5 ms·

The HSR folks have turned out to be wrong on almost every material element of CA hsr - from capital cost to schedule to operating cost to performance. I voted f

The HSR folks have turned out to be wrong on almost every material element of CA hsr - from capital cost to schedule to operating cost to performance. I voted for the bond - but wow - hsr folks seem like a bunch of scammers at this point. I think hyperloop was primarily motivated by his hated of HSR - his many complaints well documented- basically for the insane cost he felt it would end up at - something better could be done or tried

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
The first Japanese Shinkansen train went over budget by 100%, but nobody remembers that anymore. Instead they talk about how wonderful the Shinkansen trains are. Interstate I-69 costs more than CA HSR, has been plagued with problems, and has been under construction for more than 30 years and yet you don’t see the frothing negative coverage of that like you do CA HSR because in our country cars are normal and trains are the weird things we need to scrutinize to death. This video is some nice coverage of this: https://youtu.be/PwNthD-LRTQ https://youtu.be/PwNthD-LRTQ
- abudabi123 4y ago
  > The first Japanese Shinkansen train went over budget by 100%, but nobody remembers that anymore. Instead they talk about how wonderful the Shinkansen trains are. The next generation National Space Telescope went over budget by a factor of twenty and fell behind schedule. That's another data point on the loss of American prestige. I couldn't watch the documentary at the repeating use of the word incompetence. One recent commercial resupply vessel failed to open one of two solar panels and the Lisa probe failed to lock on of the two solar panels.
- masonic 4y ago
  >The first Japanese Shinkansen train went over budget by 100%, but nobody remembers that anymore. Instead they talk about how wonderful the Shinkansen trains are. HSR is at 300% of original budget without even a credible schedule for completion of that original plan -or- source of funding. Long-distance "high speed" rail is going nowhere in CA without constraints on air travel, especially short-hop flights, that includes taxation for environmental consequences. Nobody flying the Bay Area or Sacramento - L.A. corridor is going to spend 4X as much to spend double the time in transit.
  - onphonenow 4y ago
    Yeah, the routing is weirdish - the opening date keeps getting pushed back (full route promised by 2020, we may not see first segment till 2029!) cost is going to be in 1b/year range. They are projecting 9 million riders on the Bakersfield segment, will be an interesting proof point if they can deliver that (Amtrak service use on nearby routes was declining for years ore pandemic). I do wonder if for 100 billion we could have done automated bus or cargo lanes - or even just tried a few interesting ideas out. The ballot summary was literally written by the ballot authors to avoid a more neutral party writing it
- schiffern 4y ago
  > Instead they talk about how wonderful the Shinkansen trains are. At the time, Japan's HSR was the fastest in the world. California's would be the slowest in the world. Merely slapping on the name "high speed" doesn't make it so.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    > California's would be the slowest in the world. Can you elaborate on that? Because the train is designed to go 220mph, and if that's "the slowest in the world" then I don't really care. I also read that it needs to slow down to 110mph in some sections, but again that isn't necessarily an issue unless it has to do that all the time. The French TVG route from Paris to Lyon is 243 miles and takes 1 hours and 59 minutes, an average of 121 mph. So if our train travels 220mph sometimes and 110mph sometimes and the French TGV averages 121 mph on longer routes, then I'd say we're in the ballpark of building French TGV style trains in California, which sounds great to me! It sounds like this "slowest in the world" claim is another soundbite without context used to make the project look bad.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Tokaido Shinkansen (fastest train in the world): Projected ¥200 b . Completed at ¥380 b. CA HSR (slowest HSR train in the world): Projected $40 b. Currently $105 b. I think it will end north of $160 b. So that's 4x which further from 1.9x than 1.9x is from 1x. I don't think they'll meet the other targets. But if you want to have fun, I'll have someone meet you in SF and we can make a deal: On the day CA HSR opens, I'll give you $80 (supposed LA/SF fare) times 20 and you can give me 20 LA/SF tickets over that first year. We can put it on longbets.org
  - runarberg 4y ago
    Where is this myth that CAHSR will be the slowest HSR in the world coming from? I see it in sibling posts as well. CAHSR will travel up to 220 MPH (350 km/h) which makes it the fastest non-maglev train in the world. Now it will travel slower within city limits in the Bay Area and Los Angeles as it shares a corridor with non-high speed trains, but that is not unheard of in other networks around the world. As for the 2.5x over-budged, it is well known that the initial cost estimates were too low. The current rising of the estimate is largely due to inflation. This will keep happening while the project remains under-funded (which is precisely what the ill intentioned hyperloop idea was meant to do). I very much doubt that it will rise to 160 billion USD though (that is unless it remains unfunded for another decade or two).
    - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      Yeah I just did some research and I think that claim is a misleading soundbite. Copying from my other comment I just left: The French TVG route from Paris to Lyon is 243 miles and takes 1 hours and 59 minutes, an average of 121 mph. So if our train travels 220mph sometimes and 110mph sometimes and the French TGV averages 121 mph on longer routes, then I'd say we're in the ballpark of building French TGV style trains in California, which sounds great to me!
      - runarberg 4y ago
        Even if you do average speed instead of max speed CAHSR is still among fastest (if not the fasted) non-maglev train in the world. It will make a non stop run between LA union station and Transbay transit center in SF (a distance of around 760–790 km if my calculations are correct) in under 2 hours and 40 minutes. This will be an average speed of 280–300 km/h (or 180–190 MPH). In a quick google search I couldn’t find any trains—not even maglev trains—with faster average speed.
Robotbeat 4y ago
Specifically, hatred for how terrible the CA HSR project was and frustration with traffic, not HSR in general.
cycomanic 4y ago
The CA HSR is over budget, but we know at least that HSR is technologically possible in contrast to hyperloop (in fact there are many voices which say it's fundamentally not possible). So if the hsr folks are scammers what does that make the people proposing hyperloop?
- onphonenow 4y ago
  Is it politically possible? The first HSR contractor quit in total disgust - I think they went to africa and build high speed there instead? I think they already torqued the routing based on some kind of backroom deals. Some NY Times excerpts below. I don't think the hyperloop folks were trying to any of these gimmicks, none of them served on boards that could do the horse trading. “There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system." Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018. ... The horse-trading in this case involved an influential land developer and major campaign contributor from Los Angeles, Jerry Epstein. Mr. Epstein, who died in 2019, was a developer in the seaside community of Marina del Rey who, along with other investors, was courting the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for a 40-year lease extension on a huge residential, commercial and boat dock development. Mr. Epstein was also a member of the rail authority board, and he became a strong backer of Mr. Antonovich’s proposal for a Mojave Desert diversion on the bullet train. “The Palmdale route was borne of a deal between Epstein and Antonovich, absolutely,” said Art Bauer, the chief staff member on the State Senate Transportation Committee, speaking publicly on the matter for the first time. “If I get my lease, you get my vote was the deal,” Mr. Bauer said. Though Mr. Epstein was only one member of the board, his lobbying of other board members proved critical, he said. “Epstein got the votes. The staff didn’t get the votes. The staff didn’t want to go that way.”

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

The first Japanese Shinkansen train went over budget by 100%, but nobody remembers that anymore. Instead they talk about how wonderful the Shinkansen trains are. Interstate I-69 costs more than CA HSR, has been plagued with problems, and has been under construction for more than 30 years and yet you don’t see the frothing negative coverage of that like you do CA HSR because in our country cars are normal and trains are the weird things we need to scrutinize to death. This video is some nice coverage of this: https://youtu.be/PwNthD-LRTQ https://youtu.be/PwNthD-LRTQ

abudabi123 4y ago
> The first Japanese Shinkansen train went over budget by 100%, but nobody remembers that anymore. Instead they talk about how wonderful the Shinkansen trains are. The next generation National Space Telescope went over budget by a factor of twenty and fell behind schedule. That's another data point on the loss of American prestige. I couldn't watch the documentary at the repeating use of the word incompetence. One recent commercial resupply vessel failed to open one of two solar panels and the Lisa probe failed to lock on of the two solar panels.
masonic 4y ago
>The first Japanese Shinkansen train went over budget by 100%, but nobody remembers that anymore. Instead they talk about how wonderful the Shinkansen trains are. HSR is at 300% of original budget without even a credible schedule for completion of that original plan -or- source of funding. Long-distance "high speed" rail is going nowhere in CA without constraints on air travel, especially short-hop flights, that includes taxation for environmental consequences. Nobody flying the Bay Area or Sacramento - L.A. corridor is going to spend 4X as much to spend double the time in transit.
- onphonenow 4y ago
  Yeah, the routing is weirdish - the opening date keeps getting pushed back (full route promised by 2020, we may not see first segment till 2029!) cost is going to be in 1b/year range. They are projecting 9 million riders on the Bakersfield segment, will be an interesting proof point if they can deliver that (Amtrak service use on nearby routes was declining for years ore pandemic). I do wonder if for 100 billion we could have done automated bus or cargo lanes - or even just tried a few interesting ideas out. The ballot summary was literally written by the ballot authors to avoid a more neutral party writing it
schiffern 4y ago
> Instead they talk about how wonderful the Shinkansen trains are. At the time, Japan's HSR was the fastest in the world. California's would be the slowest in the world. Merely slapping on the name "high speed" doesn't make it so.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  > California's would be the slowest in the world. Can you elaborate on that? Because the train is designed to go 220mph, and if that's "the slowest in the world" then I don't really care. I also read that it needs to slow down to 110mph in some sections, but again that isn't necessarily an issue unless it has to do that all the time. The French TVG route from Paris to Lyon is 243 miles and takes 1 hours and 59 minutes, an average of 121 mph. So if our train travels 220mph sometimes and 110mph sometimes and the French TGV averages 121 mph on longer routes, then I'd say we're in the ballpark of building French TGV style trains in California, which sounds great to me! It sounds like this "slowest in the world" claim is another soundbite without context used to make the project look bad.
renewiltord 4y ago
Tokaido Shinkansen (fastest train in the world): Projected ¥200 b . Completed at ¥380 b. CA HSR (slowest HSR train in the world): Projected $40 b. Currently $105 b. I think it will end north of $160 b. So that's 4x which further from 1.9x than 1.9x is from 1x. I don't think they'll meet the other targets. But if you want to have fun, I'll have someone meet you in SF and we can make a deal: On the day CA HSR opens, I'll give you $80 (supposed LA/SF fare) times 20 and you can give me 20 LA/SF tickets over that first year. We can put it on longbets.org
- runarberg 4y ago
  Where is this myth that CAHSR will be the slowest HSR in the world coming from? I see it in sibling posts as well. CAHSR will travel up to 220 MPH (350 km/h) which makes it the fastest non-maglev train in the world. Now it will travel slower within city limits in the Bay Area and Los Angeles as it shares a corridor with non-high speed trains, but that is not unheard of in other networks around the world. As for the 2.5x over-budged, it is well known that the initial cost estimates were too low. The current rising of the estimate is largely due to inflation. This will keep happening while the project remains under-funded (which is precisely what the ill intentioned hyperloop idea was meant to do). I very much doubt that it will rise to 160 billion USD though (that is unless it remains unfunded for another decade or two).
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Yeah I just did some research and I think that claim is a misleading soundbite. Copying from my other comment I just left: The French TVG route from Paris to Lyon is 243 miles and takes 1 hours and 59 minutes, an average of 121 mph. So if our train travels 220mph sometimes and 110mph sometimes and the French TGV averages 121 mph on longer routes, then I'd say we're in the ballpark of building French TGV style trains in California, which sounds great to me!
    - runarberg 4y ago
      Even if you do average speed instead of max speed CAHSR is still among fastest (if not the fasted) non-maglev train in the world. It will make a non stop run between LA union station and Transbay transit center in SF (a distance of around 760–790 km if my calculations are correct) in under 2 hours and 40 minutes. This will be an average speed of 280–300 km/h (or 180–190 MPH). In a quick google search I couldn’t find any trains—not even maglev trains—with faster average speed.

Robotbeat 4y ago

Specifically, hatred for how terrible the CA HSR project was and frustration with traffic, not HSR in general.

cycomanic 4y ago

The CA HSR is over budget, but we know at least that HSR is technologically possible in contrast to hyperloop (in fact there are many voices which say it's fundamentally not possible). So if the hsr folks are scammers what does that make the people proposing hyperloop?

onphonenow 4y ago
Is it politically possible? The first HSR contractor quit in total disgust - I think they went to africa and build high speed there instead? I think they already torqued the routing based on some kind of backroom deals. Some NY Times excerpts below. I don't think the hyperloop folks were trying to any of these gimmicks, none of them served on boards that could do the horse trading. “There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system." Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018. ... The horse-trading in this case involved an influential land developer and major campaign contributor from Los Angeles, Jerry Epstein. Mr. Epstein, who died in 2019, was a developer in the seaside community of Marina del Rey who, along with other investors, was courting the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for a 40-year lease extension on a huge residential, commercial and boat dock development. Mr. Epstein was also a member of the rail authority board, and he became a strong backer of Mr. Antonovich’s proposal for a Mojave Desert diversion on the bullet train. “The Palmdale route was borne of a deal between Epstein and Antonovich, absolutely,” said Art Bauer, the chief staff member on the State Senate Transportation Committee, speaking publicly on the matter for the first time. “If I get my lease, you get my vote was the deal,” Mr. Bauer said. Though Mr. Epstein was only one member of the board, his lobbying of other board members proved critical, he said. “Epstein got the votes. The staff didn’t get the votes. The staff didn’t want to go that way.”