11 ms·

Taiwan managed to build high-speed rail. Why can't California?

119 points by jrmg 7y ago

ArchLinuxBtw 7y ago
Because they don't have the people of Palo Alto who refuse to acknowledge that the train tracks preceded their town, and think they have the right to prevent new rail development through it.
jkw 7y ago
California is terrible at managing infrastructure projects.
- pretendscholar 7y ago
  The question is why? Why are some government entities better at managing large infrastructure projects than other?
  - jaypeg25 7y ago
    I'd say in the US at least it's hard for a politician to devote money toward a multi-year program that their constituents won't see the benefit of for quite some time (or in the case of upkeep and maintenance, at all). The politician isn't looking to do what's right, they're looking to get reelected.
    - spaced-out 7y ago
      Why are politicians in other countries able to accomplish this while those in the US can't? Are American politicians just lower quality than those in other countries? Or is that their constituents are more prone to short-term thinking than their counterparts elsewhere?
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      > The politician isn't looking to do what's right, they're looking to get reelected. But that's true in all democracies, pretty much by definition.
  - pxeboot 7y ago
    The people managing these projects are often hired based on political connections, not expertise. And cost overruns usually lead to higher profits, so there is little incentive to keep costs down.
    - spaced-out 7y ago
      Is this a problem unique to the US? Or is it just worse in the US than in Taiwan?
      - pas 7y ago
        Sort of. The US is big and rich (so small mistakes compound into really big expensive errors fast/eventually) and sort of refuses to shop abroad for expertise, because. Reasons.
    - wwweston 7y ago
      While I’m always a fan of remembering that incentives matter (and believe that some degree citizen attention is a price for a well-functioning government), I would think that a forum full of software engineers could think of other reasons projects go over budget than graft.
      - pas 7y ago
        It's not graft exactly, but simply the project structure leads to enormous inefficiencies. Eg subcontractors cannot work/meet/organize/plan directly with each other, because financial interests put silly lines in the sand. (Just think about how slow/dumb things can become if the backend, frontend and ops are completely separated, plus there's a middle layer (the general contractor) between them and the stakeholders.) Plus, it seems that the main problem is that there's simply not enough experience/expertise at governments for managing/planning/executing these projects. Because too few people are in-house (or on payroll/retainer with the right/aligned incentives), and too few projects are done, so no competent team forms over time.
      - malandrew 7y ago
        > I would think that a forum full of software engineers could think of other reasons projects go over budget than graft. We're not talking about projects in the private domain. We're talking about government projects. Look at the Obamacare website boondoggle. Or the recent lack of backups in Baltimore when hit with ransomware. When it's a government project, it's very fair to consider graft and corruption as the primary causes, especially as they often lead to favoring incompetent people in charge of executing the project.
  - Barrin92 7y ago
    More centralised authority, no local counter initiatives that bog them down, less political gridlock and stronger consensus mechanisms, less influence by third parties through lobbying which the US glamorises as free speech, no bias against public transportation and so on. The US almost prides itself in the fact that its government is dysfunctional, that individuals can stop projects at the expense of the general public. One just needs to look at the countless of Hollywood movies where some lone Erin Brockovich-esque hero stands up to 'the machine', with the question rarely being raised what the collective costs and trade-offs are, or whether there's even a rational case to be made for the resistance.
    - pas 7y ago
      There is no big problem with going through courts to make sure the project has sufficiently good cost-benefit ratios. The problem is, that alternatives are not priced comparably, thus the economics simply favors them. (Such as driving or flying.) If tunneling would be cheaper (in concrete construction costs), then those could go ahead, because there's not much issue about it, it's about as straightforward as flying. (Of course below a certain depth, so no noise and structural concerns arise.)
- setpatchaddress 7y ago
  Genuine question: do any of the US state governments serve as a better model?
- throwawaytoday5 7y ago
  It's not just California, it's every state and every city in the US. People have an aversion to public works projects often crying about taxes or how the service is useless or not good enough. We have a political system where one major party (out of two) decries any public spending that might help people who aren't millionaires/billionaires/corporations. Is it any wonder when you have evil groups of people spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tell people that they should vote against their interests? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...
  - smsm42 7y ago
    > People have an aversion to public works projects People have aversion to public works projects because they routinely see public works projects being mismanaged, hugely overbudget, delayed to geological times, used as source to appropriate public money into private pockets, and paraded for political influence while being badly maintained and chronically broken. I am far from being a millionaire, but I would require a lot of convincing to see how it actually benefits me and doesn't turn into another boondoggle for politicians and contractors. Maybe spending serious chunk of my income on a project that would not happen for decades, would be poorly maintained and I probably won't end up using because they'd screw up something like not having proper access to the endpoints is actually not my interests?
  - SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
    > We have a political system where one major party (out of two) decries any public spending that might help people who aren't millionaires/billionaires/corporations. Wasn’t it Newsom who canceled the project? Most high ranking Democrats are certainly rich from things like “energy” and “weapons” via k street and international analogues. We are bipartisan in our corruption and failure to build infrastructure.
    - phlakaton 7y ago
      > Wasn't it Newsom who canceled the project? No. Newsom was the messenger saying what was already pretty evident: the project had run itself into a logistic and financial corner that there was no feasible path out of (at least for now). Note that HSR planning and construction is still taking place. The current public assumption seems to be that the "train from nowhere to nowhere" is all we'll ever get out of the project, but Newsom was actually pretty careful not to say this.
- malandrew 7y ago
  You can omit “infrastructure projects”. California is terrible at managing.
ksbakan 7y ago
The fact that taiwan is much poorer also means that the labor cost for construction is much lower
- larrysalibra 7y ago
  Taiwan imports construction workers from much poorer Southeast Asian countries. http://www.cedaw.org.tw/en/upload/media/Capacity%20Building/7-1BMigrant%20Worker%20in%20Taiwan.pdf http://www.cedaw.org.tw/en/upload/media/Capacity%20Building/...
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    US cannot do that either (for political reasons). The optics aren't great, "murrican jobs" and all
    - EdwardDiego 7y ago
      Large parts of your agricultural industry already are.
      - jcranmer 7y ago
        But the agricultural industry doesn't face "Buy American" provisions in their funding requirements that prohibit them from using too much foreign stuff, which is the norm in infrastructure projects.
perspective1 7y ago
Answer: cars and highways. It's really hard to spend a lot of money replacing something that already works, even if it works really, really badly. High speed rail will only happen with a federal mandate.
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haunter 7y ago
As an outsider from Europe: what I see that americans hate any publicly funded projects. "If it doesn't benefit me why should I pay taxes for that?" See the whole healthcare system. "I'm healthy, never sick why should I pay the cancer treatment of those who are obese and smoke all the time?" That's totally different in Europe. Not just in the nordic countries but generally everywhere. So the same applies for public transport and such as well. Also add on the top of that the lowest gas prices in the western world https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/
- SamReidHughes 7y ago
  Californians voted for the high speed rail project in a ballot initiative.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    And they aren’t going to get what they were promised. With boondoggles like these, it shouldn’t be a surprise why American’s are against infrastructure projects. It’s all over promising and under delivering The same thing happened with the East span of the Bay Bridge.
  - phlakaton 7y ago
    Would they have if it had been, say, a $29B proposition instead of a $9B one, and not to be completed until all the baby boomers were 90+ years old? This project has been facing stiff headwinds from the moment it began. If we had that vote again, knowing what we know now, I doubt it would pass.
    - SamReidHughes 7y ago
      Agreed. I was always against it, because I knew it would play out this way :-). I’d rather force the TSA to have an SLA.
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  > As an outsider from Europe: what I see that americans hate any publicly funded projects. [...] America has become a rat-ship. It is filled with folks that have amazing ideas of how to spend other people's money. Don't be disdainful when the people whose money you have pissed away start getting upset at "grand ideas". We see it as more of the same mostly: corruption, shitty-quality infrastructure, and handouts ("jobs" programs). Rarely do these "grand ideas" translate into real benefits over the long term.
ulkram 7y ago
Is it just me, or is it a bit arrogant to assume that because X can do something, why can't Y do it?
- bnt 7y ago
  It would be, but here we are comparing a clear “underdog” with one of the most prospering economies in the world, and the underdog won.
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aodin 7y ago
For an article with quite a few numbers, it seems to be missing some basic ones: * Taiwan, area 36,197 km^2, population density 651 / km^2 [1] * California, area 403,932 km^2, population density 97 / km^2 [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...
- ben_w 7y ago
  How does BART compare?
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    It doesn't exist in 99% of California by area
  - almost_usual 7y ago
    It doesn’t. Taipei’s MRT is also lightyears ahead of BART.
    - zhdc1 7y ago
      Kaohsiung's is even better.
- _delirium 7y ago
  The total area of the state isn't too relevant, since California isn't exactly proposing to build HSR to Eureka or Redding. It's true that California's project is larger-scale, but by 2x: Taiwan has a single 200-mile HSR line, and California is trying to build a single 400-mile line.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Taiwan has 1/5th the GDP of California. So, it’s more like California had even lower goals than Taiwan.
zachguo 7y ago
1. It resulted from the era of rapid economic growth. 2. East Asian countries generally value the greater good for all more. 3. There was no stereotype against train travel, and having HSRs was generally considered as a national pride. Nowadays, it's also difficult to do any large scale infrastructure project in Taiwan, because the economy stagnates and the two-party political system is kinda gridlocked .
narrator 7y ago
I think it's because in the U.S absolutely anyone can tie up this stuff in the court systems for years. There are a lot of environmentalists who have been working overtime to stop this thing. For example: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/10/24/high-speed-rail-lawsuit/ https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/10/24/high-speed-rail-l... . There are seven environmental lawsuits against this thing. How much do you think the legal bills are? There will likely be many more. Edit: There are a couple of regularly glitchy things about how American government works. They are: #1 : Public Employees Unions who negotiate with themselves for sweet pension deals. #2 : Suits against various government agencies by individuals that wind up being paid for by taxpayers. For example, school districts getting sued for something a janitor did and then taxpayers having to pay for it as if they were a private business and the taxpayer is the owner. #3 : Environmental lawsuits to stop government infrastructure projects.
- smsm42 7y ago
  > as if they were a private business and the taxpayer is the owner. Theoretically that's the case. Practically, the taxpayer ends up owning the downsides, and the government nomenklatura ends up owning the upsides. If you have stock in the company that does that, you can sell. If you have government like that, you can vote for another government, but somehow people never do.
- chongli 7y ago
  Are these environmental lawsuits really about protecting the environment (fighting climate change) or are they NIMBY lawsuits taking advantage of environmental laws/ordinances? In general, I would expect environmentalists to be among the major proponents of high speed rail, with the goal of getting more cars off the freeways. This calls to mind the Faculty of Environment at my university, whose primary focus is on the urban planning degree program. Urban planning as a rule seems to be all about politics, stakeholders, and NIMBYism; not so much about fighting climate change.
  - briandear 7y ago
    > Are these environmental lawsuits really about protecting the environment (fighting climate change) “Protecting the environment” isn’t “fighting climate change.” Regardless of one’s position on the effects of CO2, that’s like suggesting that ensuring health should be entirely about how to prevent influenza. Protecting the environment includes protecting habit, stopping (actual, toxic) pollution. Climate change isn’t the end-all be-all of environmentalism. Climate change is being used at an almost religious level to justify pretty much anything climate activists deem necessary — regardless of any unintended (or subversively intended) consequences. Environmentalism doesn’t have to also mean “obsession with climate.” Some of us care deeply about the environment but also don’t have the audacity to think that the climate is changing because of humans. The climate has been changing for 4+ billion years. Of course, downvote away. Heresy is expected to be punished here. It is important that the point was made: caring about the environment can be independent of the climate change gospel.
CalChris 7y ago
The route chosen for CA high speed rail guaranteed failure. SF out to the Central Valley and then in to LA meant a really expensive project which would result in a slow train. This single route through everywhere was necessary for political, particularly Congressional, backing. I'm glad Gavin Newsom cancelled it and I still want HSR. They should start with SLO to San Diego and then a Central Valley line. Finally, connect SFO (yup, San Francisco International Airport) to SLO.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  Have you read any of the official product planning documents?
  - CalChris 7y ago
    If you wish to provide a link I will look at them briefly.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      Not my problem
dehrmann 7y ago
I used to be more in favor of CA HSR, but I read an argument that said cities are congested, rural I-5 isn't, so we'd be better off building a second BART tunnel and electrifying Caltrain.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  High speed rail is paying for half of the electrification project.
jedberg 7y ago
The California HSR has a lot of problems not matched in Taiwan. Firstly, once you get from San Jose to Bakersfield, then what? We don't have good public transit in LA, much less to Bakersfield. But even if the train went all the way to Union Station in Los Angeles, you'd still need to rent a car to get anywhere useful, or take Uber/Lyft. And same thing on the other end. What happens when you get to San Jose? You still need a car or another slow train. If you want to get from San Francisco to Disneyland via HSR, the entire trip would probably take you about six hours with all the train changes and car rides and waiting. You could do the drive in six hours too and then have your car at the other end. Even today, if I want to visit my parents in the suburbs of LA coming from the suburbs of San Jose, I can make the drive in five hours, or spend five hours getting there by plane, assuming someone picks me up at the other end. The only reason I fly is if I happen to be going somewhere right near the airport or it will be rush hour at one end or another when I arrive because I don't have scheduling flexibility. Secondly, the original proposal was to build Stockton to Fresno first. That would be the least used section of the line. Not a lot of people move between Stockton and Fresno. The train would be bankrupt before it ever got to phase two. At least they finally changed their mind on that, but not for a much better route. To be remotely viable, they need to build the most trafficked parts first -- San Jose to Stockton and Bakersfield to Los Angeles. But even those lines would still suffer from problem one unless/until the local transit was vastly improved. I would love to see a viable HSR in California, but the current proposal is not that. Let's build up our local transit first in LA and the Bay Area so that when we connect them with a high speed rail, the rail is actually useful.
- ardit33 7y ago
  This argument just doesn't make sense. You can make the exact point about airports as well. What's the point of an airport? It is hard to get there, you have to rent a car, parking is expensive, too much trafic, busses are not that often... etc... etc.. Build the train, and have stations close to downtown, while local government can start/extend local transportation as well. Ideally you have both local and inter-urban rail at the same time, but if you don't, then you have to start somewhere. It is harder to build a major station, then several small tram station. Start with the harder part, and let the local government fill out the smaller parts. The beauty of the train, that it can get very close to downtown, or even in the center of it with minimal disruption (if built underground). You just can't do that with an airport.
yongjik 7y ago
I think any talk about HSRs in the US should be able to explain US highways. American highway system is arguably one of the best in the world - it's also a gigantic government project, and it's constantly being extended. So how come America, with its proven track record of great highways, is totally impotent with high speed rails? The answer can't be just "American government doesn't work" or "the country is too big." Irrational mistrust against railways?
- almost_usual 7y ago
  It’s because we already have highways and our car culture is hard to change. Highways were also originally built for national defense with the economic benefits as a secondary force. Defense projects traditionally get tons of funding in the US. Convincing a generation that witnessed two world wars to back a massive defense project wasn’t difficult.
  - ralphie02 7y ago
    Can you elaborate on the national defense? How is the highway useful with defending the country? Defending from who? I can only think of highways as secondary runways for planes but I'm unsure as to how much that helps your case.
    - thrower123 7y ago
      The only reason that I-95, for instance, extends as far as it does, is because of the Strategic Air Command bomber base in Limestone, ME. A lot of the other more nonsensical routings of the interstate system make sense when you take into consideration where strategic bases were located in the 50s and 60s.
    - hollerith 7y ago
      War puts enormous strain on a country's ability to move things around the country.
    - steve19 7y ago
      Wars are won with logistics not guns. Getting troops and supplies across the country would be key to defending it from an invasion. The interstate highway system was built in part for military purposes and partly designed by the Army: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System
justinzollars 7y ago
The key issue is this: >While California established an underfinanced government authority to lead the project, Taiwan’s biggest businesses came together to create a private corporation. It should be private.
mch82 7y ago
High speed rail is a bad investment. Rail systematizes discrimination, typically loses money, and struggles to provide a last mile solution. $60B can buy at least 600,000 electric vehicles with 3 million seats. Semi-autonomous vehicles are already capable of operating as a “train” in a dedicated freeway lane and autonomous operation is likely by 2033 (when California’s HSR would begin operation). This solution could be deployed incrementally, with a smaller fleet of human-driven, semi-autonomous EVs in the first phase. 600,000 vehicles may not sound like a lot, but the whole United States had 370,400 taxi & ride share drivers in 2018! [1]. We need to turn the HOV lane into an autonomous car lane & build the future we want instead of tying ourselves to a romanticized version of the past. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/mobile/taxi-drivers-and-chauffeurs.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/m... Edit: I failed to acknowledge that autonomous vehicles are not available today, so have updated my post. Note, high speed rail isn’t available either & won’t be until, at earliest, 2033.
- aiscapehumanity 7y ago
  600k additional vehicles sounds like a traffic density disaster.
  - mch82 7y ago
    The difference between small, point to point vehicles that operate like taxis and rail is that taxis actually get cars off the road. I attended Hack for LA a couple years back and 1/3 of the traffic in downtown LA is drivers looking for parking. Switching to shared ride transit will decongest the roads.
    - MrMorden 7y ago
      Charging for parking can fix that problem now.
      - mch82 7y ago
        How? Time would be needed to make an alternative transit option available. Are you aware the city (and private lots) already charge for parking?
monster_group 7y ago
The real issue is that gas is too cheap in the US. Everywhere else, except oil rich middle east, gas is expensive enough to discourage people from driving everywhere. They end up taking public transport. In US driving almost always comes out cheaper unless the distance is too great to be convenient to drive.
supernova87a 7y ago
Simply put, even if all the environmental / lobbying / no-car-at-the-destination issues were resolved, the distances of California (and population densities) would still make it economically challenging to have HSR a slam dunk compared to flying. HSR breaks even with flying at about _200-300 miles_ journey. That is, if the planned journey is within that range, for similar pricing, people will choose 50-50 rail over flying (in aggregate, in Europe, Asia). New York to Washington/Boston distances. Greater than that, flying has the advantage. (People will incrementally choose flying the longer the distance). This takes into account typical traffic, getting to the airport, check-in, all that stuff. San Francisco to Los Angeles is 380 miles. Add to that the destination rental car issues, etc. And we haven't even talked pricing yet. Even if you got that all out of the way, flying is still often better than rail. Even on Tokyo-Osaka route, one of the pinnacles of HSR, there are almost comparable flights serving the route as shinkansen. I know we all wish for high speed rail as a demonstration of our technological prowess. But in recent years even I've soured on it for California, given how incompetent we seem to be on top of rail's structural disadvantage in the state. The money would bring far more benefits if spent elsewhere to solve our traffic, commute, suburban issues.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  > economically challenging to have HSR a slam dunk compared to flying. Ever priced out a runway extension project? Know how much that costs? You have no idea.
  - supernova87a 7y ago
    Oh I do. But you have an existing federal body willing to hide/distribute the cost of that runway, control tower, staff, weather forecasters, etc. Not as much for rail.
- shalmanese 7y ago
  The market share equation is based on time, not distance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Market_shares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Market_shares Madrid - Barcelona is basically the same distance as SF - LA and used to be the busiest air route in the world and is now 63% rail since the 2.5 hr HSR got built. https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/66620/barcelona-madrid-85-million-passengers/ https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/66620/barcelona-mad... While there are still flights from Tokyo to Osaka, it is now 85% rail market share. https://www.railway-technology.com/features/faster-flying-high-speed-rail-routes-taking-air-industry/ https://www.railway-technology.com/features/faster-flying-hi...
Merrill 7y ago
California has 10 times as many lawyers as Taiwan. http://www.twba.org.tw/en/Report.htm http://www.twba.org.tw/en/Report.htm https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2018/05/new_aba_data_reveals/ https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...
jorblumesea 7y ago
HSR failed in California largely because building effective mass transit is a secondary goal. If you look at the route, and how the process unfolded, the focus was mostly on who was going to get paid, and helping out political friends. In the US, large transit projects are mostly about pork barrel politics and spending, and if something actually usable comes out of it, then that was a great but secondary effect. If you look at how other countries build transit, politics is more subdued and the goal is to actually build a functional system. Republicans block most transit projects as it is antithetical to their political views, and the Democrats uses it as a social spending policy and political handouts largely ignoring the needs of an actual transit system. Basically, US politics just doesn't care to build things properly because the incentives are totally off. Vox has a pretty good breakdown: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/15/18224717/california-high-speed-rail-canceled https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/15/18224717/c...
wenc 7y ago
Side observation, non-related but was brought up in the article: "Taiwan is a far poorer place than California — with median household income just one-fourth of ours — but still it managed to afford high-speed rail." The author seems to be ignorant of some context when describing Taiwan in this way -- I learned recently that wages in Taiwan were artificially and structurally depressed in order to enable a competitive export economy. Taiwan is actually not a palpably poorer place except maybe in an absolute dollar sense. Taipei has top notch infrastructure, superior to every large U.S. city in my view (I've visited and seen for myself) The highways are beautiful. They don't skimp on infra spend. Notwithstanding the fact that median household income is rarely good indication of how "poor" a place is, especially when comparing across countries because of local cost of living assumptions. If we compare poverty rates, Taiwan's is 1.78% whereas California's is 18.2%. Taiwan's GDP per capita (PPP) -- not household income -- was $53k in 2018. California's was $66k in 2016. Not that different. Looks like the author was trying to use a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand there to make his point.
erentz 7y ago
Fund rail like we do highways. Establish an agency to incrementally purchase ROW or track rights and incrementally upgrade services. And to tie all these services together into a cohesive network. This would mean first all the lines in NoCal and separately SoCal would reach speeds of 120mph, electrified, with regular high quality service. That first supports the massive need for transit within these separate mega regions. You’d have a fast enough train from Sacramento to San Jose. Or from San Diego to LA. So on. This already provides good economic benefits. Second, starting a rail renaissance this way around means you have laid out everything you need to get support for the 180+ mph HSR line that would later link these two networks into one statewide network. At that point you would not only have support from the public because it’s obvious what the benefits will be, but you also have all the construction and project management experience built up over the years of buying/fixing/upgrading lines in these northern and southern networks. And instead of this inside out (outside in?), stand-alone plan we had with CAHSR. You now all the way through are making peoples lives better AS YOU GO with your capital investments. The Central Valley construction right now for example is ridiculous as everyone knows. (We know it was done because there was federal money for it, but still.) Imagine instead that same capital expenditure had gone to making the Sacramento to San Jose Capitol Corridor route a high quality electrified 120mph line? It would’ve had immediate economic benefits and people would ride the trains and be like holy shit give me more of this now!!

119 points by jrmg 7y ago

Because they don't have the people of Palo Alto who refuse to acknowledge that the train tracks preceded their town, and think they have the right to prevent new rail development through it.

jkw 7y ago

California is terrible at managing infrastructure projects.

pretendscholar 7y ago
The question is why? Why are some government entities better at managing large infrastructure projects than other?
- jaypeg25 7y ago
  I'd say in the US at least it's hard for a politician to devote money toward a multi-year program that their constituents won't see the benefit of for quite some time (or in the case of upkeep and maintenance, at all). The politician isn't looking to do what's right, they're looking to get reelected.
  - spaced-out 7y ago
    Why are politicians in other countries able to accomplish this while those in the US can't? Are American politicians just lower quality than those in other countries? Or is that their constituents are more prone to short-term thinking than their counterparts elsewhere?
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    > The politician isn't looking to do what's right, they're looking to get reelected. But that's true in all democracies, pretty much by definition.
- pxeboot 7y ago
  The people managing these projects are often hired based on political connections, not expertise. And cost overruns usually lead to higher profits, so there is little incentive to keep costs down.
  - spaced-out 7y ago
    Is this a problem unique to the US? Or is it just worse in the US than in Taiwan?
    - pas 7y ago
      Sort of. The US is big and rich (so small mistakes compound into really big expensive errors fast/eventually) and sort of refuses to shop abroad for expertise, because. Reasons.
  - wwweston 7y ago
    While I’m always a fan of remembering that incentives matter (and believe that some degree citizen attention is a price for a well-functioning government), I would think that a forum full of software engineers could think of other reasons projects go over budget than graft.
    - pas 7y ago
      It's not graft exactly, but simply the project structure leads to enormous inefficiencies. Eg subcontractors cannot work/meet/organize/plan directly with each other, because financial interests put silly lines in the sand. (Just think about how slow/dumb things can become if the backend, frontend and ops are completely separated, plus there's a middle layer (the general contractor) between them and the stakeholders.) Plus, it seems that the main problem is that there's simply not enough experience/expertise at governments for managing/planning/executing these projects. Because too few people are in-house (or on payroll/retainer with the right/aligned incentives), and too few projects are done, so no competent team forms over time.
    - malandrew 7y ago
      > I would think that a forum full of software engineers could think of other reasons projects go over budget than graft. We're not talking about projects in the private domain. We're talking about government projects. Look at the Obamacare website boondoggle. Or the recent lack of backups in Baltimore when hit with ransomware. When it's a government project, it's very fair to consider graft and corruption as the primary causes, especially as they often lead to favoring incompetent people in charge of executing the project.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  More centralised authority, no local counter initiatives that bog them down, less political gridlock and stronger consensus mechanisms, less influence by third parties through lobbying which the US glamorises as free speech, no bias against public transportation and so on. The US almost prides itself in the fact that its government is dysfunctional, that individuals can stop projects at the expense of the general public. One just needs to look at the countless of Hollywood movies where some lone Erin Brockovich-esque hero stands up to 'the machine', with the question rarely being raised what the collective costs and trade-offs are, or whether there's even a rational case to be made for the resistance.
  - pas 7y ago
    There is no big problem with going through courts to make sure the project has sufficiently good cost-benefit ratios. The problem is, that alternatives are not priced comparably, thus the economics simply favors them. (Such as driving or flying.) If tunneling would be cheaper (in concrete construction costs), then those could go ahead, because there's not much issue about it, it's about as straightforward as flying. (Of course below a certain depth, so no noise and structural concerns arise.)
setpatchaddress 7y ago
Genuine question: do any of the US state governments serve as a better model?
throwawaytoday5 7y ago
It's not just California, it's every state and every city in the US. People have an aversion to public works projects often crying about taxes or how the service is useless or not good enough. We have a political system where one major party (out of two) decries any public spending that might help people who aren't millionaires/billionaires/corporations. Is it any wonder when you have evil groups of people spending hundreds of millions of dollars to tell people that they should vote against their interests? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...
- smsm42 7y ago
  > People have an aversion to public works projects People have aversion to public works projects because they routinely see public works projects being mismanaged, hugely overbudget, delayed to geological times, used as source to appropriate public money into private pockets, and paraded for political influence while being badly maintained and chronically broken. I am far from being a millionaire, but I would require a lot of convincing to see how it actually benefits me and doesn't turn into another boondoggle for politicians and contractors. Maybe spending serious chunk of my income on a project that would not happen for decades, would be poorly maintained and I probably won't end up using because they'd screw up something like not having proper access to the endpoints is actually not my interests?
- SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
  > We have a political system where one major party (out of two) decries any public spending that might help people who aren't millionaires/billionaires/corporations. Wasn’t it Newsom who canceled the project? Most high ranking Democrats are certainly rich from things like “energy” and “weapons” via k street and international analogues. We are bipartisan in our corruption and failure to build infrastructure.
  - phlakaton 7y ago
    > Wasn't it Newsom who canceled the project? No. Newsom was the messenger saying what was already pretty evident: the project had run itself into a logistic and financial corner that there was no feasible path out of (at least for now). Note that HSR planning and construction is still taking place. The current public assumption seems to be that the "train from nowhere to nowhere" is all we'll ever get out of the project, but Newsom was actually pretty careful not to say this.
malandrew 7y ago
You can omit “infrastructure projects”. California is terrible at managing.

ksbakan 7y ago

The fact that taiwan is much poorer also means that the labor cost for construction is much lower

larrysalibra 7y ago
Taiwan imports construction workers from much poorer Southeast Asian countries. http://www.cedaw.org.tw/en/upload/media/Capacity%20Building/7-1BMigrant%20Worker%20in%20Taiwan.pdf http://www.cedaw.org.tw/en/upload/media/Capacity%20Building/...
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  US cannot do that either (for political reasons). The optics aren't great, "murrican jobs" and all
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    Large parts of your agricultural industry already are.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      But the agricultural industry doesn't face "Buy American" provisions in their funding requirements that prohibit them from using too much foreign stuff, which is the norm in infrastructure projects.

perspective1 7y ago

Answer: cars and highways. It's really hard to spend a lot of money replacing something that already works, even if it works really, really badly. High speed rail will only happen with a federal mandate.

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haunter 7y ago

As an outsider from Europe: what I see that americans hate any publicly funded projects. "If it doesn't benefit me why should I pay taxes for that?" See the whole healthcare system. "I'm healthy, never sick why should I pay the cancer treatment of those who are obese and smoke all the time?" That's totally different in Europe. Not just in the nordic countries but generally everywhere. So the same applies for public transport and such as well. Also add on the top of that the lowest gas prices in the western world https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/ https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/

SamReidHughes 7y ago
Californians voted for the high speed rail project in a ballot initiative.
- malandrew 7y ago
  And they aren’t going to get what they were promised. With boondoggles like these, it shouldn’t be a surprise why American’s are against infrastructure projects. It’s all over promising and under delivering The same thing happened with the East span of the Bay Bridge.
- phlakaton 7y ago
  Would they have if it had been, say, a $29B proposition instead of a $9B one, and not to be completed until all the baby boomers were 90+ years old? This project has been facing stiff headwinds from the moment it began. If we had that vote again, knowing what we know now, I doubt it would pass.
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    Agreed. I was always against it, because I knew it would play out this way :-). I’d rather force the TSA to have an SLA.
GhettoMaestro 7y ago
> As an outsider from Europe: what I see that americans hate any publicly funded projects. [...] America has become a rat-ship. It is filled with folks that have amazing ideas of how to spend other people's money. Don't be disdainful when the people whose money you have pissed away start getting upset at "grand ideas". We see it as more of the same mostly: corruption, shitty-quality infrastructure, and handouts ("jobs" programs). Rarely do these "grand ideas" translate into real benefits over the long term.

ulkram 7y ago

Is it just me, or is it a bit arrogant to assume that because X can do something, why can't Y do it?

bnt 7y ago
It would be, but here we are comparing a clear “underdog” with one of the most prospering economies in the world, and the underdog won.

deleted 7y ago

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aodin 7y ago

For an article with quite a few numbers, it seems to be missing some basic ones: * Taiwan, area 36,197 km^2, population density 651 / km^2 [1] * California, area 403,932 km^2, population density 97 / km^2 [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Taiwan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...

ben_w 7y ago
How does BART compare?
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  It doesn't exist in 99% of California by area
- almost_usual 7y ago
  It doesn’t. Taipei’s MRT is also lightyears ahead of BART.
  - zhdc1 7y ago
    Kaohsiung's is even better.
_delirium 7y ago
The total area of the state isn't too relevant, since California isn't exactly proposing to build HSR to Eureka or Redding. It's true that California's project is larger-scale, but by 2x: Taiwan has a single 200-mile HSR line, and California is trying to build a single 400-mile line.
- Retric 7y ago
  Taiwan has 1/5th the GDP of California. So, it’s more like California had even lower goals than Taiwan.

zachguo 7y ago

1. It resulted from the era of rapid economic growth. 2. East Asian countries generally value the greater good for all more. 3. There was no stereotype against train travel, and having HSRs was generally considered as a national pride. Nowadays, it's also difficult to do any large scale infrastructure project in Taiwan, because the economy stagnates and the two-party political system is kinda gridlocked .

narrator 7y ago

I think it's because in the U.S absolutely anyone can tie up this stuff in the court systems for years. There are a lot of environmentalists who have been working overtime to stop this thing. For example: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/10/24/high-speed-rail-lawsuit/ https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/10/24/high-speed-rail-l... . There are seven environmental lawsuits against this thing. How much do you think the legal bills are? There will likely be many more. Edit: There are a couple of regularly glitchy things about how American government works. They are: #1 : Public Employees Unions who negotiate with themselves for sweet pension deals. #2 : Suits against various government agencies by individuals that wind up being paid for by taxpayers. For example, school districts getting sued for something a janitor did and then taxpayers having to pay for it as if they were a private business and the taxpayer is the owner. #3 : Environmental lawsuits to stop government infrastructure projects.

smsm42 7y ago
> as if they were a private business and the taxpayer is the owner. Theoretically that's the case. Practically, the taxpayer ends up owning the downsides, and the government nomenklatura ends up owning the upsides. If you have stock in the company that does that, you can sell. If you have government like that, you can vote for another government, but somehow people never do.
chongli 7y ago
Are these environmental lawsuits really about protecting the environment (fighting climate change) or are they NIMBY lawsuits taking advantage of environmental laws/ordinances? In general, I would expect environmentalists to be among the major proponents of high speed rail, with the goal of getting more cars off the freeways. This calls to mind the Faculty of Environment at my university, whose primary focus is on the urban planning degree program. Urban planning as a rule seems to be all about politics, stakeholders, and NIMBYism; not so much about fighting climate change.
- briandear 7y ago
  > Are these environmental lawsuits really about protecting the environment (fighting climate change) “Protecting the environment” isn’t “fighting climate change.” Regardless of one’s position on the effects of CO2, that’s like suggesting that ensuring health should be entirely about how to prevent influenza. Protecting the environment includes protecting habit, stopping (actual, toxic) pollution. Climate change isn’t the end-all be-all of environmentalism. Climate change is being used at an almost religious level to justify pretty much anything climate activists deem necessary — regardless of any unintended (or subversively intended) consequences. Environmentalism doesn’t have to also mean “obsession with climate.” Some of us care deeply about the environment but also don’t have the audacity to think that the climate is changing because of humans. The climate has been changing for 4+ billion years. Of course, downvote away. Heresy is expected to be punished here. It is important that the point was made: caring about the environment can be independent of the climate change gospel.

CalChris 7y ago

The route chosen for CA high speed rail guaranteed failure. SF out to the Central Valley and then in to LA meant a really expensive project which would result in a slow train. This single route through everywhere was necessary for political, particularly Congressional, backing. I'm glad Gavin Newsom cancelled it and I still want HSR. They should start with SLO to San Diego and then a Central Valley line. Finally, connect SFO (yup, San Francisco International Airport) to SLO.

Gibbon1 7y ago
Have you read any of the official product planning documents?
- CalChris 7y ago
  If you wish to provide a link I will look at them briefly.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    Not my problem

dehrmann 7y ago

I used to be more in favor of CA HSR, but I read an argument that said cities are congested, rural I-5 isn't, so we'd be better off building a second BART tunnel and electrifying Caltrain.

Gibbon1 7y ago
High speed rail is paying for half of the electrification project.

jedberg 7y ago

The California HSR has a lot of problems not matched in Taiwan. Firstly, once you get from San Jose to Bakersfield, then what? We don't have good public transit in LA, much less to Bakersfield. But even if the train went all the way to Union Station in Los Angeles, you'd still need to rent a car to get anywhere useful, or take Uber/Lyft. And same thing on the other end. What happens when you get to San Jose? You still need a car or another slow train. If you want to get from San Francisco to Disneyland via HSR, the entire trip would probably take you about six hours with all the train changes and car rides and waiting. You could do the drive in six hours too and then have your car at the other end. Even today, if I want to visit my parents in the suburbs of LA coming from the suburbs of San Jose, I can make the drive in five hours, or spend five hours getting there by plane, assuming someone picks me up at the other end. The only reason I fly is if I happen to be going somewhere right near the airport or it will be rush hour at one end or another when I arrive because I don't have scheduling flexibility. Secondly, the original proposal was to build Stockton to Fresno first. That would be the least used section of the line. Not a lot of people move between Stockton and Fresno. The train would be bankrupt before it ever got to phase two. At least they finally changed their mind on that, but not for a much better route. To be remotely viable, they need to build the most trafficked parts first -- San Jose to Stockton and Bakersfield to Los Angeles. But even those lines would still suffer from problem one unless/until the local transit was vastly improved. I would love to see a viable HSR in California, but the current proposal is not that. Let's build up our local transit first in LA and the Bay Area so that when we connect them with a high speed rail, the rail is actually useful.

ardit33 7y ago
This argument just doesn't make sense. You can make the exact point about airports as well. What's the point of an airport? It is hard to get there, you have to rent a car, parking is expensive, too much trafic, busses are not that often... etc... etc.. Build the train, and have stations close to downtown, while local government can start/extend local transportation as well. Ideally you have both local and inter-urban rail at the same time, but if you don't, then you have to start somewhere. It is harder to build a major station, then several small tram station. Start with the harder part, and let the local government fill out the smaller parts. The beauty of the train, that it can get very close to downtown, or even in the center of it with minimal disruption (if built underground). You just can't do that with an airport.

yongjik 7y ago

I think any talk about HSRs in the US should be able to explain US highways. American highway system is arguably one of the best in the world - it's also a gigantic government project, and it's constantly being extended. So how come America, with its proven track record of great highways, is totally impotent with high speed rails? The answer can't be just "American government doesn't work" or "the country is too big." Irrational mistrust against railways?

almost_usual 7y ago
It’s because we already have highways and our car culture is hard to change. Highways were also originally built for national defense with the economic benefits as a secondary force. Defense projects traditionally get tons of funding in the US. Convincing a generation that witnessed two world wars to back a massive defense project wasn’t difficult.
- ralphie02 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on the national defense? How is the highway useful with defending the country? Defending from who? I can only think of highways as secondary runways for planes but I'm unsure as to how much that helps your case.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    The only reason that I-95, for instance, extends as far as it does, is because of the Strategic Air Command bomber base in Limestone, ME. A lot of the other more nonsensical routings of the interstate system make sense when you take into consideration where strategic bases were located in the 50s and 60s.
  - hollerith 7y ago
    War puts enormous strain on a country's ability to move things around the country.
  - steve19 7y ago
    Wars are won with logistics not guns. Getting troops and supplies across the country would be key to defending it from an invasion. The interstate highway system was built in part for military purposes and partly designed by the Army: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

justinzollars 7y ago

The key issue is this: >While California established an underfinanced government authority to lead the project, Taiwan’s biggest businesses came together to create a private corporation. It should be private.

mch82 7y ago

High speed rail is a bad investment. Rail systematizes discrimination, typically loses money, and struggles to provide a last mile solution. $60B can buy at least 600,000 electric vehicles with 3 million seats. Semi-autonomous vehicles are already capable of operating as a “train” in a dedicated freeway lane and autonomous operation is likely by 2033 (when California’s HSR would begin operation). This solution could be deployed incrementally, with a smaller fleet of human-driven, semi-autonomous EVs in the first phase. 600,000 vehicles may not sound like a lot, but the whole United States had 370,400 taxi & ride share drivers in 2018! [1]. We need to turn the HOV lane into an autonomous car lane & build the future we want instead of tying ourselves to a romanticized version of the past. [1]: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/mobile/taxi-drivers-and-chauffeurs.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/m... Edit: I failed to acknowledge that autonomous vehicles are not available today, so have updated my post. Note, high speed rail isn’t available either & won’t be until, at earliest, 2033.

aiscapehumanity 7y ago
600k additional vehicles sounds like a traffic density disaster.
- mch82 7y ago
  The difference between small, point to point vehicles that operate like taxis and rail is that taxis actually get cars off the road. I attended Hack for LA a couple years back and 1/3 of the traffic in downtown LA is drivers looking for parking. Switching to shared ride transit will decongest the roads.
  - MrMorden 7y ago
    Charging for parking can fix that problem now.
    - mch82 7y ago
      How? Time would be needed to make an alternative transit option available. Are you aware the city (and private lots) already charge for parking?

monster_group 7y ago

The real issue is that gas is too cheap in the US. Everywhere else, except oil rich middle east, gas is expensive enough to discourage people from driving everywhere. They end up taking public transport. In US driving almost always comes out cheaper unless the distance is too great to be convenient to drive.

supernova87a 7y ago

Simply put, even if all the environmental / lobbying / no-car-at-the-destination issues were resolved, the distances of California (and population densities) would still make it economically challenging to have HSR a slam dunk compared to flying. HSR breaks even with flying at about _200-300 miles_ journey. That is, if the planned journey is within that range, for similar pricing, people will choose 50-50 rail over flying (in aggregate, in Europe, Asia). New York to Washington/Boston distances. Greater than that, flying has the advantage. (People will incrementally choose flying the longer the distance). This takes into account typical traffic, getting to the airport, check-in, all that stuff. San Francisco to Los Angeles is 380 miles. Add to that the destination rental car issues, etc. And we haven't even talked pricing yet. Even if you got that all out of the way, flying is still often better than rail. Even on Tokyo-Osaka route, one of the pinnacles of HSR, there are almost comparable flights serving the route as shinkansen. I know we all wish for high speed rail as a demonstration of our technological prowess. But in recent years even I've soured on it for California, given how incompetent we seem to be on top of rail's structural disadvantage in the state. The money would bring far more benefits if spent elsewhere to solve our traffic, commute, suburban issues.

Gibbon1 7y ago
> economically challenging to have HSR a slam dunk compared to flying. Ever priced out a runway extension project? Know how much that costs? You have no idea.
- supernova87a 7y ago
  Oh I do. But you have an existing federal body willing to hide/distribute the cost of that runway, control tower, staff, weather forecasters, etc. Not as much for rail.
shalmanese 7y ago
The market share equation is based on time, not distance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Market_shares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Market_shares Madrid - Barcelona is basically the same distance as SF - LA and used to be the busiest air route in the world and is now 63% rail since the 2.5 hr HSR got built. https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/66620/barcelona-madrid-85-million-passengers/ https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/66620/barcelona-mad... While there are still flights from Tokyo to Osaka, it is now 85% rail market share. https://www.railway-technology.com/features/faster-flying-high-speed-rail-routes-taking-air-industry/ https://www.railway-technology.com/features/faster-flying-hi...

Merrill 7y ago

California has 10 times as many lawyers as Taiwan. http://www.twba.org.tw/en/Report.htm http://www.twba.org.tw/en/Report.htm https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2018/05/new_aba_data_reveals/ https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...

jorblumesea 7y ago

HSR failed in California largely because building effective mass transit is a secondary goal. If you look at the route, and how the process unfolded, the focus was mostly on who was going to get paid, and helping out political friends. In the US, large transit projects are mostly about pork barrel politics and spending, and if something actually usable comes out of it, then that was a great but secondary effect. If you look at how other countries build transit, politics is more subdued and the goal is to actually build a functional system. Republicans block most transit projects as it is antithetical to their political views, and the Democrats uses it as a social spending policy and political handouts largely ignoring the needs of an actual transit system. Basically, US politics just doesn't care to build things properly because the incentives are totally off. Vox has a pretty good breakdown: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/15/18224717/california-high-speed-rail-canceled https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/15/18224717/c...

wenc 7y ago

Side observation, non-related but was brought up in the article: "Taiwan is a far poorer place than California — with median household income just one-fourth of ours — but still it managed to afford high-speed rail." The author seems to be ignorant of some context when describing Taiwan in this way -- I learned recently that wages in Taiwan were artificially and structurally depressed in order to enable a competitive export economy. Taiwan is actually not a palpably poorer place except maybe in an absolute dollar sense. Taipei has top notch infrastructure, superior to every large U.S. city in my view (I've visited and seen for myself) The highways are beautiful. They don't skimp on infra spend. Notwithstanding the fact that median household income is rarely good indication of how "poor" a place is, especially when comparing across countries because of local cost of living assumptions. If we compare poverty rates, Taiwan's is 1.78% whereas California's is 18.2%. Taiwan's GDP per capita (PPP) -- not household income -- was $53k in 2018. California's was $66k in 2016. Not that different. Looks like the author was trying to use a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand there to make his point.

erentz 7y ago

Fund rail like we do highways. Establish an agency to incrementally purchase ROW or track rights and incrementally upgrade services. And to tie all these services together into a cohesive network. This would mean first all the lines in NoCal and separately SoCal would reach speeds of 120mph, electrified, with regular high quality service. That first supports the massive need for transit within these separate mega regions. You’d have a fast enough train from Sacramento to San Jose. Or from San Diego to LA. So on. This already provides good economic benefits. Second, starting a rail renaissance this way around means you have laid out everything you need to get support for the 180+ mph HSR line that would later link these two networks into one statewide network. At that point you would not only have support from the public because it’s obvious what the benefits will be, but you also have all the construction and project management experience built up over the years of buying/fixing/upgrading lines in these northern and southern networks. And instead of this inside out (outside in?), stand-alone plan we had with CAHSR. You now all the way through are making peoples lives better AS YOU GO with your capital investments. The Central Valley construction right now for example is ridiculous as everyone knows. (We know it was done because there was federal money for it, but still.) Imagine instead that same capital expenditure had gone to making the Sacramento to San Jose Capitol Corridor route a high quality electrified 120mph line? It would’ve had immediate economic benefits and people would ride the trains and be like holy shit give me more of this now!!