
Only 31% of California voters want to keep paying for bullet train - gok
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-usc-poll-bullet-train-20180525-story.html
======
rayiner
This is the upper middle class robbing poor people. The projected fare would
be $86 per ticket, about triple the cost of driving for a family of four. The
people who are going to pay that are upper middle class travelers and business
travelers. Which would be fine if the project was paying for itself, but it
won’t be. It’ll be state subsidies for high income professionals. That money
could be doing so much good (schools, public transit for lower income people,
etc.).

For example, the $100+ billion this will eventually cost could create a fund
that would perpetually pay (with inflation increases) about $1,200 to every
low-income K-12 student in the State.

~~~
ebikelaw
No, the upper-middle-class robbing the poor has been the history of our
highway system, which you can't use without owning a car and paying ~
$0.55/mile to operate it. We have shoveled hundreds of billions of dollars of
subsidies down the throat of the automobile culture and we did not get a
functioning transportation system from doing so. We got a massively
regressive, barely functional system and all of its attendant externalities in
the form of health problems for those living near the roads, and end-of-
civilization CO2 pollution problems for people living everywhere.

The cost of HSR suddenly sounds so much more reasonable if you frame it in
terms of the road budget. HSR's all-in cost for right-of-way, tracks,
stations, and trains is about four years worth of California's current road
budget.

~~~
rayiner
That's completely divorced from reality. Even poor people own cars! 80% of
people in poverty have access to a vehicle.[1] $0.55/mile is about $120 for an
LA to SF trip. For a family of four, this train is $350. Which one do you
think a low-income family is going to take to visit relatives for Christmas?

In any case, poor people who don't own cars rely on busses and subways--which
this boondoggle does nothing for.

[1] $77 billion would also create a perpetual fund that would be able to buy a
$10,000 used car for every household in poverty every 5 years.

~~~
ebikelaw
That's cherry-picking a favorable example for the car. It's always better to
take your car when you fill it up with people, compared to other modes that
charge per person. It's true locally - always cheaper to drive from Oakland to
San Francisco vs. four round-trip BART tickets - and it's true regionally -
cheaper to drive the whole family than to fly, if you don't value your time.
Of course both of those assume that you can afford the car and that the car
you can afford will survive the trip.

Anyway, your last sentence is wrong. Much of the money under the HSR project
is going to local transportation projects. So far they have spent or committed
seven billion dollars for Caltrain, BART, Muni, Sacramento RT, Capitol
Corridor, ACE, LA Metro, Metrolink, San Diego Blue Line, and Coaster, among
others.

~~~
rayiner
It's a highly relevant example. What are the reasons a lower-income person
might travel from LA to SF? Traveling to visit family is probably the primary
reason.

You can see this play out with the Acela on the east coast. It's almost all
business travelers or nicely dressed professional looking people. People who
can't afford $100+ per ticket take the bus ($35).

Likewise, even lower income people traveling alone aren't going to spend $86
for a ticket on HSR (if it's not more like $100+ by the time it's finally
open). They'll pay $35 for a Bolt bus.

~~~
ebikelaw
Speaking of disconnected from reality, you seem to be claiming that poor
people travel, which they don't. In yet another example of American
inequality, the bottom income quartile of families are quite stationary; they
can neither afford to move about nor do they have "days off" as such because
an American is not legally entitled to any.

The supermajority of American families cannot even afford an unexpected $500
expense; they sure as hell aren't going to blow hundreds to drive to LA.

~~~
jessaustin
'rayiner seems to have argued you in a circle here. He is the one claiming the
poor aren't going to ride this train; you hardly contradict him when you argue
they aren't going to use cheaper transportation either.

~~~
ebikelaw
Not at all. He hasn't addressed my point which is that for individuals
travelling alone the train will be dramatically cheaper than driving over long
distances.

~~~
tptacek
You haven't come close to establishing that either. Bus fare from SF to LA is
less than half that train ticket price.

------
jhpriestley
I think this is a very misleading headline. 49 percent support the high speed
rail project in this poll, based on a neutrally worded question. The 31%
figure comes from a leading question that starts with "The latest estimates
for California’s high-speed rail project are that it will cost up to $77
billion dollars and will be finished in 2033. This estimate is nearly twice as
much as the original estimated cost."

The full survey is here
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g5uibGxcEuknURkZZvT4Ah4Q9-I...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g5uibGxcEuknURkZZvT4Ah4Q9-IvalVz/view)

~~~
casefields
Totally misleading to be up front about expanding costs. No one has to right
to know what the taxpayer could be on the hook for...

~~~
IshKebab
It's a classic loaded question technique. Emphasise the bad things before
asking the question. This is pretty obvious.

Do you think they would have got the same result if it was worded "A high
speed train will reduce journey times by X%, reduce congestion by Y% on the
roads and reduce CO2 pollution by Z%. Do you think we should build one?"

------
jiggliemon
When you sell voters the sizzle and not the steak; this disillusion is just a
matter of time.

It was sold on an impossible premise; \- Minimum 200 miles per hour (320 km/h)
where conditions permit \- Maximum travel time between SF and LA not to exceed
2 hr 40 min \- Financially self-sustaining (operation and maintenance costs
fully covered by revenue)

A flight to SF is 1.5hrs from LA (take off and landing). And only costs $150
round trip. If you could reduce the hassle of “security” you have a better,
faster, cheaper high speed transit system.

It was supposed to cost $30b. It will cost north of $90b. And it will still
need to be subsidized. And it will be slower than 2hr 40min.

If you could possibly deliver what was sold - I’m sure the polling would
reflect that. But what the people are getting is a shadow of what they
approved.

~~~
gok
The SF/LA route has an even bigger problem: once you get to LA, then what?
There's not really enough transit in the LA area to get where you actually
mean to go, and that's almost certain to be true even if all the current
transit projects finish. The Bay Area frankly isn't much better. You'll very
likely to need to take a car (maybe an autonomous one) from the end points.
And given that, flying seems even better. There are 3 big SFBA airports and 5
in the LA metro area; direct flights between those are more likely to get you
closer to your endpoints.

The more legitimate case for CAHSR is really opening up the middle of the
state. But that could have been done much cheaper.

------
jboles
Killing it would be short-sighted. If it gets killed, there would probably
never be the opportunity to build it ever again. California is flush with tech
money, put some of it to good use.

~~~
Agustus
Killing it would be far sighted. Technology is improving transportation
methods, we have buses and planes that can do the same thing as this train at
much cheaper rates and without tax dollars to construct or maintain.

~~~
ebikelaw
There is no bus or plane that can do anything like what HSR can do. That's the
entire point of the project. It will triple the capacity of our north-south
transportation system at a fraction of the cost of equivalent airport
capacity.

This is something that people don't understand when they haven't travelled
enough to experience good rail systems. Rail has massive capacity, 100k people
per hour per track direction. That's 500 lanes of theoretical freeway
capacity, or 1000 lanes under realistic operating conditions, and it's more
than the total capacity between all Bay Area and all L.A.-area airports, even
if you operated that route solely with widebody jets, which we don't.

~~~
DrScump

      100k people per hour per track direction
    

Your source for this statistic?

~~~
mmt
I don't have any primary sources offhand, but the closest thing I last looked
at was
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_rail)
which has a number of 25k/h for light rail (pretty low speed, single-deck,
presumably short trains).

I'd say 4x that amount for a full-sized HSR train is credible. It's just that
that's a _maximum_. I don't believe that ridership will _ever_ be high enough
to approach that number, unless air travel is outlawed.

~~~
IshKebab
> I don't believe that ridership will ever be high enough to approach that
> number

Trains in the rush hour in the UK are pretty much always full, with people
standing up. The tube at rush hour looks like this:

[https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-
public/thumbnails/image/2...](https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-
public/thumbnails/image/2016/05/06/15/tube.jpg?w968h681)

If it's not too expensive or infrequent I imagine it will be very popular.

~~~
mmt
> Trains in the rush hour

Especially given the picture you provide, I think you're talking about intra-
urban rail (subway, metro, even suburban commuter).

That's a far cry from a 350-mile, 3-hour inter-city link.

Show me the picture for the London-Edinburgh "rush hour".

~~~
IshKebab
Done:
[https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article158562.ece/ALTE...](https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article158562.ece/ALTERNATES/s810/a-busy-
train-carriage-from-southend-to-liverpool-pic-jk-press-781702887.jpg)

Southend to Liverpool is 3-4 hours on the train.

~~~
DrScump
How close does it get to the stated _25,000 passengers per hour_ throughput
metric?

~~~
mmt
Keep in mind that's for light rail, only 1/4 of what the commenter claimed for
HSR.

With 3 occupants per vehicle, 4 freeway lanes could carry 25k, not as
outlandish-sounding as 25.

------
marcell
The cost argument is always interesting to me, when you consider it in
context. We (in America) recently passed a tax cut that will cost around
$150B/year for the next 10 years, and likely more if the temporary parts are
made permanent. Even with cost overruns, that's almost enough to pay for 2
California bullet trains PER YEAR for the next decade.

And yes, I know California is just 1 state out of 50, but even still, it just
seems like people have really bad context on what is / is not an outrageous
cost for government.

~~~
rayiner
The tax cut is at least money back in peoples’ pockets. This is a huge subsidy
that’ll benefit a tiny fraction of people who need to routinely travel between
LA and SF, and can afford to spend $86 doing so (probably over $100 when it
finally opens, its gone up a lot already).

~~~
vvanders
> The tax cut is at least money back in peoples’ pockets.

s/people/corporation

~~~
exclusiv
It's quite nice for small business too.

------
zcbenz
From Wikipedia:

"In July 2014 The World Bank reported that the per kilometer cost of
California's high-speed rail system was $56 million, more than double the
average cost of $17–21 million per km of high speed rail in China and more
than the $25–39 million per km average for similar projects in Europe."

"As of May 2015, both construction packages awarded have come in significantly
under staff estimates."

"In December 2016, an internal-use-only draft risk assessment produced by the
Federal Railroad Administration was delivered to the California Rail Authority
which warned that the ICS (Merced-Bakersfield) segment could cost as much as
$9.5 billion instead of the $6.4 billion originally budgeted"

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-
Speed_Rail](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail)

------
johnbatch
Link to the Methodology and Survey:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g5uibGxcEuknURkZZvT4Ah4Q9-I...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g5uibGxcEuknURkZZvT4Ah4Q9-IvalVz/view?usp=sharing)

Question 26 is the headline.

Question 25 is In general, do you [oppose] or [support] California’s project
to build a high-speed rail system connecting Los Angeles, the Central Valley,
and San Francisco?

Strongly/somewhat Support =49 Strongly/somewhat Oppose = 43

Cross Tabs break these question down by race, education, political party, age,
region, etc:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p1sIIQSUED6MwcGxVYcImDAsn7e...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p1sIIQSUED6MwcGxVYcImDAsn7e-nY-E/view?usp=sharing)

------
d4l3k
Key graphic: [https://www.trbimg.com/img-5b0779e9/turbine/la-pol-g-ca-
usc-...](https://www.trbimg.com/img-5b0779e9/turbine/la-pol-g-ca-usc-poll-
bullet-train_web_2/)

31% for, 48% against, 19% undecided for all Californian voters.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Also worth noting the huge disparity between Bay Area voters (overwhelmingly
FOR continuing the project) vs. LA voters (this is an LA Times article).

~~~
jessaustin
Is LA Times against it because LA residents are, or are LA residents against
it because LA Times is?

~~~
ubernostrum
People think of California as one of the bluest blue states, but it's very far
from homogeneous. The LA metro area, for example, contains several affluent
and strongly Republican communities, which means that if you poll
educated/affluent/traditional-news-reading people in that area you're going to
get results that lean more conservative than what people often expect (and
Republicans/conservatives in the US are generally against public transit and
public-works projects).

You can get the same thing in the Bay area if you poll in the right places.
See Atherton's lawsuits to try to stop Caltrain electrification, for example.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Politics aside, is there any more practical reason Bay Area would prefer to
have this train more than LA (e.g. people in Bay Area visit LA more often than
people in LA visit Bay Area)?

~~~
ubernostrum
SFO and LAX send a lot of traffic to each other (each one is the other's top
domestic destination), and there doesn't seem to be a directional preference:

[https://www.transtats.bts.gov/airports.asp?pn=1&Airport=LAX&...](https://www.transtats.bts.gov/airports.asp?pn=1&Airport=LAX&carrier=FACTS)

[https://www.transtats.bts.gov/airports.asp?pn=1&Airport=SFO&...](https://www.transtats.bts.gov/airports.asp?pn=1&Airport=SFO&carrier=FACTS)

There may be a practical argument that the HSR would make it easier to commute
to SF from further away, which might relieve housing pressure a bit.

But I really do think it mostly comes down to politics, and to there being
more people in the SF area whose politics lean toward public transit/public
works than in the LA area.

------
melling
How does China build 14,000 miles of high-speed rail, with another 10,000 on
the way, while the United States essentially has zero miles?

Countries are the same size.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
speed_rail_in_China#/me...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
speed_rail_in_China#/media/File%3ARail_map_of_PRC.svg)

Their cheaper and more efficient infrastructure is could to pay dividends over
the next few decades.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Disregard of labor regulations and property rights, as well as cheap labor.

~~~
casefields
tl;dr [https://ibb.co/iEPiao](https://ibb.co/iEPiao)

------
consto
This website is blocked in Europe.

~~~
jdavis703
Ask your representatives in parliament to consider implementing less
internationally expansive laws or use a VPN.

~~~
hadrien01
Ask your newspapers in the U.S. to consider respecting user privacy.

~~~
AndrewGaspar
The easiest and cheapest answer is the status-quo, which is ambiguity on
whether you're compliant with GDPR, so it's completely logical they would just
block access.

------
Apes
Let's call it the monkey defense. If you don't like something the majority
supports, scream and fling as much shit at it for as long as possible until no
one is left that can bear the stench or the spectacle. Then claim you were
right about it being a failure all along.

~~~
AndrewBissell
The people who said this would be a massive boondoggle and voted against the
bond in the first place _were_ right all along.

~~~
jessaustin
_Every_ big public project is a massive boondoggle. Should we just stop doing
things?

~~~
basementcat
The Golden Gate Bridge was finished ahead of schedule and under budget.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
Maybe, but the Bay Bridge wasn't, and they were built around the same time.
[http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/entry/dont-
forget-...](http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/entry/dont-forget-the-
bay-bridge-project-was-a-boondoggle)

~~~
jessaustin
That link discusses the renovation of the eastern section that took place
since 2000? Hardly comparable to the original construction of either bridge...

------
mistrial9
many hidden assumptions and divisions here.. \- Bay Area / Sacramento area
voters versus LA versus who \- the traffic and pollution of cars fits many
individuals just fine, and the ability to think and act in larger groups is
rarer than one might think \- every govt project has cost problems, why is
this different

Trains with modern power sources seem like a really good idea; the rest is
project management.

~~~
DrScump

      Trains with modern power sources seem like a really good idea
    

Tell BART that. Their new Antioch extension will be _diesel powered_.

------
upofadown
Normally the majority will not support a public transportation project simply
because the majority can not use it.

------
clishem
I flagged this article is geoblocked in Europe.

------
nedwin
Can you imagine if you put every public infrastructure project to a vote?

~~~
ebikelaw
We did put this to a vote and it passed.

