4 ms·

> such boondoggles as the LA-SF "high speed" rail That thing is way beyond a "boondoggle". It makes no business sense. So there's got to be some serious graft

> such boondoggles as the LA-SF "high speed" rail That thing is way beyond a "boondoggle". It makes no business sense. So there's got to be some serious graft involved. To your point about "bigger planes", instead of spending $30B to build this train to nowhere, the govt could instead go out and lease ten A380 airplanes and dedicate them to flying between San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Sacramento. Even if they lost $1B a year subsidizing this, it would still be much much cheaper than building this train. Although, in fairness, if high speed rail were done "right", it might be able to sort-of work (even though it never makes money anywhere in the world!). But right now this thing is being built in the middle of nowhere, presumably because acquiring right-of-way on a more direct route would be too expensive. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/StatewideRailMod_BubbleMap_013013.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Statewide...

chipsy 12y ago
HSR is not simply graft, although it certainly could be implemented as such. Allow me to give some examples. When you deploy bigger planes you also need bigger infrastructure: The A380, for example, has had some delays due to new requirements. [0] And the A380 itself is not the largest plane ever built [1] - the sizes we've standardized on are an economic tradeoff of land availability, energy consumption, and carrying capacity. Finally, it's not just planes that a train competes against, but automobiles; simply, if more people drive, we waste more energy. The state's planners have run the numbers and determined that HSR will diversify the transit capacity cost load and make it less risky to hit capacity targets 20 years out. [2] In current urban planning practice, rails are preferred as a way to encourage dense and sustainable development; when you go downtown-to-downtown, the land value around those hub stops skyrockets. The Japanese rail system was built around this principle, encouraging the rail companies to be real estate investors as well as transportation companies - as a result, the trains go to nearly every major destination. In the case of CA HSR, the stops in the Central Valley will become secondary hubs for businesses that want equal transit times between SF and LA. This puts the Central Valley towns on a more stable economic footing and is good for the overall welfare of the state. [0] http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/2044309/#9 http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_aircraft [2] http://www.transformca.org/sites/default/files/moving_ahead_with_high_speed_rail_sept_2012.pdf http://www.transformca.org/sites/default/files/moving_ahead_... (page 31)
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  Thanks for providing a more balanced viewpoint on high speed rail. It's a really big gamble, I hope for California's sake that it pays off.

chipsy 12y ago

HSR is not simply graft, although it certainly could be implemented as such. Allow me to give some examples. When you deploy bigger planes you also need bigger infrastructure: The A380, for example, has had some delays due to new requirements. [0] And the A380 itself is not the largest plane ever built [1] - the sizes we've standardized on are an economic tradeoff of land availability, energy consumption, and carrying capacity. Finally, it's not just planes that a train competes against, but automobiles; simply, if more people drive, we waste more energy. The state's planners have run the numbers and determined that HSR will diversify the transit capacity cost load and make it less risky to hit capacity targets 20 years out. [2] In current urban planning practice, rails are preferred as a way to encourage dense and sustainable development; when you go downtown-to-downtown, the land value around those hub stops skyrockets. The Japanese rail system was built around this principle, encouraging the rail companies to be real estate investors as well as transportation companies - as a result, the trains go to nearly every major destination. In the case of CA HSR, the stops in the Central Valley will become secondary hubs for businesses that want equal transit times between SF and LA. This puts the Central Valley towns on a more stable economic footing and is good for the overall welfare of the state. [0] http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/2044309/#9 http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_aircraft [2] http://www.transformca.org/sites/default/files/moving_ahead_with_high_speed_rail_sept_2012.pdf http://www.transformca.org/sites/default/files/moving_ahead_... (page 31)

PhantomGremlin 12y ago
Thanks for providing a more balanced viewpoint on high speed rail. It's a really big gamble, I hope for California's sake that it pays off.