
California bullet train cost surges by $2.8B - protomyth
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-overrun-20180116-story.html
======
slapshot
There is high speed transit from San Francisco to Los Angeles today. It's
called Southwest Airlines. Tickets are $45 for SFO-LAX each way in February
right now (less than the expected cost of the train ticket). Other pairs (OAK-
BUR, SJC-BUR) are similar ($49-$57 each way).

Before you say that it's ridiculous, consider how else $64 billion (current
official estimated total construction cost of the project -- not counting
operating cost)[0] could be spent:

\- Commercial air travel costs around $0.10 per passenger-mile if you buy in
bulk[1]. That means $64 billion could buy 640 billion passenger-miles of air
travel. If allocated to the 11 million people who live in Los Angeles and San
Francisco counties, the state could buy each resident 58,000 air miles of
travel -- equivalent to about 88 round-trips between LAX and SFO.

\- If the LAX-SFO air corridor becomes too busy, that $64 billion could also
be spent upgrading existing fleets by buying 147 brand new A380s at an average
list price of $435 million each. [2]

\- If the environmental impact is a concern (not that laying tracks and
punching holes through the Central Valley is free of impact), then buy new
Teslas instead. Lots of them. At $35,000 per Model 3, you could buy 1.8
million new Teslas using that money. Add some solar panels to each purchase
and you could still buy more than a million -- more than enough for every San
Franciscan to get a brand new Tesla.

[0] [https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/13/confidential-
report-c...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/13/confidential-report-
california-bullet-train-could-cost-billions-more-than-expected/)

[1] [http://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series-
air...](http://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series-aircraft-
operating-expenses/)

[2] [http://www.airbus.com/content/dam/corporate-
topics/publicati...](http://www.airbus.com/content/dam/corporate-
topics/publications/backgrounders/Backgrounder-Airbus-Commercial-Aircraf-
price-list-EN.pdf)

(Edit: added citation for $64 billion official estimate)

~~~
themagician
I do SFO to LAX, SNA, SAN weekly. It is not really fast and you are
highlighting a special rate. Tickets easily go for $150 depending on the day,
time, etc.

First, you have to deal with the security boondoggle. Add 30 minutes for that,
because you never know what you are going to get.

Because of how SFO was built and the fact that they can't use both runways
simultaneously with even a hint of bad weather, good luck leaving on time. Pad
at least 30 minutes to your destination arrival time to be safe (but I've had
plenty of early morning flights get delayed an hour or two waiting for fog to
lift).

And then when you get into LAX… good luck getting out. Add an hour just to get
out of the airport traffic. Unless you want to go north, you are better off
flying into SNA… but tickets into SNA cost $175.

On a good day you can do it in 3 hours. On a bad day it's 6. The cost is
$50-$200, and it's always a stressful and shitty experience.

I just recently took the Amtrak all the way down. I took 12 hours and cost $93
for a business class ticket. Yeah, it took forever. But it was really
pleasant. It just takes forever. It be nice to have something in-between.

~~~
cfallin
> [Amtrak] was really pleasant. It just takes forever.

Absolutely -- IMHO for mid-distance (200 mi to 500 mi or so) trips, Amtrak is
a really underrated option. I travel semi-often from Pittsburgh to NYC (450
mi) and choose train over flights because it's actually not _that_ much slower
(consider to/from airport, security, and (de)boarding, as you say) and it's
much more comfortable: I can walk up and down the whole train, with no fasten-
seatbelt sign to stop me; there's a cafe car; I have about 2 feet of legroom;
there is reliable AC power and functional wifi. I just make it a work-from-
train day and all's well.

~~~
jachee
Having just moved to PGH, I had wondered about the viability and comfort of
riding the rails for a weekend trip to the Big Apple. This is encouraging
news.

~~~
tallblondeguy
Another Pittsburgher here endorsing the Pennsylvanian! From PGH to NYP, it
runs from 7:30 AM to 4:50 PM, which is a workday plus lunch and a nap. Really
nice. It's longer than it should be; you take those turnpike tunnels for
granted until you're in a train and you have to navigate the mountains.

If you want to spice it up, check out Southern Airways Express[0]. You can fly
between Pittsburgh and Lancaster for as little as $30 on a tiny little
8-to-10-seat plane, which is a really unique and scenic experience. Catch a
ride to the Lancaster Amtrak where there are a lot more options for getting to
NYC.

I've done Megabus and Greyhound on return trips. You get what you pay for. But
if you happen to live in the North Hills, the bus depot for Megabus is in Ohio
Township and if you ask nicely they'll let you ride up there.

[0]: [https://iflysouthern.com/](https://iflysouthern.com/)

------
rayiner
Worst case scenario? Plenty of time for costs to exceed even these projections
by the time the initial segment is due to be completed in 2025.

The $6 billion price tag was ridiculous. That's as much as the D.C. Metro
Silver Line cost, and that was only 22 miles long. This HSR segment is 119
miles long. Yeah, it's probably cheaper to build through the Central Valley
rather than the D.C. exurbs, but that much cheaper?

~~~
pacificmint
> The $6 billion price tag was ridiculous.

I looked up construction costs for European high speed rail lines earlier. The
best estimate I could find state costs between 12 - 40 million euros per
kilometer.

For the 119 miles of this train, that lands you between 2.3 to 5.7 billion
euros. So the $6 billion doesn't sound that unreasonable.

~~~
rayiner
It costs us 5-7x as much as Europe per mile to build rail:
[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-
subw...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-
construction-costs.html). That article addresses tunnels, but there is no
reason to expect it would be different for above ground rail. Indeed, it could
be worse. The eminent domain and environmental review problems that plague our
system are worse for an above ground project.

~~~
kbart
Subway!=ground rail. The former is _vastly_ more expensive. Brand new, two
line high-speed ground rail costs 10-30 millions €/km[0], while the cost of
underground kilometer typically is 200-300 millions €/km in Europe and
sometimes up to _billions_ in USA[1].

0\. [https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-construct-
a-k...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-construct-a-kilometer-
of-railway-track-in-Europe) 1\. [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new-york-second-avenue-subway-phase-2)

~~~
rayiner
OP suggested that the HSR budget was realistic if we looked at the per mile
cost of European high speed rail. My point is that if it costs us 5-7x as much
as Europe to build subway, it’s unrealistic to expect we can build above
ground rail for the same price as Europe.

------
jandrese
According to the article pretty much everybody else in this project said that
it's going to cost $10B, and only the guy in charge was still living in the
fantasy land where it could be done for $6B.

~~~
niftich
Yeah, the cognitive dissonance is only among the leadership of the project
here. Big projects like this are chronically underbudgeted (or "optimistically
budgeted"), and leadership always jumps through various mental hoops to
attribute cost overruns to unforeseen factors, where more than half of the
factors were easily foreseen by commentators.

That being said, I sympathize with the nigh-impossible pressures here: it's
difficult to convince an entire, diverse state to contribute funds to a
project that will take a long time to come to fruition, and whose benefits
will be broad, but marginal, across a variety of metrics. So there's a
pressure to deliver an ambitious project at prices that are scarcely
realistic. Being able to lead this does invite a certain amount of cognitive
dissonance; in the famous words of Upton Sinclair, "it is difficult to get a
man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not
understanding it".

~~~
dmitrygr
So far no evidence has been shown for these "broad" benefits.

~~~
bobbygoodlatte
Yeah exactly. Considering in many cases a plane ticket from SF to LA will cost
less and get you there faster, the high speed rail project makes little sense

~~~
dionidium
Trains are better than planes along several dimensions, if done right. "Why
would I take the train when I could fly for the same price?" isn't a very good
question. The answer is that (again, when done correctly):

\- Trains are generally more comfortable

\- Trains allow you to use your cell phone

\- Trains can take you from city center to city center

\- Trains don't have the same security requirements

\- Trains are safer

\- Trains are cheaper to operate (and so should actually be cheaper in the
long run)

Planes are better over very long distances. But trains are better for regional
travel.

~~~
carlivar
Are trains safer? I am not sure the statistics support that.

~~~
dionidium
You are right. Sorry about that one.

------
marcell
Some food for thought: Congress just passed a tax cut bill costing $1.5
trillion over ten years, or $150 billion. That's enough to build a California
HSR _ever year_ for the next ten years, accounting for 50% budget overrun, and
still have $500 billion or so left over.

~~~
gfodor
It's a peeve of mine when analysts refer to a tax cut "costing" the government
money. This is a deliberate dishonest re-framing (not your invention, but I
blame those who invented it as trying to mislead people.) One could equally
frame is as the taxpayers "recovering" $1.5 trillion that would have normally
been taken from them. A better framing is "is expected to reduce tax revenues
by XXX amount."

Not to mention that projecting tax cut "losses" is a game of prediction
anyway. Taking that projection, and then backing out "how many HSRs will we
have saved" makes even less sense than taking the projection itself as gospel,
because the HSR is also a projection, and also paid out over time, and also
subject to inflation, etc etc.

IOW this kind of analysis has the surface qualities of pointing out an
interesting comparison but I don't feel it's conveying anything meaningful.

~~~
wwweston
>This is a deliberate dishonest re-framing

"Dishonest" is a massive overstatement at best.

It's completely reasonable to state that the government has lost $1.5 trillion
in revenue, no matter what frame you choose. "Cost" would be one way to refer
to that. I suppose I can imagine someone nitpicking that "cost" should refer
to only expenditures, but that's an uphill battle against colloquial speech
and even some formal usage (an opportunity _cost_ is not an expenditure).

The general argument that taxation itself is theft is stronger than the
argument that reduced revenue is only referred to as a cost dishonestly. And
that's not saying much.

> Not to mention that projecting tax cut "losses" is a game of prediction
> anyway.

IIRC, the $1.5 trillion figure is among other things the prediction of the
legislators who created the policy when playing by the required legislative
rules.

~~~
shard972
> It's completely reasonable to state that the government has lost $1.5
> trillion in revenue

Unless you don't really believe the state owns that money.

------
product50
I think the state just needs to gulp the costs here. There are a few large
bets which every state should make every decade to make landmark progress. For
California, having this bullet train will be it. No matter what happens,
California needs to build this infra to help easier transportation and leisure
travel for generations to come. The cost equation will seem peanuts in
comparison to the benefits offers for multiple decades thereafter.

Otherwise, we won't even know where this $64B went.

~~~
vondur
I’m going to guess the one way price when completed is going to be more than
an airline flight.

~~~
jxramos
I'll place my bets tonight for 2X the fare.

~~~
caseysoftware
The only upside will (briefly) be not having to deal with the TSA and showing
up ~2 hours before the flight. Unfortunately, the TSA is making an appearance
in local metro and train systems more and more, so I expect them to show up
pretty quickly.

Then we'll have an grossly underestimated project with higher than "expected"
costs with high ticket prices and no tangible benefits over the alternative -
and likely faster - mode of travel.

And odds are, the system upgrades will need to start immediately so the
ongoing maintenance will not be significantly cheaper than construction.

Yay?

~~~
bsimpson
The Transbay Terminal is in a lot more convenient location than SFO. Lyft to-
and-from the airport adds $60 to your fare.

Also, I don't know what the price model will be. In Italy, for instance, you
buy a ticket reflecting the route you want to take and you can get on any
train you want. Miss the 4:05? Take the 4:25. I wouldn't be surprised if this
was similarly flexible. Most airlines, on the other hand, charge change fees
unless you are a frequent flyer.

------
gok
The California HSR makes sense if you consider it not a railroad but a jobs
program for eminent domain and environmental lawyers.

------
upofadown
>Hill said the cost increases were mainly driven by problems including higher
costs for land acquisition, issues in relocating utility systems, the need for
safety barriers where the bullet trains would operate near freight lines and
demands by stakeholders for the mitigation of myriad issues.

There could of been an entire article written about these issues. Instead we
got a bunch of stuff about politics. What's the point of writing an article
about problems with a major infrastructure project without any discussion of
the problems?

------
foota
I'm constantly struck by how much we're willing to spend on military costs but
not willing to shell out on infrastructure.

~~~
chii
If only an Infrastructure Industrial Complex could be established...

~~~
adventured
There are small ones within each major state. They keep costs insanely high
for basic maintenance and also keep repair times extremely slow, versus
comparables in Europe or Japan. Just compare how well the roads crews do in
California versus Germany, it's night and day. California roads are an
embarrassment at 4x the cost of German roads.

~~~
mschuster91
> Just compare how well the roads crews do in California versus Germany, it's
> night and day.

Well as a German I can say that most road workplaces aren't even worked at
during the day - you need to be lucky to see a worker there, and heaven forbid
working on weekends or during night. In addition it's _rare_ that politicians
have the guts to say "okay we close $Autobahn totally for a year instead of
having a 2-to-3 years halfway usable Autobahn", even though this mode of work
is way more efficient. Something like the 48-hour sinkhole repair in
Fukuoka/Japan or the Russians repaving a whole massive street in a single day
([https://sploid.gizmodo.com/watch-a-huge-swarm-of-machines-
pa...](https://sploid.gizmodo.com/watch-a-huge-swarm-of-machines-pave-a-road-
in-russia-1784417285)) would be unthinkable in Germany.

------
FreakyT
From the article, it sounds like the biggest obstacles are "land buys" and
"delays relating to land buys".

We need to strengthen eminent domain for transit projects so that we don't end
up wasting tons of money appeasing corrupt landowners trying to hit the
jackpot.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
No, eminent domain is already a questionable practice of screwing over the
individual in the name of the collective. The state should never be able to
simply co-opt private ownership just for "reasons".

~~~
beat
I hate this argument. "Property", as in land ownership, does not exist outside
of the State. You "own" land only by the consent of society. Conceptually,
land ownership is inseparable from the State.

~~~
Helmet
I don't understand how an American can manage this thought. It runs in the
face of every stated ideal and philosophical underpinning of this dear
republic. I'll refer you to the concept of natural rights, Locke, Paine, the
Deceleration of the Independence, the Bill of Rights and the rest of the
Constitution, and the entirety of classical liberal philosophy.

~~~
beat
I don't buy the idea of "natural rights" in general. That doesn't mean I think
constitutional democracy is a bad idea. It's just a good idea for different
reasons.

Believing that the concept of owning property is inseparable from a government
that defines property and resolves property disputes doesn't make me un-
American. Sheesh.

~~~
taurath
The argument is absurd, because anyone more powerful than you can and will
take your property by force unless you have the backing of a society.

------
rconti
The worst-case scenario has not yet happened. We can't call it that until it's
actually built and we know how much it REALLY cost.

------
melling
Big items in the United States are incredibly expensive to build. Nuclear
reactors, high-speed rail, etc.

China, for example, has almost 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, and they're on
target 23,000 miles by 2025. They are going to finish another 2000 miles in
2018:

[http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2126548/full-...](http://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2126548/full-
speed-ahead-chinas-fast-rail-network-us112-billion)

China has hit been hit with delays in nuclear power, but they are nearing
completion of their first AP1000 reactors:

[http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/UF-Chinese-plant-
produces-...](http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/UF-Chinese-plant-produces-
AP1000-reload-assemblies-0801175.html)

~~~
gok
It's easy to build infrastructure when labor costs are around $3/hour, eminent
domain payment can't be litigated, and environmental impact studies are
effectively not required.

~~~
pishpash
What you say is true, but there is also this: political certainty to get
something done once decided.

~~~
kelnos
Sure, when you only have one political party and your government is
authoritarian, that's pretty much a given.

------
austenallred
The most predictable worst case scenario of all time.

I’ll be shocked if it comes in under $15B.

~~~
jandrese
The article says the cost is ballooning from $6B to probably $10B.

~~~
mrpippy
And that's _just_ for 119 miles of track in the Central Valley. How much will
it cost once they get to populated areas?

~~~
sputknick
In the article it says the cost for the entire project is currently $64 B. I
can't fathom that kind of money

~~~
QAPereo
Think of it this way... we’re going to end up spending about $7 trillion in
Iraq and Afghanistan having accomplished essentially nothing good.

$64billion is a rounding error for our government.

~~~
BRAlNlAC
That doesn't really work though. If you earn 70k a year, $640 isn't a rounding
error, that's still a significant part of your budget.

~~~
QAPereo
Yeah, but we’re not talking about total budget, not even the total _military_
budget; that’s $7 trilllion _just_ on two losing wars. You need to lose
another decimal place, and remember that you also print your own money and can
levy taxes.

------
curtis
I can't help but think that the California bullet train is solving the wrong
problem. How much would it cost to extend BART into the Central Valley? And
for that matter, extend BART all the way around San Francisco Bay? And can you
do that for less than 60 billion dollars? And what kind of ridership could
such a system attract?

~~~
niftich
A lot.

It's also not a good use of money, as BART has an unusual track gauge, strange
engineering decisions, and is operationally and mechanically incompatible with
other commonly deployed rail systems. Not to mention, even with BART
fulfilling a strange role between an in-city rapid transit and far-exurb
commuter rail, extending lines further out from the operating core comes with
issues around trainset supply and capacity allocations in congested areas,
like the Oakland Wye, the Mission Street Subway, or the Transbay Tube. It's
far more likely to "extend" fringes of the system with other modes that can
then operate independently, like the eBART [1], ACE, or the Capitol Corridor,
or even a bus line.

Extending the BART entirely around the western side of the bay won't happen,
disproportionately due to the city of Atherton [2]. It's also silly,
considering Caltrain fulfills a very similar role in transit to what BART
would bring to the table, along the identical corridor.

I once wrote [3][4] about why the geography of the current transit options in
the Bay are unfortunate, and single mode of transit completing the entire
circle would do little to alleviate the problem that so much of transit around
the Bay is already around this circle.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eBART](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eBART)
[2]
[http://sfist.com/2016/07/11/atherton_wealthy_will_still_mayb...](http://sfist.com/2016/07/11/atherton_wealthy_will_still_maybe_t.php)
[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12282756#12283335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12282756#12283335)
[4]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277421#14278045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14277421#14278045)

------
0xCMP
"Moving forward, he said, the authority will not start construction on future
segments until all the land is in hand, a practice that outside experts have
long said is prudent project management."

Seems like they believed their own optimistic outlooks.

------
lewis500
I wish that voters and leaders could’ve seen a menu of policy options when
they approved this. I think they wouldn’t have gone in for such an
irreversible project.

For example, electric bus technology has been getting better and cheaper and
seems will continue to get better in the future. So for all the money we’ll be
spending on this throughout the 2020’s, we could’ve been converting buses,
where practical, to electric. And if electric buses don’t work that well (few
US models have yet been in operation for a long time), we can always just
upgrade many thousands of regular buses to cleaner and more comfortable modern
models.

Incremental improvements are nice because they can be reversed and right-
sized. It seems HSR is setting the size of its budget itself, as no one wants
a half finished rail system. This wouldn’t be too bad except that there is a
risk California will face pension problems in the future. The less money we
tie up in debt now, the less chance there is for terrible cutbacks to critical
services if a recession destroys tax revenues and pension assets.

~~~
kelnos
Agreed, and to take a bit further: I don't think we should be tackling
projects of this size and scale when we don't even have good local and
regional rail stories. They are the squeakiest wheel that should get the
grease.

------
StreamBright
This is exactly the same pattern that you can observe in government projects
in Eastern Europe that we call corruption here.

------
azernik
> Moore said the surge in costs is likely to foreshadow even greater future
> increases. On the horizon are more difficult segments, such as the long
> underground passage through the Tehachapi and San Gabriel Mountains and the
> route into the urban San Francisco Bay Area.

...

> In Hill’s presentation to the board, he said intrusion barriers will cost an
> extra $450 million; land buys, $400 million, delays for not acquiring land,
> $325 million; satisfying issues raised by localities, $250 million; and
> relocating wires, pipes and cables used by utilities, $350 million.

These issues are all related to surface land acquisition and management
(except piping/cabling relocation). Hopefully tunnel boring won't come up with
new unexpected problems; they're far enough from built-up areas that there
shouldn't be too much underground infrastructure to work around.

------
dmode
We need a high speed train connection. But the Federal government should be
building such infrastructure, considering we pay 35% of our taxes to the Fed.
In most countries, the central governments builds infrastructure at this
scale.

~~~
kelnos
Most countries don't have strong states/provinces like the US does.

Regardless, part of the funding for the CA HSR project _does_ come from the US
federal government[0]. It's pretty common in the US for infra projects like
this to have multiple funding sources.

[0]
[http://www.hsr.ca.gov/About/Funding_Finance/index.html](http://www.hsr.ca.gov/About/Funding_Finance/index.html)

------
everdev
One significant downside is the way the bonds and ballot measures work. In CA,
we're asked to approve a few billion for the project in each election. Failure
to pass means sunk costs or higher costs in the future to re-start efforts.

If the state asked upfront for $2B/year for 15 years, I doubt it would have
passed.

~~~
dragonwriter
> One significant downside is the way the bonds and ballot measures work. In
> CA, we're asked to approve a few billion for the project in each election.

No, it was all Prop 1A in 2008 for ~$10 billion. Voters have not been asked
for additional CA HSR bond funds since.

Presumably, given the level of other funding that has been secured, additional
bonds will at some point be necessary, but the “every election” thing is not
even remotely related to reality.

~~~
djrogers
$10B will likely end up being 10% of the total cost. Not to mention all of the
Prop 1A mandates that the state has already violated, such as the requirement
for private partnership, and ridiculous ridership estimates...

------
1024core
> The repayment of the existing bonds will cost about $18 billion in principal
> and interest over the next 30 years, money that is coming out of the state
> highway improvement fund.

Great. Not only is this thing a waste of money, it's also sucking the air out
of existing projects. Fuck this shit.

------
starpilot
China will have nationwide hyperloop before this thing gets built.

~~~
kelnos
I guess that's one of the "benefits" of an authoritarian government: you just
tell people what's going to happen, and they either agree, are ignored, or get
fined or jailed.

~~~
nullnilvoid
And the people love the bullet train very much. As a matter of fact, the
bullet train is making profits. [http://www.rediff.com/business/report/pix-
beijing-shanghai-b...](http://www.rediff.com/business/report/pix-beijing-
shanghai-bullet-train-worlds-most-profitable-high-speed-rail/20160720.htm)

------
Uhhrrr
Why are they wasting cycles buying land and dealing with right-of-way and
safety issues? They could just buy 100,000 shipping containers for $2M (50,000
each way), stick them together, seal them up, and sink them off the coast.

------
outside1234
My objection to the bullet train is that we could get many more people much
more effectively to work/home with local transit, which largely doesn't exist,
than with this boondoggle out in the central valley.

------
baxtr
Any infrastructure project. Always. Wherever.

------
ttn
Never been to California, using motorcycle as main transportation is not a
perfect solution there?

------
baron816
How is this train going to be useful again?

------
surlyadopter
Lol at anybody who is surprised by this event.

------
randyrand
I wish they instead built more airports within each city linked by short high
speed rail lines. LAX is overcrowded and getting to it is a nightmare in any
traffic (which is most the time). The traffic within the airport drop off
circle is also ridiculous.

Imagine an LAX2 and LAX3 in different parts of the city with short high speed
links between them.

Airports cost (only) about $10 billion to make. And each could be smaller with
probably only 1 runway. [https://www.quora.com/How-much-would-it-cost-to-
build-an-air...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-would-it-cost-to-build-an-
airport).

~~~
guelo
Airports are very loud. No one likes living near one.

~~~
pkulak
Plus, multiple airports close to each other must be a traffic control
nightmare.

