High-speed rail coming to California 29
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Posted 12:55 PM on 6 Jul 2008
by David Roberts -
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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.
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Gar Lipow Posted 5:14 am
06 Jul 2008
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:30 am
06 Jul 2008
If thats what you're comparing to, I wouldn't be surprised.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:02 am
06 Jul 2008
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 8:32 am
06 Jul 2008
Construction, which won't begin for another several years, will take 10 years, more or less, to complete. Do you want to predict the construction costs 10 to 15 years out?...
Comparing "the train of the future" with the automobiles of the present is unfair. Planes and cars in the future will be more ecologically friendly."
http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/11/why-the-california-high ...
This is just another expensive boondoggle that will suck billions and billions of dollars over its lifetime to provide a subsidizied ride for a tiny fraction of the population. That is money not spent on more beneficial projects.
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Pangolin Posted 9:21 am
06 Jul 2008
California is broke. Our government made a long term bet on endless real-estate expansion and stock market growth that didn't pan out. When we're done paying for our vast prison system their isn't much money for anything else and high-speed rail isnt' going to get built on bond money.
We have no money to pay back the bonds. Until the US returns to reality politics in general these kinds of projects are moot announcements with the value of the yearly 'flying car' article in Popular Mechanics.
Put the Carbon Back
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Jon Rynn Posted 10:46 am
06 Jul 2008
Personally, I might have avoided Central Valley, but Fresno, which ain't the most liberal place, seems like it has come "on board",to use a pun, so it seems to have been a good political move.
As to whether California can pay back its bonds, Pangolin, well, better to try to build something now then not do something at all, because when it becomes too expensive to drive or fly between areas of the state, that will have greater negative effects than whatever it's going to cost. And I would also beef up the Amtrak lines going up and down the coast, I think those are very important, for the long-term.
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:21 pm
06 Jul 2008
12 million to 58 million is typical cost per mile for light rail.
So where do cheaper numbers come from?
Trolley buses: you can run overhead lines to electrify existing buses for 3 million a mile. Of course a bus is not the most efficient vehicle in the world and electrifying it changes that only a little. Labor and electricity cost remain higher than rail, and a bus is more expensive per seat than a train as well.
Piggybacking commuter rail on existing heavy rail lines. You do this only with unused or extremely lightly used existing track. But retrofitting and repair is cheaper than building from scratch, so you can usually do this for about 3 million a mile two.
Otherwise, as far as I know, no existing light rail system has been built for less than 12 million a mile (excluding stuff built back when 5 million a mile was equal to 12 million a mile in todays dollars). But I'd be interesed hearing about a commuter rail system that really was rail, and was built from scratch not piggybacked on existing track that was built for less.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:40 pm
06 Jul 2008
Then there's lightrailnow.org, which obviously is pro-light rail -- so they have Portland's system at between 23 and 26 million per mile, and they say Charlotte's should cost about 44 million dollars per mile
That's just looking around google and lightrailnow, but it seems like $40 million a mile now is reasonable.
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:51 pm
06 Jul 2008
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hapa Posted 2:16 pm
06 Jul 2008
If passed, the ballot measure would provide $9 billion for the construction of the core segment between San Francisco and Los Angeles/Anaheim and an additional $950 million for improvements on local railroad systems, which would serve as feeder systems for high-speed rail mainline. However, the project would still depend on federal matching funds, since a $9.95 billion bond issue would cover at most half of the estimated cost of the initial core segment.
According to a 2004 estimate, the complete system from Sacramento to San Diego would likely have a [total] cost of more than $30 billion, with 2007 estimates of the cost being $40 billion. Moreover, historically, rail projects' cost estimates have been far less than the final amount required. The California High-Speed Rail Authority plans to use the projected operating profit from the initial San Francisco-Los Angeles line to finance further extensions to Sacramento and San Diego.
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:18 pm
06 Jul 2008
So that's more like 50 million/mile? The 10 billion was just half of the initial funding from Prop 1, which would get the other half from Federal matching funds (remember the Interstate Highway System got (gets?) 90% from the Feds).
Just for comparison, let me quote from cleantech blogSouthwest Airlines successfully sued and stopped high-speed rail in Texas in the 1990s. Texas is now staring at a $183 billion price for the Trans Texas Corridor as a 4,000-mile-long stretch of 10 auto lanes and six railroad tracks for high-speed freight and commuter trains. This is over twenty times higher than if they had not been stopped from implementing high-speed rail years ago. Opponents of high-speed rail carefully follow Mark Twain's advice, "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
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Bob Wallace Posted 3:01 pm
06 Jul 2008
High speed rail would be less expensive than upgrading roads and airports.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 5:01 pm
06 Jul 2008
This assumes that rail will not become ridiculous. Concrete, steel and land condemnation cost and time requirements may make it impossible.
Recommendation
1 Present each option in a revenue neutral format (tax income plus fees equals subsidies over the life of the project).
2 Put a cap on population. There is no solution that accommodates exponential population growth.
3 Let people choose the solution they want.
" Texas is now staring at a $183 billion price for the Trans Texas Corridor as a 4,000-mile-long stretch of 10 auto lanes and six railroad tracks for high-speed freight and commuter trains. "
I knew Texas was big but 4,000 mi.?
" High speed rail would be less expensive than upgrading roads and airports. "
Is that on a revenue neutral basis? Show us the analysis.
Public transportation will become huge when cars are all electric and computers learn how to drive. The most common city "bus" will have two seats and they will be distributed throughout the city at charging stations.
Touch a button on your GPS equipped cell phone and one will roll up within 90 seconds and take you directly to your destination. Computer controlled cars will be joined up into virtual trains that will move through computer controlled intersections without stopping, providing a huge savings in time and energy while improving safety and air quality.
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caniscandida Posted 5:33 pm
06 Jul 2008
Mean, however, that we were not allowed to take aboard some of the more choice of the rafters, for further examination and appreciation ...
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:17 pm
06 Jul 2008
Cut those costs to the bone Cali. Government build the (renewabley electrified) tracks (in tubes on the freeway median) and let private companies build, buy, and operate the trains.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:07 am
07 Jul 2008
Recommendation
1 Present each option in a revenue neutral format (tax income plus fees equals subsidies over the life of the project).
2 Put a cap on population. There is no solution that accommodates exponential population growth.
3 Let people choose the solution they want."
--
1. "California's high-speed train system will generate $1 billion in in annual revenue surplus and require no taxpayer subsidies."
The project is to be financed with a combination of state bonds, federal and private money. The repay of those state bonds would be part of the pre-surplus expenses.
2. Ridiculous. You're suggesting that we build a wall along the California boarder to keep out people from the 'other 49' and neuter women once they've had 2.1 children?
BTW, read up on what is happening with the world's population. It is not growing "exponentially". It's coasting to a 8-9 billion peak.
3. It's called Proposition One. It's on this fall's ballot.
Additionally, the price of concrete, steel, and land will have the same effect on building new and larger airports and expanding the freeway system as it will on building high-speed rail.
Stuff happens.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:35 am
07 Jul 2008
GM can stay in business, switch to building these composite, hypercar, plugin hybrid buses that run on the commuter rail.
Tubes with the tracks installed that interlock, mass produced from concrete, fiber, and steel. That would vastly reduce costs. They could be placed on gravel in trenches in the freeway median, or over dips, or underground.
Transpoting the tube sections along freeways would be possible too, if they were up to 16 feet in diameter?
This is not rocket surgery, good old american work crews can do this stuff. No supercooled levitation needed!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:05 am
07 Jul 2008
As for steel and concrete, well at least for steel, that is a product that is pretty much dependent on iron and electricity, and if electricity generation becomes renewably based, then there's plenty of iron in the world. On top of which, it's very easy to recycle the stuff. Not so sure about concrete, but I believe the ingredients are plentiful.
So steel and electricity means sustainable. Oil-based means it goes bye-bye eventually. So it's prudent to construct another choice -- a word I'm attempting to use to see how it goes over -- in addition to planes and cars, which are oil-based.
On the other hand, you're idea about gps-shared-cars-prt type thing sounds sort of cool, and it would be nice if somebody would try it. But as it turns out, trolleys have about 100 years of experience, so I think it will be awhile before prt (personal rapid transit) becomes ubiquitous.
Amazin', I think that it's absolutely essential that the passengers in a train be able to see the landscape, it's one of the big advantages of a train over a car or plane. So maybe tubes would work, but they'd have to be above ground.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 2:05 am
07 Jul 2008
Moving the same number of people the same distance using less expensive technology will generate more revenue.
" The project is to be financed with a combination of state bonds, federal and private money. The repay of those state bonds would be part of the pre-surplus expenses. "
Cars are a profit center for government.
Royalties and taxes on fuel add up to around $1 per gallon. Add in taxes on car sales, parts registration etc.
Train ticket sales will not repay the bonds and federal money, they are subsidies.
" 2. Ridiculous. You're suggesting that we build a wall along the California boarder to keep out people from the 'other 49' and neuter women once they've had 2.1 children?
BTW, read up on what is happening with the world's population. It is not growing "exponentially". It's coasting to a 8-9 billion peak. "
Under natural selection the children of the best parents had the highest probability of surviving, passing along the characteristics of their parents. You're suggesting that the best parents are having the most children today.
I think that allowing an incompetent person to raise a child is child abuse. Parenting should be a privilege that has to be earned, like the privilege of driving a car or performing brain surgery. A parenting license would require a minimum level of training and qualifications.
Is this a radical idea? There have been dozens of major civilizations and perhaps thousands of minor civilizations. They have all gone through a rise and fall cycle. To think that ours will be the exception without addressing the root cause of the problem is the radical idea.
Being born into the downturn of that cycle leads to a harsh and often short life. Excellence does not happen by accident.
" Additionally, the price of concrete, steel, and land will have the same effect on building new and larger airports and expanding the freeway system as it will on building high-speed rail. "
If I take a car or train ride from Colorado to Florida it requires 1,600 miles of concrete or steel. A plane requires a mile or two of concrete at each end.
" it's very easy to predict that oil will get worse and worse, price-wise. "
Most trains are diesel now, why do you assume cars and planes will always use fossil fuel but not trains? Boeing has conceptual designs for hydrogen powered airliners. The space shuttle runs on hydrogen due to its high energy to weight ratio.
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:14 am
07 Jul 2008
Hydrogen planes also sound cool, sometime in the future. You still haven't said what this cheaper form of transport, cheaper than rail, would be. Again, don't think "cheaper than", think, "what will we be able to use indefinitely into the future?", which is steel and electricity, to name two, but not oil.
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Matt G Posted 3:50 am
07 Jul 2008
Way back in this thread [Jon] mentioned beefing up Amtrak tracks. Amtrak doesn't own any tracks except on the east coast. This is why we call the train that runs through California the StarLate (vs. StarLight) - it operates on borrowed freight track and constantly has to stop and wait for freight cars, making it typically hours late and occasionally on the order of a day late.
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:58 am
07 Jul 2008
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hapa Posted 4:09 am
07 Jul 2008
we live in groups. individual parenting performance is a reflection of group abilities and trends -- how easy it is for that kid's caregivers to beat adversity or gain advantage by leveraging the support network.
all "culture" grows from the need for individuals to learn quickly and put ideas and capital to work quickly. what can't be well communicated, dies.
this is not a test of every individual human being. this is a society. "exponential population growth" worry, not an uncommon american freakout, shows how our group has come to dislike being a society, instead choosing to judge individuals by their ability to grin and bear the destruction of their support networks by economic fantasists.
looking at a row of little pink houses you wouldn't know that it also "takes a village" to raise american kids, too. think of all the costs we still share.
then focus closer on the rows of houses. how do those households function? on parenting skills? no, they work because the whole machinery of industrial society provides those households with insanely underpriced goods to offset the loss of our original child-rearing technologies -- the clan, the tribe, the extended family.
but if you go to a store, filled with social services, in the form of highly-specialized tools, and you look at the place how someone without the backing of industry might look at a forest, you see opportunities and techniques apparently falling out of the sky. to the user, what is the real difference between a pile of collected branches, a solar space heater, and an oil furnace? they're all found objects, all comprehensible and easy to operate.
you can give yourself credit for having a car instead of an ox if you want and then extend that into giving your parents high marks for raising a kid who could tell the difference between a car and an ox but this is an environmental and cultural event, and not a great one, right now, with us bent on maintaining those cars and furnaces as we conceive their proper form to be, showing us as just another generation of superstitious idiots in the grand human tradition -- "a powerful car makes you lucky" -- but --
none of that changes the fact that population growth is a function of the demographic shift from a high death rate to a low one and the speed at which culture can adjust. it has nothing to do with innate parenting skills. it's a conceptual gap that can only be bridged with experience and teaching.
You're suggesting that the best parents are having the most children today.
study after study shows that the wealth of a community determines the health of a kid. if human beings were inherently bad at raising kids, because we'd somehow lost that key ingredient of life, and by "bad" i mean "lacking several redundant built-in strategies for giving the kids a good strong push out the door," we wouldn't be having a population problem, would we.
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Wolverine Posted 4:40 am
07 Jul 2008
Many of us, including even middle-of-the-road Sierra Club, are strongly opposed to building this project through Pacheco Pass, and there's a strong chance of a lawsuit if that alternative is pursued. As another poster said, there's nothing environmentally positive about destroying nature to save nature. You can count on our opposition to this project unless the route avoids Pacheco Pass.
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:49 am
07 Jul 2008
You'd think altamount would be a no-brainer, since there is wind power there, no? that could directly feed the train.
In fact, here's an animation of the train going through the altamont pass
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Wolverine Posted 8:58 am
07 Jul 2008
You're quite correct that if a decision were made based on environmental concerns, rationality, and logic, the Altamont Pass route WOULD be a no-brainer. However, economic concerns have great power, so the San Jose business interests have caused the route through Pacheco Pass to become the "preferred alternative." And we're saying, "over our dead bodies!"
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 9:28 am
07 Jul 2008
Passenger rail has the highest subsidy to customer cost ratio of all the major transportation modes, yet it is struggling. This indicates that rail has the lowest performance in terms of desirability per dollar. Passenger rail would disappear on a level playing field.
Most people do not want to ride the train, they want others to ride the train so the road will be less crowded.
" study after study shows that the wealth of a community determines the health of a kid. "
hapa. That may be true. If unwealthy communities produce twice as many kids per capita than wealthy communities the civilization will eventually be dominated by unwealthy communities and collapse.
Why is it that people have not created a permanently sustainable civilization in 200,000 years? What changes do you propose make that happen?
My recommendation is a Bill of Rights for children. Each child is guaranteed;
1 At least one qualified parent.
2 A top notch education.
Under these conditions I think kids would do well regardless of their neighborhoods wealth or poverty. Poor neighborhoods would disappear in a generation or two.
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Jon Rynn Posted 9:42 am
07 Jul 2008
But you've brought up the topic of full-cost accounting for various forms of transport, which is an interesting topic, but "needs more research", as they say.
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hapa Posted 11:36 am
07 Jul 2008
that's funny because most people think civilization's collapse will result from resource depletion by the wealthy communities.
but i mean if you're really worried about this, send handguns, totally erroneous agronomics textbooks, and expired medicines to the areas of the world where you think growth is improper. that will bring their death rate back up to historic averages and save "civilization."
ok. but you're not getting it. communities go into high growth because they are on the verge of modernization -- their death rate has dropped, but they're still having as many babies as they used to when so many more died. it doesn't take long for women to "transition" to having fewer babies. and that goes faster if mothers have access to education -- full schooling, not just family planning -- and political, social, and economic capital.
Why is it that people have not created a permanently sustainable civilization in 200,000 years?
only the last 10,000 years -- the age of agriculture (and its offshoot, industry) -- are relevant to this.
you could also argue that only the last 100 years are relevant, because before then, the major civilizations of the world had room to grow without coming into contention, theoretically.
but basically that's my answer. sustainability comes first with the recognition that you can't solve your problems by sailing away to another place and "just starting over." nobody had to do that until the 20th century.
if you're talking about durability, the "rise and fall" kind of stuff, i would say, societies grow according to how well their neighborhood and culture support that growth. at some point everybody seems to hit the same wall: you ran out of something really crucial and were too big to adjust.
What changes do you propose make that happen?
truly sustainable? planetary thinking.
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