California Hits the Brakes on High-Speed Rail Fiasco

[Carl]

One of the lefts holy grails.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027965105

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 05:52 PM

Star Member Purveyor (28,751 posts)

California Hits the Brakes on High-Speed Rail Fiasco
JUNE 28, 2016 10:00 AM EDT
By Virginia Postrel

California's high-speed rail project increasingly looks like an expensive social science experiment to test just how long interest groups can keep money flowing to a doomed endeavor before elected officials finally decide to cancel it. What combination of sweet-sounding scenarios, streamlined mockups, ever-changing and mind-numbing technical detail, and audacious spin will keep the dream alive?

Sold to the public in 2008 as a visionary plan to whisk riders along at 220 miles an hour, making the trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a little over two and a half hours, the project promised to attract most of the necessary billions from private investors, to operate without ongoing subsidies and to charge fares low enough to make it competitive with cheap flights. With those assurances, 53.7 percent of voters said yes to a $9.95 billion bond referendum to get the project started. But the assurances were at best wishful thinking, at worst an elaborate con.

The total construction cost estimate has now more than doubled to $68 billion from the original $33 billion, despite trims in the routes planned. The first, easiest-to-build, segment of the system -- the “train to nowhere” through a relatively empty stretch of the Central Valley -- is running at least four years behind schedule and still hasn’t acquired all the needed land. Predicted ticket prices to travel from LA to the Bay have shot from $50 to more than $80. State funding is running short. Last month’s cap-and-trade auction for greenhouse gases, expected to provide $150 million for the train, yielded a mere $2.5 million. And no investors are lining up to fill the $43 billion construction-budget gap.

Now, courtesy of Los Angeles Times reporter Ralph Vartabedian, comes yet another damning revelation: When the Spanish construction company Ferrovial submitted its winning bid for a 22-mile segment, the proposal included a clear and inconvenient warning: “More than likely, the California high speed rail will require large government subsidies for years to come.” Ferrovial reviewed 111 similar systems around the world and found only three that cover their operating costs.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-06-28/california-hits-the-brakes-on-high-speed-rail-fiasco

Who could have guessed? 

Response to Purveyor (Original post)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 06:11 PM

taught_me_patience (5,088 posts)
1. As a Californian, I think that it's time to pull the plug on this boondogle n/t

A big leftist government project is always a boondoggle.

Response to Purveyor (Original post)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 06:39 PM

Agnosticsherbet (10,834 posts)
4. As a Californian, I think we should build it faster

And expand it to link the entire state.

It will be more efficient and less poluting.

Who needs reality anyways.

Response to Agnosticsherbet (Reply #4)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 06:50 PM

Throd (6,992 posts)
6. You sure about that?

It's a vanity project for Jerry.

Plus typical dumbocrat money laundering through unions and back to campaigns too.

Response to Throd (Reply #6)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 06:59 PM

Agnosticsherbet (10,834 posts)
8. High speed rail in other countries is all I said about it.

We can do the same thing here.

In my opinion, the federal government should fund and build a national high speed rail system. That and mass transit are necessary to end the age of the private automobile.

Sadly, we are too polarized for sane government.

A train in every garage! 
Retard.

Response to Agnosticsherbet (Reply #8)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 07:22 PM

Throd (6,992 posts)
11. It's a simple math equation that doesn't pencil out.

I also have no interest in ending the private automobile. That's an odd goal.

Response to Throd (Reply #11)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 08:21 PM

Agnosticsherbet (10,834 posts)
17. What is odd about ending a low efficiency high energy, pollution heavy, space using

method of transportation.
As our population increases, public transportation systems are the only viable alternative.
Time to engineer a driverless society.

And food magically appears at the EBT check out.

Response to Purveyor (Original post)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 06:42 PM

liberal N proud (53,018 posts)
5. Why does high speed rail work every where but the US?

Response to liberal N proud (Reply #5)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 07:00 PM

Star Member cherokeeprogressive (24,561 posts)
9. "111 similar systems around the world and found only three that cover their operating cost."

Doesn't sound like it does.

Response to liberal N proud (Reply #5)

Tue Jun 28, 2016, 07:04 PM

Star Member Recursion (49,682 posts)
10. It doesn't. It works in very dense places like Western Europe, Japan, and coastal China

The place it is working in the US, the Bo-Wash corridor, is the only part of the country that approaches that density.

Russia finally after decades of trying opened a high speed line between Moscow and Petrograd, and it's losing money hand over fist and is being kept around as an ego-stoking project for Putin.

Two actual answers ignored.

Response to liberal N proud (Reply #5)

Wed Jun 29, 2016, 03:22 AM

Star Member Firebrand Gary (4,595 posts)
38. Because oil addicted interest in the US are trying to kill it.

Every entity from Ford, Exxon and including Bloomberg would love to see the California project as HSR's "Waterloo"...

Response to Firebrand Gary (Reply #38)

Wed Jun 29, 2016, 06:15 AM

liberal N proud (53,018 posts)
45. And that is the answer!

OIL Companies and their death grip on this country.

But a lunatic C/T is the real reason!!!!!

Response to Purveyor (Original post)

Wed Jun 29, 2016, 01:13 AM

TeamPooka (7,818 posts)
26. maybe we can't do big things anymore. Good thing the Hoover Dam is already built.

Response to TeamPooka (Reply #26)

Wed Jun 29, 2016, 01:26 AM

Star Member Recursion (49,682 posts)
29. Could you imagine having to write the environmental impact assessment on the Hoover Dam?

Or adjudicating the multiple claims among fisheries, First Nations (I guarantee you it's sacred to someone), ranchers, etc.?

Sometimes the reasons we don't do big things anymore make sense...

Yay for big government bureaucrats.

Response to Purveyor (Original post)

Wed Jun 29, 2016, 01:26 AM

Star Member SunSeeker (19,580 posts)
30. We desperately need a high speed train between LA and SF.

I am glad Governor Brown is championing this infrastructure project. I just drove with the family from LA to the bay area last week, since flying would have been really expensive for the whole family. Good God what a horridly long drive, dodging trucks, speed traps and gagging on cow stench for hour after hour of the day long ordeal. Every time I forget and try it again, I remember why I swore I would fly no matter what the cost. I can't wait for a high speed train. We need one between LA and Vegas too.

Starve to death then ****wad.

Urban cretins. 

[landofconfusion80]

They wouldn't ride it anyway and demand the state give their ride free. Another great place for homeless people to piss in at best

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[J P Sousa]

California's high-speed rail project increasingly looks like an expensive social science experiment to test just how long interest groups can keep money flowing to a doomed endeavor before elected officials finally decide to cancel it.   

Sounds like the war on poverty, billions of truck loads of money and democrats keep pushing for more. It never ends.........at least they haven't run out of other peoples money just yet. Maybe if Hillary gets in they finally will run out. 

[DumbAss Tanker]

I agree with Carl, it's like the Sochi Olympics - all about vanity, graft, and money-laundering. 

[thundley4]

The place it is working in the US, the Bo-Wash corridor, is the only part of the country that approaches that density.

It's not working there, either. Amtrak is heavily subsidized by taxpayers and is still expensive to ride.

[jukin]

As I have always said, this will never be built. The only winners will be the graft given to connected democrat elites and the thieves that steal all of the 1/4 done Fresno to Modesto infrastructure.

Tickets have gone up from projected $50 one way LA-SF to $85. In another year it will be well over $100. Projected construction cost has more than doubled from last projection to $69 billion. Original projection the democrat geniuses in Sacto said was $6 billion.

[Ralph Wiggum]

I agree with Carl, it's like the Sochi Olympics - all about vanity, graft, and money-laundering.

And symbolism.

[Karin]

With those assurances, 53.7 percent of voters said yes to a $9.95 billion bond referendum

Gullible nitwits. 

I see that Agnosticsherbet is one of *those* types, who want to re-engineer society to fit its utopian ideal.  The end of the private automobile.  I have three words for you, cold dead hands.  Americans love their cars and they love to drive.  The don't all live in urban hellholes, they live out in wide open spaces where they can breathe.  And drive.  Keep your mitts out of my life, asshole. 

Here's another nasty post about smells:

Response to SunSeeker (Reply #30)

Wed Jun 29, 2016, 02:51 AM

LeftyMom (48,567 posts)

37. The train's still going to take hours and go through smelly valley towns.

And it's going to cost almost as much as Southwest. 

[DLR Pyro]

Agnosticsherbet (10,834 posts)
4. As a Californian, I think we should build it faster

And expand it to link the entire state.

So then you wouldn't mind it going right thru your backyard as part of your master plan to "link the entire state"?


Didn't think so

[thundley4]

So then you wouldn't mind it going right thru your backyard as part of your master plan to "link the entire state"?


Didn't think so

DUmmies have no problem with the government taking other people's land for high speed rail, but NIMBY.

Anyone with common sense can look at a map of the US showing geological features, current rail systems, highways, pipelines and other infrastructure and  easily see that high speed rail will run into lots of conflicts. 

A nationwide high speed system would have to cut through national and state parks to take advantage of some of the most direct routes. 

[Carl]

DUmmies have no problem with the government taking other people's land for high speed rail, but NIMBY.

Anyone with common sense can look at a map of the US showing geological features, current rail systems, highways, pipelines and other infrastructure and  easily see that high speed rail will run into lots of conflicts. 

A nationwide high speed system would have to cut through national and state parks to take advantage of some of the most direct routes. 

It would also have to duplicate the airline model of hubs and layovers.

[SVPete]

Star Member SunSeeker (19,580 posts)
30. We desperately need a high speed train between LA and SF.

I am glad Governor Brown is championing this infrastructure project. I just drove with the family from LA to the bay area last week, since flying would have been really expensive for the whole family. Good God what a horridly long drive, dodging trucks, speed traps and gagging on cow stench for hour after hour of the day long ordeal.

Hokayyyy ... I live in the SF Bay Area. I've driven from San Jose to MouseLand many times. On that basis, I will say that "SunSeeker" is lying and/or a totally inept trip planner. First of all, no matter what route taken, it's, at most, a 5-6 hour drive. Second, even if (s)he foolishly used I-580 to cross over to I-5, they would either have missed the dairy area or been in it for an hour or so. Third, the best route from the Bay Area would have been to take US101 south, either all the way into the Land of LA, or to cross over to I-5 at Gilroy on SR152 or at Paso Robles on SR46. I've done US101 all the way and via SR46 many times, and all three routings avoid cow country. Fourth, while driving costs the same. whether driver onl or with 4 passengers, both airlines and trains charge per seat.

I hope a garlic-impregnated cross-topped silver stake is driven through the heart of this tax $$ guzzling vampire!

[BattleHymn]

I live in an area with lots of cows.


If I knew that's all it took to keep primitives out of my county, I would have started a huge dairy farm years ago. 

[SVPete]

  & an H-5, BH!

I was rushed in my post above, so I'm adding here that not only does driving avoid being charged per person, but once a plane or train passenger arrives, they have to get transportation to where they really want to go. IOW, if SunSeeker took the "bullet train" from the SF Bay Area to the Land of LA, they'd have to rent ... wait for it ... a car to get to MouseLand or whatever their real destination is.

Another thought re "gagging on cow stench", why in Hades did (s)he have the car windows down? Unless the trip was months ago, the temps would have been in the 90s in the central Valley! And if the car AC didn't work (or they didn't have AC), why in Hades did SunSeeker subject her family to hours in a hot car? Yet another thing in this bouncy that doesn't smell right.

And yet another thought re "gagging on cow stench", there is a section of I-5 between Tracy and Sacto that passes a dairy. It shouldn't have been part of their route, but even if it was, that section MIGHT last 20 or 30 minutes. I've driven through that area quite a bit, and will again early on the 4th. "Cow stench" will be the least of my worries (the 6:30 packet pick-up and 7:30 start for a 5-miler in the Central Valley, OTOH ...).

[freedumb2003b]

By the time it was all done, California was ready to spend $100 billion on a high speed railway to rival Seattle's downtown one!

[BattleHymn]

By the time it was all done, California was ready to spend $100 billion on a high speed railway to rival Seattle's downtown one!

Is that the SLUT?  Or is there a different one?

[SVPete]

Wed Jun 29, 2016, 02:51 AM

LeftyMom (48,567 posts)

37. The train's still going to take hours and go through smelly valley towns.

And it's going to cost almost as much as Southwest.

LM is correct about the route, that it would stop in several Central Valley cities.

Travelling from SF, the train would stop in Millbrae (SFO), San Jose, and Gilroy (~50,000) before crossing into the Central Valley then it would stop in:

* Merced, ~80,000

* Madera, ~63,000

* Fresno, ~500,000, the 5th largest city in CA

* Hanford, ~56,000

* Bakersfield, 400,000-500,000, the 9th largest city in CA

And then into LA County.

Calling those Central Valley cities "towns" is exactly the kind of snobbery toward the people who feed and clothe them I know to expect from DU (and similar) Libs and Progs! As for "smelly", I won't say what I really think, but I'll invite "LeftyMom" to cease eating the food produced and processed in those (and similar) "smelly towns" and cease wearing the clothing produced from the cotton and wool raised in those (and similar) "smelly towns".

I've lived more than half my life in Silicon Valley, working in electronics. But I grew up near a large Central Valley town that has grown into a small city of ~56,000. My Dad and many of his friends were farmers, and, unlike many Lib/Prog morons, I respect them. Not only do they feed and clothe me, they are every bit as (or more!) smart in their professions as I am in mine.

[98ZJUSMC]

Starve to death then ****wad.

Urban cretins. 

Faster, please.  ...and do so, painfully, in huge quantities. 

Very painfully.