11 ms·

I used to support the HSR project on the grounds that connecting the state (both LA / Bay Area and the Central Valley towns) would yield long term economic bene

by ummonk 8y ago

I used to support the HSR project on the grounds that connecting the state (both LA / Bay Area and the Central Valley towns) would yield long term economic benefits due the increased flow of people within the state. Decreasing the effective distance between people by making travel faster and cheaper has a lot of value in the information economy. Nothing beats face to face communication. I now no longer support the project due to the large price tag. I don’t believe the convenience of HSR over air travel is worth the cost of this infrastructure investment. We could get way more value out of investing in building our local public transportation and expanding the highway network. Maybe if we went back to the drawing board a reasonable HSR plan would be possible (this article certainly provides good areas of improvement). Until then, we need to stop forging ahead.

marcell 8y ago
What’s interesting to me is that the federal tax cuts passed last year cost around $150B a year. I know you may not support this either, but that would pay for the construction of 1 and a 1/2 HSR’s a year, even with the cost overrun. Reminds me of PG’s essay about how it’s easy to loss lots of money on bad investments, even for people who are normally frugal on luxuries.
- rukittenme 8y ago
  Tax rates were cut; tax revenue was not. The federal government is expecting $26 billion more in tax revenue than in 2017.
  - marcell 8y ago
    That’s a bit semantics as it’s looking at just one year, and in any case doesn’t look at the delta from the old law. Edit: IIRC the law had some incentives to onshore money at special tax rates, which may cause a one-time bump in revenues.
  - greenburger 8y ago
    That may have been the estimate, but so far receipts are not keeping pace with 2017. Depending on your reference tax year revenues are 3% - 8% lower than 2017 thus far [1]. [1] http://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-bill-did-not-cause-revenue-rise http://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-bill-did-not-cause-revenue-ris...
illvm 8y ago
There is also the environmental impact to consider. Air travel has a much larger emission profile compared to train travel, and train travel has a much larger capacity. Plus, rail station are often in the center of the city rather than on the outskirts like airports are. e.g. traveling by train from Boston to NYC vs flying is almost a wash time wise due to travel to/from the airport + buffer time for security.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Getting to the city center, though, is often problematic. You either follow the existing railroad lines, which often have tight curves, or you build your own, which involves ripping out a long path through the already-existing city.
  - rangibaby 8y ago
    if Japan can manage it America can
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      The more relevant comparison would be California specifically instead of all of America. Still, given that if California were an independent country it'd be right behind Japan in terms of GDP, if Japan can manage high-speed rail, we should be able to.
      - woolvalley 8y ago
        The issue is a large chunk of tax revenue goes to the federal govt, not the state of calfornia. That and their mismanagement of property tax and pubic pensions.
  - scatters 8y ago
    Or you tunnel. Expensive, but effective.
    - 8y ago
mc32 8y ago
Yep, same here. It's been such a boondoggle. I wish I could take back my support. It looks like sometimes you do need a Robert Moses to have a vision and force it through. Here there were too many compromises and too many cooks in the kitchen demanding things and putting their c2 in.
eloff 8y ago
For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes with 10 person capacity and 600mi range - not quite anything like that on the market yet mind you - but it seems close at hand. You could cover nearly the whole state, not just LA <--> SF, and have 330,000 person capacity. By what measure would this train be better? Certainly not economic, noise, land-use, speed, convenience, coverage, or flexibility. Probably in terms of operational costs - but not by a huge margin. And the economics change if you scale the capacity down to match the train system and invest the rest to partially cover the operating costs. And it took me 5 minutes to think of a (possibly) better plan than theirs.
- richk449 8y ago
  Very impressive. But in just three minutes, I thought of an even better plan: put a $10M wormhole between LA and SF and have near instant travel. Wormholes don’t quite exist yet, but they seem close at hand.
  - eloff 8y ago
    There was a plane featured on HN this week with those exact specs.
    - richk449 8y ago
      For sale for $3M?
      - eloff 8y ago
        Yes, but I have my doubts
        Someone 8y ago
        “aims to have one flying early next year.”, and HN is skeptical about it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18602771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18602771)
    - 8y ago
amunicio 8y ago
All big infrastructure projects are very expensive, always miss their deadlines and go way over budget; it is the nature of the beast. I'm not saying it is ok or that it could not be managed better: it could and it should. The thing is that the cost of such projects is an investments and a legacy for future generations to enjoy. Imagine if we had to build the BART or the highway system in this they and age. How much would it cost? How many buildings in highly concentrated areas will need to be taken down to make way? Do you even believe that BART was on budget or on time? Would it be any cheaper to build a high speed rail system in 10 years? In 20 years? Should we throw the towel and decide that future generations will only have the option to fly to LA or should they have to build it themselves at an even bigger price tag? I know the HSR project is going to be over budget and the ROI won't be there for my generation. But in the same way that I can commute to SF on Bart, I want future generations to have the option to travel to LA in HSR.
- peterhunt 8y ago
  There's no need for high-speed, long-distance, expensive commuter rail in today's era of high-quality, reliable, free, socially acceptable, and highly available videoconferencing solutions. Business travel is in decline for a reason!
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > There's no need for high-speed, long-distance, expensive commuter rail in today's era of high-quality, reliable, free, socially acceptable, and highly available videoconferencing solutions. That baseless assertion is so profoundly wrong at so many levels. It's like claiming that there is no need for cars just because skype is cheap.
  - ramchip 8y ago
    I’m sure my family and long-distance relationship partner will be glad to hear about this new development! (Typed from a train leaving Tokyo at 320 km/h, with beer and sandwich sold on board)
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
landryraccoon 8y ago
I think all of your arguments could have been made against BART 30 years ago as well. I'd be willing to bet that future generations will be glad we made the investment in HSR despite inefficiencies in it's construction. HSR is not only supposed to support LA and SF. Air travel is great for those cities but it doesn't do much for anything in between.
georgeecollins 8y ago
The HSR will be overpriced, but it may benefit the state for a long time. The BART train used to not go to SFO because the counties below SF did not want to pay for it. And then they did. Was it too expensive? I don't know. My grandchildren will probably be able to take BART from SF to the airport. What they would those counties spent on that would benefit my grandchildren?

by ummonk 8y ago

marcell 8y ago

What’s interesting to me is that the federal tax cuts passed last year cost around $150B a year. I know you may not support this either, but that would pay for the construction of 1 and a 1/2 HSR’s a year, even with the cost overrun. Reminds me of PG’s essay about how it’s easy to loss lots of money on bad investments, even for people who are normally frugal on luxuries.

rukittenme 8y ago
Tax rates were cut; tax revenue was not. The federal government is expecting $26 billion more in tax revenue than in 2017.
- marcell 8y ago
  That’s a bit semantics as it’s looking at just one year, and in any case doesn’t look at the delta from the old law. Edit: IIRC the law had some incentives to onshore money at special tax rates, which may cause a one-time bump in revenues.
- greenburger 8y ago
  That may have been the estimate, but so far receipts are not keeping pace with 2017. Depending on your reference tax year revenues are 3% - 8% lower than 2017 thus far [1]. [1] http://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-bill-did-not-cause-revenue-rise http://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-bill-did-not-cause-revenue-ris...

illvm 8y ago

There is also the environmental impact to consider. Air travel has a much larger emission profile compared to train travel, and train travel has a much larger capacity. Plus, rail station are often in the center of the city rather than on the outskirts like airports are. e.g. traveling by train from Boston to NYC vs flying is almost a wash time wise due to travel to/from the airport + buffer time for security.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Getting to the city center, though, is often problematic. You either follow the existing railroad lines, which often have tight curves, or you build your own, which involves ripping out a long path through the already-existing city.
- rangibaby 8y ago
  if Japan can manage it America can
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    The more relevant comparison would be California specifically instead of all of America. Still, given that if California were an independent country it'd be right behind Japan in terms of GDP, if Japan can manage high-speed rail, we should be able to.
    - woolvalley 8y ago
      The issue is a large chunk of tax revenue goes to the federal govt, not the state of calfornia. That and their mismanagement of property tax and pubic pensions.
- scatters 8y ago
  Or you tunnel. Expensive, but effective.
  - 8y ago

mc32 8y ago

Yep, same here. It's been such a boondoggle. I wish I could take back my support. It looks like sometimes you do need a Robert Moses to have a vision and force it through. Here there were too many compromises and too many cooks in the kitchen demanding things and putting their c2 in.

eloff 8y ago

For $100B you could buy ~33,000 $3M-dollar electric commuter planes with 10 person capacity and 600mi range - not quite anything like that on the market yet mind you - but it seems close at hand. You could cover nearly the whole state, not just LA <--> SF, and have 330,000 person capacity. By what measure would this train be better? Certainly not economic, noise, land-use, speed, convenience, coverage, or flexibility. Probably in terms of operational costs - but not by a huge margin. And the economics change if you scale the capacity down to match the train system and invest the rest to partially cover the operating costs. And it took me 5 minutes to think of a (possibly) better plan than theirs.

richk449 8y ago
Very impressive. But in just three minutes, I thought of an even better plan: put a $10M wormhole between LA and SF and have near instant travel. Wormholes don’t quite exist yet, but they seem close at hand.
- eloff 8y ago
  There was a plane featured on HN this week with those exact specs.
  - richk449 8y ago
    For sale for $3M?
    - eloff 8y ago
      Yes, but I have my doubts
      - Someone 8y ago
        “aims to have one flying early next year.”, and HN is skeptical about it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18602771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18602771)
  - 8y ago

amunicio 8y ago

All big infrastructure projects are very expensive, always miss their deadlines and go way over budget; it is the nature of the beast. I'm not saying it is ok or that it could not be managed better: it could and it should. The thing is that the cost of such projects is an investments and a legacy for future generations to enjoy. Imagine if we had to build the BART or the highway system in this they and age. How much would it cost? How many buildings in highly concentrated areas will need to be taken down to make way? Do you even believe that BART was on budget or on time? Would it be any cheaper to build a high speed rail system in 10 years? In 20 years? Should we throw the towel and decide that future generations will only have the option to fly to LA or should they have to build it themselves at an even bigger price tag? I know the HSR project is going to be over budget and the ROI won't be there for my generation. But in the same way that I can commute to SF on Bart, I want future generations to have the option to travel to LA in HSR.

peterhunt 8y ago
There's no need for high-speed, long-distance, expensive commuter rail in today's era of high-quality, reliable, free, socially acceptable, and highly available videoconferencing solutions. Business travel is in decline for a reason!
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > There's no need for high-speed, long-distance, expensive commuter rail in today's era of high-quality, reliable, free, socially acceptable, and highly available videoconferencing solutions. That baseless assertion is so profoundly wrong at so many levels. It's like claiming that there is no need for cars just because skype is cheap.
- ramchip 8y ago
  I’m sure my family and long-distance relationship partner will be glad to hear about this new development! (Typed from a train leaving Tokyo at 320 km/h, with beer and sandwich sold on board)
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago

landryraccoon 8y ago

I think all of your arguments could have been made against BART 30 years ago as well. I'd be willing to bet that future generations will be glad we made the investment in HSR despite inefficiencies in it's construction. HSR is not only supposed to support LA and SF. Air travel is great for those cities but it doesn't do much for anything in between.

georgeecollins 8y ago

The HSR will be overpriced, but it may benefit the state for a long time. The BART train used to not go to SFO because the counties below SF did not want to pay for it. And then they did. Was it too expensive? I don't know. My grandchildren will probably be able to take BART from SF to the airport. What they would those counties spent on that would benefit my grandchildren?