
Work Begins on California Bullet Train, Locals Angry - protomyth
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/opposition-rises-calif-high-speed-rail-begins-20625748?singlePage=true
======
dionidium
_The high-speed rail business plan says trains will run between the greater
Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area by 2029._

By comparison, it took about 7 years in the mid 19th century to build the
nearly-2000-mile First Transcontinental Railroad [0].

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad)

~~~
Anechoic
_By comparison, it took about 7 years in the mid 19th century to build the
nearly-2000-mile First Transcontinental Railroad_

It's amazing what you can do when a) the government grants you the land [1]),
b) you can exploit a class of workers [2], and c) (as pointed out by
dredmorbius) you don't have to worry about appeasing existing property owners.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts)

[2] According to
[http://cprr.org/Museum/FAQs.html#Died](http://cprr.org/Museum/FAQs.html#Died)
100-150 Chinese workers died constructing the 1907-mile transcontinental
railroad which corresponds to 12-19 worker deaths per mile. The CA HSR project
is 800 miles in length, at TCRR fatality rate, CA HSR would be expected to
lose 42 to 67 workers during the life of construction which would not be
tolerated. There are also inequities in pay, etc to consider. I couldn't find
non-fatal injury numbers

~~~
001sky
_It 's amazing what you can do when..._

This misses the point that a trans-continenatl railroad was _< actually a good
idea>_. It was the latter point that allowed for the footnotes in your snark
answer to even be relevant. A train from 2 hours outside LA to 2 hours outside
SF is not doing any CA taxpayers any favours, regardless of its speed. [1]

[1]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/St...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/StatewideRailMod_BubbleMap_013013.jpg/463px-
StatewideRailMod_BubbleMap_013013.jpg)

~~~
Anechoic
_A train from 2 hours outside LA to 2 hours outside SF is not doing any CA
taxpayers any favours_

Good think no one (who isn't named "Elon Musk" that is) is talking about
building a high-speed transportation system that doesn't go into the heart of
SF or LA.

As for what you refer to as "snark" \- it's the cold reality of capital
projects in the modern age. Governments and companies can't just ram projects
through the countryside with little regard to abutters the environment, and
workers as they did in the olden days. There are welfare and environmental
requirements that must be met and they tend to slow things down. That's
reality.

~~~
001sky
You might not be from California, but Merced to San Fernando valley is a
pointless commute. Their is no need for high-speed rail in the 5 corridor. The
5 Fwy is "high-speed" and the corridor is both straight and sparseley
populated. The benefit of HSR is only in plowing through the "last mile" (in
actuality, the last hour).

Look at London's linnk to pairs with Eurotunnel. That is a successful HSR
because it drops into Waterloo. If it dropped into Heathrow/Gatwick/Cambridge
or something else two hours away, it wouldn't be nearly as useful. It would be
a more interesting project to see an HSR from Berkeley to Palo Alto or SF to
Monterey, or something that actualy opened up new areas to one another. Right
now the Bay Area is hamstrung by these types of regional bottlenecks, which
the HSR is not going to solve.

I don't disagree with you on the fact that these bottlenecks exist for the
reasons your mention. But that is also my point: there is no consensus on
them, so special interests are able to leverage legitimate differences of
opinion. The eralier example of trans-continental was exactly the opposite.
The consesnsus and political will was so strong, all barriers were basically
steamrolled out of the way (legal, ethical, etc).

------
angersock
Taking the interviewed at face value, we find a really solid argument for why
people are miserable at long-term planning. "Wah wah wah my bidness wah wah
wah the traffic during construction." Fuck it, let'em suffer--except that that
66 year old will be dead and rotted just as the next generation really can use
that new rail.

~~~
kevingadd
God forbid someone want to be paid the fair market value for their property
instead of having it eminent domained by the state... how whiny. It's like
people believe they have a right to the things they worked decades to
purchase!

~~~
angersock
So, that's cool and all, but the fact remains that you are going to have to
inconvenience _somebody_ whenever building over land. The fact that they even
mentioned political wrangling causing trains to have to merge into the same
cities and whatnot and in turn making the whole thing not a high-speed rail
and a boondoggle is pretty unfortunate.

I watched an immensely useful project in my own town get hosed the same way--
light rail expansion running east-west along the north side of the inner loop
in Houston (along Richmond). The fact that a few shop owners bitched enough
caused the thing to be put on hold, and thus a few SMBs fucked it up for the
4th largest city in the US.

Similarly, major road repairs take so long because they can't just shut down a
road and fix it all in one fell swoop--they instead have to carefully start
and stop work in little stubby sections, and deal with the overhead (and
danger!) of angry drivers zooming by work sites.

Guess what? These happy little SMBs? They don't understand or care about civic
matters, and will gleefully fuck over everyone else in their city to try and
make an extra few bucks. Fuck. Them.

------
savvyraccoon
Angry? This [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/19/us-italy-
demonstra...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/19/us-italy-
demonstration-idUSBRE99I06B20131019) angry!

~~~
jotm
A job and a house are basic rights? Well, they should be, but really never
were, what the hell is that guy smoking...

~~~
mieses
I don't see where anyone wrote that a job, house, or spouse should be basic
rights.

------
maak
These are unfortunate casualties of progress, but the benefits far outweigh
the inconvenience.

Europe has been well linked by rail for how long now? Com on USA, it's time to
catch up.

------
jotm
The worst kind of job creation... although if it ends up being a 2-3 decades
project with a total cost north of $300 billion, then those workers are set
for life :-)

~~~
jonomw
If this project follows the same track record for other construction in this
state, then this is more than likely.

------
VLM
Three important points are missed in the article.

1) There's absolutely nothing train specific. My elderly grandmother's house
was in the line of fire for a state highway redesign for about a decade, until
they FINALLY decided on a route that didn't pass thru her house. Although the
article only calls out delays in train construction its more of a generic "DOT
is slow" story. I'm quite sure if they were building irrigation canals or dirt
roads they'd still cause confusion and delay for a good part of a decade.
There is probably a startup idea revolving around investing... Informally
people know the DOT overpays so there were offers to pay 20% over prevailing
prices on the goal of making instant 20% profit if the DOT selected that
route... diversification, etc. There should be some way to create a REIT or
social network or matching service for people who like to speculate like this.
I don't think thehousingbubbleblog.com is quite the real estate social network
they're looking for LOL, although it would probably be extremely informative
for them.

2) The article claims its necessary because of a population of 46 million. Why
does a population need transit, if they don't have jobs? Luckily the project
will create hundreds of temp jobs. I'm sure that will be wonderful for
increasing sales of $1M houses. I'm not sure the optimism is well placed. The
big city I live in built a rather elaborate interstate freeway spur in the 50s
to handle the obvious massive growth predicted, just in time for white flight
to cut city population by about 25%, and recently was unable to afford to
simply maintain the spur so they got fed funds to demolish it and replace with
surface roads, the PR campaign was all "new urbanism" BS but fundamentally
they were too poor after decline to maintain it. Its kind of an empty slum
area about a decade after the demolition. The point of this anecdote is to
point out that investing enormous amounts of money using a "build it and they
will come" strategy is not necessarily wise. With startups you can scale in
the cloud, doesn't work so well with real estate. In 1970 high speed rail in
CA would have been brilliant before all the growth... now that the peak is
past and decline has started, why build for growth now? Put that train track
in Austin, or Colorado, or Madison, or ... well pretty much anywhere else? The
startup lesson here is obvious, if dogfood delivery over the internet was the
place to be in early 2000, in 2013 finally getting around to building your
dream dog food delivery website isn't exactly forward thinking.

3) Depending on local levels of corruption, the only story you can tell about
eminent domain is moral / ethical or implications of corruption, because the
DOT usually reimburses people locally about 50% above prevailing prices
usually with a secrecy clause. I've met several people who have done very well
financially via eminent domain. The whiny restaurateurs in the article must
rent their space... A 150% offer windfall in a field where biz failure is the
norm is not to be ignored. I believe this is the "startup" connection, where
if someone offers you millions or billions for something worth far less, you'd
be an idiot not to take the deal or to complain about it.

------
notatoad
TL;TR summary: NIMBY

------
adamb_
tl;dr: People being relocated because of the track's construction are annoyed.
Elon Musk and his hyperloop are never mentioned.

~~~
maak
The hyperloop is just a concept. I don't see how it is relevant to this
article.

~~~
adamb_
For many readers, especially internationally, the high speed rail in
California is only relavent because of the hyperloop concept, which has been
discussed at length on HN.

------
mieses
The Antiplanner is a great blog that questions whether rail makes any sense at
all.

[http://ti.org/antiplanner/](http://ti.org/antiplanner/)

