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It's a Western problem. China just moves people out of the way. In the West, you have go around, under, or over. Labour costs are low. The CCP answers to it
by DrBazza 5y ago
It's a Western problem. China just moves people out of the way. In the West, you have go around, under, or over. Labour costs are low. The CCP answers to itself. Can I build this? Of course you can!
In the UK, there's archaeological surveys, bio-diversity/green considerations, carbon impact, political lobbying. The list just goes on and on and on.
The US, at least, is largely an empty continent. You can probably draw a line between cities and not hit many things. Plus the US love-affair with cars means you could, if you wanted to, build terminals outside major cities and rent a car to drive the last part and still conceivably run a profitable service.
In the UK, we must have our terminals in the city centres which adds so much more to the cost as we have to tunnel under and into the cities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_2
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> It's a Western problem It's more accurately a common law problem. European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral. > You can probably draw a line between cities and not hit many things The empty parts are away from cities. The California and Capitol corridors are (a) prime rail routes and (b) almost contiguous megalopolises.
- ttz 5y ago> It's more accurately a common law problem. European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral. Asking out of genuine interest - do you have any ideas as to why this might be?
- username90 5y agoCould also be that first past the post systems leading to less competent administrations than proportional representation and coalitions. Common law and first past the post seems to go hand in hand.
- JPLeRouzic 5y ago> European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral. At least not in France. The "SNCF" had to be rescued by the French state three times since it was created in 1937. And it was created because the private companies it replaced were bankrupt. [0] (in French) Each year the French state gives ~16 Billion Euros to the company [1] (in French) [0] https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/03/19/cinq-questions-sur-la-dette-de-la-sncf_5273270_4355770.html https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/03/19/cinq... [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_nationale_des_chemins_de_fer_fran%C3%A7ais#Subventions_et_aides_de_l'%C3%89tat_et_des_r%C3%A9gions https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_nationale_de...
- distances 5y agoEach and every country loves to complain about their railway services. I bet you're selling the French railways short here. I'd assume you're doing better than UK, and definitely an order of magnitude better than US.
- JPLeRouzic 5y agoI did not complained, I replied to: "European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral." Do you have any hint of other European states with Napoleonic law that avoided cost spiral?
- distances 5y agoRight, I misunderstood your comment. I agree that costs have increased in continental Europe too, don't have any numbers.
- IdiocyInAction 5y ago> It's more accurately a common law problem. European states with Napoleonic law appear to avoid the cost spiral. Germany alone has like 3 major extremely over-budget infrastructure projects I can think of.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> Germany alone has like 3 major extremely over-budget infrastructure projects I can think of I'm going off cost per mile to build rail and road. Even when European projects go over budget, they still clock in below the U.K.–on average–which clocks in way below the U.S. (The latter gap is best explained by institutional ineptitude.)
- hulitu 5y agoCorruption also plays a big part in rising the cost.
- ggggtez 5y agoTechnically speaking, the US has eminent domain laws which allow it to force people out of the way (generally by paying fair market price for the land). The problem isn't legal, but entirely one of political will.
- DrBazza 5y agoWe have compulsory purchase orders in the UK that are often used on large infrastructure projects such as high speed rail to clear the route, but they’re politically unpopular and not used as often as they perhaps should be. And politicians are nothing if not about self interest and popularity.
- 6510 5y agoIOW high speed rail is not popular.
- laurencerowe 5y agoThe UK's HS2 is really about freeing up more commuter capacity on the existing lines into London - currently both the express and stopping services use the same line requiring large gaps. By separating the fast and slow trains they'll be able to schedule more trains. If you're going to build a new line might as well make it high speed. If you've ever been on a London commuter service you'll see they're pretty packed.
- 6510 5y agoIf the system requires a charismatic politician vocal about high speed rail he/she either doesn't exist or not enough people care for it?
- laurencerowe 5y agoI don't think people particularly care about high speed rail in Britain since the vast majority of the population live within 200 miles of London and our existing trains go up to 125mph on the mainlines so get you to London in a couple of hours or so. Edinburgh or Glasgow to London is a similar distance as LA to SF. Those trains take about 4 hours right now versus 8 hours on Amtrak, about the same as the 8 1/2 hours the Flying Scotsman took from Edinburgh to London in 1888.
- m0llusk 5y agoThe stretch of California high speed rail currently under construction includes a costly grade separation roughly every one and two thirds miles. The result should be safe and robust, but the expense is evidence of something more than a largely empty continent. And that is in a largely wide open mostly agricultural area of the US.
- laurencerowe 5y agoI assume you're referring to the Caltrain upgrade. It was completely wild to me that a railway line through a major metropolitan area would have level crossings. They're usually a rural thing in other countries.
- m0llusk 5y agoNo, I'm talking about the current round of work in the Central Valley that just started. Currently all the big HSR works are going on there. I can't currently find the report with the oddly high grade separation count and it is possible that my read of that was mistaken, but I am pretty sure that if you look at the recent documents they just moved on from CP1 and started on either CP2 or CP4 in the south end of the Central Valley and it includes a very large number of grade separations. That report was posted somewhere on either https://hsr.ca.gov/ https://hsr.ca.gov/ or https://www.buildhsr.com https://www.buildhsr.com a month or two ago. Fortunately these Central Valley grade separations are merely expensive while the CalTrain corridor work on the peninsula is experiencing explosive growth of costs from the the complexity of grade separations because of the very tricky maze of rights of way especially in and around Redwood City: https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-exploding-cost-of-grade-separations.html https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-exploding-cost...
- birdyrooster 5y agoEveryone says that the party can just build infrastructure anywhere but then why are nail houses so common in China?
- Forbo 5y ago> carbon impact I must be missing something here. Surely trains have a much lower carbon impact than cars and planes do, right?
- chongli 5y agoLower yes, but not zero. Concrete and steel for construction of the railways produces a lot of emissions. Even if the trains are electric, a lot of the U.S. grid is powered by fossil fuels (mainly coal plus some natural gas).
- AuryGlenz 5y agoEven in the US the government needs to buy/take land from every individual in the way. In my experience that maybe wouldn’t be a problem but they try to get it for a ridiculously low amount, so then people (understandably) fight. That leads to delays and more costs until that’s finally settled. When the county replaced a road that ran next to my parent’s property, they wanted to move it up, taking half of their 60 acres. They did this because they wanted to expand the county park (for RVers) that’s across the road. They offered $500 an acre. That land is easily worth $10,000 an acre, and that would have also reduced the value of the rest of their land and house. Their house is on a hill and the view is wonderful, and the county also tried to put a water tower up right in front of their house. Long story short after a long fight a man with some pull got involved on my parents behalf, and the county ended up with some extra land (sold at a reasonable price) and the water tower was put behind a woods (from their perspective) instead, all of a few hundred feet away. It was years of stress for my parents.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y agoI don't see what's stopping the US from building elevated rail over interstate highways. They already own the rights of way, and the radii of curvature are already pretty large. As a conservative lower bound, they should at least be able to match automobile speeds. Additionally, those highways typically enter cities, so stations could be built over them, often right in the city center. That does leave details about how those stations are accessed, but this seems minor since everything else has already been dealt with. I wonder if an executive order could make it happen.
- muskox2 5y agoWouldn't it also be much, much more expensive than building the line on the ground?
- AdrianB1 5y agoI don't know the cost in US, but in my country Euro prices are: highway at 6 million/km, rail at 10 million, viaducts over 15 and tunnels over 20 million. The elevated rail would be at least 50% more expensive, probably more than double because in case of viaducts there is no restriction on what is below the construction and you can put pylons anywhere, if it is above and existing highway there are many limitations. So it is doable, maybe a good idea if you have the money, but I heard California is burning money like there is no tomorrow and there are no funds for such a project (maybe not true, it's just what I heard).
- DrBazza 5y agoI'm not American, but I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't much appetite for building transport infrastructure above existing transport after the Oakland viaduct collapse in the 1989 SF earthquake. I'm old enough to remember it, and watching from abroad, it was pretty horrific. The cost of building something like that is likely to be prohibitive because you'll need to dig support pylons by the road and each and every pylon would need a ground survey for existing utilities, and so on. It adds up really quickly, even with a concrete factory on site manufacturing identical parts (which they do for tunnel building for example). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake#Oakland_and_Interstate_880/Cypress_Viaduct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake#Oa...