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There are also a lot of rather substantial engineering issues that have to be overcome in California that the train in China didn't have to consider. For exampl

There are also a lot of rather substantial engineering issues that have to be overcome in California that the train in China didn't have to consider. For example, the high speed train in California also has to cross notoriously rugged mountain ranges. The Diablo Range has a smattering of two-lane roads winding through it because it's so difficult to build through the gnarled hills. In the south, the Sierra Pelona and Tehachapi ranges almost caused California to be split in two separate before some rather remarkable feats in roadbuilding connected the two halves of the state. As such, there is an immense amount of planning, engineering studies, etc that need to take place before construction can start. Additionally, there's a huge political element. A vocal minority of people have done everything they can to try to keep the project from taking off for various reasons. As such, there have been a rather insane amount of lawsuits filed which divert money to lawyers and time that would better be served by actually putting shovels in the ground. There are people who want it to fail for the sake of failing, because they want to bang their "government doesn't work drum" to the detriment of the taxpayers who are stuck paying for lawyers to fight their silliness.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
Switzerland tunneled through the alps for $12B. The issue isn't engineering. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  That's a single 35 mile tunnel, in a comparably geographically stable area. The high speed rail project would need essentially two of those, each of which would need to cross the San Andreas fault. Additionally, a substantial amount of the remaining amount of track would need to be newly laid, because the existing rail infrastructure in the area is already near capacity, and the freight companies are hostile to any sort of improvements to passenger infrastructure. Yes, some of the issue is political, but it is an immensely challenging engineering problem to work through.
  - billions 10y ago
    Relative to past engineering challenges, this represents a drop in the bucket. There is sufficient precedent to be able to emulate existing solutions for all portions of the track. Compare that to engineering accomplishments of the 20th century that had to be designed from scratch: the Itaipu dam, Panama canal or the US highway system.
    - trome 10y ago
      Damn, way to demean someone's work. Just cause a similarly impressive feat of engineering was recently completed doesn't mean building twice more in a much different environment, with multiple active fault lines and through varied soil/types of rock is going to be smooth sailing. After the Army Corps of Engineers built the Panama Canal in 1914, it was not all smooth sailing to build the Chittenden Locks in Seattle, between dropping the lake 10ft, reversing the course of/eliminating multiple rivers and streams and dealing with the fallout of that it was and still is quite an engineering marvel.
- intransigent 10y ago
  Political quagmires like this only get untangled by terrifying psychos, unfortunately. People only shut their mouths when they get threatened into a fearful silence, and/or sometimes if they get bribed enough. Otherwise, you'll always have a substantially sized group of complainers dragging down a project this big, and the complainers leech into operations and mysterious expensive mistakes erode the budget of an already expensive operation. There's just enough shrug factor here for people to not care about how much gas they burn driving to places that might not be very exciting to begin with. Many would just as soon not have to travel at all, and even more would prefer to not be taxed so as to pay for trips they personally don't want to take to begin with. Most people just want their actual lives to be generally easier. Without confrontational intimidation, bribery is probably the only other political lever to press in the United States.
- akiselev 10y ago
  The issue isn't engineering, it's the cost and amount of labor. It can be significantly cheaper to tunnel through a mountain range in an almost straight line than to build on top of one. Once you've started digging into the mountain, you just keep digging and building the tunnel. Barring any maintenance and additional surveys, there is little interruption and the overhead costs can be amortized over the entire length. You will have to swap out drilling equipment as you hit different types and densities of rock but you can often go miles without doing so. To build on top of a mountain range, there is a smaller overhead cost to survey, do an engineering/environmental study, cut earth, and lay down road but you literally have to pay that overhead for every few hundred feet because as the terrain changes, the equipment and other infrastructure you require also changes drastically. To build a highway you have to have strong ground to build on, which is why US freeways largely bob and weave all over the place instead of just going in a straight line, and civil engineers avoid weak ground where soil stabilization will be most expensive. On mountain roads, not only are the options for soil stabilization limited to very labor intensive methods, but you also often have no choice but to take a bad (expensive) route because you have to design safe turns and gradients. The problem isn't that the engineering is harder, there's just a lot more of it to do. Also, United States property rights are pretty unique as far as Western countries go. To build a tunnel you'd have to get the mineral rights from every single property owner in your path whereas in most European countries, mineral rights are owned by the government. If you're going to compare a Swiss tunnel to any US road projects, you have to account for the massive differences in legal fees and land acquisition because whether you build above or below ground in the US, you have to deal with the property rights of private owners and all of the extra safety/environmental/etc regulations that come as a consequence.
  - wycx 10y ago
    I do not think US mineral rights are much of an issue. Australia has similar, or perhaps worse problems with high cost intercity high speed rail. Every time a Sydney to Melbourne fast train is investigated, cost estimates are among the highest in the world per kilometer, without the challenging geography of California. I suspect some form of rent seeking (or likely multiple layers of rent seeking) is part of the problem.
scentedmeat 10y ago
While I agree that comparing China to California in terms of large scale engineering works is comparing apples to oranges (guess which is which). I disagree (kind of) on the following: > There are also a lot of rather substantial engineering issues that have to be overcome in California Japan is a mountainous, earthquake prone country, and they seem to have figured it out. The biggest problem geography-wise is probably all the NIMBY complaints. To be fair, they are really loud trains that would kill property values, and the complaints are valid. I think thats where a lot of those lawsuits are coming from.
- timr 10y ago
  "Japan is a mountainous, earthquake prone country, and they seem to have figured it out." Japan's high-speed trains also cost a hell of a lot more than the OP is talking about. The Chuo Shinkansen will cost around $51 billion for a 286km train (i.e. half the distance from SF to LA). The Hokuriku Shinkansen was much cheaper, but still 10x more expensive ($18 billion) than the Chinese line. [1] Both make the LA-SF line look reasonable, if not exactly cheap. I generally agree that the SF-LA line is too expensive, but the OP's reasoning is just completely wrong. India and China are cheaper because everything in India and China is cheaper than the US. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-cost-differences-between-Maglev-and-conventional-high-speed-rail https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-cost-differences-between-...
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    The Chuo Shinkansen is a very special kind of expensive, since something like 80% of that 268 km is going to be tunnels they have to drill. It works well to illustrate the point that you need some more nuance to compare costs.
    - timr 10y ago
      Yes, granted. But again, the Hokuriku line was "normal", and was still 10x the cost of the Chinese line. The point of citing both was definitely to show that you can have a pretty large variance in costs, even if you're the world expert in building these things in earthquake-prone areas.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

Switzerland tunneled through the alps for $12B. The issue isn't engineering. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

Sanddancer 10y ago
That's a single 35 mile tunnel, in a comparably geographically stable area. The high speed rail project would need essentially two of those, each of which would need to cross the San Andreas fault. Additionally, a substantial amount of the remaining amount of track would need to be newly laid, because the existing rail infrastructure in the area is already near capacity, and the freight companies are hostile to any sort of improvements to passenger infrastructure. Yes, some of the issue is political, but it is an immensely challenging engineering problem to work through.
- billions 10y ago
  Relative to past engineering challenges, this represents a drop in the bucket. There is sufficient precedent to be able to emulate existing solutions for all portions of the track. Compare that to engineering accomplishments of the 20th century that had to be designed from scratch: the Itaipu dam, Panama canal or the US highway system.
  - trome 10y ago
    Damn, way to demean someone's work. Just cause a similarly impressive feat of engineering was recently completed doesn't mean building twice more in a much different environment, with multiple active fault lines and through varied soil/types of rock is going to be smooth sailing. After the Army Corps of Engineers built the Panama Canal in 1914, it was not all smooth sailing to build the Chittenden Locks in Seattle, between dropping the lake 10ft, reversing the course of/eliminating multiple rivers and streams and dealing with the fallout of that it was and still is quite an engineering marvel.
intransigent 10y ago
Political quagmires like this only get untangled by terrifying psychos, unfortunately. People only shut their mouths when they get threatened into a fearful silence, and/or sometimes if they get bribed enough. Otherwise, you'll always have a substantially sized group of complainers dragging down a project this big, and the complainers leech into operations and mysterious expensive mistakes erode the budget of an already expensive operation. There's just enough shrug factor here for people to not care about how much gas they burn driving to places that might not be very exciting to begin with. Many would just as soon not have to travel at all, and even more would prefer to not be taxed so as to pay for trips they personally don't want to take to begin with. Most people just want their actual lives to be generally easier. Without confrontational intimidation, bribery is probably the only other political lever to press in the United States.
akiselev 10y ago
The issue isn't engineering, it's the cost and amount of labor. It can be significantly cheaper to tunnel through a mountain range in an almost straight line than to build on top of one. Once you've started digging into the mountain, you just keep digging and building the tunnel. Barring any maintenance and additional surveys, there is little interruption and the overhead costs can be amortized over the entire length. You will have to swap out drilling equipment as you hit different types and densities of rock but you can often go miles without doing so. To build on top of a mountain range, there is a smaller overhead cost to survey, do an engineering/environmental study, cut earth, and lay down road but you literally have to pay that overhead for every few hundred feet because as the terrain changes, the equipment and other infrastructure you require also changes drastically. To build a highway you have to have strong ground to build on, which is why US freeways largely bob and weave all over the place instead of just going in a straight line, and civil engineers avoid weak ground where soil stabilization will be most expensive. On mountain roads, not only are the options for soil stabilization limited to very labor intensive methods, but you also often have no choice but to take a bad (expensive) route because you have to design safe turns and gradients. The problem isn't that the engineering is harder, there's just a lot more of it to do. Also, United States property rights are pretty unique as far as Western countries go. To build a tunnel you'd have to get the mineral rights from every single property owner in your path whereas in most European countries, mineral rights are owned by the government. If you're going to compare a Swiss tunnel to any US road projects, you have to account for the massive differences in legal fees and land acquisition because whether you build above or below ground in the US, you have to deal with the property rights of private owners and all of the extra safety/environmental/etc regulations that come as a consequence.
- wycx 10y ago
  I do not think US mineral rights are much of an issue. Australia has similar, or perhaps worse problems with high cost intercity high speed rail. Every time a Sydney to Melbourne fast train is investigated, cost estimates are among the highest in the world per kilometer, without the challenging geography of California. I suspect some form of rent seeking (or likely multiple layers of rent seeking) is part of the problem.

scentedmeat 10y ago

While I agree that comparing China to California in terms of large scale engineering works is comparing apples to oranges (guess which is which). I disagree (kind of) on the following: > There are also a lot of rather substantial engineering issues that have to be overcome in California Japan is a mountainous, earthquake prone country, and they seem to have figured it out. The biggest problem geography-wise is probably all the NIMBY complaints. To be fair, they are really loud trains that would kill property values, and the complaints are valid. I think thats where a lot of those lawsuits are coming from.

timr 10y ago
"Japan is a mountainous, earthquake prone country, and they seem to have figured it out." Japan's high-speed trains also cost a hell of a lot more than the OP is talking about. The Chuo Shinkansen will cost around $51 billion for a 286km train (i.e. half the distance from SF to LA). The Hokuriku Shinkansen was much cheaper, but still 10x more expensive ($18 billion) than the Chinese line. [1] Both make the LA-SF line look reasonable, if not exactly cheap. I generally agree that the SF-LA line is too expensive, but the OP's reasoning is just completely wrong. India and China are cheaper because everything in India and China is cheaper than the US. [1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-cost-differences-between-Maglev-and-conventional-high-speed-rail https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-cost-differences-between-...
- kalleboo 10y ago
  The Chuo Shinkansen is a very special kind of expensive, since something like 80% of that 268 km is going to be tunnels they have to drill. It works well to illustrate the point that you need some more nuance to compare costs.
  - timr 10y ago
    Yes, granted. But again, the Hokuriku line was "normal", and was still 10x the cost of the Chinese line. The point of citing both was definitely to show that you can have a pretty large variance in costs, even if you're the world expert in building these things in earthquake-prone areas.