California's Bullet Train Hurtles Towards a Multibillion-Dollar Overrun (latimes.com) 408
schwit1 quotes the Los Angeles Times: California's bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated — as much as $3.6 billion more. And that's just for the first 118 miles through the Central Valley, which was supposed to be the easiest part of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis, obtained by the Times, projects that building bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter, just north of Bakersfield, could cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion, compared with the original budget of $6.4 billion.
The federal document outlines far-reaching management problems: significant delays in environmental planning, lags in processing invoices for federal grants and continuing failures to acquire needed property. The California High-Speed Rail Authority originally anticipated completing the Central Valley track by this year, but the federal risk analysis estimates that that won't happen until 2024, placing the project seven years behind schedule.
The whole project is expected to cost more than $68 billion.
The federal document outlines far-reaching management problems: significant delays in environmental planning, lags in processing invoices for federal grants and continuing failures to acquire needed property. The California High-Speed Rail Authority originally anticipated completing the Central Valley track by this year, but the federal risk analysis estimates that that won't happen until 2024, placing the project seven years behind schedule.
The whole project is expected to cost more than $68 billion.
Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:5, Insightful)
It may work eventually, but it's a boondoggle for construction companies and mayors/governors.
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:5, Insightful)
It may work eventually, but it's a boondoggle for construction companies and mayors/governors.
Sure, but we should give credit where credit is due. The rule of thumb is that public works eventually cost three times their original budget. So if the overrun is only 50%, that is pretty good. But I am skeptical, since overruns generally follow the "salami algorithm" of publicising the overruns in small digestible slices. This is most likely just a slice, not the final figure.
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, it isn't. Didn't you read the article? It says that in the worst-case scenario, the overrun may be as much as 50% if they aren't careful.
In fact, the contracts awarded so far have cost lass than expected, so the project is actually under budget at this time.
Unfortunately, there will always be opponents like Jeff Dunham who will have none of it. In an effort to get the project canceled under the guise of potential cost overruns, they ironically (if not hypocritically) drive up
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In fact, the contracts awarded so far have cost lass than expected, so the project is actually under budget at this time.
I guess you don't understand how these games are played. There's been very little spending to date so of course, contractors can afford to appear under budget. To get the real money flowing, the contractors and such need to bait the trap and get California to commit a lot more funding.
When there's a lot of commitment, then they'll suddenly have huge cost overruns. My view is that the 50% cost overrun is not a "worst case", but rather an unrealistically low cost estimate just like most other public projec
It's a lot more simple than that (Score:2)
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Here in GA they were going to build a "Northern Arc," to complement the the I285 by-pass that circles around Atlanta. It would by-pass the city even farther away, as the metro area has grown way beyond the original by-pass. Anyway, the corrupt a-holes in charge at the time bought the land that would be near the exits... and then announced the plan about where the highway would run.
In an all-too-infrequent bout of sanity, the voters elected a new governor who immediately stopped the program.
Too bad that d
Re:It's a lot more simple than that (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really - as soon as they announce the project (with the current spending estimates), all the property along the route immediately increases in value.
Do you truly believe this was totally unforeseeable? There is no possible way for them to have predicted it, and taken the price rises into account when budgeting? Let's say they look at 100 past projects, and 98 of them went WAY over budget because of "land price increases", then it is perfectly reasonable for them to just assume that land prices will not be a factor for new projects?
Or do you believe that they look at those 100 past projects, and realize that they made billions and billions by intentionally lowballing the initial bid and then demanding cost overruns, and decide that it is in their financial interests to do it again?
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:5, Informative)
Must be nice to be this incompetent and still have no fear of losing your job.
This is NOT incompetence. It is corruption. They are intentionally lowballing to get the project approved with the connivance of the politicians. They knew exactly what they were doing. The only incompetents are the voters who continue to tolerate this behavior.
It was cushy for me, hard to get used to slacking (Score:5, Interesting)
For me, when I started working for the government, one problem I had was that it was hard to get used to everyone slacking off so much. Previously I worked for a company I own, so any slacking off hit me directly in theb pocketbook. It was frustrating when government employees would come into my office and chit-chat about nothing for an hour.
I eventually got used to it, relaxed, and enjoyed my stress-free job. The less-stressed approach didn't hurt productivity *as much* as I would have expected because it fostered communication between employees and didn't lead to rushing through work, cutting corners on quality because you're rushing. Our quality problems were instead due to lack of competence, because nobody got fired for failing to update their skills in 20 years.
Back in private sector now, I'm glad I had that experience. It reinforced something from working for companies I owned: I don't accept unrealistic deadlines, then deliver crappy trying to meet a deadline that doesn't allow quality work. I can and do tell the boss "no, I don't think we can do project X in a month, and I'm not going to promise you it'll be done in that time." So far, management has appreciated, or at least accepted, being told the truth. They know what "technical debt" is, and they don't want more of it. Actually, MOST of the time they don't want more technical debt. Sometimes, incurring technical debt makes sense, just like monetary debt (borrowing) sometimes makes sense. One instance springs to mind - we wanted to replace an annual contract with an in-house solution. It made sense to use duct tape and baling wire where needed to get the job done before the yearly cost was renewed, then replace the duct tape with bolts afterwards.
Re:It was cushy for me, hard to get used to slacki (Score:4, Interesting)
You have some very good managers. My private sector experience has been different. If I tell them that we can't do project "X" in a month, and I won't be promising that, the managers in my experience will immediately say, "do it at a far shorter time, or we will find someone who will." The concept of "technical debt" is ignored, because what matters is getting the product out -now-, so the next round of VC funding can be approved, because it is far more important to ship -something- and clinch the sales... than to ship something release worthy and be behind. If the shortcuts taken with coding cause major problems, the company just axes devs and makes the call to Tata or Infosys.
On the other hand, I'm very thankful I'm in the public sector. My boss will ask for a solution that will work for five years. Not something that is duct taped together that will make the lash-bearers in this financial quarter happy and not spawn shareholder lawsuits (but require exponentially more work each time until the axe swings and it just goes offshore), but something that can be implemented and maintained for a good amount of time, then things moved to the next solution.
My experience is that the private sector doesn't want an Engineer Scott who gets the job on time, but is conservative about the scheduling estimates. They want a Captain Cass Mason who can promise anything and everything, with the steam engines always overdriven. When the ship blows, no big deal, stuff gets offshored, and the execs get their bonuses anyway because it was supposed to be offshored anyway.
Re: Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund (Score:5, Insightful)
What is so difficult anout doing ground radar surveys so that you know in advance what you are going to encounter
Because if you identify all the problems upfront, and give an accurate estimate, then YOUR PROJECT WILL NOT BE APPROVED. It is much smarter to drastically lowball, and then start jacking up the costs after enough has been spent to invoke the "sunk cost" argument. Business people are taught to ignore sunk costs, but in politics, sunk costs are never ignored.
Re: Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fu (Score:5, Informative)
Almost a hundred years ago, Henry Flagler had the Florida East Coast Railroad built from Jacksonville to Miami to Key West in approximately the same time it now takes **just** to do the environmental impact studies.
It's taking longer to re-double-track FEC along a roadbed built decades ago between WEST PALM BEACH & Miami (for the new Tri-Rail) than it took to build the entire original railroad across a mostly-uninhabited swamp literally a hundred miles from the nearest real city (in 1900, Miami's population was barely 100).
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It may work eventually, but it's a boondoggle for construction companies and mayors/governors.
So I must have been just dreaming when I thought I remembered zipping from London to Paris in just over two hours and sending emails from under the Atlantic seabed.
Re: Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund (Score:2)
Have any reason to zip to fucking Bakersfield?
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:4, Informative)
It may work eventually, but it's a boondoggle for construction companies and mayors/governors.
So I must have been just dreaming when I thought I remembered zipping from London to Paris in just over two hours and sending emails from under the Atlantic seabed.
Your response is strange; the article and the GP are about cost overruns not whether the project is completed or not. The Chunnel did indeed overrun by about 80%.
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:5, Informative)
Emphasis mine. What you say does not contract what OP said. From the Wikipedia article on the Channel Tunnel [wikipedia.org]:
I suspect what's going on is a bit more insidious than mere corruption. Construction companies bid low so that they'll win the contract. Then they charge the actual construction costs as cost overruns. What's needed is an incentive to encourage companies to bid a realistic estimated cost, rather than a completely unrealistic underbid just to win the contract. Something like, say, not paying for overruns and holding the company to its original bid price.
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Really? If so, what the heck are the state's lawyers s
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:5, Informative)
No, what is needed is a PUNISHMENT for not completing the project as they specified.
Do this a couple of times, and believe me, the problem will be solved.
Just go and have a look at how the Chinese government gets work done. Hint: NO contractors get to overcharge, or walk away folding the company 1 week after 'completion', etc. THEY ARE HELP ACCOUNTABLE.
Such construction has long been another slush-fund for politicians to line the pockets of their backroom funders.
Almost all public construction in the west is not so completely corrupt that the 'organisations' running it make vice and drug gangs look straight..
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I suspect what's going on is a bit more insidious than mere corruption. Construction companies bid low so that they'll win the contract. Then they charge the actual construction costs as cost overruns. What's needed is an incentive to encourage companies to bid a realistic estimated cost, rather than a completely unrealistic underbid just to win the contract. Something like, say, not paying for overruns and holding the company to its original bid price.
The real problem is the politicians want the budget to
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Also, it can be tricky to drive from London to Paris while sending emails.
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:5, Insightful)
"London and Paris are about 200 miles apart. The distance between San Francisco and Los Angeles is about 350 miles."
That's 200 miles with a stormy ocean channel in the middle vs 350 miles on land with some mountain passes. Every route has "interesting" construction problems, but the Swiss just completed a bullet train tunnel that passes under the Alps north-south in a straight line ("base tunnel") as if the range wasn't there. That dwarfs the largely political problems that are inflating California's HSR budget.
Commercial air travel is optimized for long distances. We will always use it to go from Los Angeles to Seattle, Chicago or New York. But trains in busy corridors can replace the fleet of planes it takes to shuttle people over Europe-sized distances within the US, just as they do successfully in, you know, Europe.
This is not new and unexplored tech. The cost overruns are not because it's a train, but because it's California.
Re:Well, duh. Mass transportation is a slush fund. (Score:4, Insightful)
It would probably be easier for California if we built it through the base of a mountain range. Nobody owns that. Having to negotiate for ownership of the route necessarily means it'll be tied up in court for eons.
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31.4 miles as the tunnel flies. The tunnel was one of the world's long-dreamed-up "impossible" projects that everyone thought would never be built. The only tunnel that was more "impossible" was the one between Honshu and Hokkaido. I've been through that one, too.
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As is any highway project but the overall ROI is massive.
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They will. Construction workers, cops, sailors, indian chiefs, banana stand owners, right of way owners, construction equipment mechanics etc. will all get paid.
There will be no train (Score:4, Insightful)
It will never have a single paying passenger. This has been an easy prediction since at least the year after it was approved.
It's the 21st century, not the 19th. How many airports could you build with $68 Billion ?
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Re:There will be no train (Score:5, Insightful)
-mass transportation needs to be able to pay its own way or it isn't something we should be putting in.
I disagree. Some forms of mass transit should be subsidized. The problem is that THIS ISN'T ONE OF THEM. This is long distance travel that only well-off people will be able to afford, that will carry a small proportion of traffic on a route that is not congested anyway, and is already well served by other mass transit options (airplanes, buses, Amtrak).
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Amtrak and buses take 7+ hours to make the trip that high-speed rail will do in 3.
As for airports: the planes pollute more, the trains are more comfortable, and the train stations are located where people are (in downtowns) instead of on the outskirts of town.
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Neither LAX nor SFO airports are on the outskirts. Nor is SAN, nor SNA, nor SJC. Which California airport are you talking about?
Re:There will be no train (Score:4, Interesting)
"LAX is right on the coast, as far from the city center as one can get. It's a half-hour ride through traffic to downtown."
Yup. LAX is about 30 mins away from the center of downtown. Union station is about 10 min away from the center. Clearly we must spend billions and billions of dollars to turn a 60-90 min flight in to a 3 hour train ride that costs more and breaks the bank so a few people who can afford it can travel in comfort and shave 20 mins off their cab ride.
Makes perfect sense.
Re:There will be no train (Score:5, Insightful)
Now add in 90 minutes at the airport before and after which don't exist on trains. Now add in the extra pollution and carbon usage of the planes. Now add in lower prices because rail is cheaper to run and uses less gas. Now add in the lower congestion at airports because some percentage is now using rail. You end up with a trip that's cheaper, barely if at all longer, more comfortable, less polluting, and improves things for everyone else too. I'm very glad to have voted for it.
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For a small fraction of $68 Billion, it would be easy to solve wait times at airports for popular regional flights. And it is a 60 minute flight, so comfort is less of a concern than for a (more expensive) 3-4 hour train ride.
If pollution is the issue (for green religious types), you could use another small fraction of $68 Billion to subsidize the switch from gas to electric for millions of cars -- that would more than make up for some extra planes.
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Ha. Show up one hour before scheduled boarding time is the standard advice, but frequent travellers know to show up 90 minutes to two hours. Then add another 15-30 minutes to actually start taxing out to the runway, and thirty minutes after landing before you're at the curb looking for a taxi, bus, or rental car shuttle.
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You say "only well-off people will be able to afford" the train, but that's not the case in other places where there is high speed rail.
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Long before (the plan says) you can take a high speed train from San Francisco to LA, you'll be able to hire a robot car to drive you.
And it will pick you up and drop you off wherever you are going on your own schedule. It will be a little slower, but not that much because it won't stop in Merced or Palmdale unless you want it to, and because robot cars will be safe on rural freeways at 100 mph at least. The price will probably be less than the price of an HSR ticket (and almost surely less than the cost
Re:There will be no train (Score:4, Interesting)
mass transportation needs to be able to pay its own way or it isn't something we should be putting in.
So if I could spend $10 on mass transit that reduced the road budget by $20 and got people where they wanted to go, we shouldn't save money, because that doesn't hate mass transit enough?
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You should make up more interesting numbers. Say your $10 would save $10000. Why tell merely a dramatic story when you could tell a fantastic one?
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The cost of building equivalent capacity to the $68.4 billion bullet train is estimated to be $119.0 billion for 4,295 new lane-miles (6,912 km) of highway, plus $38.6 billion for 115 new airport gates and 4 new runways, for a total estimated cost of $158 billion (2.3x $68.4 billion).
So AK Marc's figures of $10 on mass transit vs. $20 on roads were a little on the conservative side.
Re:There will be no train (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't mind mass transit that can't pay its own way (in fact, I'd fully subsidize free public use of city bus / light rail systems to encourage their use and lower emissions). The main reason I voted against high speed rail is that it doesn't actually solve a problem -- it's not more attractive to the customers than air travel or car travel, the ticket prices aren't projected to be cheaper, the trains won't arrive sooner than planes, and by the time it's built it'll be extremely antiquated already (it's not even a true fast HSR project by today's standards, let alone 2040s standards).
If the hyperloop had been on the ballot instead, I would've had to consider it much more strongly. It would be a very risky project also, but at least it would be innovation and it would potentially provide something new that would solve real problems.
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Why? Mass transportation has a lot of positive externalities.
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The above post suggests that money should instead be spend on Bay Area or Southern California transit projects, but this is a false dichotomy (trichotomy?) -- the public benefits from spending money on all three of these areas (North, South, and HSR to connect them). In the North: BART is extending south from Fremont to San Jose (coming end of 2017!), Caltrain is electrifying to boost capacity and speed, giving frequent, fully electrified, and high-capacity transit all around the Bay. In the South, Los A
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High speed rail will tie these two great regions even closer together, compensate for our overcrowded highways and airports, and benefit the entire state.
Sure, but wouldn't that scenario be good for the State of California, and thus, less inspirational for the "government is always wrong" posting numbers?
Re:There will be no train (Score:5, Informative)
YOu need to get out of the US. Throughout Europe they use trains. They go 200 miles per hour. They're more comfortable than a plane (more leg room, dining cars, etc), cheaper to operate, and when you count the time it takes to get through security faster. Also far more likely to be on time. The only way planes win is if the trip is at least 800 miles so the speed difference beats the amount of time wasted at an airport. Anything else, take a train. Literally nobody in Europe or Asia prefers planes for medium distance travel.
Except in America of course where we're decades behind on rail technology and have trains limited to 50-60 mph. Its about time we catch up with the rest of the world.
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Except in America of course where we're decades behind on rail technology and have trains limited to 50-60 mph. Its about time we catch up with the rest of the world.
The freight rail is perhaps the world's best.
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Can you imagine the pollution produced by airliners?
I'm not a member of the green religion, so my airline flights aren't a sin.
Grand railway terminals can be placed lin the heart of cities
That's not how they are building the train in CA though. The high speed transfers are (planned to be) from the far ends of the commuter rail systems, far outside the heart of the city. They abandoned the plan to directly link the city centers to keep the cost under $100 Billion.
Why not build a railway for the entire route, so people can travel city centre to city centre, without changing modality?
Because it's slower, much more expensive, and technologically backward. And airports can serve people who don't just want to go between LA and SF.
Let a Private Company Do It (Score:4, Interesting)
If it is viable, a private company would have funded and started it with agreements with California government entitites.
They haven't done so and would not do it, so that tells you it will NEVER BE PROFITABLE.
Let Hyperloop step up.
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The fallacy to that is the initial costs are huge and the entire project is risky. No company in their right minds wants it no matter how much there is an overall economic argument for it. Only government can take these kinds of risks.
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If it is viable, a private company would have funded and started it with agreements with California government entitites.
They haven't done so and would not do it, so that tells you it will NEVER BE PROFITABLE.
Viable and profitable are not the same thing. Infrastructure should not be a profit centre but rather an economic assessment of the needs for the future of an area. You can look to Australia to see what happens when profits are put first. A whole network of tunnels through cities all tolled, and all barely used while the traffic clogs the streets above.
Welcome Back to DrudgeDot! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Or...or maybe just do what all the greenies like anyway and shop/eat/live local?
Re:Welcome Back to DrudgeDot! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Interstate System. NASA's trips to the planets. FDA keeping your food from killing you. SS keeping Grandma from moving in with you. NiH keeping research going on the diseases that might kill you. Need I continue or has your myopic stupidity completely clouded your vision?
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Sorry, but I've seen far too much of the AC type of things said in earnest, to believe that. At the very least Poe's Law applies in spades.
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It worked for them and LA to SF seems almost like a textbook example of where it would work again.
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It would work great if they had built it back in the 1960s. You could get a project done back then, and the land and labor would have been cheap. But we can't go back in time to the 1960s to build it. And now that it's going to be the 2020s, the world has moved on and there are less backward looking alternatives.
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Big projects done by government, bad. No further information needed!
E.g. the Apollo program. Or Medicare/Medicaid. Or the Manhattan Project. The government does things wrong, but it also does things well. This mantra about the government fouling up everything it touches is patently false.
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It's *Herr Trump* get it right.
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Tricky Dicky had a pretty fair record,
Unless you count stuff like sabatoging peace talks in the Vietnam war [nytimes.com]. Causing the death of thousands of Americans and more Vietnamese is a really heavy counter-weight to the good stuff he did.
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Tricky Dicky had a pretty fair record,
Unless you count stuff like sabatoging peace talks in the Vietnam war [nytimes.com]. Causing the death of thousands of Americans and more Vietnamese is a really heavy counter-weight to the good stuff he did.
Even the whole "open up trade with communist China" thing is backfiring big time.
Support High Speed Rail (Score:5, Insightful)
I am shocked that by LA Times writer Ralph Vartabedian's article on the supposed risk and overruns to California's ongoing high-speed rail (HSR) effort. Vartabedian is a known opponent of HSR whose every article drips with antagonism against this project, as a quick review of his past articles will clearly show. Anyone who reads the purported analysis (in fact a single Powerpoint file, taken out of context) will quickly see that the article's claims are not justified -- for example, a *possible* $3B overrun (really less, since this compares against obsolete estimates) does not equal a 50% budget problem for a project of this size. The entire state stands to benefit immensely from this project, which will connect BART, Caltrain, and VTA users in the North with Metro, Metrolink, and Amtrak users in the South --- and connect both to the isolated, ignored, economically-depressed Central Valley. Californians, and all who believe in progress, should embrace this transformative project and reject the uniformed mudslinging by the Vartabedians of the world.
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Certainly, few people drove on the first five miles of controlled-access highway --- but the fully built-out Interstate system is used by many millions. To describe the entire project as only the Central Valley segment is foolish at best and malevolent at worst.
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Certainly, few people drove on the first five miles of controlled-access highway
Actually that would be an interesting thing worth researching.
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already out-of-date (Score:3)
As a veteran of the Big Dig (Score:4, Funny)
I can confidently asset that the fleecing of the taxpayers has hardly begun. Already over seven years late and fifty per cent over budget, they have found a good vein and are going to suck it dry. Look for Trump to try to pull the federal funds, or contain them to the railroad subsidy to get the eastern states squealing too.
ChumpChange (Score:5, Informative)
The liberal voters in Seattle pushed through a $54B transportation bill for only 64 MILES of track....Ya, with "B"..
http://www.seattletimes.com/se... [seattletimes.com]
Every property owner in 2 counties will get the benefit of higher taxes ($400+ per year) on top of our already 10+% sales tax.
Sure, traffic is awful, but I can't fathom over $843M per mile of light rail. What a testament to government bloat, payola and incompetence...
California tax payers should consider themselves lucky with such a paltry number.
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> What a testament to government bloat, payola and incompetence...
That's exactly it. We can no longer accomplish big projects because all anyone is trying to do these days is hustle everyone else. And because so many are playing the same racket, no honest player can actually survive.
Re:ChumpChange (Score:4, Informative)
Apples and Oranges. Building one train line like this is relatively simple, compared to urban light rail.
A more apt comparison would be to compare Puget Sound's Sound Transit 3 to LA's Measure M [seattletimes.com]. Both are rather complex light rail expansions. Measure M's projected cost was $121 billion, compared to Sound Transit 3's 54 billion.
Also, Sound Transit's tax base is three counties, not two.
Nope (Score:2)
America's modern motto, "No, we can't!"
Compre to Boston's Big Dig (Score:2)
I know people are gasping at the $68b possible price tag. I would like to point out that Boston's Big Dig, basically a tunnel an inner-city highway ended up costing $22b. So, a state-of-the-art high-speed rail line from LA to San Fransisco will only cost 3x what a 2 mile tunnel and urban highway cost. Oh and they highway did nothing to reduce congestion, all it did was induce demand for more drivers and push bottle necks outside the city.
Put that way, this is a relative bargain.
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Not in California. It's always a drought here, regardless of how many times it rains.
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Or I'm joking.
Who cares? (Score:2)
It's only the public's money, and no politician gives a damn about that.
Translation (Score:2)
"lags in processing invoices for federal grants": "We can't be bothered to catch the money that's falling down on us".
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Oh well, I'm from Europe and new railroads being much more expensive and much less profitable than first estimated is certainly not an unknown phenomenon here. I know 2 Dutch railroad projects that were massively over budget and much less profitable than estimated (a freight transferline), and a complete failure (a high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris, which is now used by normal trains but no further than Brussels).
Re: Envy is one of the seven deadly sins (Score:2)
There's already high speed operated by Thalys from Brussels to Paris, so maybe already enough capacity? Or perhaps it's the same problem faced by DB when it comes to running trains from Cologne to London: too many different national rail standards and requirements. It seems to me that the EU hasn't done too good a job of extending the single market to rail (yet), although this becomes prohibitively expensive where there are differences in things like loading gauge.
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HSR safety document [ca.gov]. AFAIK, true grade separation isn't fully funded. The quad gates described in the PDF are said to reduce "collisions" 98%, but I'm inferring that as vehicle collisions. They don't look like they would do much for pedestrians.
You improperly inferred that I was saying CA HSR won't match the eastern corridor for speed. In fact, it will exceed it. I was only making a statement regarding the expense of building out HSR in populated areas of the US, and why it's a problem; namely the fac
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It's not the worst idea --- but the track is exceedingly curvy, speeds could never be very high, and in the end it wouldn't be much cheaper (if at all) than building a new line. Plus the large (if often ignored!) population centers in the Central Valley would be entirely bypassed by a coastal route, relegating them even more to backwater status. Further more the coastal route is anyway owned and mainly run my freight rail, who would fight to the death against any encroachment. The current HSR project buil
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Because Amtrak is a corporate welfare basket case that will never come close to justifying itself economically. We have aircraft now. Passenger rail is for short-distance commuting, and it's barely cost effective at that.
Aircraft can't bring you city center to city center. If you add up travel to and from the airport the break-even is usually 3-3.5 hours. The question is whether there's many enough passengers to justify it, laying down rail costs almost the same no matter how many travel. Airplanes are much closer tied to number of flights = cost of delivering service.
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Because upgrading the tracks doesn't increase average speed very much. The trains still have a lot of stops so speeds average slower than driving.
Plus we have airplanes now. Any money that could be spent on trains could be spent much more efficiently to solve whatever issues might make people want to choose rail travel over airline travel.
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The word 'projection' when used by business or government s a fancy way of saying they can the future. Through enough numbers and fancy colorful graphs and people will believe anything.
But that's fine. The voters should allow the bond after a construction company has given a firm bid and demonstrated that it has insurance for up to, say, 5x cost overruns.
If no one company can cover that much, the managers can break it up into small enough pieces until the voters have a guaranteed not-to-exceed cost.
Any vot
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Pretty much no construction project, public or private, is done with fixed price bidding. Its done with costs+ bidding. No construction company in the world would touch a contract where they're on the hook for the overruns. And no insurance company would ever issue such insurance, for any cost.
I mean really- would you accept a software project where you're told when it has to be done, all the features in it with no changes, a fixed budget, and if it goes over you have to pay everything? Nobody would ag
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The word 'projection' when used by business or government s a fancy way of saying they can the future. Through enough numbers and fancy colorful graphs and people will believe anything.
And how is that any different from a typical IT project?
Maybe it's time they do agile infrastructure projects! I can already imagine user stories: "As a train passenger I need to get from Point A to Point B without paying $5,000 per mile and without breaking the laws of nature".
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Simpsons - Monorail Song [youtube.com]
When China wants a bullet train, they Just Fucking Build It. We sing the monorail song as our way of warding off progress.
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And they don't care about building it to withstand earthquakes either.
Re:We know that will happened fromt the beginning. (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump's border wall will be paid by raising taxes on Mexico imports. They will indirectly pay for it.
It's funny how you think tariffs and taxes on products being imported into the US will be paid for by the people exporting the goods.