8 ms·

As I see it, the price of rail tickets will be pretty high.whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this

by sand500 10y ago

As I see it, the price of rail tickets will be pretty high.whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too?

privong 10y ago
> whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too? The construction of the high-speed rail system is/will be heavily subsidized by the government. So presumably, the government will have a vested interest in keeping the train service running and will subsidize operating costs if airlines cut prices in that manner.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  > the government ... will subsidize operating costs By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    This is my big reservation about HSR even as a huge proponent of rail transit. I live in a working class area of south LA and there is huge demand here for local/regional rail and other transit. Neither LA, despite its improvements over the last decade, nor the Bay Area, have anywhere near the needed levels of regional mass transit. My big fear is that HSR will ultimately be subsidized by middle class Californians so business people and wealthy vacationers can travel between SF and LA at the expense of more regionally focused transit that has a greater impact on the lives of working/middle class people.
  - setpatchaddress 10y ago
    Taxpayers subsidize all successful transit. True of cars, true of rail.
    - twoodfin 10y ago
      The subsidies are qualitatively different: If roads had to be paid for entirely from user fees in the form of gas or mileage taxes, they could be for effective rates not much higher than fuel prices of a few years ago. Capital and maintenance. If you tried to charge passengers adequately to fund rail, the system would go into a death spiral, absent radical changes in consumer preferences.
      - lhopki01 10y ago
        Europe has significantly higher taxes on fuel yet still needs to subsidise roads from general taxes so I think if roads were properly funded it would be higher than fuel prices a few years ago. Also if both rail and roads were funded only by users then rail would be the more attractive option.
        privong 10y ago
        > Also if both rail and roads were funded only by users then rail would be the more attractive option. Can you elaborate? This is the first time I've heard this claim – I'm curious about the details.
        lhopki01 10y ago
        Cost per passenger per mile is cheaper by rail than by road. It is just much more efficient. If we then start to take into account the other costs such as pollution, land wasted on parking and wider roads, the increased area of municipal services that have to be covered because of the much lower density require for cars, and the massively increased health costs associated with a car lifestyle and trains not only are more cost efficient than cars they're an order of magnitude more cost efficient. Trains are wildly efficient, they only use energy to overcome air and rolling resistances as energy used to accelerate is put back into the system during deceleration. They can pack many more people with much higher throughput. For example Crossrail in London is designed to have 24 1500 person trains an hour on a single track.
  - privong 10y ago
    > By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. Yeah, exactly. > I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice. Yeah. And a lot of the funding for the rail project is already coming from Federal and State coffers (via taxpayer money or deficit spending), so this wealth transfer is already happening. There's at least $6 billion already allocated from Federal funding programs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Financing_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Fin...) and the Proposition 1A required Federal Funds matching the $9.95 billion approved by bonds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_1A_(2008)#Provisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_1A_(200...). I don't know if the $6 billion in stimulus money "counts" towards the $9.95 billion in matching funds, nor do I know if the funds have been fully matched.
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    > By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. Just as we subsidize operating costs for freeways, city streets, buses, subways, and virtually all other forms of transportation infrastructure.
- privong 10y ago
  Folks down-voting: I know "subsidized by the government" == "subsidized by the taxpayers". My phrasing wasn't intended as a judgment on the merits of such action, just as a possible scenario in response to the GP's question.
TYPE_FASTER 10y ago
One advantage of rail is you can put a station in the middle of a metro area, removing travel time to the airport.
- jzwinck 10y ago
  You can sometimes put an airport in the middle of a metro area as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_City_Airport https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_City_Airport London presently needs more runways and one of the serious proposals (now declined) was to build them in the Thames like the above.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Is there any reason Heathrow couldn't be moved out to the suburbs where expansion could take place to allow London to continue to be a worldwide travel hub, but then use high speed rail to connect with London proper?
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Not sure what you're saying. Heathrow is sorta in the suburbs already--about an hour tube ride--but you can get from Heathrow to Paddington in about 15 minutes by Heathrow Express (which may or may not be a good value) with another rail project underway. Certainly Heathrow isn't going to be picked up and moved.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        I must've remembered it being closer to London than it really is, sorry about that!
  - stuaxo 10y ago
    London city airport is a tiny airport, it would be terrible if this was a decent size. It's bad enough having Heathrow where it is, with all the planes over London. One good thing about the "Boris" island idea was that planes wouldn't have had to fly over London itself, which would have probably helped noise and pollution.
helthanatos 10y ago
High speed trains are much better than flights for small commutes, after the expenses are payed, it will be cheaper, it's easier to get on a train than wait hours for flights to take off. High speed rails are the future; flights are the past. Why would you not want to see this work out? Flying is quite annoying because it has constant delays, TSA, and hours of waiting in between.
- deleted 10y ago
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- ghaff 10y ago
  While I tend to agree, on the right routes, planes can easily run on an hourly shuttle schedule. As happens for some city pairs. And we're one attack away from potentially having increased security for trains.
  - k_sh 10y ago
    Delta and Southwest both run between SF and LA nearly, if not, hourly.
    - djrogers 10y ago
      Not just SFO and LAX either, you have OAK, SJC and SFO up here, and ONT, BUR, LAX, LGB, and SNA down south. There are flights between any of those combinations many many times per day, and the locations involved are often much more convenient than the HSR depots will be.
      - Sanddancer 10y ago
        The HSR depots are going to be downtown San Francisco, which is a lot more convenient than the pain in the arse SFO is, and LA Union Station, which is rapidly becoming a hub for rail lines going to Orange County, Santa Monica, Pomona, the South Bay, East LA, etc. LA Union station is rapidly becoming a rather good transit hub.
Gibbon1 10y ago
My understanding and part of why I support the high speed rail project is this. Airports in California coastal cities are near max capacity. And expansion is either very expensive[1] or near impossible. And would face even more community objections than the high speed rail project. So the airlines likely wouldn't try to compete with high speed rail. Instead they would try to attract more national and international travelers. Paradoxically to high speed rail would increase the airports area of service. Because one could then take the train + cab to the airport rather than drive 100 miles or take a puddle jumper. [1] I offhand remember, between 500 million to 2 billion _each_.
- gydfi 10y ago
  Even if the airports are near max capacity (and I think that's probably only LAX) there could be a lot more passenger-miles. Right now most SFO-LAX flights are on nothing larger than a 737 or A320, and on LAX-SJC I seem to wind up on some abominable regional jet. There's a lot of room to increase capacity by flying wide bodies if the demand exists. Compare to the SYD-MEL route, a similar distance, where you're likely to wind up on an A330 or 767.
- pm24601 10y ago
  SFO back in early 2000 was trying for a runway repositioning that was priced at $3.5 billion (http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=00-P13-00026&segmentID=2 http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=00-P13-0002...) . Mind you this was just for repositioning runways. Not increasing fair weather capacity.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    I was trying to be conservative. But yeah. Take the six or so coastal airports times a couple of billion each for expansion. And add that Bakersfield and Fresno are undeserved. That adds up to a big chunk of the money needed to build the Bay Area to LA Basin part of the project.
ngokevin 10y ago
In China, the high speed rail tickets are just about equally as expensive as flights. Though not having to go through Chinese airport security and flights are worth it. No mobile devices allowed at all during flights!
milesrout 10y ago
As I understand it, aeroplane tickets are already very low-margin.
- coredog64 10y ago
  Airlines generally have the same 3% margin that you would find in the grocery business. It has long been an aviation joke that it is easy to make a small fortune running an airline...As long as you start with a large fortune.
fulafel 10y ago
Due to climate change air travel will have to be drastically reduced (or we get problems that make California transport irrelevant).

by sand500 10y ago

As I see it, the price of rail tickets will be pretty high.whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too?

privong 10y ago

> whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too? The construction of the high-speed rail system is/will be heavily subsidized by the government. So presumably, the government will have a vested interest in keeping the train service running and will subsidize operating costs if airlines cut prices in that manner.

fennecfoxen 10y ago
> the government ... will subsidize operating costs By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice.
- Inconel 10y ago
  This is my big reservation about HSR even as a huge proponent of rail transit. I live in a working class area of south LA and there is huge demand here for local/regional rail and other transit. Neither LA, despite its improvements over the last decade, nor the Bay Area, have anywhere near the needed levels of regional mass transit. My big fear is that HSR will ultimately be subsidized by middle class Californians so business people and wealthy vacationers can travel between SF and LA at the expense of more regionally focused transit that has a greater impact on the lives of working/middle class people.
- setpatchaddress 10y ago
  Taxpayers subsidize all successful transit. True of cars, true of rail.
  - twoodfin 10y ago
    The subsidies are qualitatively different: If roads had to be paid for entirely from user fees in the form of gas or mileage taxes, they could be for effective rates not much higher than fuel prices of a few years ago. Capital and maintenance. If you tried to charge passengers adequately to fund rail, the system would go into a death spiral, absent radical changes in consumer preferences.
    - lhopki01 10y ago
      Europe has significantly higher taxes on fuel yet still needs to subsidise roads from general taxes so I think if roads were properly funded it would be higher than fuel prices a few years ago. Also if both rail and roads were funded only by users then rail would be the more attractive option.
      - privong 10y ago
        > Also if both rail and roads were funded only by users then rail would be the more attractive option. Can you elaborate? This is the first time I've heard this claim – I'm curious about the details.
        lhopki01 10y ago
        Cost per passenger per mile is cheaper by rail than by road. It is just much more efficient. If we then start to take into account the other costs such as pollution, land wasted on parking and wider roads, the increased area of municipal services that have to be covered because of the much lower density require for cars, and the massively increased health costs associated with a car lifestyle and trains not only are more cost efficient than cars they're an order of magnitude more cost efficient. Trains are wildly efficient, they only use energy to overcome air and rolling resistances as energy used to accelerate is put back into the system during deceleration. They can pack many more people with much higher throughput. For example Crossrail in London is designed to have 24 1500 person trains an hour on a single track.
- privong 10y ago
  > By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. Yeah, exactly. > I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice. Yeah. And a lot of the funding for the rail project is already coming from Federal and State coffers (via taxpayer money or deficit spending), so this wealth transfer is already happening. There's at least $6 billion already allocated from Federal funding programs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Financing_summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Fin...) and the Proposition 1A required Federal Funds matching the $9.95 billion approved by bonds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_1A_(2008)#Provisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_1A_(200...). I don't know if the $6 billion in stimulus money "counts" towards the $9.95 billion in matching funds, nor do I know if the funds have been fully matched.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  > By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. Just as we subsidize operating costs for freeways, city streets, buses, subways, and virtually all other forms of transportation infrastructure.
privong 10y ago
Folks down-voting: I know "subsidized by the government" == "subsidized by the taxpayers". My phrasing wasn't intended as a judgment on the merits of such action, just as a possible scenario in response to the GP's question.

TYPE_FASTER 10y ago

One advantage of rail is you can put a station in the middle of a metro area, removing travel time to the airport.

jzwinck 10y ago
You can sometimes put an airport in the middle of a metro area as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_City_Airport https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_City_Airport London presently needs more runways and one of the serious proposals (now declined) was to build them in the Thames like the above.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Is there any reason Heathrow couldn't be moved out to the suburbs where expansion could take place to allow London to continue to be a worldwide travel hub, but then use high speed rail to connect with London proper?
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Not sure what you're saying. Heathrow is sorta in the suburbs already--about an hour tube ride--but you can get from Heathrow to Paddington in about 15 minutes by Heathrow Express (which may or may not be a good value) with another rail project underway. Certainly Heathrow isn't going to be picked up and moved.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      I must've remembered it being closer to London than it really is, sorry about that!
- stuaxo 10y ago
  London city airport is a tiny airport, it would be terrible if this was a decent size. It's bad enough having Heathrow where it is, with all the planes over London. One good thing about the "Boris" island idea was that planes wouldn't have had to fly over London itself, which would have probably helped noise and pollution.

helthanatos 10y ago

High speed trains are much better than flights for small commutes, after the expenses are payed, it will be cheaper, it's easier to get on a train than wait hours for flights to take off. High speed rails are the future; flights are the past. Why would you not want to see this work out? Flying is quite annoying because it has constant delays, TSA, and hours of waiting in between.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ghaff 10y ago
While I tend to agree, on the right routes, planes can easily run on an hourly shuttle schedule. As happens for some city pairs. And we're one attack away from potentially having increased security for trains.
- k_sh 10y ago
  Delta and Southwest both run between SF and LA nearly, if not, hourly.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    Not just SFO and LAX either, you have OAK, SJC and SFO up here, and ONT, BUR, LAX, LGB, and SNA down south. There are flights between any of those combinations many many times per day, and the locations involved are often much more convenient than the HSR depots will be.
    - Sanddancer 10y ago
      The HSR depots are going to be downtown San Francisco, which is a lot more convenient than the pain in the arse SFO is, and LA Union Station, which is rapidly becoming a hub for rail lines going to Orange County, Santa Monica, Pomona, the South Bay, East LA, etc. LA Union station is rapidly becoming a rather good transit hub.

Gibbon1 10y ago

My understanding and part of why I support the high speed rail project is this. Airports in California coastal cities are near max capacity. And expansion is either very expensive[1] or near impossible. And would face even more community objections than the high speed rail project. So the airlines likely wouldn't try to compete with high speed rail. Instead they would try to attract more national and international travelers. Paradoxically to high speed rail would increase the airports area of service. Because one could then take the train + cab to the airport rather than drive 100 miles or take a puddle jumper. [1] I offhand remember, between 500 million to 2 billion _each_.

gydfi 10y ago
Even if the airports are near max capacity (and I think that's probably only LAX) there could be a lot more passenger-miles. Right now most SFO-LAX flights are on nothing larger than a 737 or A320, and on LAX-SJC I seem to wind up on some abominable regional jet. There's a lot of room to increase capacity by flying wide bodies if the demand exists. Compare to the SYD-MEL route, a similar distance, where you're likely to wind up on an A330 or 767.
pm24601 10y ago
SFO back in early 2000 was trying for a runway repositioning that was priced at $3.5 billion (http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=00-P13-00026&segmentID=2 http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=00-P13-0002...) . Mind you this was just for repositioning runways. Not increasing fair weather capacity.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  I was trying to be conservative. But yeah. Take the six or so coastal airports times a couple of billion each for expansion. And add that Bakersfield and Fresno are undeserved. That adds up to a big chunk of the money needed to build the Bay Area to LA Basin part of the project.

ngokevin 10y ago

In China, the high speed rail tickets are just about equally as expensive as flights. Though not having to go through Chinese airport security and flights are worth it. No mobile devices allowed at all during flights!

milesrout 10y ago

As I understand it, aeroplane tickets are already very low-margin.

coredog64 10y ago
Airlines generally have the same 3% margin that you would find in the grocery business. It has long been an aviation joke that it is easy to make a small fortune running an airline...As long as you start with a large fortune.

fulafel 10y ago

Due to climate change air travel will have to be drastically reduced (or we get problems that make California transport irrelevant).