California High-Speed Rail: Later, Slower, and Way Over Budget

How 'bout a monorail?

An LA - Vegas high speed train would be genius. Have a couple stops in the Greater Los Angeles Area, then over the hill into the desert and direct to the strip in two hours.

Of course you'd have to get Nevada on board to help pay for its share since they'd be the ones profiting from the train the most.

LA - SF would work, so would LA - SAC. It's not as fast as an airport but there's far less hassle. There are tons of daily commuter flights from LA to SF/SAC for business everyday.

That would be the extent of CA's high speed rail ambitions though (aside from a line to SD). There's no reason to connect high speed rail across the US. It's mostly garbage fly-over states in the middle anyway.

I'm surprised you were able to string all those thoughts together without breaking into a sweat, but yeah pretty much.

Either the value the market places on your goods and services (whether an individual, a group of individuals, a region, whatever) is the end all be all determinate of value or it is not.

Once you move into the 'not' group you have start actually thinking about things and weighing competing values. Something we all know you aren't capable of.

Or at least weren't until it's YOUR BABY thats getting judged. Now there are all sorts of nuances and complexities that the market could in no way accurately assign value to.

Bullshit rationalizing, top to bottom.

The public and private sectors are subject to different considerations, period. They are not interchangeable. They are not accountable in the same ways to the same people, and there is absolutely no rational requirement that they assign value in the same way or act on that valuation consistently. That your urban snobbery would like that to be the case because it supports YOUR BABY is utterly fucking irrelevant.

Get back to me when you can find a way to take out a 110-story skyscraper using a train. Not only that, but we're talking about an intrastate rail system for half of California, not an interstate rail system. It's complete fear-mongering to say that the TSA will suddenly take over the CA HSR on the scale they have taken over airports.

I think you have that backwards. The only reason to go to Las Vegas is for tourism. One of the many reasons people travel between Northern and Southern California is for business.

Don't get me wrong, it would be great to have a train between LA and LV.

Exactly.

Also, the commute time via high speed rail would be roughly the same as airplane when you factor in showing up to the airport 1 hour early for security, and the fact that most airports we're dealing with are far removed from the city center (adding more travel time).

Can we agree that the market price evaluation of the goods produced in rural areas generates an insufficient amount to cover their total cost needs? That would be way they need constant wealth transfers from cities; because the value of the products produced doesn't entirely cover their needs. That means the value of the goods and services produced in rural areas has already been taken into consideration, the market has already done so, and it was baked into the market price.

I'm kind of with Anc on this one as it is hard to understand why you'd want to do price evaluations with something other than money unless you want to start getting into dumb stuff like Marxist labor theory.

I'd imagine plenty of casinos would get on-board.

The airline's sponsorship of politicians. That an the fact that they don't bid out a job straight out to a bonded company. This is what you bid on the job and this is what the state pays, period. To many kick backs in the current system.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-for-Californias-bullet-train-to-nowhere.html

I love this story just for the fun of rubbing ConfederateSon face in it.

Another big obstacle is going to be acquiring right of ways for all 11,000 parcels of land, some of which are currently owned by some very wealthy and powerful agro-corps. If some of them sue then it could slow down or even stop the project for years until the courts straighten everything out. Eminent domain is really the only feasible way to get this done because even if 90%+ of the people agree to sell right of ways there will still be hold outs who won't agree at any price so eminent domain will have to be used.

So how much money will have to spent before you consider this to be an economic boondoggle? Or do you just want it no matter how much it costs or even if is never cost effective?

Right, so steal peoples' private property to pave the way for a government boondoggle.

You true colors... they're showing. Again.

I think I mentioned how stupid the right wing label of "train to no where" is some pages back. It doesn't matter which set of tracks is laid first as long as the whole system is built so you can go from LA to SF. Unless of course you think LA and SF is "no where" but then you'd be even dumber than you appear to be.

A good question which I don't really know enough to make an educated response to. It would depend on how much revenue the system pulls in and what the debt load to sales income is especially when you look at it over the life time of the project.

How do you think every freeway in this country was built, dunce?

Honest response. Now, when was the last time a passenger rail system actually made money instead of existing on massive subsidies to cover their deficit operating system?

Why do you think this would be any different?

I think the fear is they'll spend a few billion to start and then abandon it as costs spiral out of control and there is no money for the rest. This is not an unreasonable fear.

So you're going with, "This theft has happened before, so it's magically not theft"? Fuck you, it's still theft.

I believe the system will require subsidies just like all other forms of transportation get massive subsidies from the government. Why should HSR be unique and not get any subsidies? Your car wouldn't be worth as much without all those government funded roads to drive them on (and user fees only cover about 20% of the cost to maintain roads much less the cost to build roads) or how much more expensive and risky would air travel be without the FAA providing traffic control and government owned/subsidized airports? Yes, HSR will require subsidies to compete against the other subsidized transport options but that's to be expected.

2011.

It's called the Acela Express, it's our only HSR route, and it covers Operating Expenses depending on how you line up the numbers.

B/c it will run in it's own ROW and be much faster so the idea is that not only will it have full Fairbox Recovery but will also eat into and/or cover capital costs.

However, with what the Republicans and NIMBYs have been able to do to the project the capital costs are rising quickly, while the speed and ridership are decreasing.

It needs to be depoliticized STAT.

I think Ancalagon has already covered this many times throughout the thread: Acela.

Also, how many airlines are turning a profit without government subsidies? Doesn't the automobile industry benefit from massive government subsidies? Is there any aspect of transportation that isn't subsidized?

Largely because there are already transport systems in place that don't require over $100 billion just to build (for one small line). If we were first laying out the country's transportation system, HSR for closer cites with air travel for longer trips would be a great way to go. Problem is everything else is already built.

He has covered it. I believe he said it occasionally breaks even (usually loses money) and takes only about 1/3 of air travel at times. Acela is in the best area for HSR in the country to boot. Not a good sign to use that.

See my response to CS.

That is a possibility though an unlikely one in my estimation. It makes sense to start those sections you can as soon as you can other wise we'd risk losing some of the Federal matching funds if construction hadn't started by a certain date. Like I said before there was the same risk when the first interstate free section was built in rural Missouri but in the end no one really cares where the first section was built as long as the whole thing got built.

Depending. I've been reading about that and the stated profit margins take quite a bit of creative accounting to get.

There are valid arguments against it, and NIMBY occurs with al projects of this type, Dem or Repub. In fact, many enviro's are opposed to this as well. Not traditional GOP loyalists.

That's the big risk of Fed funds. You have to cough up huge amounts of state or local cash to get the fed subsidy. Many states have declined as they realize they'll be left holding the bag after the fed money runs out.

I don't think it makes sense to start a project of this magnitude unless there is a viable and real plan and possibility of completing it. I just don't see Cali having over $100 billion (at current costs) to complete this project.