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The high-speed rail business plan says trains will run between the greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area by 2029. By comparison, it took abo

The high-speed rail business plan says trains will run between the greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area by 2029. By comparison, it took about 7 years in the mid 19th century to build the nearly-2000-mile First Transcontinental Railroad [0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad

dredmorbius 13y ago
The transcontinental railroad wasn't routed through sprawling megalopolises and extant exurbs home to tens of millions of people. Rather, it enabled them. The principle challenges of California's HSR project are that it does connect and pass through developed areas. In the case of the French and German HSR projects, development times from inception to first lines being opened were on the order of 10-15 years, and this in countries with large extant conventional passenger rail networks. In the case of the US, passenger rail has been relegated to second-citizen status on the nation's freight railroad network (itself world class). HSR necessitates additional rights of way, and securing the land for this is in fact a major factor in development. This article and your response actually highlight the problem: small but focused individual increments of pain vs. large (but individually smaller) social benefits. It's a classic instance of the Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_of_Collective_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_of_Collective_Action
Anechoic 13y ago
By comparison, it took about 7 years in the mid 19th century to build the nearly-2000-mile First Transcontinental Railroad It's amazing what you can do when a) the government grants you the land [1]), b) you can exploit a class of workers [2], and c) (as pointed out by dredmorbius) you don't have to worry about appeasing existing property owners. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts [2] According to http://cprr.org/Museum/FAQs.html#Died http://cprr.org/Museum/FAQs.html#Died 100-150 Chinese workers died constructing the 1907-mile transcontinental railroad which corresponds to 12-19 worker deaths per mile. The CA HSR project is 800 miles in length, at TCRR fatality rate, CA HSR would be expected to lose 42 to 67 workers during the life of construction which would not be tolerated. There are also inequities in pay, etc to consider. I couldn't find non-fatal injury numbers
- 001sky 13y ago
  It's amazing what you can do when... This misses the point that a trans-continenatl railroad was <actually a good idea>. It was the latter point that allowed for the footnotes in your snark answer to even be relevant. A train from 2 hours outside LA to 2 hours outside SF is not doing any CA taxpayers any favours, regardless of its speed. [1] [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/StatewideRailMod_BubbleMap_013013.jpg/463px-StatewideRailMod_BubbleMap_013013.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/St...
  - Anechoic 13y ago
    A train from 2 hours outside LA to 2 hours outside SF is not doing any CA taxpayers any favours Good think no one (who isn't named "Elon Musk" that is) is talking about building a high-speed transportation system that doesn't go into the heart of SF or LA. As for what you refer to as "snark" - it's the cold reality of capital projects in the modern age. Governments and companies can't just ram projects through the countryside with little regard to abutters the environment, and workers as they did in the olden days. There are welfare and environmental requirements that must be met and they tend to slow things down. That's reality.
    - 001sky 13y ago
      You might not be from California, but Merced to San Fernando valley is a pointless commute. Their is no need for high-speed rail in the 5 corridor. The 5 Fwy is "high-speed" and the corridor is both straight and sparseley populated. The benefit of HSR is only in plowing through the "last mile" (in actuality, the last hour). Look at London's linnk to pairs with Eurotunnel. That is a successful HSR because it drops into Waterloo. If it dropped into Heathrow/Gatwick/Cambridge or something else two hours away, it wouldn't be nearly as useful. It would be a more interesting project to see an HSR from Berkeley to Palo Alto or SF to Monterey, or something that actualy opened up new areas to one another. Right now the Bay Area is hamstrung by these types of regional bottlenecks, which the HSR is not going to solve. I don't disagree with you on the fact that these bottlenecks exist for the reasons your mention. But that is also my point: there is no consensus on them, so special interests are able to leverage legitimate differences of opinion. The eralier example of trans-continental was exactly the opposite. The consesnsus and political will was so strong, all barriers were basically steamrolled out of the way (legal, ethical, etc).

dredmorbius 13y ago

The transcontinental railroad wasn't routed through sprawling megalopolises and extant exurbs home to tens of millions of people. Rather, it enabled them. The principle challenges of California's HSR project are that it does connect and pass through developed areas. In the case of the French and German HSR projects, development times from inception to first lines being opened were on the order of 10-15 years, and this in countries with large extant conventional passenger rail networks. In the case of the US, passenger rail has been relegated to second-citizen status on the nation's freight railroad network (itself world class). HSR necessitates additional rights of way, and securing the land for this is in fact a major factor in development. This article and your response actually highlight the problem: small but focused individual increments of pain vs. large (but individually smaller) social benefits. It's a classic instance of the Logic of Collective Action (Mancur Olson): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_of_Collective_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_of_Collective_Action

Anechoic 13y ago

By comparison, it took about 7 years in the mid 19th century to build the nearly-2000-mile First Transcontinental Railroad It's amazing what you can do when a) the government grants you the land [1]), b) you can exploit a class of workers [2], and c) (as pointed out by dredmorbius) you don't have to worry about appeasing existing property owners. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts [2] According to http://cprr.org/Museum/FAQs.html#Died http://cprr.org/Museum/FAQs.html#Died 100-150 Chinese workers died constructing the 1907-mile transcontinental railroad which corresponds to 12-19 worker deaths per mile. The CA HSR project is 800 miles in length, at TCRR fatality rate, CA HSR would be expected to lose 42 to 67 workers during the life of construction which would not be tolerated. There are also inequities in pay, etc to consider. I couldn't find non-fatal injury numbers

001sky 13y ago
It's amazing what you can do when... This misses the point that a trans-continenatl railroad was <actually a good idea>. It was the latter point that allowed for the footnotes in your snark answer to even be relevant. A train from 2 hours outside LA to 2 hours outside SF is not doing any CA taxpayers any favours, regardless of its speed. [1] [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/StatewideRailMod_BubbleMap_013013.jpg/463px-StatewideRailMod_BubbleMap_013013.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/St...
- Anechoic 13y ago
  A train from 2 hours outside LA to 2 hours outside SF is not doing any CA taxpayers any favours Good think no one (who isn't named "Elon Musk" that is) is talking about building a high-speed transportation system that doesn't go into the heart of SF or LA. As for what you refer to as "snark" - it's the cold reality of capital projects in the modern age. Governments and companies can't just ram projects through the countryside with little regard to abutters the environment, and workers as they did in the olden days. There are welfare and environmental requirements that must be met and they tend to slow things down. That's reality.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    You might not be from California, but Merced to San Fernando valley is a pointless commute. Their is no need for high-speed rail in the 5 corridor. The 5 Fwy is "high-speed" and the corridor is both straight and sparseley populated. The benefit of HSR is only in plowing through the "last mile" (in actuality, the last hour). Look at London's linnk to pairs with Eurotunnel. That is a successful HSR because it drops into Waterloo. If it dropped into Heathrow/Gatwick/Cambridge or something else two hours away, it wouldn't be nearly as useful. It would be a more interesting project to see an HSR from Berkeley to Palo Alto or SF to Monterey, or something that actualy opened up new areas to one another. Right now the Bay Area is hamstrung by these types of regional bottlenecks, which the HSR is not going to solve. I don't disagree with you on the fact that these bottlenecks exist for the reasons your mention. But that is also my point: there is no consensus on them, so special interests are able to leverage legitimate differences of opinion. The eralier example of trans-continental was exactly the opposite. The consesnsus and political will was so strong, all barriers were basically steamrolled out of the way (legal, ethical, etc).