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

Also look how instead of going straight north from LA to Bakersfield on their proposed route they do a great big circle first heading due east, then due north, then turning 45 degrees. That's all just to pick up Barstow, CA (population 22,000) which won't have fuck all as far as passenger traffic but the rep sits on a key subcommittee and he wants it. Again it doubles the miles of track and doubles or triples the travel time for no actual economic benefit to the over all system. It's just a vanity project for the Republican rep who constantly speaks out against the project and votes against it but he threatens to filibuster if he doesn't get his way. Fuck him and fuck Barstow.

Pretty clever strategy. The Republicans and NIMBYs have united to weigh the project down so much that it will either collapse under it's own weight or be so useless/expensive it will sour people on HSR for a generation.

I'm with you, either do it right (ignore the Republicans, run it down the freeway; ignore the NIMBYs, elevate it in the suburbs) or don't do it at all and give the money to states that are doing the right thing.

Those fucking eeevil Republicans. That reminds me: I've got a carload of plastic shopping bags. If gas comes down another nickel, I can afford to drive up to Seattle and dump them in the Puget Sound.

Actually, yes, it is all those evil fucking Republicans. Let's face facts here, the worthless red district welfare sucking bastards who don't net pay any taxes (yet who are always demanding more welfare for themselves and always blaming blacks and hispanics for every problem under the sun) are the ones pushing to get the routes changed so it goes through their areas. It sure as fuck isn't democrats trying to tank the system by servicing areas which have never and will never actually vote for them. This is completely 100% a Republican problem and they need to own this shit because they created it and they did it deliberately.

And the relationship between your penis and this train is . . . ?

The boondoggle is now exposed for what it is, so ominous forces have to be invented to explain it! It's those bad old Republicans (who hardly have ANY power in the state government) and those NIMBYs! Were the planners of this system SO NAIVE as to expect that there wouldn't be difficulties getting people in the REAL WORLD to go along?

But never fear, statists! Despite the catastrophic escalation of costs, THEY'RE STILL GOING TO BUILD IT. Which shows that the proponents of this system want state-owned transportation so badly, they don't care WHAT it ultimately costs or how poorly it performs.

Which is as expected from state-owned enterprises.

Since I believe there is no "right" way to do it (i.e., a way that makes any kind of economic sense), I'd favor scrapping it and reducing the debt load on California taxpayers.

It wouldn't be a boondoggle if they just restored the original alignment route. That's what is pissing me off.

Who do you suppose is responsible for changing the route, Paladin?

Exactly. It's the legislators trying to get some pork into their district that are screwing this up. It's pure and simple pork barreling whether it's 100% Republicans realigning the route, 100% Democrats doing it, or some combination in between.

This is like Scorp and Volpone inviting Tas back to show how big a mistake getting rid of rep was.

You can't help create a bad situation then turn around and say LOOK, SEE!!!

Of course, b/c you are an ideologue who even though in this very thread it has pointed out that done correctly HSR can break even/turn an operational profit, something which our road system can't even claim, falls back to the old transit bad, cars good Republican mantra.

And somehow you guys believed this kind of thing WASN'T going to happen in a state-run project?

As long as you have POLITICIANS making the calls, the decisions will be POLITICAL, not economic, not service-oriented.

To paraphrase the question (with the obvious, but somehow surprising answer) from Rollerball: How are political decisions made?

*I* did absolutely nothing to hurt or help the project. I predicted that a state-run project of this scale would run into massive cost overruns and huge shortfalls of service PRECISELY BECAUSE it was more a political undertaking than an economic one.

And I was right.

If by "correctly," you mean "without intervention by politicians," well...have fun building it in Fantasyland. Because you sure as shit ain't going to build it in California that way. This is the same state whose bloated, corrupt transportation department has spent 20 years and $10 billion (or more) replacing a bridge that was built in the Depression in a single year for about $30 million.

This thing was a boondoggle from the get-go: spending billions of dollars (that, of course, we don't have) to build a train system no one needs.

And don't talk to me about ideology: you're for this goddamned thing no matter how much it costs.

The fact that you can say that when not five posts earlier you quoted me saying I DON'T SUPPORT THIS PROJECT ANY MORE tells me you aren't even reading what I say but just spouting your tired arguments over and over again.

God knows how many times people have brought up the demand and economics of a good HSR system.

Yeah, if you take a look at the Interstate Freeway system they mostly look extremely logical in their layout and the paths they took. You see, it can work and has worked in the past.

Of course the guys in the 1950's had one key advantage. They didn't have one party actively trying to fuck the whole interstate system up by changing the routes so that they made absolutely no sense.

Excuse me for being optimistic about a project that had popular support and would have saved our economy. I forgot that one party has been heavily favoring obstructionist policies for the last several years, and the other party is incompetent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/business/hassles-of-air-travel-push-passengers-to-amtrak.html

If you read on you'll see that while the Acela makes money, Congressional politicking won't allow it to make the improvements it needs to make even more money.

Can't have Amtrak succeeding, it'd ruin the narrative!

I don't have time to look through the article, but do you know whether these numbers represent all travel or just non private passenger vehicle travel. Are the 75% and 54% numbers only as a share of plane/bus/train? Great numbers no matter what, just curious.

Those tracks in the NE are virtually the only tracks Amtrak owns where as all the other tracks Amtrak has to rent at highly inflated prices from freight companies. If Congress would let Amtrak negotiate prices instead of mandating an absurdly high price as a way of giving kick backs to freight companies then I'd imagine most of the medium distance routes would make money. The Southern California route does make money BTW even if the absurdly high rental prices and the fact that Amtrak trains have to wait and give freight trains priority.

Given how most people in NYC don't have cars I'm willing to bet it is all travel.

An unintended consequence of the TSA. Abolish them, allow flying to be tolerable, and the share will drop. Of course, the airlines need to stop getting bailed out too.

Abolishing the TSA isn't going to make JFK easier to get to and from than Penn Station, or Dulles closer than Union Station.

Also, if you had read the article you'd see that the shuttle companies had moved to their own terminals where they control security and it has yet to stop Acela's growth.

Same is happening out here with the Cascades. Every time a new train is added ridership jumps (more than just the extra train, more trains mean more flexibility, you depart closer to when you want) even though Alaska is doing everything possible to speed up their service (including again, their own terminals/security).

In other words, try again.

Of course this could be all part of some sort of demented neurotic conspiracy. Put in all these crap extensions to no where's ville then come back to tax payers and say we need to do it right by going straight up the I5. That would mean eventually all of the state would get fast to decent rail service but they're going about it all wrong. They're probably afraid that if it just goes up the I5 then redneck land won't ever get connected and, honestly, it shouldn't because they're too worthless and won't generate enough passengers to justify the expense. Big cities only or bust says I.

Then when Arabs blow up another plane you'll no doubt be the first to complain the government isn't doing enough to protect you.

You don't know him very well then.

This piece says it is plane/train mode share.

http://blogs.bostonmagazine.com/boston_daily/2012/08/20/amtrak-flying/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19336815

A good video from the BBC which makes a great case for why the train shouldn't go through the central valley.

And since that's where it's going to be built, it makes a great case for not building it all.

The key metric from that video: $68 BILLION to build, while the state goes $16 BILLION deeper into debt EVERY YEAR.

[?=He don't know me very well, do he?][/?]

68 billion? Are they planning to blast a separate track into the landscape for every single traveler? Or is some super secret beaming tech involved?

Nevertheless, good to hear that there are some infrastructure upgrades at least in the planning stages. High speed trains between major air hubs seem to be a good idea for the US.

$68 billion is slightly misleading. That's the total expected nominally denominated expenditures by the end of the project; total cost in current dollars is expected to be about $55 billion. That's still a lot, but it pays to be clear about what the numbers really are. It also pays to note that the alternative way to meet estimated transportation infrastructure needs is spending an estimated $100billion+ improving roads and airports.

In any event, rail construction costs in the urban centers are extremely high. Laying track over open land isn't what's costing all that money; it's buying up land in L.A. and San Francisco, and laying rail and building tunnels without totally fucking up existing infrastructure that costs so much. Compare, for example the Second Avenue subway line in New York City, which is finally being built at an estimated cost of $2billion/mile or more.

Or to Northgate Link in Seattle, which is 4.3miles at a cost of $2.1 Billion.