The liberals $43 billion train to no where...

[ichy]

ichy, I agree too and I have been arguing it for about 20 years now.

The problem is, for the same reason the NE needs it is why it can't have it. Eminent Domain.

Too many people LIVE and work here, so it is difficult to get the strait-lines needed to put in a good HSR. Add to it the topography and you will have some more difficulties.

I'm no rail engineer, but from what I understand you could make some pretty significant improvements in Acela Express speed without the use of Eminent Domain. I wish I could dig up my source but I believe that in a lot of places the train is limited by signaling or other infrastructure issues like old overhead wires.

Edit: Here's one example. Just last year they finally got around to upgrading the line between NYC and Philadephia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor#New_York_to_Philadelphia_increased_speeds

Edit #2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express#Operating_speeds

South of New York, Acela Express service travels at 135 mph (217 km/h). The limiting factor is stated[by whom?] to be the overhead catenary support system which was constructed prior to 1935 and lacks the constant-tension features of the new catenary east of New Haven

Instead of spending billions in California the feds should spend a few hundred million to upgrade the electrical system in the Northeast Corridor.

 

[WackyDan]

Good point...

However, the Acela's average speed is what? 80 MPH? Yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express

That is not high speed rail... Yet we have poured billions of dollars into Amtrak just to keep that rail network alive. I'd rather we fundamentally change our rail infrastructure nationwide and drag Canada along with us.... and pay that price.

I would gladly take high speed rail from my home base of Charlotte, NC to Raleigh, Atlanta, or D.C. instead of driving or flying as I do now.... But it has to be true high speed or it isn't worth the time.

 

[ichy]

WackyDan:

Most of Amtrak should be scrapped. There are parts of the country where rail makes sense (it makes so much sense that as I mentioned even the pathetic Acela Express makes a profit) but schemes to run trains from NYC to Chicago and similar crap are insane.

Get rid of the long distance lines that cover areas which would be better served by planes. Accept the fact that trains only make sense in certain parts of the country where distances are short enough and population density is high enough, and then give those rail routes the resources to provide REAL high speed service.

 

[Ninjahedge]

We need to pay for another study of Japan's high speed lines.


/me raises hand to volunteer.

 

[xBiffx]

We need to pay for another study of Japan's high speed lines.


/me raises hand to volunteer.

Study all you want. What works in Japan, or even Europe for that matter, will not necessarily work here so the studies I think are a waste of time/money. Here is the main reason why.

 

[ichy]

Study all you want. What works in Japan, or even Europe for that matter, will not necessarily work here so the studies I think are a waste of time/money. Here is the main reason why.
[/IMG]

Last time I checked population density is not uniform across the United States.

 

[xBiffx]

Last time I checked population density is not uniform across the United States.

Nor is it across Japan, Europe. Besides, even if it was, the length of track needed is cost prohibitive here in the US regardless of how many people live near it. This was the point of the graphic, sorry you missed that.

The thing that Japan has going for it is its small size. You run out of room for cars a lot quicker over there hence the need for other modes of transportation. I doubt that is going to be a problem here anytime soon, even in California, especially between the two shit towns involved.

 

[ichy]

Comparing the size of the US to Japan is meaningless unless you're arguing with idiots who want to build rail lines from Chicago to Houston. There are certain limited sections of the US where HSR makes sense. The Northeast has a high population density, clogged airports and highways and a demonstrated demand for rail service. If Amtrak could improve the crap product they currently offer there it would be even more popular. Right now Acela Express is pretty much the only profitable part of Amtrak.

 

[Brigandier]

It cost about $50,000,000 to build the transcontinental railroad, gotta love government efficiency.

 

[xBiffx]

Comparing the size of the US to Japan is meaningless unless you're arguing with idiots who want to build rail lines from Chicago to Houston. There are certain limited sections of the US where HSR makes sense. The Northeast has a high population density, clogged airports and highways and a demonstrated demand for rail service. If Amtrak could improve the crap product they currently offer there it would be even more popular. Right now Acela Express is pretty much the only profitable part of Amtrak.

You mean these idiots, I mean liberals?

http://www.ushsr.com/ushsrmap.html

 

[ichy]

You mean these idiots, I mean liberals?

Thanks for that really mature and insightful addition to this discussion

 

[xBiffx]

Thanks for that really mature and insightful addition to this discussion

You get what you give.

 

[Drako]

Kill the "Brown Streak" before it kills California!

 

[zephyrprime]

So traffic between the largest city and fifth largest city was only 593,000.

NY & Boston have a combined population of 29 million.

La + San Fran... 25 million...

So please explain to me how they expect to get millions of people on this freaking train?

Exactly. This thing is a huge expense and it will never pay for itself. Any government project you can safely assume will cost twice as much as initially planned at least. So, a cost of $86B. With similar ridership levels and a ticket price of $100 (assuming profjohn is right about ticket prices), it would take 1682 years for this project to pay for itself, assuming no operating costs. So basically, this project will never pay for itself AT ALL factoring in inflation and opportunity costs of simply investing $86B in treasuries. It would be far cheaper to subsidize $50 towards anyone's plane ticket from LA to SF.

 

[ichy]

In fairness how many highway projects pay for themselves?

 

[woolfe9999]

Exactly. This thing is a huge expense and it will never pay for itself. Any government project you can safely assume will cost twice as much as initially planned at least. So, a cost of $86B. With similar ridership levels and a ticket price of $100 (assuming profjohn is right about ticket prices), it would take 1682 years for this project to pay for itself, assuming no operating costs. So basically, this project will never pay for itself AT ALL factoring in inflation and opportunity costs of simply investing $86B in treasuries. It would be far cheaper to subsidize $50 towards anyone's plane ticket from LA to SF.

Do you know the cost of the highway and airport construction which is avoided by building the rail instead? With expanding population, we need more infrustucture all the time. That is a critical issue that has to be understood here. We aren't talking about just building HSR. We're talking about building HSR *instead* of other types of infrustucture. Highway and airport construction, btw, are subject to the same kinds of cost overruns as rail.

I'm not saying I favor this project. I'm saying there is a lot of debated data on its cost, its expected passenger density (demand for it), its environmental impact, and the magnitude of savings in avoided alternatives. All that stuff has to be well understood before a final verdict can be reached and unfortunately there's a lot of conflicting information out there, and not all of the confusion is from the state. Some of it comes from very partisan opposition groups.

- wolf

 

[K1052]

WackyDan:

Most of Amtrak should be scrapped. There are parts of the country where rail makes sense (it makes so much sense that as I mentioned even the pathetic Acela Express makes a profit) but schemes to run trains from NYC to Chicago and similar crap are insane.

Get rid of the long distance lines that cover areas which would be better served by planes. Accept the fact that trains only make sense in certain parts of the country where distances are short enough and population density is high enough, and then give those rail routes the resources to provide REAL high speed service.

Congress makes Amtrak maintain money loosing services. Amtrak would eliminate unprofitable routes if they were allowed.

 

[chucky2]

Easy solution then:

1.) Militarize border with Mexico, locking it down.

2.) Use money previously to be squandered on choo choo project to instead develop water born birth control. One will actively need to take a pill/shot (provided "free" by state) to counteract the water born BC.

Multiple problems solved for far far far less....

Good compromise.

Chuck

 

[Ninjahedge]

Study all you want. What works in Japan, or even Europe for that matter, will not necessarily work here so the studies I think are a waste of time/money. Here is the main reason why.

Take a closer look.

Find a map that outlines the bullet trains from Tokyo to Kyoto and compare that to, say, NY to Boston.

Bullet trains are for mid-range travel. You cant make one for cross country for a number of reasons:

1. It would cost more than an airplane
2. It would take longer than an airplane
3. It would go to fast for people to enjoy the trip if the purpose of the trip was the travel itself (which most long range train travel is).

So comparing Japan to the US, when Japan is longer than California, and comparable to the east coast, actually shows how modeling our system after theirs may actually be a SMART thing to do.

 

[EagleKeeper]

While Japan may be longer than California; in contiguous land masses; it may be shorter.

They do not run high speed rail between islands

 

[DucatiMonster696]

While Japan may be longer than California; in contiguous land masses; it may be shorter.

They do not run high speed rail between islands

Square area of land mass for Japan is basically the similar to the state of Montana.

145,925 sq mi (Japan) vs 147,042 sq mi (Montana)


Being that Japan's land mass is stretched out California is used as a reference because it is assumed that most people have no clue about Montana and what it looks like or its land mass in square miles. Furthermore most of Japan's land mass on the main land is not actually accessible due to it being 70% dominated by mountains so many cities are along the coast.

 

[OutHouse]

wow i forgot about profjohn. i kinda miss his threads and the flame wars they started.

 

[chowderhead]

Do you know the cost of the highway and airport construction which is avoided by building the rail instead? With expanding population, we need more infrustucture all the time. That is a critical issue that has to be understood here. We aren't talking about just building HSR. We're talking about building HSR *instead* of other types of infrustucture. Highway and airport construction, btw, are subject to the same kinds of cost overruns as rail.

I'm not saying I favor this project. I'm saying there is a lot of debated data on its cost, its expected passenger density (demand for it), its environmental impact, and the magnitude of savings in avoided alternatives. All that stuff has to be well understood before a final verdict can be reached and unfortunately there's a lot of conflicting information out there, and not all of the confusion is from the state. Some of it comes from very partisan opposition groups.

- wolf

Highway 5 is not busy at all if you consider most people doing 80-85 mph down this stretch of road. Even if demand increases, you can just add two additional lanes. Airports currently have excess capacity especially the outlying greater LA areas such as Burbank, Ontario, Long Beach and San Jose and Oakland in the Bay Area.
The great thing about planes is that they can directed to different airports as populations shift or demand increases. With fixed trains and tracks, if populations shifts, you are stuck with fixed tracks and stations.

 

[zephyrprime]

Do you know the cost of the highway and airport construction which is avoided by building the rail instead? With expanding population, we need more infrustucture all the time. That is a critical issue that has to be understood here. We aren't talking about just building HSR. We're talking about building HSR *instead* of other types of infrustucture. Highway and airport construction, btw, are subject to the same kinds of cost overruns as rail.
- wolf

Both those things cost way the heck less than this project. The problem with this thread is that no one really understands how much $43 billion dollars is and no one has a basic familiarity with how much infrastructure costs are.

Here is an example of where they expanded LAX:
http://www.lawa.org/uploadedFiles/LAXDev/News_for_LAXDev/New TBIT 05 15.pdf

1200 additional passengers an hour. But I figure an airport is only busy for 4 hours a day and 5 days a week and the rest of the time the extra capacity is useless. That gives an increase of 1.248 million flights per year for a mere $1.5 billion dollars. If we double the costs and also include the needed expansion in SF, that would yield a cost of $6 billion for twice the capacity of this rail project or a cost of a mere $3 billion for equal capacity. $3B vs $86B (or $1.5B vs. $43B if you believe estimates). As you can see, air travel is way the heck cheaper. I'm too lazy to do the numbers for expanding the highway or additional highways but I reckon they are also much less than this project.

 

[woolfe9999]

Both those things cost way the heck less than this project. The problem with this thread is that no one really understands how much $43 billion dollars is and no one has a basic familiarity with how much infrastructure costs are.

Here is an example of where they expanded LAX:
http://www.lawa.org/uploadedFiles/LAXDev/News_for_LAXDev/New TBIT 05 15.pdf

1200 additional passengers an hour. But I figure an airport is only busy for 4 hours a day and 5 days a week and the rest of the time the extra capacity is useless. That gives an increase of 1.248 million flights per year for a mere $1.5 billion dollars. If we double the costs and also include the needed expansion in SF, that would yield a cost of $6 billion for twice the capacity of this rail project or a cost of a mere $3 billion for equal capacity. $3B vs $86B (or $1.5B vs. $43B if you believe estimates). As you can see, air travel is way the heck cheaper. I'm too lazy to do the numbers for expanding the highway or additional highways but I reckon they are also much less than this project.

Yeah, sorry, I'm not going to trust back of the napkin calculations from internet posters. The issue has been studied by experts coming to pretty divergent conclusions. Not a one has placed the avoided cost anywhere near that low. Not even the ones produced by partisan opposition groups.