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High-speed rail in California was a disaster, but there’s a better way
- robertAngst 8y ago>Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Bait topic, cant we just talk about new tech and how that makes rail better?
- methodiosmel 8y agoHere come the apologists...
- tamalesfan 8y agoHas it been 24 hours since Newsom put a stake through the heart of California HSR? If trains aren't feasible in CA -- where it's (D)s all the way down -- who are we kidding? We have the power system and the transportation system we're going to have, climate change or not. Any real change is going to require a GULAG system and mass graves.
- bmiranda 8y agoEven in Japan it's cheaper to fly between Osaka and Tokyo than take the train. The train is a lot more convenient, though. There are only a few corridors where high speed rail makes sense. Northeast US. Texas Central Railway is even trying to build a line between Houston and Dallas. Building out everywhere though is a surefire way to rack up debt. Look at Japan, which is touted as a high-speed rail success story. Although the Osaka-Tokyo route is profitable (and very beneficial to their economy), the rest of their high-speed rail network essentially bankrupted JR Rail. JR Rail ended up being privatized, with most of the debt being funneled into a holding company owned by the government. JR East/Central are operating off of a high-speed network they essentially got for free.
- thatfrenchguy 8y agoOnce you add up the externalities to air travel though pricing is going to be different...
- skookumchuck 8y agoFlying is quick, but the time at both ends kills it for shorter trips. I'd rather take the train. I love riding the rails in Europe. It's a very pleasant way to travel.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoshinkansen stations are sometimes a bit put there, though not as bad as the airports. Chinese HSR stations are usually way out there, adding to lots of endpoint time, though still not as much as Chinese airports. Europe is pretty ideal, though I’ve had to transfer train stations in Paris before coming off a TGV. Not fun.
- ajmurmann 8y agoWhere are Shinkansen stations "out there"? I've only taken it for a variety of stops between Tokyo and Okayama. All those stations were very central.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoFor many of the smaller cities along the route; eg Gifu, it doesn’t make sense to route the train into the city.
- Grue3 8y agoShin-Yokohama, Shin-Osaka, Shin-Hakodate are the typical examples. Going from Tokyo to Yokohama center is usually faster on a conventional train.
- jboles 8y agoOsaka is an example, the Shinkansen does not stop in central Osaka but stops at ‘Shin Osaka’ station (literally ‘New Osaka’ station).
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoThough to be fair, shin Osaka is pretty built up and only 4 Minutes away by subway from central Osaka station.
- tdfx 8y agoEven with parking for a couple days priced in, it's still considerably cheaper to rent a car and drive from DC to NYC than to take the train (and takes about the same amount of time). I much prefer train travel but unless it's heavily subsidized the way highway travel is, I don't think it will ever be competitive or widely popular.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoOr just unsubsidize highway travel. It is bound to happen eventually as public investment can’t keep up with road infrastructure needs.
- ajmurmann 8y agoJapan also doesn't have street parking. Another way pretty much every other country is subsidizing cars.
- sjjshvuiajhz 8y agoBut where are you going to put the car when you get to NYC?
- kalleboo 8y agoJapan also has a privatized and almost fully-tolled highway network. A high-speed rail ticket for me to Fukuoka costs 9,000 yen; to drive a car instead the tolls alone cost 6,200 yen, add gas to that and the longer time it takes to drive, unless you're loading your family into the car the high cost of driving makes taking the train highly attractive. The US would never tolerate highway tolls like Japan has.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gotocake 8y agoIt’s not as expensive per mile as Japan, but US highways do often have tools, and if you’re on the East coast it can add up. Just crossing the GW bridge in New York costs about the equivalent of 1,400 yen. If you want to compare a similar distance something like the I-95 corridor from Massachusetts to North Carolina is a good choice. All told it would be in the range of about 3,500 yen in tolls depending on your route and stop-offs. Remembering that Americans on average drive much larger cars that use more gas than Japanese people, and I’m not sure thst your point holds up.
- mikekchar 8y agoThe OP actually has to live pretty close to Fukuoka for those prices (probably you were thinking they lived in Tokyo). The distance they are talking about is less than 200 km (maybe 150 miles) -- so about 15% of the distance you are talking about. Tolls roads are very expensive in Japan. Trains are also surprisingly expensive, though very well run.
- ballenarosada 8y agoTaking on debt to finance a public good like high speed rail is perfectly reasonable. Privatization isn't a natural outcome of a public corporation running a deficit--it's the result of a political decision to disinvest in that project.
- geofft 8y agoAgree. Government debt is a good thing - just ask fiscal conservative Ronald Reagan, who was the first president since World War II to increase the national debt relative to the GDP. Government is not a company, and judging it by the standards of a company is a mistake. (If anything, it is the dual of a company.)
- slavik81 8y agoRonald Reagan lowered government revenues with a round of tax cuts and sharply raised government spending. The debt was entirely from increasing the military budget without having taxes to pay for it. I would not describe his presidency as fiscally conservative.
- zhte415 8y agoSitting on a train from Jilin to Beijing, I noted the below from Wikipedia: > In another study conducted about Japan's High-speed rail service, they found a "4-hour wall" in high-speed rail's market share, which if the high speed rail journey time exceeded 4 hours, then people would likely choose planes over high-speed rail. For instance, from Tokyo to Osaka, a 2h22m-journey by Shinkansen, high-speed rail has an 85% market share whereas planes have 15%. From Tokyo to Hiroshima, a 3h44m-journey by Shinkansen, high-speed rail has a 67% market share whereas planes have 33%. The situation is the reverse on the Tokyo to Fukuoka route where high-speed rail takes 4h47m and rail only has 10% market share and planes 90%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail The journey is a bit more than 4 hours. The above "4-hour wall" seemed to make a lot of sense. Passenger ridership end-to-end was not very high, but intermediate station pickup and putdown, consisting of quite large cities by European or North American standards, was high. Taking a plane would be slightly faster and sometimes a little cheaper, I prefer the train because of time in laptop/connectivity, good seat size/leg room/decline, ability to have a snooze. Without the intermediate cities, the train would have be mainly empty. What the train brought/brings was a relief of bus/coach traffic, and a substantial increase in facilitating movement between 'smaller' (though not small) cities that mainly don't have airports. Does the US have this layout or need?
- Aloha 8y agoI'd say it does - if you look at Amtraks long distance trains, the number of people traveling end to end, is usually small, its the intermediary stops that provide the bulk of the passengers.
- mistrial9 8y agono - you dont factor in the sheer number of people that are travelling the routes on any given day, or extranalaties of the systems.. its a one-dimensional choice, by marketshare, in your example
- mikekchar 8y agoJust to give you the price, a return fare Shinkansen ticket from Tokyo to Hakata (Fukuoka) costs almost exactly $400 (44660 JPY). I did a random search for air fares for next week and the lowest ones were $250 return (was looking at an English site, so it only gave me USD). The Shinkansen takes nearly 5 hours, while the flight takes 2. Even when you account for the crazy amount of time ahead you need to arrive for a flight, it will end up being both nearly half the price and half the amount of time. Especially for business travel, there is no way for the Shinkansen to compete. I've actually done that ride once and really enjoyed it, but you have to be a train fan :-)
- Pxtl 8y agoCarbon pricing may change this cost-benefit ratio though - planes are grossly carbon-ineffecient. With a respectable carbon price, will electric HSR become economical?
- innocenat 8y agoWow. Just wow. JNR ("JP Rail") is in debt because underperforming local lines and inability to increase fare. During privatisation, the Shinkansen is only leased to the newly formed companies as it's making money hand over fist. JR East/Central/West have since bought the line, though. And flying is cheaper precisely because people like Shinkansen more, though it's not always cheaper.
- int_19h 8y agoThe general antipathy towards rail seems to be an American cultural thing, mostly. And a relatively recent (2nd half of 20th century?) at that. What I find especially amusing is when US size is brought up as a counter-point. It had the same size back in the day when it had the most vibrant railway industry in the world.
- mc32 8y agoI could be wrong but I believe even at the height of rail, for the most part, it served industry to transport raw materials or finished goods from where they were made or extracted to where they were needed or sold.
- int_19h 8y agoThere's always more goods to move around than people, so if a transportation method is cheap enough, goods will dominate tonnage.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- paleotrope 8y agoSeems more likely Americans prefer the fastest way to get from point A to B regardless of the technology.
- chrisseaton 8y agoBut they seem to prefer slow driving over the idea of trains, for shorter distances?
- paleotrope 8y agoHow so? I can drive to NYC from Boston, that's a little slower then the acela, but then I am not bound to the train schedule. It's more convenient to me. I'd like to see high speed trains, but it's never going to happen in the US without massive investments. Too many special interests.
- ilovecaching 8y agoI wonder what the rail-laying tech looks like, and if it's made any big advancements in the past 50 years. I would imagine some big advancements in rail construction would tip the scales of cost/benefit. Let's invest in self-replicating rail construction!
- ummonk 8y agoPractically none of the cost goes into laying down rail. Almost all the cost goes into acquiring land, building grade separation in municipalities, and tunneling if needed.
- Symbiote 8y agoRailway track laying machines. I don't know if there's something to prepare the foundation, most videos show replacing a line rather than laying a new one. https://youtube.com/watch?v=_MKcTbYDP7w https://youtube.com/watch?v=_MKcTbYDP7w https://youtube.com/watch?v=_-wThCECvxM https://youtube.com/watch?v=_-wThCECvxM
- azurezyq 8y agoThis is the one used in Chinese HSR construction, for elevated viaducts. https://youtu.be/T7hdo9tL6u0 https://youtu.be/T7hdo9tL6u0
- hexane360 8y agoAs a progressive from far away from California, I can't help but be frustrated that a) California seems to be all people talk about when it comes to progressive reforms and that b) California consistently sets such a toxic example when it comes to progressive reforms.
- chipotle_coyote 8y agoSo other than the high speed rail debacle, what progressive reforms has California pushed through that are so "toxic?"
- hexane360 8y agoI think you misunderstand me (I may have worded my point badly). It's not that the reforms are toxic, or even anything to do with the reforms themselves. It's that the political landscape in California is often toxic when it bleeds over to the country as a whole. I don't mean this in the "California is just too liberal for middle America" sense (as many Californians seem to). I mean "California seems to have a level of corruption that makes successful reform nigh-impossible". You can see this "toxicity" in, for example, the singular influence California (and Texas on the other side) have on K12 textbooks, and the synergistic relationship between huge California ag businesses and the Bureau of Reclamation.
- eecsninja 8y agoI think he means the big disconnect between the progressive rhetoric that Californians talk about, versus the policies that are actually enacted. The anti-transit, anti-development mindset that makes urban California unaffordable for most people.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoHousing, water management, and a few other things come to mind. Housing in the valley (and elsewhere in CA) is a problem and it has nothing to do with land shortage and everything to do with local politics preventing the use of that land. Housing prices are insane. This is not helped in any way by property taxes which are also very high. So you have an economy that is basically bottle necked on housing. A lot of venture capital goes straight to paying the rent instead of more innovative uses. In the same way, it's kind of surprising that e.g. desalination plants are not already fully solving water shortages in LA and elsewhere in the state. Instead they seem to continue to insist on providing water from depleted sources for essentially close to free to their citizens while simultaneously struggling to keep the agriculture sector going. Agriculture is a big economic sector in CA and it's being held back by water availability. Water shortages are a huge problem throughout California and most of its population pretty much lives within miles of the Pacific. Yet, people install toilets in their home that flush gallons of drinking water from depleted sources into the sewer.. Roads are notoriously bad (maintenance issues, decades of neglect). Public transport in the Valley is a joke and subways are only a recent novelty in LA. Both cities are notorious for the level of difficulty of actually getting into them or around them by car. There's a unifying theme here where a policy actively prevents meaningful progress on what are fundamentally not very challenging technical problems (providing housing, getting from A to B, having enough water, etc.). This is odd because tech is basically a core business of that state. High speed rail around the valley could cut commute times to reasonable levels, get cars off the congested streets, and would allow people to commute in from way beyond the currently practical range. It solves a lot of real problems. But getting it done requires policy changes that are entirely reasonable but yet seemingly impossible. The total investment needed is substantial but comparatively small compared to the money made by unicorns across the valley. Why would you take a plane to LA when you can get there by rail in the time it takes to get to the airport, through security, etc. There's no good reason for not being able to get from downtown SFO to downtown LA in under 2 hours by rail. A few billion investment doesn't sound like it should be particularly hard in the VC epicenter of this planet. Money is not the issue. Policy is.
- hprotagonist 8y agohigh speed rail is a beautiful thing. who’s gonna be the guy who eminent domains all the existing developed property to unkink the existing lines so they can support fast trains?
- gumby 8y agoAmerica actually does have a world-leading rail system...for freight. In fact passenger trains usually travel on freight tracks (yes, even Caltrain from SF to SJ) and have to give way to freight which is prioritized. As far as HSR goes, the article is actually unfair when it talks about the Line running through the Central Valley. It's a lot cheaper to run the line there than any straight line between SF and LA. More importantly, tying Bakersfield, Merced and Fresno into the Bay Area and LA regional economies would be great for all three.
- chrisseaton 8y ago> In fact passenger trains usually travel on freight tracks But the idea of ‘freight tracks’ vs ‘passenger tracks’ isn’t a thing in most other places. In most of the world they’re the same thing and they prioritise using a schedule. This is another artificial problem that Americans see as an inherent one.
- Aloha 8y agoIt's not a thing here either honestly - and we have freight trains, and amtrak is now mostly ontime - but still slow - and it would remain slow - even with high speed rail.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoI live on the cascade corridor, amtrak is always delayed between Portland and Seattle because of priority freight traffic.
- Aloha 8y agoThere is a distinct lack of capacity between Seattle and Portland particularly anytime there are capacity issues over the cascades on Stampede/Stevens Pass due to accident, track work, or weather - then things get routed down to Portland and east thru the Columbia River Gorge. Ironically, their used to be a third rail line over the cascades, with was flatter and honestly, better engineered - but it was ripped up in 1978-1982 era - that is the former Milwaukee Road route thru Snoqualamie pass
- angel_j 8y agoI always thought the obvious route is to replace a couple lanes of interstate with rail.
- variable11 8y agoRails and highways need to be certain safe distances away for structural and safety reasons. Can't imagine the carnage that would ensue in your scenario.
- ilovecaching 8y agoWhy can't the government just declare that the rail should be built for the greater good and take control of all the land they need via eminent domain for a nominal fee?
- Someone1234 8y agoThey can and often do. But the lawsuits can take tens of years to conclude and cost significant amounts of money even if they win. The problem California has is that they're trying to take long from rich people, which means protracted fights. You see Eniment Domain working against the poor all the time, just offer slightly above market and twist a little.
- zaroth 8y agoAh yes, the good old “men with guns show up to steal your land” approach. This Green New Deal is really shaping up!
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoAt least they are starting to be fairly honest with what they really want.
- enjo 8y agoUgh.. when did these clowns discover HN?
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoPlease comment according to the guidelines.
- anonymous5133 8y agoAbsolutely horrible idea. Ethically bankrupt to say the least.
- ryanmetz 8y agoAlways important to remember that a lot of the people slamming this stuff have no counter-plan because they either don't believe in climate change or just don't care about it. May an ill fate befall them.
- vondur 8y agoThe property prices are crazy expensive when you start getting into the populated areas of Southern California. I don't know it could ever be done without spending huge amounts of money. I do think it would be great to link the Bakersfield and Fresno areas with both SF and the Los Angeles area.
- anonymous5133 8y agoIt would have never been built simply because the uber rich property owners would never let it be built. They would just stall it out long enough to prevent it from ever being built.
- joe_the_user 8y agoGood, damning, summary of the amazing decisions made during the construction of this project (bullet points are quotes): • A meandering route through the Central Valley devised to win support at the ballot box, locking planners into a scheme that took the route away from its goal of connecting the state’s biggest cities. • A mad rush to begin construction without knowing the route, acquiring the right of way, studying the geology, or securing the funding. • An irresponsible partner in the federal government that rushed California to get going and encouraged the state to proceed with half-baked plans. • A balkanized planning process teeming with eager private-sector beavers who were afraid to report how flawed the enterprise was, a system that Naik called “no consultant left behind.” • The determination not to engage French and Chinese engineers who offered to just build the damn thing for us. “The equivalent of Bangladesh saying they’d go to the moon with indigenous technology” is how Perl describes the general attitude. “We excluded all the learning and tech that happened elsewhere.” But after all that, the thing that wasn't said was "by how this was done, one would deduce that no one really cared whether the project succeeded or not." Which is to say that if another project of this sort is attempted, creating an institutional imperative to succeed from the start is crucial. And as far as popular support goes, it seems reasonable to make it clear to the voters that the project didn't die by accident but that it was killed. Of course, with all parties conveniently culpable, it's hard to say what a concerned citizen is to do. Sadly, corruption tends to be a part of any large scale infrastructure project. The trick is creating a situation where the forces involved have incentive not to eat the golden goose. And this incentive basically has to come from the top. Obviously, it didn't this time.
- Bucephalus355 8y agoExcellent summary. Part of the reason he interstate got built / was such a success was that there was enough goodwill and cohesion in society to see the whole thing through. JFK served in his unit alongside guys who hadn’t finished the 9th grade. People trusted each other more than they do today. Even the moon landing and the work of NASA was part of this cohesive society. That being said cohesion requires conformity which has a ton of drawbacks as well, and this eventually fell apart after a Vietnam. Maybe it had to happen but societies move in cycles and some other highly cohesive event will occur, making stuff like this possible again.
- synaesthesisx 8y agoAs long as I can fly from LAX to SFO for ~$100 RT it's going to be difficult justifying high speed rail, unless it can be offered at competitive prices. When I was living in the Northeast an Amtrak train from Boston-NYC could easily soar above $100 one-way...
- guiomie 8y agoIt's also a 9 to 12 hours train ride from SF to LA. Which is mind boggling long! I tried to do a business trip via train, but it's just not worth the time.
- Grue3 8y agoYeah, it's called private development. Just look at Brightline. Or privatized railroads in Japan. Most of the profit comes from owning real estate (usually the railway stations) redeveloped into business and shopping centers, which thrive because of easy access to transportation. This real estate pays for itself, subsidizing the train operations which might be unprofitable by themselves.
- jdhn 8y agoI agree that private development like Japan is the way to go, but outside of the Brightline, it seems like nobody in the US is doing this. The only real estate that the HSR line in Texas seems to buy is land for the tracks, but not any real estate around the station.