९ ऑक्टोबर, २०२२

"I was totally naïve when I took the job. I spent my time and didn’t succeed. I realized the system didn’t work. I just wasn’t smart enough. I don’t know how they can build it now."

Said Michael Tennenbaum, "a former Wall Street investment banker who was the first chairman of the rail authority 20 years ago," quoted in "How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails America’s first experiment with high-speed rail has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare. Political compromises created a project so expensive that almost no one knows how it can be built as originally envisioned" (NYT).

The idea of beginning construction not on either end, but in the middle — in the Central Valley, a place few in Los Angeles would want to go — was a political deal from the start. 
Proponents of running the rail through the booming cities of Bakersfield, Fresno and Merced cited a lot of arguments: The Central Valley needed jobs. It would be an ideal location to test equipment. It would be the easiest place to build, because it was mostly open farmland. 
But the entire concept depended on yet another costly diversion. Instead of following Interstate 5 through the uninhabited west end of the valley, the train would travel through the cities on the east side — more passengers, but also more delays, more complications over acquiring land, more environmental problems.... 
State senators were under pressure to endorse the Central Valley plan, not only from Gov. Jerry Brown but also from President Barack Obama’s transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, who came to the state Capitol to lobby the vote. 
The Central Valley quickly became a quagmire. The need for land has quadrupled to more than 2,000 parcels, the largest land take in modern state history, and is still not complete. In many cases, the seizures have involved bitter litigation against well-resourced farmers, whose fields were being split diagonally. 
Federal grants of $3.5 billion for what was supposed to be a shovel-ready project pushed the state to prematurely issue the first construction contracts when it lacked any land to build on....

When Californians voted for the project in 2008, the projected cost was $33 billion and the completion date was 2020. The current projected cost is $113 billion, and the completion date is... never. It costs $1.8 million a day but it isn't possible to complete it "in this century." 

Here's a post of mine from December 5, 2010, "The high-speed rail boondoggle at its worst — in California." Excerpt:

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, we just elected a new governor whose central election promise was to say no to $810 million connect Madison and Milwaukee by high-speed rail:

Scott Walker has made no secret of his aversion to high-speed trains, but before he goes any further with his plans to derail the planned Milwaukee-Madison line, Walker might consider some earlier chapters in Wisconsin's transportation history. They indicate that the governor-elect could be putting his state in reverse..

As long as there has been a Wisconsin, residents have labored mightily to establish connections with each other and with the world beyond the state's borders. Although disputes often arose in working out the details, the general trend was unmistakable....

Connections! We're all about relationships among people. 

The idea seems oddly nostalgic at first - why build passenger trains in the 21st century? - but it actually fits an emerging settlement pattern. Not in my lifetime but perhaps in my grandchildren's, and for better or worse, an interconnected megalopolis will sprawl from Benton Harbor, Mich., to Minneapolis-St. Paul. As the empty spaces fill in, there will be a demand for some form of transport that's faster than cars but has more frequent stops (and fewer exasperating waits) than airplanes.

The columnist — John Gurda in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — is imagining a megalopolis in the future and telling us what people then will want. But people don't even want trains now. We drive cars. Or we take planes. There's also the bus. True, a bus doesn't go at a speed in between the speed of a car and a plane, but come on. Pick one. Road or air.

I'm so glad we elected Scott Walker and avoided the train fiasco. I was a one-issue voter in 2010, and I look back on that choice with satisfaction. 

I've never understood what was so important about efficiently shuttling people between Madison and Milwaukee — or L.A. and San Francisco. Pick a city, you Madison/Milwaukee and L.A./San Francisco wafflers. What on earth is so important about your 2-city ambivalence? It's especially obvious now that there's so much remote work being done easily through technology. Use Zoom or Metaverse or something. The clunky, repeated transportation of your physical body not a worthy demand on public money. And the lies about the amount of money it would take are ongoing and horrifying.

८९ टिप्पण्या:

Wince म्हणाले...

Simple question for modern day "progressives."

What progress have you delivered on?

Mike (MJB Wolf) म्हणाले...

They can’t. They won’t. It will not be high speed if they do complete any of it. It is the perfect progressive boondoggle. They are always trying to take us back to small farms choo choo trains and bicycles. That’s regress not progress.

Wa St Blogger म्हणाले...

If you want infrastructure in the US now, you have to be like China - have the ability to make it happen without all the locals getting in the way. Such projects require strong central government, I am not sure we are there yet. Might be just one of the reasons the left wants to destroy the right. But even in California they are learning that a heavily blue state still can't get anything done. First they would need to kill all the lawyers.

rrsafety म्हणाले...

Literally EVERYONE outside the liberal California eco-bubble knew this would be debacle. There is not a single surprise in the entire story.

RideSpaceMountain म्हणाले...

The Simpsons presaged this 15 years beforehand. Monorail projects are losers in every situation which doesn't involve wide open expanses of frontier or pre-industrial nations with high density but low infrastructure (i.e. China).

A great example of the outrageous cost but on a smaller scale would be the St. Louis Loop Trolley. A $60 million (and climbing) eyesore that goes a distance of 2.5 miles.

Fred Drinkwater म्हणाले...

It took something like ten years to repair the damage from the 89 quake in the SF area. BART still has no south bay loop, after forty plus years.

I was sure of two things when the HSR was proposed. 1) it would never be finished, or even mostly built. 2) it would be considered a success by its managers if it attracted the Federal dollars expected.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

That old thread has a classic Ritmo melt-down. A pity he isn't still here to slap around 12 years later.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

These boondoggles always end the same way. I used to think that people "never learn", but now realize it's about the graft.

Heartless Aztec म्हणाले...

Trains should be antique, nostalgic and zoom along at 50mph tops befitting the 1800's from whence they came.
Oh yeah, and a steam whistle too.
Toot-toot.

hawkeyedjb म्हणाले...

I've followed this incredible boondoggle since its inception. For a good primer, read anything written by Ralph Vartebedian of the LA Times (and other publications). At this point, the project is no longer a transportation project - if it ever was. It is a gigantic and unbelievably costly vanity project, a virtue-signal, a means for politicians and other sociopaths to sort themselves according to their own perverse definition of "virtue."

Another point - if you read deeply enough (not politicians or commenters, but engineers and geologists) you realize that the train can never be built as it was originally sold. California could spend its entire economic output and never be able to finish the thing. It would be an engineering feat beyond comprehension if this actually ran from LA to SF.

The government and its various parasites will spend the entire $100 billion-plus on a train that never leaves the central valley of California. It is an incredibly wealthy society that is able to continue this level of economic waste without ever having to worry about financial consequences.

gilbar म्हणाले...

We're supposed to believe, that ANYONE thought that this boondoggle wasn't a boondoggle?

..never understood what was so important about efficiently shuttling people between Madison and Milwaukee — or L.A. and San Francisco

Sometimes, you have to (or want to travel); what we need is;
a MAGIC Train, that:
a) needs a VERY small land footprint
b) is SUPER fast
c) is SO EFFICIENT, that private companies would operate it (maybe even At a Profit!)

The Great News IS! These MAGIC Trains will SOON Exist! THEY ARE COMING!!!
Here's what they'll look like MAGIC TRAIN!

Richard म्हणाले...

In Atlas Shrugged the railroad people were the good guys.

mikee म्हणाले...

Odd, at the start of the project, critics were saying all the things that have come true now.

hombre म्हणाले...

Shame on those California Republicans who corrupted that railroad project. Oh ... wait!

Darkisland म्हणाले...

"all aboard! Trains good, planes bad. Woo! Woo!

John stop fascism vote republican Henry

Rabel म्हणाले...

When you choose a guy for chairman who wears clown glasses as his signature look, you just have to expect a clown show.

I'd like to see the shoes he's wearing.

Owen म्हणाले...

These Steel Rail Visions seem to be an unkillable blend of little-boy love of trains (I was one: had the whole basement for my RR empire), plus untethered Sci-fi fantasy projected by the grifters and politicians and uncritically consumed and repeated by idiot reporters.

The same psychodynamic seems present in most big public works projects: look at the gauzy narratives spun for every Olympics and every urban renewal work. A fresh start! A clean sweep! Bigger is bolder is better! And again and again: just a few more billion to get us “over the last hump” (even more thoroughly mired)!

You would expect that with the ever-bigger “asks” and ever-greater failures, we would see accountability. You would be wrong.

phantommut म्हणाले...

It costs $1.8 million a day but it isn't possible to complete it "in this century."

Someone should remind Californians about the First Rule of Holes.

phantommut म्हणाले...

hawkeyedjb said...

It is an incredibly wealthy society that is able to continue this level of economic waste without ever having to worry about financial consequences.


This is exactly how an incredibly wealthy society stops being an incredibly wealthy society. Unfortunately the decline tends not to be gradual. See: Venezuela. At this point I really wish CaliWashOgon would secede.

Rabel म्हणाले...

"That old thread has a classic Ritmo melt-down. A pity he isn't still here to slap around 12 years later."

I'm not so sure he isn't.

veni vidi vici म्हणाले...

Tasked with being "smart enough", this bozo pronounced it could be built (including obtaining all those easements into the core downtowns of both SF and LA, two of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world!) for about $33 billion. Within months and increasingly as bits and pieces of the project started to show up, like a modern Stonehenge, out in the boondocks of the interior plain near Bakersfield (i.e., the middle of goddam nowhere), the price predictably inflated into the 70s and then well over a trillion by some estimates -- and still without consideration of the cost of buying their way into the two costly destination cities on either end of the project.

Why is anyone, much less this blog, publishing this bellend's attempt at reputation-laundering? He deserves ignominy and the hardship of finding good-paying work to which a fuckup of this magnitude entitle him for the rest of his working life. Other people work crappy jobs and supplement income as CostCo greeters; get used to it homeboy, you're a proven dumb loser.

veni vidi vici म्हणाले...

"A great example of the outrageous cost but on a smaller scale would be the St. Louis Loop Trolley. A $60 million (and climbing) eyesore that goes a distance of 2.5 miles."

Detroit's famously worthless "People Mover" is another one.

Andrew म्हणाले...

This seems a perfect example of the sunk cost fallacy.

Imagine a world in which everyone involved recognizes this as a mistake, turns away from perpetuating it, and saves the remaining money for a project that is actually beneficial? Or even ... returns the money to the taxpayers?

LOL, sorry. Must be my medication.

phantommut म्हणाले...

You know where high-speed rail works? Someone mentioned China, and I guess that would be possible. But where it was established and still works is where all the infrastructure was blown to bits in WWII. BeNeLux, France, West Germany, (Japan especially) etc. Places where starting from scratch was problematic or not worth the cost, no. So England, Canada, the US, etc. do not have real "high-speed" rail. (Acela line? It is to laugh.) As non-Green as they are, magic tubes in the sky do the job most people want done.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

Every high speed rail line of which I am aware powers their train by electricity. From the Chinese Fuxing train to the famous Japanese Shinkansen, to the Italian Red Arrows (Frecciarossa), to the Spanish AVE, the French TGV, and the dilapidated (when I last rode on it years ago) American Acela, they all are powered by electricity. But California’s existing grid cannot meet their current needs for electric power, much less provide power for high speed passenger service. Nor does California’s government show much interest in improving the resilience of their grid or increasing their generating capacity. So I would argue that California’s high speed rail never was meant to operate a passenger service and always was intended merely to provide graft to politicians and the politically well-connected.

readering म्हणाले...

I was also a single issue voter, against Brown and Newsom over high speed rail. It was so obviously a money out for something unwanted. Now the worthwhile line between LA and SD has a break because of cliff erosion.

SGT Ted म्हणाले...

Those of us not drunk on CA prog koolaide always knew that this was little more than a graft boondoggle for unions.

Sean म्हणाले...

In this country trains are for freight and airplanes are for people. Trains for people are a waste and should be abolished. Want to ride a train? Fly to Europe or Japan.

Danno म्हणाले...

Blogger rrsafety said...Literally EVERYONE outside the liberal California eco-bubble knew this would be debacle. There is not a single surprise in the entire story.

Yes indeed. Anyone with even one whit of common sense could see this from the start. But all libtards unfailingly believe in their progressive religion.

Anthony म्हणाले...

As I mentioned in another thread, rain projects aren't for transporting people, they're for graft and corruption.

n.n म्हणाले...

The lack of density and consensus are missing links in viability that aborted the hub order.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

Look on the bright side. Imagine all the windmills they would have built with that money.

rcocean म्हणाले...

There was zero popular interesting in a Bullett train from LA to SF. Its always been a boondoggle and cover for graft and corruption. I lived in SF for several years and never knew anyone who went to LA unless they had to. SoCal and Bay area are two different worlds, and if American Pols weren't lazy and corrupt, they'd be in two separate states.

Its as if you built a bullet train to go from NYC to chicago. Two big population centers that have little to do with each other.

Mason G म्हणाले...

"Political compromises created a project so expensive that almost no one knows how it can be built as originally envisioned"

Politics? Well, there's your problem, right there.

Lurker21 म्हणाले...

Sure, it was a bad idea. The conflict between "We can do great things like FDR" and "Not in my back yard" and "Bad for the snail darter," is ridiculous and tiresome, but I don't really go in for train bashing, or for public transportation bashing either. Trains have their uses and will continue to have uses, even for moving people. I'm suspicious of the way that "everybody has to have a car" or "everybody has to have an i-phone" upend societies. So sure, it was a stupid idea that wouldn't work over here, but I wonder if the expectations we've built up about cars and planes might not also unravel some day.

JK Brown म्हणाले...

Besides lawyers and politicians, who goes from city center to city center outside of NYC and DC? Almost every other city in the US, you need a car to go to the location that is "in that city" but no where near the downtown.

Cities are way to land-costly for any enterprise that needs a lot of space, like manufacturing, especially with the high squared footage per employee of these days. Those type of enterprises build at an outskirts freeway exit, for cheap land and easy truck access.

Ignorance is Bliss म्हणाले...

...a project so expensive that almost no one knows how it can be built as originally envisioned

They spent billions, just as envisioned. The train was a means, not an end.


Michael म्हणाले...

In China they can use a ruler to plan a train path. No pesky land owners, no environmental studies, no lawyers.

PrimoStL म्हणाले...

"A great example of the outrageous cost but on a smaller scale would be the St. Louis Loop Trolley. A $60 million (and climbing) eyesore that goes a distance of 2.5 miles."

Everyone here hates that thing and Joe Edwards now with a passion. The Loop was already terrible to navigate. No one even uses it plus people keep tagging it with graffiti. Hipsters ruin everything.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Call the rail connection from Madison to Milwaukee the Mugger Mover, like the system in Detroit when it was being built.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

"I was also a single issue voter, against Brown and Newsom over high speed rail. It was so obviously a money out for something unwanted."

Sure.

Yancey Ward म्हणाले...

If we tried to build the interstate highway system starting today, we would spend 1000 times more in inflation adjusted dollars, and it wouldn't even be 1/4 finished by the next century.

We don't have the ability to build anything at this scale any longer- our political class is too corrupt and too stupid.

Michael K म्हणाले...

California has not built an infrastructure project since Jerry Brown's father was Governor. The water system is falling apart and no new reservoir has been built since the population was half of what it is now. The "bullet train " was always a leftist fantasy. Only the crazies ever thought it would happen. There was a proposal to build a tunnel through the mountains between Orange County and Riverside County when I still lived there. There are big tunneling machines that will dig the tunnel and line it with concrete as it goes. Norway built such a tunnel 15 years ago. The traffic on the freeway between those two places is horrendous and the state keeps widening and trying to improve the commute. After a few years of trying, it was given up. Too many lawyers.

Jim Gust म्हणाले...

According to my fuzzy memory, the Firesign Theater wrote of "A giant steel rail. . . stretching all the way from Bangor to mighty Maine" in "I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus."

Nailed it again.

Joe Smith म्हणाले...

For those of you not familiar with the Central Valley of California, it is the very definition of 'Middle of Nowhere.'

There are many great farms where many of you get your produce and beef, but not much else.

The first thing anyone who is serious about building a high-speed rail system should do, is to hire a Japanese company.

Anything less is malfeasance...

retail lawyer म्हणाले...

The high speed rail will never be built, yet the state spends $1.5 per day on it. Remember this when Newsom runs for President. This fiasco should be studied in all relevant disciplines. They might get 100 miles or so built in the Central Valley before they call the whole thing off, and run it as a tourist attraction and part of a museum of government lies and incompetence.

Darkisland म्हणाले...

Big Mike,

Trains in the US are universally powered by electricity. Freight and passenger.

The trains in Japan, France, China etc are mostly powered by fossil fuels. Just like US trains. Coal in many cases, diesel oil mostly in the us.

The difference is where the fuel is burned. On the train in the us to generate the juice that drives the electric motors at each wheel.

In Central plants elsewhere to drive the electric motors at each wheel in Japan, France etc.

John stop fascism vote republican Henry

Jamie म्हणाले...

I'm reminded of the lead guy in Singles: "If you give people great coffee and great music, they'll ride the train!"

And the music he planned to offer was grunge.

I liked grunge. But I never fooled myself into thinking that it was majority-popular - especially with people commuting into downtown Seattle back then. I took that line as a nice illustration of what an echo chamber sounds like.

Jim at म्हणाले...

A $60 million (and climbing) eyesore that goes a distance of 2.5 miles.

That's nothing. Tacoma (WA) spent $80 mil on a 1.6 mile track back in 2003. (129 million in today's dollars)

Mike म्हणाले...

Governor Pat Brown was a guy who could wheel and deal. My very first court argument after passing the bar (more than 50 years ago) was before Superior Court Judge Hugo Fisher. Fisher had been a State Senator--and Pat needed one more vote to get the California Water project through the State Senate. Brown got the vote--and Fisher got a seat on the Superior Court Bench in San Diego County.


But 16 years or so later Pat's son--Governor Moonbeam--took Linda Ronstadt on safari to Africa--and didn't know what to do with her. He didn't get any smarter 30 years later when he helped push his Fast Choo Choo Train to Nowhere through the legislature--and also through a popular vote.

They all forgot the inexorable Iron Rule when it comes to new light passenger railroads--doesn't matter whether it's WMATA, BART or whatever they call the system in Atlanta.
No matter what the proponents tell you 1. The system will take twice as long to build as they promised; 2. The system will cost (at least) twice as much as they promised; 3. The actual ridership of the completed system will be less than half as much as projected; which in turn leads to 4. Revenues of the completed system will be less than half as much as promised.

I mean, them's the facts folks. Jerry Brown's Choo Choo Train to Nowhere breaks that Iron rule in that it will never be completed as projected. The pipe dream of a high speed train from downtown San Francisco to downtown LA ignored the fact that you can't run a high speed train down the San Francisco Peninsula on the existing trackage. It also ignored the fact that a lot of the cities and suburbs along the way (can you say Burbank in Los Angeles) will insist that the price of running a high speed train through their city is that it stop there to take on let off passengers. Non stop high speed, my suffering Aunt Fanny!

JAORE म्हणाले...

The train is a raging success. If you could trace the billions spent you'd find (D) friends and family with pockets at the bursting point.

Mikey NTH म्हणाले...

The Chinese overbuilt their high speed rail. Only a few lines are profitable, the bulk lose money.

Thomas Friedman Hardest Hit.

Caligula म्हणाले...

"A great example of the outrageous cost but on a smaller scale would be the St. Louis Loop Trolley. A $60 million (and climbing) eyesore that goes a distance of 2.5 miles."

During the heyday of the trolley, it seems trolley lines could be built or extended quickly (often tens of miles within a single year) and at reasonable cost.

Today it seems we can't built anything quickly or inexpensively.

In any case, when I think of trains as passenger transport I sometimes think of their use in India. The British did, after all, leave behind an extensive rail network, and in some cases a newly independent India expanded it.

Yet today it seems every young person wants a "two-wheeler" (a small, inexpensive motorcycle). And why? So you can go where you want, when you want, at low cost- and without dealing with a train bureaucracy.

Perhaps there's something in there to explain why it's so hard to get people out of their cars and into trains (except in those cases where there is extreme congestion and density, such as the NYC metro area)?

Ampersand म्हणाले...

I am a Californian. This project is a testament to the powerlessness in California of people with common sense. From the outset, it's been a disgrace both from the perspective of meeting an incredibly low demand, and costing an infinity of public resources.

If I want to go to San Francisco, I can either drive to my specific destination in 7 hours, or go to the airport, arrive an hour early, get on a one hour flight, and then public transit or rental car to my specific destination in the San Francisco area. If there were a bullet train, I'd have to go to the train station, go through security, get on a 2 1/2 hour bullet train ride, and then public transit or rental car to my destination in the area. How much time am i saving? and why really do I need to be in San Francisco?

The only possible explanations are stupidity, greed, and corruption, enthusiastically assisted by the media.

gadfly म्हणाले...

Unfortunately, new passenger rail connections are all the rage, regardless of political leanings. Super-conservative and mostly Republican Indiana, (where nobody rides trains except electrics running out to Chicago's Hoosier suburbs) are screaming for a new long-haul line running from Chicago Union Station to Columbus through Fort Wayne.

This is the state that exercised good judgment by refusing to finance an Amtrak train, The Hoosier State, which ran just three days a week because there were virtually no riders. Yep, more fans watched football played in front of Touchdown Jesus in any given year than rode that passenger train. But paying to spend five hours or more on a train serving rubber chicken to travel only 165 miles is stupid.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

By the time it's built, everybody will have left California. (should make it easier to acquire the land)

gadfly म्हणाले...

Mikey NTH said...
The Chinese overbuilt their high-speed rail. Only a few lines are profitable, and the bulk lose money.

Very few trains in America qualify as "high-speed" but it really doesn't matter, since no trains here make money either when we add in track maintenance.

Gospace म्हणाले...

The USA doesn’t need high speed rail anywhere. Especially not taxpayer subsidized high speed rail. The only area in the USA where intercity rail as opposed to commuter rail makes any sense is the BOSWASH corridor. What does that have in common with Europe? Dense cities with a central business area that are close together. 435 miles or so. Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, then DC. Could throw in stops for Hartford and/ New Haven. And possibly Wilmington. Could be done with elevated rail OR monorail. Elevated monorail would be much lighter and cheaper to construct, and a suspended system such as the SAFEGE type would be operable in any weather. Politics would e the problem. How to get private investors lined up? Solve the right of way problem. Allow them to utilize existing highway, rail, or utility rights of way. An additional incentive would make all rail infrastructure free of property tax of any kind. Big Mike mentioned electricity is used on most high speed rail lines, also used on all subway and mist commuter rail. A lot of rail lines pulled down catenary on little used lines even though electric locomotives are cheaper to run. The property taxes on the assessed value of the catenary made use of the cheaper to run locomotives uneconomical because of the added taxes.

As a note- the original subways in NYC were built and operated by private industry. Then the city built tracks and leased them. Then took them all over.

The USA carries a much larger percentage of freight by rail then any other nation. Intermodal transport, the worldwide standard size of 20 and 40 ft containers, was established so the containers could travel on European roads and through European tunnels. Old infrastructure determines new stuff. Space shuttle SRBs are the size they are because Roman chariot wheels were 4’8.5” apart, which became the British and USA rail standard, which rail tunnels were designed around, which the SRBs have to pass through.

Michael K म्हणाले...

There are many great farms where many of you get your produce and beef, but not much else.

Joe, if you have been there lately, the farms are all dying. The state has cut off their water to return spawning salmon to rivers that dried up a century ago.

Darkisland म्हणाले...

James j hill built the only railroad in the us that never went bankrupt. At least to the 1980s.

The great northern was privately financed and built from Minnesota to puget sound on rights of way purchased at market price.

Henry Ford wound up buying a railroad. "two streaks of rust" he called it. He made it so profitable by applying what we now call the "Toyota Production System" that other railroads complained and the govt made him sell it.

Railroads can be profitable. Mostly they seem to be built and run for the Grift.

John stop fascism vote republican Henry

Joe Bar म्हणाले...

Everyone knew it would end this way. Everyone.

Iman म्हणाले...

Crony Capitalism. If they ever followed the money, there’d be some prison time for some.

typingtalker म्हणाले...

New Boeing 737 aircraft cost (list price) about $100 million each. At $1.8 million per day to build California's two-rail behemoth, Southwest Airlines could add a new jet (using existing airports) to the LAX-SFO route every two months or so. And, without lifting a shovel, they could add service to all the other airports ready and waiting throughout California.

Mason G म्हणाले...

"I'm suspicious of the way that "everybody has to have a car"..."

As I am, of the way that "nobody needs a car." Get a car if you want, don't if you don't. Stop using the government to force your preference on others.

Mason G म्हणाले...

"It also ignored the fact that a lot of the cities and suburbs along the way (can you say Burbank in Los Angeles) will insist that the price of running a high speed train through their city is that it stop there to take on let off passengers."

Thirty years ago, I rode the train from Boise to Portland. A little over twelve hours. By car? Maybe six.

As Steven Wright said, "Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time".

Whiskeybum म्हणाले...

The current projected cost is $113,...

Well, if it's THAT cheap, I say go ahead and build it!

/sarc

gpm म्हणाले...

who goes from city center to city center outside of NYC and DC

More of a train fan than most here, though I don't endorse the California monstrosity. For the last five or six years, I've been taking the Lake Shore Limited between Boston "center" and Chicago "center." Usually once a year, but three times in the last year (though the Chicago end is becoming more fraught, even though I stay in the West Loop when I'm not seeing family out in the burbs). I get a roomette, which jacks up the price, but it's so much more relaxing than flying to/from O'Hare or Midway (and, you know, you end up in the center of both cities, which is where I want to be). No having to arrive three hours early to go through the TSA charade. The 22 hours is a bit much, but you displace two nights of hotel rooms. You can bring your own booze, The worst part is the food, which is pretty awful.

--gpm

effinayright म्हणाले...

Darkisland said...
Big Mike,

Trains in the US are universally powered by electricity. Freight and passenger.

The trains in Japan, France, China etc are mostly powered by fossil fuels.

***************

Do we live on the same planet?

Japan's Shinkansen is electric. And has been for about 45 years. Ditto France's TGV. Ditto China's vast high-speed train network, which includes super-advanced mag-lev.

Yeah, the electricity comes largely from burning fossil fuels elsewhere, just like EVs.

But you got the US stats wrong as well:

https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/electrification-of-u.s.-railways-pie-in-the-sky-or-realistic-goal

"As a result, electrified rail is currently used on less than 1 percent of U.S. railroad tracks while electricity supplies more than one-third of the energy that powers trains globally."

Try again.

Ray - SoCal म्हणाले...

I just too a train from LA to Dallas.

Food was good from LA to San Antonio, unfortunately the train was late by 2 hours so we got put in a bus.

We were in a roomette, European sleeping cars were much better in Germany / Switzerland.

Train was only 1/3rd for regular cars.

2 sleeping cars, seemed full.

Dining car was only for those in the sleeping cars.

Cleanliness, could have been better. Perhaps they were short staffed. Seems to still be recovering from Covid. Dining car just started service.

Getting on in Pomona (la county) was a negative experience.

Original Mike म्हणाले...

I'm suspicious of the way that "everybody has to have a car"..."

Nobody is making you buy a car.

gilbar म्हणाले...

Darkisland confused THE HELL out of me, when he said...

Trains in the US are universally powered by electricity. Freight and passenger.

Then i read this part

The difference is where the fuel is burned. On the train in the us to generate the juice that drives the electric motors at each wheel.

yes, now i see what you're saying.. Yes, they are Diesel Electric. The engines (which my sister is in charge of building) don't drive the train; they run the alternators which make the electricity.
Then that electricity is inverted into Different electricity which drives the AC motors that turn the axles.

The Godfather म्हणाले...

In my legal career I did a fair amount of RR work, mostly freight, but several cases for Amtrak. Also, I was a train rider, in part because my first wife had a severe phobia about flying, and in part because the Metroliner was a pretty good way to travel between DC and NYC or Phila. (And the pre-Amtrak service was AWFUL!) So I knew enough that when I heard some politician touting "highspeed rail", he or she was selling snake oil. Can you say "Obama"? He cheered on the Democrats in California, but like the savvy pol he was/is cheering leaves no fingerprints.
But freight rail is a different story (or it was 5 years ago -- I haven't followed things closely since I retired). Regulatory Reform (not "de-regulation") under the Staggers Act (1980) has fostered a productive and profitable freight rail system, although at the same time rail mergers (creating 3 mega systems in the East and 3 mega systems in the West) impose costs on "captive" rail shippers, i.e., those who have only one rail option; but it's better than the regulatory regime during the pre-Staggers era under which virtually every railroad went through multiple bankruptcies for better than half a century.
The only decent passenger rail service I experienced was the Autotrain between northern Virginia and Sanford, FL, because it solved the problem of how do you get where you want to go when you get off the train: You took your car with you. Not, however, a model that would work in other corridors. Alhough maybe California might try that if the political payoffs were adequate!

Smilin' Jack म्हणाले...

Transportation is stupid. With modern communications, virtual reality, etc. you can “be” anywhere at the speed of light. Actually moving people around just spreads disease.

Big Mike म्हणाले...

@John Henry, yes, I am very aware that in a diesel locomotive the diesel engine powers a generator that sends current to electric motors mounted on the axles. I even know why this is preferable for train service over having the diesel engine drive axles directly. Subways, trolley systems, and high speed rail get the electricity for the motors on their axles from electrical power plants that are outside the train cars for a number of good reasons, but it’s late and I’m tired snd I don’t mean to bore the other commentators. My point is still that California is not serious about powering the trains because their electric generating capacity and their grid are already over stressed.

Darkisland म्हणाले...

Effinay,

Do you know how diesel-electric locomotives work?

A diesel drives a generator that makes electricity to drive electric motors on the wheels.

Just like any electric train. Just like the bullet train.

The difference is that one carries its generator with it. The other is powered by a stationary generator. Mobile or stationary, all use mostly fossil fuel to generate the electricity. Some nuke (France) and hydro but mostly fossil us and elsewhere.

Some all electric trains in the US but mostly diesel electric.

Triva: in the late 1960s the us navy still had a number of diesel electric ships. Des, DDs, minesweepers and others. And all US submarines that are not diesel electric are nuke-electric.

John stop fascism vote republican Henry

Greg The Class Traitor म्हणाले...

I realized the system didn’t work. I just wasn’t smart enough.

The system is designed not to work, with all the environmental bullshit.

The only way "smart enough" matters is if your'e smart enough to realize its' a mug's game, and don't get involved

As the computer said in War Games, the only way to win is not to play

Greg The Class Traitor म्हणाले...

I've never understood what was so important about efficiently shuttling people between Madison and Milwaukee — or L.A. and San Francisco

In the Dot Com days there was significant air traffic of people flying from LA area to Bay Area on Monday, spending the week there working, and then flying back home on Friday.

As a rule, that route has been one of the busiest routes in the nation for decades. Mainly because there are significant tourist and business destinations on both ends.

Which, of course, is why the bullet train idea is so stupid. There's already massive and relatively inexpensive ways to get back in forth, almost all of which are going to get you from starting point to end point faster than the train.

And while the Bay Area has fairly decent mass transit ways to get you from the train station to somewhere near your destination (so you can take a cab / hotel shuttle / friend pick you up to get you the rest of the way there), LA doesn't. Exactly home many rental car facilities were they planning on having near the LA stations?

MadisonMan म्हणाले...

Another boondoggle: The light rail system to the Honolulu airport. Now set to finish in 2031. (And if you believe that....)

Static Ping म्हणाले...

There was a time when we could just do things. There were no concerns for environmental reports or safety measures or impact statements. You just got the persons you needed to approve your project on board, possibly through bribery, and then you did it. We no longer tolerate that sort of thing. That's not a bad thing as safety measures and environmental concerns should be considered for major projects, but it has also enabled self-important bureaucracies and fringe special interest groups. We went from pretty much anything goes to even minor projects that almost everyone wants getting stuck in the courts and bureaucracy for a decade, then end up costing three times as much and take five times longer, assuming it ever gets approved.

If they tried to build this train in, say, the business environment of the 1920s, it would be built by now. It would probably go bankrupt given it is an ill-conceived idea, but it would be built. Now we get to go bankrupt without actually ever building it. On the "plus" side, an entire industry has been built around ill-conceived projects, so plenty of people are getting paid.

Then again, this is California. This is a state that thinks it can run an electrical grid on renewables, which is impossible without massive hydroelectric resources and/or living amongst the volcanoes like Iceland; and thinks they can then have everyone drive electric cars on a power grid that is struggling to function now. Anyone with half a brain expected this result.

Russell म्हणाले...

The train fetish is the surest sign of progressive would be authoritarians. They don't view trains as a tool of fascism, of course. They think using trains and not owning a car is somehow liberating (probably because they've never road trains during rush hour in Tokyo). But, trains dictate where and when you go on a schedule you are told to adhere to. And requires paying the government for the privilege to do so, even after your taxes and public debt supposedly paid for its creation.

We are still probably 10 years from having dependable self driving cars. But, we will get there. THAT is the future of public transit. And FAR FAR cheaper to build a dedicated infrastructure for. Self driving cars can provide something trains will never be able to provide: door to door service. Likely on a schedule of your choosing.

These progressive train fetishists are the sort that always claim that THEY are the ones who a pro-science, pro-technology, pro-FUTURE yet they keep falling back on the city building dreams of central planners in the 1930s.

Greg The Class Traitor म्हणाले...

Lurker21 said...
I'm suspicious of the way that "everybody has to have a car"

So, what I see you writing is "I hate individual freedom"

I have a car. That means I get to go pretty much where I want, when I want, in my own private space, not having to smell or listen to people I don't want to

That's what "everyone should have a car" means.

I've never met a good human being who was opposed to that

Gospace म्हणाले...

Darkisland said...

Triva: in the late 1960s the us navy still had a number of diesel electric ships. Des, DDs, minesweepers and others. And all US submarines that are not diesel electric are nuke-electric.


Ummm, no. There have been a few experimental subs with electric drive.Nuclear subs are, for the most part, steam turbines driving the shaft through reduction gears. There is an EPM on most- Electric driven Emergency propulsion motor. Slow going if it is engaged.

Surface ships today are driven by either jet engines- combatants, or large slow speed diesels- auxiliaries, driving the shaft through reduction gears.

PM म्हणाले...

Well they are not finishing it in the right place. The San Joaquin Valley is 84 miles from the ocean. By completion, those rising seas should still be several miles away.

Greg The Class Traitor म्हणाले...

Why do we hate trains and love cars?

‘Sabotage’ causes major train disruption in northern Germany. “German Transport Minister Volker Wissing said Saturday that ‘sabotage acts on the cable network’ were responsible for a serious outage of train traffic in large parts of northern Germany, adding that authorities were investigating and seeking the unknown perpetrators. The service of long-distance, regional and cargo trains in the northwestern states of Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Bremen was interrupted for about three hours on Saturday morning after critical cables for a communication system, which enables radio contact and data transmission between trains and the railway operating centers, had been sabotaged.”

Cars and trucks let you route around this kind of sabotage

MadTownGuy म्हणाले...

Original Mike said...

"By the time it's built, everybody will have left California. (should make it easier to acquire the land"

Plausible. We drove from northern CA to San Bernardino County last August and the Central Valley is full of almond groves. Many of the ones we saw are bone dry and full of dead trees. Lots of signs chiding Gov Newsom for letting water run unfettered to the Pacific while farmers must scrounge for whatever water they can get.

FullMoon म्हणाले...

That train gonna be done one week before "the big one" strikes and shakes it into little bitty pieces.

Then, we will pass another tax hike to fund repair, end homelessness, cure addiction, and provide abortion services for the country

FullMoon म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
FullMoon म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
PM म्हणाले...

In ten short years and billion$, Californians'll be going high speed from Merced to Bakersfield. In Wisconsin, that's like high-speed from Rib Lake to Butternut.