
A $100B Train: The Future of California or a Boondoggle? - gok
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/us/california-high-speed-rail.html
======
yostrovs
"Beginning construction without all of the financing in place represents a
strategic gamble by the rail authority, and by Mr. Brown, that once enough
work is completed, future leaders will be loath to walk away from the project
and leave a landscape of unfinished pillars, viaducts, bridges and track beds.
Faced with reduced resources, the authority has altered its plans, and is now
focused on finishing a 119-mile stretch of track from Bakersfield to Madera by
2022."

This is political blackmail. The project is now more than twice the price what
the voters approved, yet construction is continuing on disconnected bits in
the easy to build flatness of Central Valley, all to make sure the
construction companies and their workers have something to do. What about the
environmental impact if the train is never finished? What about moving people
out of the way? What about having ugly concrete columns stand for decades
within a beautiful region doing nothing? Jobs, jobs, jobs, and money is the
answer.

~~~
geezerjay
> What about the environmental impact if the train is never finished?

And what about the environmental impact of not building it and instead
insisting in expanding highways with a dozen of lanes perpetually gridlocked
by countless gas guzzlers?

~~~
yostrovs
My "what if" question was about a train line that is never finished. An
unfinished train line doesn't carry trains and doesn't move passengers. It
doesn't decongest highways of traffic either. Its role will probably be only
as a monument to a certain type of politics.

On a side note, it's really hard to argue against people's limitless
imaginations.

~~~
yostrovs
Now that I think about it using my endless imagination, the concrete pillars
may serve as platforms for contemporary art installations. When that becomes
reality, the politicians in California will be patting themselves on the back
about how they turned lemons into lemonade, creating the world's largest
sculpture garden. Roads will have to be built to reach the sculptures so the
citizens can view them. Holes will probably be drilled into the concrete
columns to provide a habitat for native birds and falcons will build nests on
top. It may be a win for the environment, who knows?

------
ojosilva
There isn't anything in the article about the "product-market fit" of
California's speed rail, which I'm not familiar with: who and what are the use
cases for the rail?

In Spain, with 2000 miles worth and another 1200 under construction (making it
second only to China in total length[1]), a few of the lines goals were to
enable high speed daily _commutes_ from way outside the city limits. It works,
at least to some extent, with people from cities up to 150 miles from Madrid
commuting in and out daily in 30 - 50 min. Same happens in Japan, afaik. This
really opens up densely populated cities with scarce/expensive housing,
reducing inflationary pressures that often threaten to damage the local
economy.

To me improving the effective housing radius of large metro areas is the
crucial ROI any government should be pursuing, be it with rail, hyperloop...

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-
speed_railway_lin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-
speed_railway_lines#Overview)

~~~
yostrovs
The California rail links cities together. Here's the map:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Cahsr_ma...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Cahsr_map.svg)

There are a few stops near San Francisco and Los Angeles, but those areas
would be better served through improving existing commuter rail, which is slow
and has many other issues that limit its usage.

------
thescriptkiddie
The Republicans are doing everything in their power to sabotage this project.
They couldn't convince the people to vote against it, so now they're going to
knock it all down like a child that doesn't want to share their toys. Nobody
wins.

~~~
yostrovs
But what the voters were convinced of isn't what is going to happen. That's
the work of politicians who know how to do their jobs right.

------
Shivetya
Even the LA Times warned about this back in March[1]. The problem with many
big government projects is that politicians love to cut ribbons and build
legacies. Even the routes the projects follow are more determined by political
needs than real needs. So even when costs explode it takes changes in the top
levels of government to reign projects in or even cancel them.

When initially announced many critics stated that the costs would be double if
not more and were constantly mocked. However it cannot be ignored that it is
not just the cost to build that is important but maintenance will be in the
billions. Just the rail systems many cities use across the US have deferred
maintenance totaling over one hundred billion dollars combined.

With regards to nations who truly have a lot of established high speed rail,
while the average Japanese traveler will have nearly two thousand miles of
rail travel only about twenty percent is across high speed rail. When it comes
to freight less than fiver percent moves by rail in Japan with the rest by
highway and other. In the US over a third of all freight moves by rail versus
less than a quarter by road.

tl;dr Politicians love their legacies and reality has little input. heavy rail
systems are incredibly expensive to build out and maintain

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-
train-c...](http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-
increase-20180309-story.html)

~~~
melling
You’d think the United States could break into the top 20 high-speed rail.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-
speed_railway_l...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-
speed_railway_lines)

China is up to almost 16,000 miles of track.

The fact that we’re incapable of building projects like this more affordably
must be hurting our economy.

~~~
yostrovs
Well, in America almost everyone has a car and there's a road system that will
take you anywhere you want to go. Americans don't like public transport
overall, for reasons such as privacy, being able to play your music over the
speakers, not having to smell the person next to you, having an interior you
choose, taking the route you choose, being able to stop at Wendy's when you
want, leaving to go and coming back on your own time rather than the
train's... This list is much longer in reality. Plus there are planes for long
distance which are already cheaper to fly San Francisco to LA than the ticket
on the yet to be built train.

~~~
CaptainZapp
_Americans don 't like public transport overall_

That, and probably the unwillingness to fund public infrastructure projects
with tax money. Which, unfortunately, is inevitable with projects of such
magnitude.

 _Well, in America almost everyone has a car and there 's a road system that
will take you anywhere you want to go_

That's not different than any European country, which offers high speed rail
(or a dense, interconnected rail system where HSR is not really viable, like
Switzerland).

If anything and in my experience roads are usually better maintained in
Europe. But that's probably the same problem. Maintenance costs (tax) money
and that seems to be a dirty word to a lot of Americans.

~~~
yostrovs
You're wrong about car ownership in Europe vs U.S.

In America there's basically 1 car per person, in Europe there's one car per
two persons.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita)

The statistics come from different sources and times, but that's what I have
to work with and I don't think the true numbers are much different from this.

It's also important to note that the culture in America is quite different in
Europe regarding personal space, freedom to drive endlessly and on your own
time, and having the place to do these things. Europeans are used to adjusting
themselves to the train's schedule, leaving the party because the last train
is coming, standing on the platform and waiting for it to arrive, and
cancelling plans when the train drivers union decides to go on strike. These
things frustrate an American, and that is because cars have been around for
about 100 years in America and people have come to expect the freedoms that
cars bring them.

~~~
HillaryBriss
> ... people have come to expect the freedoms that cars bring them

this idea has some truth, but ... with higher population densities and
traffic, the amount of freedom a private car offers diminishes significantly.

if the rules of the road were changed in California -- if taxes, fees,
insurance and fuel costs went high enough, if metered lanes on freeways
charged enough, individual car ownership would become much less desirable,
even to Americans.

people, even US people, would adapt and the whole system might finally be
arranged so that commuters could arrive at work on a reliable time schedule.

~~~
yostrovs
Again, hard to argue against wild speculation. The train is being built within
our current reality and people's desires are part of that reality. Arguably,
the freedom that cars provide is an incredibly powerful and beneficial thing
for the happiness of Americans.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I'm not speculating about this: I and thousands of daily commuters have
noticed that driving a car on the Hollywood freeway in rush hour does not feel
like an experience of freedom.

At least some of those commuters find the Metro red line to downtown, which
runs on a fairly reliable schedule, arrives more quickly and does feel like an
experience of freedom, by comparison.

Another non speculative observation: at least some Americans who move to NYC
find that selling their car is a liberating experience.

Also, not having a car, is, in some ways a way to gain some freedom: insurance
and maintenance burdens decrease, time and effort to park the vehicle are
eliminated, etc

