I agree with the previous challenge of the last sentence, and I don’t think you have to be any kind of extreme libertarian to reject that as a reason to spend public money.
As for security, what about when terrorists target the ‘crown jewel’ HSR system? Note I’m not offering terrorism as a reason not to build HSR, just pointing out it’s somewhat arbitrary to hold the arguable overreaction in of society as manifested in today’s airport security against air travel alone. The same dynamics in society which caused that could cause it in other places too.
As for inconvenience of airport location, need to use cars (not necessarily your own though in the age of Uber) to/from them, train stations are also often relatively distant and inconvenient for travel to particular endpoints. And it so happens neither SFO nor LAX are that inconvenient as large city airports go. I lived much closer to LAX than the downtown train station when I lived in LA. The only systematic benefit of rail in this respect is the greater feasibility of stopping along the way, which has to be limited for true HSR but is still superior to airplane’s ability to make stopovers. But only if you’re on the route.
All in all I think the arguments about extra time on airline flights are pretty weak in comparing a stratospherically expensive CA HSR system, in the real world, even if it’s easy for random voices on the internet to claim evidence-free ‘we could do it so much cheaper’, as a system likely permanently subsidized for the bulk of its cost (like HSR rail generally is) v highly economical for-profit air travel from LA to SF, with subsidies (the airport and ATC system) a relatively modest proportion of its costs. That just doesn’t add up as an economic proposition, again no libertarian extremism required. As shown by a quite left Democratic governor pulling the plug (basically).
The cost of the train has been an issue for ages, and has been increasing. Earthquakes have nothing to do with it. First, most of the route goes through a region which is not earthquake prone. Second, earthquakes are only an issue if one happened to hit when the train was passing. Which is unlikely. If you think it is likely, you’ve been watching too many disaster movies. We don’t have major earthquakes every hour - we’re not Oklahoma after all.
If an earthquake hits the train stops and no damage is done, except to schedules. Track repair is not all that hard. We bombed the crap out of the German rail system in WW II and didn’t have much of an impact.
So earthquakes have nothing to do with anything.
If it were “just another rail line” I’d agree with you in an instant. But that isn’t what everybody is discussing. HSR needs to be straight(-ish.) That will require quite a bit of land removal/moving. Much more than the usual “follow the terrain” method.
BTW, BB, you would be mistaken to classify me as any sort of libertarian, large “L” or small. The older I get, the more socialist I get.
I remember moving to California in 1977 when the voters voted down the high speed rail system from LA to San Diego due to the right of way close to the ocean etc, but give me a break 42 years later California would’ve had the best high speed rail system outside of Tokyo for business and tourist use.
My entry point of reading up on HSR was to be predisposed to thinking it is a good idea but the more I have read the more convinced I am of the opposite conclusion. HSR is committing to a technology that is last century to potentially gain relatively trivial benefits at high costs.
Best case benefits is slight increased convenience for a few city to city commutes, some modest regional decreased congestion, and modest regional decreased emissions, compared to the current auto and air travel status quo, at a cost estimated as in excess of $77B. And some analyses bring into question whether or not those best case scenarios are realistic. For example, the GHG and other environmental costs of the construction project would likely make the project a negative on the emission front for many years, seven decades at mid-level ridership forecasts. Actual travel times are also of some question.
Let’s accept some rosy forecasts about ridership and benefits though, accept the best case benefits picture: the benefits are not so dramatic and the cost is very high. Is this static last century approach, now, and as technology advances over the next decades, the most bang for the buck way to address those issues (let alone most important way to spend $77B+)?
What would be the congestion and GHG benefit at what increased over baseline cost would an embrace of self-driving EVs with vehicle to vehicle communication (that allowed for minimal distances between vehicles, as virtual trains, thus traveling more efficiently from both energy use and congestion perspectives)? Ignoring the EV aspect, ignoring full self-driving, ignoring other future technologic improvements, just the connected vehicle aspect alone would be predicted to avoid 5000 traffic fatalities a year, and decrease travel time on freeways by up to 42%, and decrease full use by 22%, and that could apply across the entire country, not just in one corridor.
It seems to me that HSR could be outdated by the time it was completed and would divert investments from areas in which the money would more cost-effectively used.
OK, so convenience, speed, safety, reliability, punctuality, energy efficiency and low environmental impact are “relatively trivial” benefits. What would be an example of a non-trivial benefit?
Do you think we should also stop pouring money into maintaining the road network and the airline infrastructure? Those are also decidedly last-century technologies. We should just sit on our hands hoping for newer technologies to come along and solve all problems, right? Why are we (the US) spending over $400 billion a year maintaining and improving the road system??
The issue is not category but amount; it is quantitative not qualitative. Compared to stage coach the convenience, speed, safety (etc.) would be huge. Compared to current air travel not so much so. The return on investment (ROI) in categories relative to current air travel might or might not be positive but to justify that cost they’d need to be much larger. Specifically it has to be a better ROI than other possible current and next several decades emergent potential approaches to the issues it is advertised to address. Is this last century approach a better, more impactful, and more effective way to spend that $77B+ (and rising) than other current or foreseeable future approaches?
Convenience/speed/safety? The gain, assuming best case predictions, compared to air travel is trivial, unless you feel that it worth that much to cater to the flying phobic. Saving some people the annoyance of a delayed flight hardly seems worth that much.
Pollution/GHG/environmental again may be a net negative due to the impacts of construction.
How about in competition with cars? Most of that congestion and pollution is *within *regions. It seems highly likely to me that the probable impact of the coming technologies I alluded to above will have much greater net ROI over baseline projections (and wider as well) than fixed regional rail projects. As an example of specifics here is a comprehensiveanalysis of the ROI on GHG.
We should leapfrog over HSR to the solutions for the next century, ones that are more dynamic and flexible than static ones. Ones that are adaptable to the needs to come. We should not sit on our hands passively waiting for new technologies (although planning that there would be none would be stupid). We should use that $77B+, and smart policies, in part to catalyze their emergence.
There is a sexiness that appeals to the large project. I get that. But many smaller projects would likely be a more impactful way to spend $77B+. And yes that includes ways to use our current infrastructure more efficiently (inclusive of improved public transit).
I generally agree, minus the assumption it’s in CA taxpayer interest to necessarily spend that kind of money on public support of transportation, let alone the interest of federal tax payers to do spend that much just in CA. But like you say that’s a quantitative point, depends how much, justify public spending case by case.
To oversimplify this issue only slightly, there’s as you imply travel between distant cities, LA to SF say, and local transport. HSR is largely irrelevant to the second. For the first there’s no plausible argument not to maintain in good repair a road network such as the current one between those two cities, so pointing to road maintenance $'s as an excuse to fund projects like HSR is ridiculous. If there were no roads between the cities or a major expansion was in the offing it might not be.
So it’s basically what the govt (mainly federal) spends on the air travel system, minus user fees, v the HSR cost. That’s a huge extra net public cost for HSR. For which it would have to have comparable benefits. Which it pretty obviously doesn’t…hence more than average left governor basically pulling the plug on it.
The fact that it’s 20th century per se doesn’t matter that much IMO. But it’s also true that already highly economically efficient, overall, air travel has fairly near term opportunities to significantly reduce fossil fuel use on routes of that length (IOW it’s a relatively feasible route length for hybrid or even battery a/c in terms of tech advances than say compared to transcontinental or overseas flight)
because $77 billion for one small transportation node in California is 19% of the entire cost of transportation in the US. A much higher percentage in California.
Where is the money coming from? Or put another way, what crumbling bridge are you willing to shut down or delay for 20 years waiting on the funds used for HSR?
While we are just quibbling I will defend the position that it is the CA taxpayer interest to address the issues of traffic congestion, pollution (and both its direct health and climate impacts), and safety. These are significant and growing issues within the state. Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in CA are increasing.
Los Angeles is the world’s most traffic-clogged city.That is not just lost time for economic productivity and quality of life, and of health and climate change impact, it becomes a rate-limiting step for regional economic growth. Avoiding the commute raises housing prices and makes the region less attractive to those of modest means.
Affordable, convenient, comfortable, and reliable, public transportation within regions is very likely a cost-effective public investment. Continued growth will very likely demand more people traveling (if not more miles per person) and handing that volume of people efficiently is not likely possible without it. Given the share of the nation’s VMT that are traveled there some Federal matching seems appropriate as well.
Agreed that there is nothing per se wrong with technology from the last century. The right tool for the job is what matters. The right tool, the smartest one to use, is not necessarily the most expensive or sexiest one. But you might need to create one with the job in mind.
I understand the point you’re trying to make. HSR is an expensive upgrade with little ROI and possibly and probably a negative ROI.
Lets look at historical changes. The rotary telephone was a staple for a large part of the last century. It may seem like a pointless fact but it demonstrates how fast a technology is leapfrogged. It wasn’t replaced with a fancy “walkie talkie” cell phone, it was replaced with a communication system that has transformed the world as we know it. The value generated from cell phone technology cannot be easily calculated but it is easily in the trillions of dollars of positive financial growth and it’s about to make another leap frog over cable and satellite communication.
Now imagine if California had upgraded it’s cable transmission system at taxpayer expense. They would be stuck with a huge bill and have much slower speeds. It would be abandoned over the next generation of cell phone communication.
I think what DSeid is trying to say is think in terms of new technology versus propping up old technology with expensive upgrades. It would make much more sense to wait for something like flying trains. Something designed by the private sector that utilizes far less infrastructure than a massive ground based system. It doesn’t even have to involve rail at all. Someone like musk could build a low flying electric plane that swaps out batteries at every stop. NASA is already working on the concept of electric planes and swapping batteries is a minor engineering consideration.
Whatever it is it should come from the private sector and represent newly advanced technologies and not a reinvention of old technologies at tax payer expense.
In fairness that has little to do with what we’re talking about. China could have freedom of speech and still keep the existing infrastructure investment.
And even if the Chinese included an appropriate consultation period, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it must be as slow as certain western countries.
China could have a lot of things. Freedom is not one of them. It’s progress is at the expense of cheap labor and the environment. None of which is relevant to this thread of HSR in the US. Might I suggest a trip to Tiananmen Square to contemplate your response in a new thread of your creation.
Highway projects prioritize cost efficiency and the interest of the end user (drivers). However, the rail project was diverted to help legislators achieve other goals, like including particular small towns on the route, which made the costs skyrocket and would have made rider trip times longer.
Except that some of the technology I am talking about is not in the flying train, or even Hyperloop, realm. These are technologies pretty much already available. To some degree they will be rolled out over the next decade or so in any case. (See Toyota’s plans for example.) The benefits of widespread V2V with even modest penetration of vehicles with even modest levels of automated driving capacity can lead to significant benefits with congestion and fuel use/pollution.
Policies and incentives can provide the nudges to make this happen over a less drawn out time course, along with providing the framework for security of such systems, but this is not technology that is distant fantasy. It’s just high level adaptive cruise control married with a roll-out of V2V with a policy framework. And, again, improved other, less costly than HSR public transit projects, can have major ROIs. There is a lot else that can be done that accomplishes more than one region getting HSR for a few points to points with $77B+.