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

[chowderhead]

Musk's hyperloop is highly speculative. Since he can't be bothered to push it forward I don't really take it seriously and many of the experts say it will end up costing a hell of a lot more than he said. I generally have respect for his achievements with Tesla and SpaceX but this is vaporware.

The money cannot be used on local transit. If CA gives up on HSR the money goes away.

There has been interest for many years to connect LA with Vegas via HSR. The most current plan moving forward planned a terminus in Victorville but now it is probable that it will extend to Palmdale to connect with HSR directly. Funding is of course the hurdle here as well. Cost is supposed to be in the neighborhood of $6B with $1-2B coming from private sources and the rest FRA loans. The application for loans was put on hold as they have to meet Buy American requirements. Thinking is that they'll be back after CAHSR or Amtrak starts placing orders for trainsets.

Elon Musk has a better track record than Caltrans and Parson Brinckerhoff, designers of the Big Dig and this project.

They have already broken many of the requirements that VOTERS voted on such as time from SF to Los Angeles, getting PRIVATE investment i.e. 1/3 of the funding from each California, Federal funding and Private investment and now blended use of tracks. They should give it to Musk and let him develop it. Spend the rest of the money on more worthwhile projects that will help a lot more people in their daily commutes. This is a subsidy to business travelers and a boondoggle.

 

[theeedude]

The problem is Republicans are no longer the "let's do it cheaper and more efficiently" bean counter party, which would be useful. They are now the "let's not do anything" party, which is less than useless.

 

[K1052]

Holy crap would that train be great. First, a good portion of that trip is through desert wasteland so I would think (hope!) the land would be cheap. Second, the traffic on the 15 between LA and Vegas is absolutely apocalyptic on Fridays and Sundays.

One major hurdle does come to mind though, the fact that the train would have extremely high demand on Friday-Sunday and probably quite low demand on Monday-Thursday. Not sure what that would do to the viability.

If they end up sharing rolling stock with CAHSR it should be pretty manageable to shift based on demand. I kind of think this is what they're waiting for, also their pricing will be lower if they can tag along after CAHSR buys trainsets.

 

[K1052]

Elon Musk has a better track record than Caltrans and Parson Brinckerhoff, designers of the Big Dig and this project.

They have already broken many of the requirements that VOTERS voted on such as time from SF to Los Angeles, getting PRIVATE investment i.e. 1/3 of the funding from each California, Federal funding and Private investment and now blended use of tracks. They should give it to Musk and let him develop it. Spend the rest of the money on more worthwhile projects that will help a lot more people in their daily commutes. This is a subsidy to business travelers and a boondoggle.

PB has been sold a couple times since Boston and is now in the hands of WSP Global. I'm not really concerned with their inclusion under design-build criteria.

Now that CA is going to leverage cap and trade revenue for HSR I think they'll be able to attract private investment. Probably Asia.

Again, you cannot legally send the HSR money to local projects.

 

[Screech]

Can't have solar power, haven't you heard of Solyndra?
Freeways are so 20th century, so are airports.
And universities are 17th century technology.

Not sure if srs, but I suppose I shouldn't sidetrack this thread any longer

.....going to vegas on a train sounds nice

 

[Darwin333]

In raw productivity we've certainly increased, but we now have a lot more obstacles. It isn't just environmental concerns, it's also safety and union regs and purely regulatory issues. Road construction has a LOT more people standing around at any one time, waiting on some inspector or some specialized trade to finish one small task. Tennessee DOT regulations for example require the pavers to be on the job site all day any paving day, even though they might actually work only one or two hours at the end of the day. Thus pavers must price eight hours instead of the one or two they'll be working, and even though they can pave more per hour than half a century ago, their cost per unit has still risen considerably. Union regulations require a separate guy to carry a welder's gear or move a truck, and such regulations are usually written into government contracts. OSHA regulations require onerous procedures (and documentation) that are designed to keep even the dimmest bulb safe under any imaginable circumstances, even though the circumstance driving the regulation might be vanishingly rare and the regulations are sometimes counter-productive as you pointed out. All these things add up.

I would really like to know the name of the dumb asshole that thought the bolded bullshit was a good idea. I'm all for safer workplaces and I'm all for regs that make sense but that is just flat out retarded.

My guess is that the biggest factor is labor, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Go back to when the interstate system was built or the really magnificent infrastructure was built and you'll find dirt cheap labor rates with the vast majority of workers earning a laborer's wages. Today laborers earn far more and we have tons of specialists who earn much, much more. Push that back to, say, 1913 and you'll find the specialists and managers much more rare and earning much less. Push it farther back and you'll find the same effect, so that in the Middle Ages a highly skilled journeyman mason would be earning perhaps 150% to 200% of a laborer's wages, and a laborer was among the poorest of the regularly employed. That labor premium makes everything more expensive. I say that's not necessarily a bad thing because high wages for skilled labor are an important part of a prosperous middle class. One could build an interstate highway much more cheaply in Vietnam or Nigeria than in America, yet we don't see much immigration into those countries.

Makes a lot of sense, I guess I just never put all of them together before.

So basically our days of building really big, awe inspiring, infrastructure are pretty much over with or at least significantly reduced in size, scope and execution? That is kind of depressing.

 

[marincounty]

Not sure if srs, but I suppose I shouldn't sidetrack this thread any longer

.....going to vegas on a train sounds nice

Screw that. Nevada is a parasite state living off of California . Notice how badly Nevada is doing since California opened Indian casinos.
Why would any California taxpayer want to support a train to nowhere, I mean Nevada?

 

[chowderhead]

PB has been sold a couple times since Boston and is now in the hands of WSP Global. I'm not really concerned with their inclusion under design-build criteria.

Now that CA is going to leverage cap and trade revenue for HSR I think they'll be able to attract private investment. Probably Asia.

Again, you cannot legally send the HSR money to local projects.

Again, the CHSRA has already ignored many of the stipulations written into Prop 1A such as what I mentioned. Take the bond money and extend BART to San Jose. Take the money and make a HSR from Las Vegas to Los Angeles as proof of concept and demand. If there is a lot of demand and it is successful, GREAT. But some of the locations (previously planned and current) of the stops are ridiculous.

 

[Screech]

Screw that. Nevada is a parasite state living off of California . Notice how badly Nevada is doing since California opened Indian casinos.
Why would any California taxpayer want to support a train to nowhere, I mean Nevada?

Oh nobody wants to pay for it, obviously, that's why people vote for the train and skip reading the part about funding it! ;D

 

[theeedude]

Not sure if srs, but I suppose I shouldn't sidetrack this thread any longer

.....going to vegas on a train sounds nice

Vegas is so 20th century.

 

[Screech]

Let's be realistic, getting on a plane when wasted isn't much fun, a train is easier to handle

ok, I'm done with this thread

 

[K1052]

Again, the CHSRA has already ignored many of the stipulations written into Prop 1A such as what I mentioned. Take the bond money and extend BART to San Jose. Take the money and make a HSR from Las Vegas to Los Angeles as proof of concept and demand. If there is a lot of demand and it is successful, GREAT. But some of the locations (previously planned and current) of the stops are ridiculous.

BART is already extending to San Jose. It's going to open in 2017.

You cannot legally take the money and dump it into another, totally unrelated, project without a ballot measure. It goes "poof" if you try to.

The project was never going to get approved in the first place if the Central Valley was cut out and got no stations.

 

[werepossum]

I would really like to know the name of the dumb asshole that thought the bolded bullshit was a good idea. I'm all for safer workplaces and I'm all for regs that make sense but that is just flat out retarded.

At least in Tennessee, DOT projects seem to be run mostly as jobs programs, all sorts of bullshit. In Chattanooga we had a state project repaving a couple miles of interstate, replacing the concrete dividers (about two years old) with new taller dividers, and re-striping to give a bit more room from the dividers. Was supposed to take 12-18 months. Instead, the interstate was blocked for several years. Eventually the state renegotiated and offered a $100,000 bonus if they completed the work within 12 months - which of course was three to four times the bid schedule. Just under twelve months later the contractor removed all its lane blocking and with its equipment still setting around, very publicly accepted its $100,000 bonus. Then they once again blocked lanes and went back to work. Caused such an uproar that the contractor had to voluntarily give back the bonus.

On the other hand, when Chattanooga developed the old TNT reservation into an industrial park (now home of Volkswagon and Amazon, among others) the state gave waivers to allow the city to build a road without all the bullshit. And the city built a damned nice road in roughly 1/8 the time and 1/10 the cost for the state project (and that was assuming the state project had come in on time and on budget - not a safe assumption.) If I remember correctly anyway.

Makes a lot of sense, I guess I just never put all of them together before.

So basically our days of building really big, awe inspiring, infrastructure are pretty much over with or at least significantly reduced in size, scope and execution? That is kind of depressing.

Well, probably for things like the interstate system or nationwide railroads. Bshole actually had probably the best single factor - land cost. For projects which don't require buying the equivalent of Delaware, we could still build something pretty impressive.

 

[cabri]

Screw that. Nevada is a parasite state living off of California . Notice how badly Nevada is doing since California opened Indian casinos.
Why would any California taxpayer want to support a train to nowhere, I mean Nevada?

Nevada was the one the improved I15 to allow CA to visit.
Why is I15 so crowded on weekends between LV and SoCAL - tourists
The airport has flights all the time from CA cities, including SFO - apparently Nevada does have some attraction.

Nevada went down due to the overall economic climate - not due to CA Indian casinos.

Where is CES held each year, at an Indian Casino?

CA has the porn industry - yet where are their conventions held?

Some come to gamble, some come for the experience, ambiance and entertainment.

How many overseas visitors do you see in the CA Indian Casinos?

Only the former is available at the Indican casinos

 

[theeedude]

GOP wasted enough money in Iraq to build HSR over the whole US, and got enough Americans killed and maimed to fill the jobs needed to build it.

 

[cabri]

GOP wasted enough money in Iraq to build HSR over the whole US, and got enough Americans killed and maimed to fill the jobs needed to build it.

Interesting that the Democrats also were willing to fund Iraq actions.

 

[theeedude]

Interesting that the Democrats also were willing to fund Iraq actions.

Nice deflection.

 

[glenn1]

Nice deflection.

Why, when Democrat social programs have wasted enough money to build a HSR covering the entire Earth plus maybe Mars and a few other planets?

 

[theeedude]

Why, when Democrat social programs have wasted enough money to build a HSR covering the entire Earth plus maybe Mars and a few other planets?

Social Security and Medicare? OK, then GOP should repeal them, or die trying
Democrat social programs help Americans, GOP military programs kill Americans while looking for non-existent WMDs and burn trillions of dollars with nothing to show for it. That's the difference.

 

[IGBT]

Obviously, we need to outsource this high-speed rail project to the Chinese.

not long ago they did offer to build it for free if they could have the maintenance contract. Maintenance is huge financial black hole when it comes to track / sub station / rail car maintenance. Similar to the razor blade business.

 

[cabri]

Fairly unbiased article on the ground breaking and other concerns

 

[Greenman]

The problem is Republicans are no longer the "let's do it cheaper and more efficiently" bean counter party, which would be useful. They are now the "let's not do anything" party, which is less than useless.

Lets not do anything is far and away better than "lets build a giant money pit status symbol". I'm more convinced every day that there isn't one single benefit to having HSR in California.

I used to think it would be a net positive for the state. But your very own comments have shown that even it's biggest supporters can't come up with a logic that justifies this thing.
The very best argument for HSR is that it might not cause a huge tax hike and it will save well to do people some money. While giving rich folks a gift for being rich is always nice, I think we should find one with a lower price tag.

 

[Genx87]

GOP wasted enough money in Iraq to build HSR over the whole US, and got enough Americans killed and maimed to fill the jobs needed to build it.

Democrats could had stopped funding that adventure starting after the 06 elections. Why didn't they?

I get tired of the argument by morons like you who think because we wasted money elsewhere we are supposed to waste it in new ways.

 

[theeedude]

Democrats could had stopped funding that adventure starting after the 06 elections. Why didn't they?

I get tired of the argument by morons like you who think because we wasted money elsewhere we are supposed to waste it in new ways.

Iraq War was a waste, a train is not.

 

[Genx87]

Iraq War was a waste, a train is not.

They were and are both wastes.

If you really cared about proving these HSRs can work in the United States. Why build it in California? Go to the NE corridor. A place that it has a legitimate chance at success.