Florida Gov. Rick Scott cancels high speed rail

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Sam_Stone

That’s what happens when the real world of engineering runs up against the best-case assumption sales job put out by advocates for HSR.

Two independent consulting firms hired by the DOT are “advocates for HSR”?

[furt]

The enthusiastically pro-rail group America 2050 made a list of the 100 train routes most likely to get riders. Tampa-Orlando ranked something like 50th.

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/01/11/new-report-the-most-promising-us-high-speed-rail-routes/
Seattle-Portland seems to me a better choice; both cities are denser than Tampa & Orlando, both have (AFAIK) better mass transit, there’s a lot of empty space in between them, they’re farther apart (squarely in the sweet spot where it’s too far to drive but to close to fly), and – essentially – I’d think the populations there would eagerly embrace a possibly more environmental travel option. Ditto Denver-Pueblo.

[gonzomax]

@The_King_of_Soup

Florida is one of those states so afraid of its citizens that it basically refuses to tax them. One result of this is that the citizenry consists more and more of demographics that hate taxes,have no interest in funding public services like schools (usually, because their own children died decades ago), and, because they themselves generally depend on fiercely-defended, tax-generated funds for their own daily bread, has a skewed idea of what a functioning democratic society looks like. Another result of this fear is a strange political function: potentially controversial issues, that elsewhere would be posited, studied, debated and settled in a state legislature, here are regularly presented as constitutional referenda: this lets legislators off the hook while creating constitutional mandates for sweet-sounding services without any thought as to the practicalities.

The Florida Supertrain was such a constitutional mandate, some years ago. And sure, it’s a really stupid idea and a guaranteed money-loser even if it magically appeared in working condition tomorrow. But the state probably has some sort of obligation to follow through, given its abnegation of its own authority, in which case turning down $2 billion of federal money is kind of irresponsible.

And there’s the irony of Rick Scott, who had no problem taking millions in federal medicare funds, intended to heal and ease the suffering of the afflicted, and simply calling it “profit,” bolstering his tea-party credentials by refusing federal funds. He calls it a waste, and it is, but Republicans should know that money can trickle whether you hand it to billionaires in tax cuts or give it to welders and electricians in exchange for an honest day’s work.

Scott took millions from the government when he was head of a hospital chain, Columbia/ HCA. When he was CEO ,they were fined 1.7 billion for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. That is a huge fine.
The people of Florida thought he would make a good governor.

[Wile_E]

@gonzomax

Scott took millions from the government when he was head of a hospital chain, Columbia/ HCA. When he was CEO ,they were fined 1.7 billion for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. That is a huge fine.
The people of Florida thought he would make a good governor.

Nope. Only slightly more than half of Florida voters thought he’d make a good governor.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Well, yeah, but that’s true of almost any major officeholder.

[PoorYorick]

Just came by to remark that this is one of the few times I’ve seen when there was a pit, a debate broke out.

[raindog]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

It was already paid for.

Already paid for?? Really?

Or is that already borrowed?

[DSeid]

Not sure how much it applies to the proposed Florida route, but thisis of some interest:

All flights between Nanjing and Wuhan were canceled starting from March 27 because of strong competition from high-speed rail. This is the first time that high-speed rail has forced airlines to cancel flights on the same route.

The Hefei-Wuhan High-speed Passenger Railway opened in 2009. With a speed of 250 kilometers per hour, it cuts the journey time between the two cities to three hours. Three trains run on this route every day …

… Actually, the situation of road passenger transportation is also not good. A long-distance bus without any passengers departed from the Jinjiadun Terminal at 7 p.m. on March 30. The driver said the bus to Nanjing had not received any passengers for several days.

Of course car ownership is much less in China.

I would personally rather see the investment go into car platooning technologies, but hey …

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@raindog

Already paid for?? Really?

Or is that already borrowed?

Already paid for. Perhaps you should read the whole thread.

[Sam_Stone]

@DSeid

Not sure how much it applies to the proposed Florida route, but thisis of some interest:
Of course car ownership is much less in China.

I would personally rather see the investment go into car platooning technologies, but hey …

And what are the roads like? And how much are the Chinese subsidizing the train? The details matter. Also, China being a dictatorship, it doesn’t have to worry about messy things like paying people for their land or being tied up in court over environmental issues or eminent domain lawsuits. It can skip regulatory issues, hire construction workers for pennies, and cut corners on safety.

I would hesitate on extrapolating the Chinese experience. A much more intelligent way to look at it would be to look at existing passenger rail in the U.S., and the experience of the already-underway California HSR construction project.

[Sam_Stone]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Already paid for. Perhaps you should read the whole thread.

Not ‘paid for’. The federal money is borrowed money. And it’s only 80% of the total, and that’s only 80% of the construction cost assuming no cost overruns. The state would have to pay for all overruns and for the operational losses if the trains don’t show a profit.

California’s HSR was supposed to cost $45 billion. Construction hasn’t even started, and the price tag has already grown to $105 billion. And, they’ve cut two of the promised lines, and raised the ticket price from $45 to $105. Whatever ridership estimates they had at $45 per ticket would be laughably high at $105 per ticket.

[DSeid]

Well, Sam, I had indeed posted with that caution - which is a shame for your side of the discussion since a little more digging also showsthis -

The financial outlook of China’s high-speed rail network seems grim, according to an article posted on the Chinese Economic Net Feb. 28. … China’s railway system might not be able to sustain normal operations if it does not borrow more money, even though higher borrowings could aggravate its financial situation, it said. …

I understand the appeal of HSR and am not yet completely convinced by the naysayers, but the arguments against, in our country, at this time, seem cogent. Pretty much I’ve been flipped. Seriously, I think platooning could be brought up to speed and solve the same issues for less money in the same time it would take to build these lines.

[billfish678]

Hey Sam Stone.

Since you seem to have lots of numbers/data handy, here is a question for you.

Lets take a HSR system. Its X miles long by Y feet wide. It can transport Z people per hour at a speed of ABC.

How does that compare to your typical interstate highway thats busy, but not so busy that traffic slows down?

You’ve convinced me that HSR is generally more expensive, less flexible, not a time saver, and not an energy saver. I suspect that in addition, that for the land it uses, it also is less capable of getting a given number of people from point A to point B using a given amount of land.

I’m leaving town for a bit shortly, so I might not get back to this thread soon, but I thought you might like to address this as well. I must say kudos on your posts on this topic. I’ve certainly gone from a “HSR would be sorta nice” to “oh hells no, what a terrible idea all the way around” on this.

[Zakalwe]

@Sam_Stone

Not ‘paid for’. The federal money is borrowed money. And it’s only 80% of the total, and that’s only 80% of the construction cost assuming no cost overruns. The state would have to pay for all overruns and for the operational losses if the trains don’t show a profit.

You haven’t been keeping up. Seimens made it quite clear that they would guarantee the build at the contracted price (no cost overruns for the state), plus absorb any operational losses for (IIRC) a period of 20 years.

[Oldeb]

@Sam_Stone

…state would have to pay for all overruns…

WTF? Eight of the companies that were trying to place for bids to build the HSR offered to cover all overrun costs at least two months ago, if not earlier.

[Sam_Stone]

@billfish678

Hey Sam Stone.

Since you seem to have lots of numbers/data handy, here is a question for you.

Lets take a HSR system. Its X miles long by Y feet wide. It can transport Z people per hour at a speed of ABC.

How does that compare to your typical interstate highway thats busy, but not so busy that traffic slows down?

I’m not sure you can really compare them that way. It’s not about the size of the track - it’s about the capacity of the trains, the cost of running the trains, and how often you can run them.

A quick Google search returned this report about California’s highway 101, which has a carrying capacity of 2,000 cars per lane when four lanes are open, and which moves about 7,300 hundred cars per hour at morning rush hour. At the highway average of around 1.6 people per car, that’s about 11,000 people per hour

Some of the European passenger trains carry around 750 passengers at a time. I don’t know how many per day you could run on one track, but I’m guessing you could space them apart by 20 minutes or so, therefore running over 2,000 people per hour.

But that’s not realistic. The problem with trains is that if they run half empty they lose money. They cost the same amount of energy give or take a bit whether they run empty or full of people, so they’re only ‘green’ if they’re running at capacity.

Once a highway is built its operational cost goes way down, and it costs less if the traffic on it declines (road wear is largely a function of vehicle traffic). But trains represent heavy capital investment, so you can’t afford to just park them to save cost, and you can’t afford to run them half empty. Therefore, you HAVE to keep the ridership up over decades in order to make the line profitable. That’s a huge risk.

You’ve convinced me that HSR is generally more expensive, less flexible, not a time saver, and not an energy saver. I suspect that in addition, that for the land it uses, it also is less capable of getting a given number of people from point A to point B using a given amount of land.

Well… trains are narrow. If you really had to move EVERYONE by train, you could probably do as well as the highway by running five tracks side by side or something. But that’s just not practical.

I’m leaving town for a bit shortly, so I might not get back to this thread soon, but I thought you might like to address this as well. I must say kudos on your posts on this topic. I’ve certainly gone from a “HSR would be sorta nice” to “oh hells no, what a terrible idea all the way around” on this.

I want to be careful not to totally bag on HSR. I think there are one or two corridors in the states where it might be profitable. Most of the proposed routes will not be - and when the Obama administration says that they’ll take the money from Florida and simply give it to some other state to build a train, you know they’re not serious about only funding the profitable corridors. Their own plan shows HSR links all over the country. That’s ridiculous.

My main points I’m trying to get across are:

1. Don’t believe everything you read from advocate reports and studies. The history of HSR is replete with optimistic business plans that explode when they meet the real world.

2. Understand what it will and won’t do, and why you support it. If your support for HSR is that it will reduce congestion or save the environment, you’re probably wrong. If you simply support it as a profitable venture in the right circumstances, then you might be right - in exactly the right circumstances.

3. Don’t forget to consider the secondary effects - pushing freight off the rails and onto the roads when they have to share track with HSR, distorting economies and hurting businesses that aren’t near railheads, preventing organic evolution of cities in favor of central planning (which doesn’t have a great track record), etc.

4. Beware the rent-seekers. HSR is big money to big special interests, and they’ve all got their hands in the cookie jar. Approach HSR reports and advocates the same way you’d approach a study on tobacco health put out by RJR Reynolds.

5. Consider the alternatives. Car platooning, incentives for car pooling, and most importantly, congestion pricing. Congestion pricing can be made to be revenue neutral so it’s not an overall tax increase. It can be phased in slowly, and it can be raised or lowered to control congestion. It’s an efficient, market-based answer to fixing the externalities of auto travel and would lead to efficiency-improving activities like teleconferencing, flex-hours, etc. It would reward businesses that stay close to their communities and lead to more efficient city planning. To avoid distorting current markets, congestion pricing can be used to pay for buildout of more roads in congested areas, lowering their economic disadvantage. Or, it can be used to rebate property taxes in areas that have their property values decreased because of congestion pricing on access roads.

6. Always, always price in the cost of risk. We didn’t do that with our mortgages, and look where that got us. Good engineering plans consider what happens if the optimum assumptions don’t happen. They calculate the potential costs of disasters, the potential effect of travel pattern changes due to a dynamic economy, etc. They then figure out the probability of those things occurring, and price that in to the estimates for revenue return. If a plan doesn’t do those kinds of things, it’s not a real plan - it’s a sales job.

[Sam_Stone]

@Oldeb

WTF? Eight of the companies that were trying to place for bids to build the HSR offered to cover all overrun costs at least two months ago, if not earlier.

What kind of cost overruns? I imagine they’re talking about the cost overruns for their particular contract to build a particular part of the infrastructure, right? What about a cost overrun due to political delays that set the project back and throw off timetables? What about the cost of money if construction takes longer? What about increases in the price of raw materials or labor? What about cost increases due to changes in the plan caused by political whim or protests?

Go look at why other HSR programs have gone over budget. It’s not just because Bombardier promised a locomotive for $200 million and charged $300 million instead. The big money changes have more to do with unavailability of land, legal challenges, changes to the plan brought about by political change, changing the specifications in mid-project, etc.

[Oldeb]

@Sam_Stone

What kind of cost overruns?

All of the costs. It was being given to Florida for free. The only, only, possible point Scott had was about operating costs. And then he lost that too.

Cite from Post 59 of this thread

@WTSP

Scott said one of his main worries is Florida could be on the hook for cost overruns or delays. But up to eight private companies that want to operate the rail line have said they would take on that risk themselves.

Cite from Post 65 of this thread

@Bradenton.com

Scott also cited what he projected as $3 billion in potential cost overruns, which he stated would burden Florida taxpayers. But that, too, is not factual.
As recently outlined, any construction contract would have bound the contractor to pay for overruns, not taxpayers, and a variety of international companies stood poised to bid on the project.

Cite from Post 136 of this thread

@CNN

But leaders in several of Florida’s cities say they’ve eliminated all risk to taxpayers. “We have addressed all of the governor’s concerns,” said Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio. “We have structured this so that if there were cost overruns the private sector would take care if it.”
“If there are operational short falls – private sector. This is a true public-private partnership,” Iorio said. “This is what governors all across the country want and we had structured this in such a way that there would not be risk to the Florida taxpayers.”

And a new onejust for you

@Orlando Sentinel

As many as eight teams of companies from across the world were waiting for Florida to ask for proposals that likely would have forced the consortiums to say in writing whether they were willing to cover possible cost overruns and operating deficits, Lawless said.

Sadly they never got that far, because Scott never opened it up to any bids.

[billfish678]

Gottta post and run.

But thanks for that info Sam Stone.

[Hyperelastic]

Government contractors never bid a contract of significant size that truly requires them to absorb all overruns. There’s always an out. Otherwise the state would get no bids.