is originally allocated and need more.
With this in mind, the way the current project is being funded and run is actually the most practical way (regardless of the horrible optics): Doing chunks at a time, rather than trying to plan and fund the entire time and cost up front. The fact is that estimations are inherently political and always, always, always incorrect.
Though it seems a ludicrous way to work, the project would never had started had the actual time and cost had been known at the outset. Though some parts of the project cost more because of the lack of complete funding and slower pace (things cost more now), the overall efficiency is actually improved by making sure that the money is spent as needed.
So, if they're saying it'll cost another $100B to complete, the real cost is probably $250B. If they say it'll be done by 2030, it'll probably be 2035 at the earliest. And that's fine. As a country we need to stop thinking in the short term. Unless we want to start acting like China and just bulldoze our way across the country regardless of property owners, residents and the environment, this is how it has to be.
Anyone who's been on this earth for more than a few decades should know this by now.
The RoI just isn't there for this specific project though.
That additional $100B could have been used to drastically enhance the existing public transit systems within California. Projects like the ACE expansion, the LA Metro expansion, the Caltrain electrification, etc have all had tangible positive effects, and a bit more money could have been poured into multiple local projects instead.
At this price point, what would the ticket be for a SF to LA train?!? If it reaches the $100-200 range you can't beat flying.
HSR between LA and SF will never be able to compete with air travel, especially with how many stupid stops they are planning on.
A flight takes ~1hr, plus another hour for TSA and whatnot. Rail will take several hours at best. Unless rail significantly undercuts the cost of a flight (which can be had for extremely cheap these days) people just aren't going to use it.
Not disagreeing that they’ll screw it up, but it’s only about 400 miles from the Bay Area to LA. That should be about 2 hours for a modern train.
Assuming the train runs frequently enough for spur-of-the-moment trips (why wouldn’t it?!?) I’d definitely prefer that to screwing around with booking a flight, getting to the airport, and dealing with the TSA, even if the flight was only an hour.
>>So, if they're saying it'll cost another $100B to complete, the real cost is probably $250B. If they say it'll be done by 2030, it'll probably be 2035 at the earliest. And that's fine. As a country we need to stop thinking in the short term. Unless we want to start acting like China and just bulldoze our way across the country regardless of property owners, residents and the environment, this is how it has to be.
At this dismal level of spending efficiency, the US would go bankrupt long before it matches China's scale of public works construction. So if the choice is between falling behind China as an industrial power, or exercising eminent domain, and sidelining environmental regulations and labor unions, to get infrastructure built like China, the choice is easy. Build the way China does.
Every major US city being connected by high speed rail lines would have innumerable benefits far exceeding the costs associated with rapid construction.
Not just China, which people often correctly point out is willing to do things with zero input or concern for individuals, but most of Europe is able to build stuff with much lower costs than we are while respecting property rights and the environment. We should just bring over some Spanish or French rail administrators and ask them how we can fix our bureaucracy.
I see the push back on bureaucracy all the time in ways that imply government is the problem. When explained, what it ends up perpetually looking like to me is rent seeking middlemen who are really good at pointing at every one but themselves while they line their pockets.
The government giving money to rent seeking middlemen is corruption and a common problem with bureaucracy. The corrupt bureaucrats here realized it is more efficient to extract value by using private corporations, so the root of the problem isn't the corporations but the corrupt bureaucrats.
Private corporations often gets good value from outsourcing, why can't the government? Corruption, plain and simple.
Just because bureaucracy is outsourced to private corporations doesn't change much. It's still basically bureaucracy, decisions are not made by elected representatives but by opaque and complicated bodies and processes that are insulated from accountability.
This really sounds like what I would call bureaucracy. Not project management, but nesting dolls of grift that create double-binds and negative externalities - all of this under complex, often criss-crossing laws that can only be interpreted to varying degrees of definition by lawyers who charge $1500 per hour.
It's why upstarts (like America was in the 20th and 19th centuries) are so competitive. They have the frontier, emptiness, a blank slate.
"It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.”
Who in California is hoovering up the $26b that Caltrans spent last year on freeways? Who stands to benefit from constantly trumpeting the cost of the rail project while never, ever reporting on the cost of freeways?
I take it you're not from CA. Anyone who lives here has seen Caltrans workers, and instantly understands why it costs so much to do so little. If you don't have at least 5 people standing around the hole watching 1 guy dig, it isn't Caltrans work.
What you say might be true but even if we use hyperbole and pretend they have 10,000 employed full time doing absolutely nothing and getting paid 60k/yr, let's say with overhead costing 100k/yr each to the state, that's still only $1B/year...
What if everyone involved received equity which is worth more with every dollar from the initial cost estimate not spent? Giving them an incentive to save money and pocket the difference
Part of the issue is that the transit lobby seems allergic to private sector investment. The golden gate was funded privately via bond sales to bank or America.
This was a project that was never needed. High speed rail make sense in corridors that have a large number of big population centers that are just far enough where driving is not a great solution and flights are inefficient to move large number of people around. Europe, Japan, American North East etc.
There’s not a whole lot between LA and the Bay Area, and people didn’t need the train when flights work. It’s the same kind of feasibility study that put a multi billion dollar transit terminal in the middle of San Francisco, that is not connected to all major transit operations that exist in the city
It's a somewhat shiny bus terminal near downtown San Francisco which is now actually used a lot (though it would have been used a lot more if not for COVID and work-from-home). It has a basement level prepared for the California High-Speed Rail (the original subject of the article we're discussing) but it doesn't connect to Caltrain, BART, or Muni Metro, although the latter two are a relatively short walk away.
> High speed rail make sense in corridors that have a large number of big population centers that are just far enough where driving is not a great solution
so exactly SF Bay Area (7.5 MM people) to LA Area (13.5 MM people). Distance 350 miles or 560km.
1 hr flight is inefficient with starts/landing/checkin/checkout/TSA/infrastructure costs/getting in and out of airports etc
Proper high speed rail like Shinkansen could do it in 2-2.5 hours easily. (same distance as Tokyo to Osaka, which is the OLDEST Shinkansen line)
You're describing Barcelona to Madrid, which is now one of the busiest rail corridors in Europe and is eating demand for flights between the cities (previously the busiest flight corridor in Europe).
It seems concerning that the US isn't able to complete basic infrastructure projects. Even if they're a little over time and budget. In other parts of the world, infrastructure is getting done.
Looking at how much high speed rail China has built, and operates, then you look at the USA who cannot event get a train built between to major cities it's quite crazy that this is such a struggle.
I know that it's not a priority because Americans are "rich" and like cars, but something about this failure seems deeply problematic to me.
I would caution against lumping everyone else in with California. There are definitely functional states in the US that can finish projects. California, however, is not one of them.
I think the only holes left from the big dig that haven't been filled are in the MBTA's budget from the imaginative financing used to make it happen. The actual physical digging and stuff is all done.
How about we add Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas to the California example? The Interstate 69 project through those states has been going on for decades, and it is nowhere near completion. But I-69 doesn't get the same scrutiny. Maybe because it's about cars rather than trains?
One definition of “rich” is how much work you can get done with the money you have. Maybe Americans are not really rich given that it takes $100B+ to build a train line? Maybe a dollar is not really worth much given that it take so much of it to do anything valuable?
You can see this at play with the support of the Ukraine. Billions are being tossed around but how much 'punch' does that dollar have when it reaches the frontline? Does it even get there at all? Is 10B in American aid even close to 10B in Estonian aid?
Zero provenance of where each aid dollar goes. Does it reach the frontline, who's pocket does it go into? And why can't we track this information (at a high level)?
It's being tracked and there's been government reports checking if the money is being siphoned to corruption and so far not much has been found (except the usual low percentage of defrauding but that happens with anything).
You and I don't have access to it, it's just expected since it's sensitive information during wartime.
This country isn’t centered on doing big things anymore. Its core morality is “get rich as you can.” Government projects are perhaps the single best way to get there.
Companies doing space travel don’t care about exploration. They care about being the ones to capitalize on space first.
> They care about being the ones to capitalize on space first.
that's fine - because exploration is a useful side-effect of "capitalizing" space.
The problem with gov't funded public works projects is that everyone involved knows it's gov't funded, and adds their own margin on top. Not to mention the land acquisition gets more expensive over time - both purely due to inflation, as well as the idea that the land owner could squeeze more juice out the later the project is in (after all, if you're the sole "hold-up", you could squeeze the gov't for your land at above market rates and they'd have to pay or lose the entire project!).
It is really a result of freedom of the individuals in america (vs their gov't) compared to places like china.
You don't get to overcharge for your work as a "contractor" in china - you work for the state-owned company that employs you at a fixed wage.
The land is always something the gov't can just take as imminent domain, and pays you what the gov't thinks is fair compensation (which, of course, is going to be lower than market cost, as you are forced to accept it).
Lastly, those "pesky" environmental reviews in the US doesn't really exist in china. At best they get rubber stamped.
While the result of china's infrastructure development is definitely impressive, those who had to eat the hidden cost exist, but is powerless to stop it. Hopefully they also get to enjoy the fruits of the infrastructure, and that it outweighs the cost paid by them.
I look at this from another perspective. While you interpet "personal freedom" as a good thing, I see it as an indicator of weakness. Alone personal freedom isn't bad. But when used as resistance against the public good and overall progress, it is a sign that it is being misused, either by malice or incompetence, or maybe both.
America won the world wars by being an industrial powerhouse who could get things built in large quantity. I think that is no longer the case. To go further, it indicates a strategic weakness in national defense. Japan's warships were technologically superior to the American's. The German tank' specs were better than the Allies. But they lost on the number games. I feel like if a fight broke out between the US and China right now, we may see the same thing happen again, except this time, the US is the one playing the "few elite" card while China has the industrial and manufacturing power to swarm us with "good enough" war engines. And history has shown twice which strategy would win a war.
luckily, nukes exist today, and this is no longer a volume problem. The all-out war scenario is one where humanity dies out, revert back to the stone age.
In a regional conflict, such as a taiwan invasion, this might play out as you described. But then in such a regional conflict, the "elite" forces of the US is more useful imho.
> But when used as resistance against the public good and overall progress
There's shades of grey there, because what constitutes public good and overall progress? But you may be right that there's more middlemen these days that are just not pulling their weight for what they output. Like ticket-clipping, where they just add a margin and pass on the work down the chain, and yet contribute nothing.
Yes when you have no concept of private property, environmental protection, or workers rights, stuff gets done faster. Comparisons to China aren’t helpful because the US has chosen a fundamentally different path than China.
Eh, nail houses are usually built to extract compensation from the government. Which then sometimes is stolen by local officials who build around the property.
Some of those nail houses looked rather old, so I'm having difficulties to believe they've been built for the purpose of extracting compensation from the current government.
I'm sorry but I just don't think that's a valid enough excuse because all of the things you mentioned are part of "getting a project done". Everything you mentioned should've been done as part of a study before embarking on the project if it wasn't deemed inviable then no money should've been committed in the first place?
If you compare these actually objectivly then things arent that clear.
Great, lots of environmental laws that ... prevent a train line that is objectivly great for the envoirnment.
The simple fact is, China transportation system is better for the actual environment.
Worker protection, ok, US worker protection globally known for being great? If im China a train-line is built 10x as fast, then even assuming higher insure rate, the overall project might be safer.
Lets talk salary. Are US workers that work on CHSR better paid relative to other jobs in the economy compared to China? Did China use ultra cheap slave labor? Can you actually show that its the actual workers who benefit from this 10x cost upgrade?
Private property isnt absolute. The US can take property if required. And happly did so and still does so for highway expantion. Japan on the other hand has less ability to do it and still manage to build trains. Im not sure how exactly this works in China. But just saying 'private property' isnt actually great analysis. Can you objectivly show that people on the path of CHSR were objectivly better of then those that had property along a line in China. And even if so, how much of the cost does that actually explain.
You can look at any number of statistics in regards to infrastructure spending efficency. The US does then to be very high.
Some very good refutations here...really interesting perspectives too.
I like this one:
Worker protection, ok, US worker protection globally known for being great? If im China a train-line is built 10x as fast, then even assuming higher insure rate, the overall project might be safer.
I'd say absolutely no, it's not great, only when you want it to be for making an argument to support a narrative I guess :)
> Looking at how much high speed rail China has built, and operates, then you look at the USA who cannot event get a train built between to major cities it's quite crazy that this is such a struggle.
One such rail line just opened up going to my friends hometown [1]. Now instead of a 3 hour car ride from the major airport it's 45 minutes by train. The route is roughly half the distance of SF<>LA and wasn't even fully approved till 2019 [2].
There is something to say that the US gives high priority to individual rights and private property owners. A big part of why developing countries can build so quickly is by steamrolling citizens who aren't politically connected. In China, they simply force everyone to move and bulldoze huge swaths of existing real estate to build new highways and trains.
I agree the pendulum is too far in the wrong direction here. But if my city told me I had to move because they were destroying my whole neighborhood to put in a new train, I would be livid - "I thought this was America!" It would take an enormous sum of money - many times over what my property is worth on paper - to make me feel properly compensated for all of the memories, sentimental value, and how much I like my neighborhood.
Many of the special interests that benefit from the status quo have a stranglehold over narrative. How would a consensus ever emerge to strip labor unions of their power in the current social landscape for example?
Must first start with the political operating system that cannot be reformed from within. After that happens, then it's possible to have sensible governance and effectively implementing megaprojects. Public-private "partnerships" are just subsidies to corporate profits.
The entire CA transportation budget is $21 billion per annum (not counting federal funds, which were elevated at $8.8B in 23-24).
That includes DMV and CHP as well as the city/county road funds, state highways, transit programs, bridge retrofitting, general maintenance, and existing rail programs.
I think I am being crystal clear. The government spending on the car transportation scheme costs so much that it spends every few years enough money to build a statewide bullet train system, even though the car system is only treading water and not adding capacity. That isn't even counting the private spending on the car scheme, which is far larger. HSR is the deal of the century.
This bullet train is absolutely not statewide. You can get from basically anywhere in California to anywhere else using the state highway system, and millions and millions of Californians actually do. (CA has 2,459 miles of Interstate highway and 11,982 miles of freeways and principal arterial roads; the final length of the HSR as planned is 800 miles)
This $100B is a marginal cost on top of what has already been spent, and does not include the cost to operate the system. It seems unreasonable to imply that the cost of the highways which actually connect the entire state, somehow dwarfs the cost of this project -- that's just not true. It's even more unreasonable to to imply that the journalism is flawed because it does not make that argument.
> told lawmakers the project has $28 billion dollars on hand, but noted it was still a few billion dollars short to complete the Central Valley segment between Merced and Bakersfield. Depending on how long the segment takes to finish, it could cost between $32 Billion to $35 Billion
California will spend tens of billions and multiple decades connecting two cities in the middle of nowhere. And in the most conservative part of the state, where people didn’t want high speed rail to begin with. And then the project will get cancelled because no way this thing is ever getting built. Truly excellent trolling.
Most of the transportation budget goes to lowering the capacity of commuter corridors (car and public transit) in the cities, and devising ever-more-dangerous non-standard bike lanes.
One fifth of California’s population lives in this “middle of nowhere” called the Central Valley, and its existing rail line is in the top 10 busiest train routes in the USA, with thousands of daily riders.[1]
Although the project needs to connect to the coastal cities to really make sense, it is certain that the initial operating segment from Bakersfield to Merced will prove popular as soon as it starts running.
Un Switerland any town with 1000 people is expect to have regular trains. Even mountain towns of a few 100 people have regular buses synced up with the train. In the US, multi million cities are somehow 'in the middle of nowhere'. If that doesnt tell you the difference in additide then I dont know what will.
You literally have two metro areas with 10+ million people and multible towns with millions or multibe 100k people in the middle.
Maybe just improving the projects organisation instead of cancling it makes sense.
I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a success story or not.
125MPH is the max speed of the train. It runs the route at an average of 67mph, end to end.
Adult tickets start at $79 for a 235 mile ride.
That’s about $0.33/mile, which is cheaper than driving with only two people in the car. With three, it’s cheaper to drive.
Ridership is over 2 million per year, which seems good. (Ten years at that ridership means the track construction cost $300 per passenger trip though. No idea how much maintenance has cost.)
However, overseas, the older trains are averaging well over 100mph, and the new workhorse trains routinely run faster than 200 mph.
For a train and tracks completed in 2013, I’d expect the 235 mile trip (6 stops; say, 4 minutes per stop: 235 mph top speed) to take about 90 minutes; 100 minutes figuring in time to accelerate and decelerate 6 times.
It takes 3.5 hours. That’s probably slower than a car.
Also, according to wikipedia, the system is incredibly unsafe (by train standards).
It sounds like the tracks are a severe safety and performance issue, even after $6B in upgrades. The construction cost already puts the system at the edge of insolvency, even without considering operating costs.
This is very similar to the Mission Valley leg of the San Diego trolly. This was the first trolly project developed in modern San Diego, and connected hotels to the "charger statium". Supposedly to allow tourist to go to football games from their hotel. Then, the chargers ditched San Diego and moved to LA 8-/
Meanwhile, El Cajon Blvd, which mostly parallels the route of that Mission Valley trolly route, but goes through residential and business areas and connects the city core to SDSU continues to have no trolly. In spite of the fact that this was a major trolley route back in the day when US cities originally had trolleys.
Ironically, that original Mission Valley trolley route now connects to SDSU, but doesn't travel through the most densly packed part of the city.
The project is too profitable for it to end. Why would anybody at the trough be against stretching the timeline and budget in perpetuity? Yum yum, unless you're a CA taxpayer.
The $1.7M toilet feels like a steal in comparison to this.
I've spent large amounts of time in other countries. America is an absolute embarrassment.
There are countries you can go where it feels like the government actually cares about trying to help people have a better life. There are countries where infrastructure projects get completed. There are countries where infrastructure isn't just completed, it's good. There are countries where the administrative overhead of health care is 2% instead of (a likely underestimated) 25%.
You can't fix infrastructure policy, or any other policy, in America without first fixing campaign finance reform.
As long as senators and justices can be openly bought and sold there is no hope of getting responsible leadership that acts in the interests of citizens.
Very good video explaining the core issue of American politics by Harvard Law professor and founder of creative commons Lawrence Lessig-- Our democracy no longer represents the people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE
Yep. America has the simultaneous problems of being both too spread out and too busy/dense in most areas without sufficient public transport. There has been a widespread, long-term lack of planning to arrange smaller residential areas closer to commercial and industrial areas. It's largely dependent on long commutes and automobile commutes, which is unnecessarily expensive and wasteful.
For reference, Wikipedia says SpaceX has spent $3B on the Starship program through May 2023. Another 2B estimated in 2023 at that point, so somewhere less than 10B total, easily.
It went to space today, and these jokers can’t lay railroad track like we did in the 1800s.
Title author clearly isn't from CA. They've been hyping HSR since the 80's. Never gonna happen without lots of pork barrel waste and, like VTA light rail, no one's going to use it. Americans are in love with meat agriculture, political toxicity, feelings over knowledge and competency, uninformed opinions, and single occupant vehicles stuck in traffic with long commutes.
This is a one-party failure of the California democratic party 8-(
They're so in bed with the real estate mafia that it's almost impossible to get anything involving land accomplished.
With the number of people flying daily between southern California and the bay area, a high speed rail would be boon for the region. It's ironic that after the whole idea of California high speed rail was first introduced by a San Diego legislator in the '80s, after a trip to Japan, San Diego is no longer even on the initial planned route.
There's a simple solution to the funding problem: a $5-$10 dollar tax on each flight between SoCal and the bay area. These short hop flights are exactly what the high speed rail is supposed to eliminate, and the number of people taking them everyday is huge. Make the problem pay for the solution.
The same approach could fund the transition away from petroleum. The problem, of course, is that both major US political parties primarily represent the entrenched equity stake holders, not the population at large.
"The purpose of system is what it does". High speed rail (and almost all US train systems) are not about moving people in a cost or time efficient way. The purpose is to transfer taxpayer dollars to employees, consultants, and politicians.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 72.5 ms ] threadOh wait, we had exactly that, and then ripped it out / prioritized freight on it.
I don’t see why they don’t just imminent-domain the tracks, and straighten them so the existing amtrak trains could run at their top speed on them (125mph vs today’s 60mph if I remember right).
They could even run frequent commuter trains within cities at rush hour.
Later, they could upgrade the trains and tracks, until it’s ratcheted up to modern speeds (> 200 mph) in remote areas.
With this in mind, the way the current project is being funded and run is actually the most practical way (regardless of the horrible optics): Doing chunks at a time, rather than trying to plan and fund the entire time and cost up front. The fact is that estimations are inherently political and always, always, always incorrect.
Though it seems a ludicrous way to work, the project would never had started had the actual time and cost had been known at the outset. Though some parts of the project cost more because of the lack of complete funding and slower pace (things cost more now), the overall efficiency is actually improved by making sure that the money is spent as needed.
So, if they're saying it'll cost another $100B to complete, the real cost is probably $250B. If they say it'll be done by 2030, it'll probably be 2035 at the earliest. And that's fine. As a country we need to stop thinking in the short term. Unless we want to start acting like China and just bulldoze our way across the country regardless of property owners, residents and the environment, this is how it has to be.
Anyone who's been on this earth for more than a few decades should know this by now.
That additional $100B could have been used to drastically enhance the existing public transit systems within California. Projects like the ACE expansion, the LA Metro expansion, the Caltrain electrification, etc have all had tangible positive effects, and a bit more money could have been poured into multiple local projects instead.
At this price point, what would the ticket be for a SF to LA train?!? If it reaches the $100-200 range you can't beat flying.
A flight takes ~1hr, plus another hour for TSA and whatnot. Rail will take several hours at best. Unless rail significantly undercuts the cost of a flight (which can be had for extremely cheap these days) people just aren't going to use it.
Assuming the train runs frequently enough for spur-of-the-moment trips (why wouldn’t it?!?) I’d definitely prefer that to screwing around with booking a flight, getting to the airport, and dealing with the TSA, even if the flight was only an hour.
I'ce never faced a 1 hour TSA line for domestic flights at SFO, SJC, SMF, SAN, or SNA, and I travel a lot for work.
Most of my security lines have been around 20 tops.
And I'm a brown guy so I'm the demographic that should be hassled the most.
At this dismal level of spending efficiency, the US would go bankrupt long before it matches China's scale of public works construction. So if the choice is between falling behind China as an industrial power, or exercising eminent domain, and sidelining environmental regulations and labor unions, to get infrastructure built like China, the choice is easy. Build the way China does.
Every major US city being connected by high speed rail lines would have innumerable benefits far exceeding the costs associated with rapid construction.
What's worse, is if you even begin to question this stuff, people are like "stop being anti-<insert buzzword> blah blah"
One day, a hundred trillion dollars in debt and 1000's of million dollar restrooms later, the bill will be due and we won't be able to pay.
There is no bureaucracy tasked with building.
Instead there is an executive committee tasked with supervising consultants who are supervising construction firms who are contracted to do the work.
There is no professional project management class in the actual government because "we don't need them when we can save money hiring consultants."
https://www.google.com/search?q=consultants+to+run+infrastru...
Private corporations often gets good value from outsourcing, why can't the government? Corruption, plain and simple.
It's why upstarts (like America was in the 20th and 19th centuries) are so competitive. They have the frontier, emptiness, a blank slate.
"It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.”
Where's the rest going?
Part of the issue is that the transit lobby seems allergic to private sector investment. The golden gate was funded privately via bond sales to bank or America.
There’s not a whole lot between LA and the Bay Area, and people didn’t need the train when flights work. It’s the same kind of feasibility study that put a multi billion dollar transit terminal in the middle of San Francisco, that is not connected to all major transit operations that exist in the city
Are you talking about Caltrain? Caltrain is highly used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transbay_Transit_Center
It's a somewhat shiny bus terminal near downtown San Francisco which is now actually used a lot (though it would have been used a lot more if not for COVID and work-from-home). It has a basement level prepared for the California High-Speed Rail (the original subject of the article we're discussing) but it doesn't connect to Caltrain, BART, or Muni Metro, although the latter two are a relatively short walk away.
so exactly SF Bay Area (7.5 MM people) to LA Area (13.5 MM people). Distance 350 miles or 560km.
1 hr flight is inefficient with starts/landing/checkin/checkout/TSA/infrastructure costs/getting in and out of airports etc
Proper high speed rail like Shinkansen could do it in 2-2.5 hours easily. (same distance as Tokyo to Osaka, which is the OLDEST Shinkansen line)
Looking at how much high speed rail China has built, and operates, then you look at the USA who cannot event get a train built between to major cities it's quite crazy that this is such a struggle.
I know that it's not a priority because Americans are "rich" and like cars, but something about this failure seems deeply problematic to me.
I would caution against lumping everyone else in with California. There are definitely functional states in the US that can finish projects. California, however, is not one of them.
And it made Boston a habitable city.
https://www.boston.com/cars/untagged/2015/01/05/can-we-talk-...
You can see this at play with the support of the Ukraine. Billions are being tossed around but how much 'punch' does that dollar have when it reaches the frontline? Does it even get there at all? Is 10B in American aid even close to 10B in Estonian aid?
You and I don't have access to it, it's just expected since it's sensitive information during wartime.
Companies doing space travel don’t care about exploration. They care about being the ones to capitalize on space first.
that's fine - because exploration is a useful side-effect of "capitalizing" space.
The problem with gov't funded public works projects is that everyone involved knows it's gov't funded, and adds their own margin on top. Not to mention the land acquisition gets more expensive over time - both purely due to inflation, as well as the idea that the land owner could squeeze more juice out the later the project is in (after all, if you're the sole "hold-up", you could squeeze the gov't for your land at above market rates and they'd have to pay or lose the entire project!).
It is really a result of freedom of the individuals in america (vs their gov't) compared to places like china.
You don't get to overcharge for your work as a "contractor" in china - you work for the state-owned company that employs you at a fixed wage.
The land is always something the gov't can just take as imminent domain, and pays you what the gov't thinks is fair compensation (which, of course, is going to be lower than market cost, as you are forced to accept it).
Lastly, those "pesky" environmental reviews in the US doesn't really exist in china. At best they get rubber stamped.
While the result of china's infrastructure development is definitely impressive, those who had to eat the hidden cost exist, but is powerless to stop it. Hopefully they also get to enjoy the fruits of the infrastructure, and that it outweighs the cost paid by them.
America won the world wars by being an industrial powerhouse who could get things built in large quantity. I think that is no longer the case. To go further, it indicates a strategic weakness in national defense. Japan's warships were technologically superior to the American's. The German tank' specs were better than the Allies. But they lost on the number games. I feel like if a fight broke out between the US and China right now, we may see the same thing happen again, except this time, the US is the one playing the "few elite" card while China has the industrial and manufacturing power to swarm us with "good enough" war engines. And history has shown twice which strategy would win a war.
luckily, nukes exist today, and this is no longer a volume problem. The all-out war scenario is one where humanity dies out, revert back to the stone age.
In a regional conflict, such as a taiwan invasion, this might play out as you described. But then in such a regional conflict, the "elite" forces of the US is more useful imho.
> But when used as resistance against the public good and overall progress
There's shades of grey there, because what constitutes public good and overall progress? But you may be right that there's more middlemen these days that are just not pulling their weight for what they output. Like ticket-clipping, where they just add a margin and pass on the work down the chain, and yet contribute nothing.
Pictures: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E9%92%89%E5%AD%90%E6%88%B7&iax=im...
Adv China has some videos on and in those.
Great, lots of environmental laws that ... prevent a train line that is objectivly great for the envoirnment.
The simple fact is, China transportation system is better for the actual environment.
Worker protection, ok, US worker protection globally known for being great? If im China a train-line is built 10x as fast, then even assuming higher insure rate, the overall project might be safer.
Lets talk salary. Are US workers that work on CHSR better paid relative to other jobs in the economy compared to China? Did China use ultra cheap slave labor? Can you actually show that its the actual workers who benefit from this 10x cost upgrade?
Private property isnt absolute. The US can take property if required. And happly did so and still does so for highway expantion. Japan on the other hand has less ability to do it and still manage to build trains. Im not sure how exactly this works in China. But just saying 'private property' isnt actually great analysis. Can you objectivly show that people on the path of CHSR were objectivly better of then those that had property along a line in China. And even if so, how much of the cost does that actually explain.
You can look at any number of statistics in regards to infrastructure spending efficency. The US does then to be very high.
I like this one:
Worker protection, ok, US worker protection globally known for being great? If im China a train-line is built 10x as fast, then even assuming higher insure rate, the overall project might be safer.
I'd say absolutely no, it's not great, only when you want it to be for making an argument to support a narrative I guess :)
One such rail line just opened up going to my friends hometown [1]. Now instead of a 3 hour car ride from the major airport it's 45 minutes by train. The route is roughly half the distance of SF<>LA and wasn't even fully approved till 2019 [2].
[1] https://english.news.cn/20231226/ee2fd2183517440eb11427d25ae...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu%E2%80%93Zigong_high-sp...
I agree the pendulum is too far in the wrong direction here. But if my city told me I had to move because they were destroying my whole neighborhood to put in a new train, I would be livid - "I thought this was America!" It would take an enormous sum of money - many times over what my property is worth on paper - to make me feel properly compensated for all of the memories, sentimental value, and how much I like my neighborhood.
That includes DMV and CHP as well as the city/county road funds, state highways, transit programs, bridge retrofitting, general maintenance, and existing rail programs.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4804
This $100B is a marginal cost on top of what has already been spent, and does not include the cost to operate the system. It seems unreasonable to imply that the cost of the highways which actually connect the entire state, somehow dwarfs the cost of this project -- that's just not true. It's even more unreasonable to to imply that the journalism is flawed because it does not make that argument.
California will spend tens of billions and multiple decades connecting two cities in the middle of nowhere. And in the most conservative part of the state, where people didn’t want high speed rail to begin with. And then the project will get cancelled because no way this thing is ever getting built. Truly excellent trolling.
Although the project needs to connect to the coastal cities to really make sense, it is certain that the initial operating segment from Bakersfield to Merced will prove popular as soon as it starts running.
[1] https://www.railpassengers.org/site/assets/files/3477/39.pdf
You literally have two metro areas with 10+ million people and multible towns with millions or multibe 100k people in the middle.
Maybe just improving the projects organisation instead of cancling it makes sense.
125MPH is the max speed of the train. It runs the route at an average of 67mph, end to end.
Adult tickets start at $79 for a 235 mile ride.
That’s about $0.33/mile, which is cheaper than driving with only two people in the car. With three, it’s cheaper to drive.
Ridership is over 2 million per year, which seems good. (Ten years at that ridership means the track construction cost $300 per passenger trip though. No idea how much maintenance has cost.)
However, overseas, the older trains are averaging well over 100mph, and the new workhorse trains routinely run faster than 200 mph.
For a train and tracks completed in 2013, I’d expect the 235 mile trip (6 stops; say, 4 minutes per stop: 235 mph top speed) to take about 90 minutes; 100 minutes figuring in time to accelerate and decelerate 6 times.
It takes 3.5 hours. That’s probably slower than a car.
Also, according to wikipedia, the system is incredibly unsafe (by train standards).
It is a line not well integrated in the larger transportation system and has a limited scope. Getting to as many riders as they have is impressive.
Its unsafe because of Florida insane traffic engineering, not because of any issue with the trains or the company.
In the context of the US Brightline is clearly a success by a large margin.
I agree they're doing well by US standards.
This is very similar to the Mission Valley leg of the San Diego trolly. This was the first trolly project developed in modern San Diego, and connected hotels to the "charger statium". Supposedly to allow tourist to go to football games from their hotel. Then, the chargers ditched San Diego and moved to LA 8-/
Meanwhile, El Cajon Blvd, which mostly parallels the route of that Mission Valley trolly route, but goes through residential and business areas and connects the city core to SDSU continues to have no trolly. In spite of the fact that this was a major trolley route back in the day when US cities originally had trolleys.
Ironically, that original Mission Valley trolley route now connects to SDSU, but doesn't travel through the most densly packed part of the city.
The $1.7M toilet feels like a steal in comparison to this.
There are countries you can go where it feels like the government actually cares about trying to help people have a better life. There are countries where infrastructure projects get completed. There are countries where infrastructure isn't just completed, it's good. There are countries where the administrative overhead of health care is 2% instead of (a likely underestimated) 25%.
You can't fix infrastructure policy, or any other policy, in America without first fixing campaign finance reform.
As long as senators and justices can be openly bought and sold there is no hope of getting responsible leadership that acts in the interests of citizens.
Very good video explaining the core issue of American politics by Harvard Law professor and founder of creative commons Lawrence Lessig-- Our democracy no longer represents the people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE
It went to space today, and these jokers can’t lay railroad track like we did in the 1800s.
They're so in bed with the real estate mafia that it's almost impossible to get anything involving land accomplished.
With the number of people flying daily between southern California and the bay area, a high speed rail would be boon for the region. It's ironic that after the whole idea of California high speed rail was first introduced by a San Diego legislator in the '80s, after a trip to Japan, San Diego is no longer even on the initial planned route.
There's a simple solution to the funding problem: a $5-$10 dollar tax on each flight between SoCal and the bay area. These short hop flights are exactly what the high speed rail is supposed to eliminate, and the number of people taking them everyday is huge. Make the problem pay for the solution.
The same approach could fund the transition away from petroleum. The problem, of course, is that both major US political parties primarily represent the entrenched equity stake holders, not the population at large.