California Bullet Train Costs Soar To $77.3 Billion, Will Take 5 Years Longer To Complete 269
The California High-Speed Rail Authority announced today that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would total $77.3 billion, an increase of $13 billion from estimates two years ago, and could potentially rise as high as $98.1 billion. They also said the earliest trains could operate on a partial system between San Jose and the farming town of Wasco would be 2029, five years later than the previous projection. Los Angeles Times reports: The disclosures are contained in a 114-page business plan that was issued in draft form by the rail authority and will be finalized this summer in a submission to the Legislature. The rail authority has wrestled with a more than $40-billion funding gap, which would increase sharply under the new cost estimates. The biggest immediate driver of the cost increase has been in the Central Valley, where the rail authority is building 119 miles of track between Wasco and Merced. The authority disclosed in early February that the cost of that work would jump to $10.6 billion from an original estimate of about $6 billion. Roy Hill, one of the senior consultants advising the state, told the rail authority board, "The worst-case scenario has happened." In its 2014 business plan, the rail authority optimistically projected that it could begin carrying passengers in just seven years. But the warning signs of uncontrolled cost growth had already started mounting then, even though until this year the rail authority has vehemently denied that it was facing a problem. The project began having trouble buying property for the route almost immediately after it issued its first construction contract in 2013.
European mass transit v US mass transit (Score:4, Informative)
Re: European mass transit v US mass transit (Score:2)
Any business relying on government deals is shady: construction, waste management, software programming.
Everyone knows that once you locked a government contract, you can lay back and count money.
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I'd like to see politicians promise to quit if the such a project go
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I'd go one further, I'd like to see the authorizing body (city council, state legislators) held personally liable for costs over 15%. But that is not going to happen either.
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The main issue is inflation. When this was originally proposed about 20 years ago, the “cost” was about $10B. Inflation in California is about 5% annually, so take ~50 years of inflation, and you are magically at $100B. The original cost was likely half of the real cost at the time, so this is what you get... $1Million/mile for the track was a reasonable cost at the time, double it for land, double the total again for cars and stations.
But, the real problem is land acquisition. They should have
Race between Texas and California (Score:4, Interesting)
The official web site [texascentral.com] of the proposed Texas bullet train, from Houston to Dallas, says that the Texas project will cost "over 12 billion" and start construction in 2019. Like the California project, the Texas project has been plagued by delays and cost increases. I wonder who succeed first, or at all.
Re:Race between Texas and California (Score:5, Insightful)
Texas Central is confident they will transport the first true high speed passengers in the country, despite not having yet turned a shovel. If they can manage to reach construction, I think they will win because the route is easier (mostly flat open land), 100% new build (versus sharing with existing passenger/freight RoW), and less encumbered by regulations (e.g. FRA crash safety standards can be relaxed as it does not connect to the national freight network).
And by not taking government subsidy, they were able to come up with the route of "least resistance" versus routes that involve deviating to serve every local politician's one horse town. Stations are pretty expensive, and by only having one intermediate one they save on cost, time, and legal wrangling.
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I wonder who succeed first, or at all.
Well, the folks who "win", will be the employees of the project who succeed in dragging out their project the longest. If they pad the project out correctly . . . they can make it last until their planned retirement, and never need to look for another train construction job again.
If they finish on time . . . they will need to go out and look for a new job in a few years.
Now, which option do you think they will choose . . . ?
Anyway, when rail construction in the western got stuck in the late 1800's, they
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That seems to be the operative sentence. If they manage to extend the local network in time it would be a fine idea.
Of course, rail planners everywhere seem to think only in terms of their prestige project and not about local connectivity, so I'm afraid that it will turn out to be another station to nowhere.
(As an example, the Netherlands insisted on a High Speed rail link going all the way to Amsterdam, for reasons of 'international prestige', instead of terminating at Rotterd
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There not only Amsterdamers who want to travel somewhere there are plenty of people that want to travel to Amsterdam, too.
And for them a train stopping in the center of the city is convenient.
Hard to believe (Score:4, Insightful)
$78B? OMG. That is like almost 8% of the cost of the Iraq war.
No way we could ever fund something that big.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Interesting)
Iraq war was funded by the US govt. It was a national effort. This train is a state project.
Secondly, just because you wasted a lot of money on a big worthless project in the past, doesn't make it okay to keep on wasting money on further worthless projects. And yes I do agree that Iraq was a clusterfuck and that US should GTFO of the middle east completely.
I'm hoping Elon will put this matter to rest with his Boring company. By that I mean, the Senate Launch System, which at $1 billion+ per launch is a wasteful pork barrel project designed only to line the pockets of former Shuttle defense contractors. But with the successful launch of the Falcon Heavy (which currently costs less than 1/10th of the SLS but eventually with reusability will probably reach 1/100th the cost of the SLS) not even the most pork-doling corrupt senator will be able to justify the SLS's existence.
Anyways I'm hoping Boring company will do to worthless pork barrel trains what SpaceX has done to worthless pork barrel rockets.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:4, Insightful)
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Didn't we just get tax reform? Lower taxes for all. That will solve the problem. Oh and fire 20 weather forecasters to cut costs.
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Interstate highway system is a national effort. No reason a high-speed rail network should not be.
If the interstate highway system had started five years ago, it would also be a "big worthless project" and completing it would involve an astronomical sum.
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Where do you think federal highways go through - outer space? How many times were you dropped on the head as a child?
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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All problems that can be solved by Calexit...
(1) A terrorist attack against a train itself is unlikely (why not just attack the tracks?), but will be even less likely in an independent California that's neutral and not involved in wars that make people hate the US.
(2) California pays more money to DC than it gets back. An independent California would have much more money to play with without subsidizing parasitic states.
(3) Assuming an independent California, they'd still have to deal with state bureauc
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Please god yes. Cal exit. ... Cal gone a couple of years after that ... water rights go away with Cal exit, and Cal goes away w/o water).
(Oh, and surprise
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You want a Calexit? Ok, but take all the Democrat refugees that have been fleeing from the state and taking their shitty policies with them that caused them to flee in the first place. Then you can officially become annexed by Mexico.
Re: Hard to believe (Score:4, Interesting)
http://spaceflight101.com/2017... [spaceflight101.com]
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We still need good trains (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been to a lot of different countries, and it's always ironic how much better their mass transit is than in the U.S. I have rarely had to rent a car or even take a taxi to get anywhere I want to go - outside of the U.S. And it's very rare for me to have to take a bus in another country. Train go everywhere, except in the country I live in.
Given the insane amounts we spend on airports and aircraft, and roads, there just isn't any justification for not having the good trains they have in other countries. Consider little Switzerland, and its incredible transit systems. Take the train from London to Paris. Nothing you would see in the U.S.
So-called "smart roads" (which aren't going to work except for those leased vehicles with locked-down hoods) and autonomous vehicles might work for urban transit eventually. For inter-city routes they are still molasses-slow and inefficient.
And I am not really sanguine about the hyperloop. The safety issues make my mind boggle, and companies are having trouble even getting a model to go fast in one.
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I can take an airplane from San Jose to Burbank for $121 and even with security, it takes about 2 hours I can drive to Shafter (about halfway) in about 2.5 hours and cost about $23. Why do I need a train that takes twice as long and is *certain* to cause $300-400, not to mention bankrupting the state in the process? Who gives a crap what happens in Europe, why does *this* train and the astonishing and ever-growing cost make sense?
Re: We still need good trains (Score:2)
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Actually, the lowest I got on Kayak was $86, and that's using your own insurance.
Then add in the cost of a driver. You aren't driving the train, and you get to do other stuff.
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I can take an airplane from San Jose to Burbank for $121 and even with security, it takes about 2 hours
I haven't been to San Jose's airport, but if you were to leave from LAX you'd have to get to their airport two hours before takeoff to make it to your gate in time. That's not counting LA's crazy traffic, where it takes an hour to drive ten miles.
why does *this* train and the astonishing and ever-growing cost make sense?
It will greatly reduce traffic, decongest airports, reduce pollution, provide economic opportunities for the underprivileged, and projects like this are a boon to the economy.
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Why should the train ticket be such expensive?
I had expected a price around $50, perhaps $60.
For EUR75 I ride from my town to Paris, 450km, 2:30h, city center to city center.
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Probably because LA to SF is 600+ km and CA ($90-100 million/mile) is spending way more per mile of track than France ($3-4 million/mile) did.
For reference, a current Amtrak one-way train takes 11 hours and costs anywhere from $65-$215 depending on class of service. Taking the bus is less time (9h) and money ($30), although presumably not as nice. Current prediction is $86 for subsidized single "low-cost" high-speed ticket (3h) on the new line, but that may still increase.
Cheapest (one tank of gas) and fast
Re:We still need good trains (Score:5, Interesting)
This stretch of track is going to cost $10.6 billion / 119 miles = $89 million per mile.
The U.S. bet on highways in the 1940s and 1950s. While highways are probably a good idea for personal vehicles in a country the size of the U.S., they had the side-effect of subsidizing the trucking industry. The higher tire pressures of trucks cause almost all the damage to our roads and highways, but their fuel taxes only pay for about half of it. So in effect, passenger cars are subsidizing the trucking industry, dropping the economic cost of truck transport below that of rail (where you have to pay for labor to transfer cargo from a ship/truck to the train in the source city, then from the train to a truck in the destination city). That's what we need to fix if we want to spur more railway development in the U.S. Make trucks bear the true cost of the damage they do to our roads, and suddenly rail transport will be more financially attractive.
Re:We still need good trains (Score:5, Insightful)
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My favorite response to this sort of thing is this entirely accidental equivalent for roads [nytimes.com].
Re:We still need good trains (Score:4, Informative)
Take the train from London to Paris.
I’ll take a plane instead.
I have done London-Paris using both modes. Trust me, you would prefer the train. Get in in downtown London, get off in downtown Paris while airport travelers are still dealing with the latest wildcat strike at CDG.
The People's Republic of California could order every component of this bullet train system right out of the Alstom catalog, so technology is not the issue in the Gilded State. It's strictly because of the stupid politics that you will be able to hop a self-driving car to the Hyperloop station before the HSR is finished.
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Sheldon, you're raising an objection that is not relevant to high speed train operation. Tracks and right-of-way have to be rebuilt for high speed, such as reducing curve radii, in any case.
When you take the regular train from Barcelona into France, it stops at the old pre-EU border between Portbou and Cerbère for about a half hour of people running around outside the train and hammering on the wheels. What they're doing is changing the train gauge from the broad Spanish standard to the narrower EU sta
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Bezos (Score:3)
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Can you say "taking advantage"? (Score:3)
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Why should land owners want to sell? The train is being built for other people, not for them.
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Cancel it (Score:2)
Theres no way this is better than simply taking an airplane between the cities. The whole thing is a boondoggle. Cancel the whole thing. Probably a racket here, some Democrat giving kickbacks to a contractor. Would be better to subsidise an express bus service for people needing a lower cost option. Florida wanted to build something similar. It was realized it would be a wasteful boondoggle. It was cancelled by Rick Scott, the wisest decision he ever made.
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Theres no way this is better than simply taking an airplane between the cities.
Proposition: trains suck.
Proof: Europe does not exist.
AI (Score:3)
I'm shocked.. (Score:3)
..shocked I tell..
Wait, no I'm not. This thing is the boondoggle of our generation and has been since the beginning.
If the legislature gave two shits about the citizens of California they would cut their losses and scrap the project. They don't and they won't.
HSR in California? (Score:2)
Not worth it--wrong vision for California (Score:2)
Would the riders/economic benefit of such a railway ever support the interest payments on the billions? I'm skeptical on that point.
How about we invest $80B instead in "virtual presence" and better networking technology, so that people can stay home and their avatars can go to work, and business travel becomes unnecessary and archaic?
I think California has the wrong vision. Instead of making travel cheap, California should work on developing tech to make travel obsolete.
--PeterM
Is it this expensive in other countries? (Score:2)
Did other countries pay comparable money for bullet trains?
BTW: the price will likely keep going up. Figure around $300B by the time it's finished.
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With that much money... (Score:2)
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California could buy and distribute 155 million $50 airline tickets.
And how much would the additional road and airport capacity required to support that additional load cost?
I just don't believe estimates (Score:2)
The city did an expansion of "Mopac" and the cost/time overrun was crazy. Now the sound walls have a problem. A report just came in that the drainage tunnel the city put in downtown which was 161 million in the end quoted as 26 mil is structurally deficient. The did not put rebar in so buildings over it may collapse. And who can forget the boston big dig. Government has somehow become incompetent to build things on time/budget. Gov needs to start putting teeth into contracts. If you miss on quality/time/pr
That's a fair amount of cash (Score:4, Insightful)
You could have a school with a capacity of 100,000 where the average student had a BSc/BA by 18 and 15% had PhDs by then, and teachers and researchers were paid a decent salary, and run it for 40 years on the same money. That includes the cost of building it. The benefit to the economy would be infinitely greater than the train system, which should have been built for far, far less. Maybe set the design of its replacement to the kids.
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Goofus drives a car. Gallant takes mass transit. Goofus thinks "Smart Roads" mean something. Gallant realizes that they can't be any smarter than the idiot driving his Uber.
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Gallant gets a nap on the train, gets some work done, arrives refreshed. Gallant's self-driving, no steering wheel car was bricked in an OS update, like his Oculus Rift. It's still sitting in his garage as he calls for a "ridesharing" service, who are not responding because all their self-driving cars have also been bricked in an OS update.
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Gallant wakes up and realizes that the High Speed Rail is just a boondoggle used to drain California of more of it's money.
Goofus waves as he is driven by the train station.
Gallant hops on a Greyhound, and cries into his chai tea.
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Gallant knows that other western countries have been making decent high-speed rail networks since the 60s that are considerably faster than driving, and decent city public transport systems that are often faster than traffic too, and wonders what's taking the USA so long.
Goofus doesn't realize this and instead of insisting on decent public transport from the government is just waiting on the pipe dream that technology will eliminate the traffic jams he sits in every day.
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There's already a train. This is just a faster, fancier train, because this is California and we have nice things.
Re: Just likely lovely Venezuela! (Score:5, Funny)
That's just what we tell people like you to keep you from moving to California.
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Ha ha, that was a good one!
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All my life. I take the Coast Starlight that rolls right along the stunningly beautiful California coast. You can see the ocean almost all the way. It has good wi-fi and comfortable seats that can recline almost completely. It''ll take you from L.A. to Seattle and everwhere in between. The food is even good. Do they serve food and fresh coffee in your self-driving econobox? Oh wait, I'm sorry, your self-driving econobox doesn't exist yet. Does it, Goofus?
The tr
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Except that for political reasons, the newer, faster replacement is going to run through the distinctly not so scenic central valley rather than along the coast. And it's presumably going to cost a lot more than the Coast Daylight if they hope to ever recover construction costs. And there's a distinct -- once_you_get_to_X,_you_need_a_car_to_get_to_where_you_really_want_to_be problem in California's sprawling urban areas
I'm not against trains. I even ride them sometimes. But I think perhaps California ne
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Since it's high-speed, it doesn't really matter too much. Better to run through the Central Valley where nobody wants to live than displace or disrupt the lives of those of us near the coast.
The Coast Daylight hasn't run since 1974.
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All my life. I take the Coast Starlight that rolls right along the stunningly beautiful California coast. You can see the ocean almost all the way. It has good wi-fi and comfortable seats that can recline almost completely. It''ll take you from L.A. to Seattle and everwhere in between.
a) You better NOT be anywhere near in a hurry to get to your destination. I've looked at this train to get from LA to Davis, CA (have to make a connecting stop) and it took WAY WAY longer than just driving there. Did I forget to mention WAY longer?
b) Took the Surfliner multiple times from Santa Barbara to San Diego area. Took much longer on the train than driving by night (don't even try driving in LA area during the day to get anywhere in a hurry). Wifi sucked.
c) Big problem with trains is that unl
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Depends on how crowded the trains are. In the UK, there is a good intercity train network that takes you between cities in the South Coast and London within an hour. It's even possible to get between the South Coast and the Midlands within a couple of hours (Southampton -> Bristol/Birmingham).
When things work well, train carriages can be empty or full enough that everyone still has a seat, can sit down at a table and use Wi-Fi with their laptops/smartphones. and there are refreshment trolleys going up an
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A fleet of networked self-driving cars *is* a train. It's a bad idea to build a new new fixed-rail system from scratch. It will cost a ton of money, take forever... and even when finished, it will be just another choo-choo train, good for transporting people from one place where they don't want to be to another place where they don't want to be.
For some reason, people around here only like trains if they run on dedicated railbeds. Weird.
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Train networks in the UK do something similar. They are now moving to the point of increasing capacity by getting smaller train services formed by a couple of carriages to "join up" to form a larger train when going across busy lines, then they split up again. The only hazard is that you have to know which carriages are going where (carriages A to D go to the coastal town, E to H continue onto the next city).
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Realworld situation (Score:3)
Not really. Not if both end stations have electric cars for rent that only need a battery range of 40 to 50 miles.
Which is actually a real-world situation in switzerland, with the biggest car-sharing cooperative (Mobility) also having cars available at trains stations, including electric cars in bigger cities (Renault Zoe - currently equipped with the smaller 125km range battery, progressively getting upgraded to the bigger 250km).
This is currently successful commercially.
no need for fast charging infrastructure either. Rail plus electric cars is a beautiful combination
Actually, due to how train work, you happen to have a fast charging solution available almost for free at the train station.
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Re:The train California deserves. (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly no one with any brains is surprised. This is government working the way it always does, badly.
Right. The Interstate highway system was such a complete disaster. And who could ever forget the mistake called Hoover dam. The power grid and water system never did do what it was supposed to. Private enterprise and the free market were the only reason we had no air carrier fatalities for 10 years and don't get me started on the U.S. Army. A high-school football team could probably push them over.
Too bad we didn't just leave it all up to AC. What were we thinking.
Re:The train California deserves. (Score:5, Insightful)
While the Interstate system is a great success story, it spawned the very hurdles that CAHSR is trying to overcome. Highways were built by:
1. Siezing and demolishing everything they *might* need to use for a RoW
2. Completely ignoring anything resembling environmental impact
The only reason we have our successful system now is that by the time the legal system caught up and mechanisms to stop the "destruction" were put in place, most of it was already built.
Engineering, labor and materials costs have mostly kept up with inflation. At this point that's maybe 20% of the total cost of this project; the rest is in fighting lawsuits.
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It's taken longer to dredge a South Carolina harbor 5 feet deeper to accomodate the upcoming supercargo ships for the Panamax expansion than it took Teddy Roosevelt to dig the original Panama Canal itself.
When an empire stops keeping the trade routes open and instead turns to preying on its own people, it falters, and the center of empire moves to the growing regions on the edge.
It matters not how good the intentions. If the net effect is the same as massive corruption, oh well.
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That's the benefit of a one-party system that gives no fucks about citizen complaints.
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Actually, California's train project has more in common with the Soviet's Hero Projects.
Re:The train California deserves. (Score:4, Informative)
Righto. What did US private enterprise do to the electric trams that had spread across the US by a century ago? They ganged together (look closely at L.A. for one example) to get them destroyed and replaced with buses, selling engines and tires and ... and getting people to abandon them and proliferate private ownership of vehicles, and sell leaded gas. Then they got the government to foot the bill for the Interstate system (socializing the cost, privatizing the profits).
Fast forward a century and what is replacing the carbon-spewing traffic jams? Electric trams, now known as 'light rail'. NOT being paid for by private interests but by the taxpayers. Was that the best possible solution for modern mass transit? NO, but it was best for all of the private contractors ... in the same way that NASA paid out way more than SpaceX. Follow the money ... always.
'Studies' make the costs go up. 'Inventions' make the costs go down. Your choice, folks.
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So your theory is that private enterprise is responsible for every poor decision the government makes? Therefore we need what, more government deciders running more things?
It sounds like you have your causation and solution a little bit backwards, there....
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An even better example might be the Erie Canal which was built by New York State in the 1820s. NY built it after private capital refused to take the chance. The Erie Canal opened up settlement of mid-continent North America a couple of decades before the railroads got to be competetive. It cut travel time from the coast to the Great Lakes from a month to nine days. It turned places like Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo into boom towns It cemented New York City's position as the nation's leading port.
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Or, just use that $6.1 billion budget surplus to pay it off.
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I know, right?
Also, 60 BILLION dollars. That's 60,000 million dollars. It's such a vast some of money. You just KNOW there's cash being skimmed off the top all over the place. A lot of people can become quite rich from just a couple percent off this budget.
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Are they laying tracks from solid gold, set with sapphires?
No, the gold and sapphires are going to the Central Valley farmers whose land the train will cross. Land which after the train goes through will be so much higher in value that a rational government could have had them bid for the privilege of paying for the right to have the track running through.
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Only where there are stations. Believe it or not a high speed train running non-stop through your community does not raise land values.
And a lot of stations means no "high speed rail".
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Re: Hyperloop One (Score:2)
Re:Hyperloop One (Score:4, Informative)
Forget Hyperloop, even traditional tunneling costs are lower than this - let alone the costs Boring Company is looking for. While it's easy to focus on the most expensive, ridiculously priced urban tunnel projects in history, which can be over a billion dollars per mile, most tunnels are far cheaper. The Shanghai River crossing tunnel in China, for example, was $27m/mi. For tunnels in the western world, Westerschelde in the Netherlands was $60m per mile. For 11m diameter twin tunnels.
$10,6B for 119 miles is $89m per mile, primarily in "land acquisition", "relocating utility systems" and "the need for safety barriers" - none of which exist on a per-mile basis for a bored tunnel of sufficient depth. You don't even need improvements in boring technology to make tunnels more economical than this, you just need a reasonable bid on a fixed-price contract at current modern pricing. And if you bore, the number of miles can generally be reduced. It's just crazy that 119 miles from Wasco to Merced costs so much. Look at it on a map; it's just farmland.
Re:From Massachusetts... (Score:5, Insightful)
...and the victims of "The Big Dig", we feel your pain.
I feel for those who had to suffer through the construction.... but as one of the tens of thousands of beneficiaries of the Big Dig,... It was worth it!!!
Re: From Massachusetts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo!! Anyone who commuted into Boston before the Big Dig and then after would say it was well worth it. I had to work in Cambridge last week and while there were backups, they only lasted 15 to 20 minutes. Before the Big Dig you could easily spend upwards of 60 minutes sitting in traffic. People who live directly in Boston may not see the benefits but the 80% of the population that commutes into Boston it's a huge difference.
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It's also been a nightmare for property owners along the route for this expensive but imaginary train, thanks to eminent domain
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-land-problems-20180204-htmlstory.html
To be fair, they aren't property owners anymore after the train authority buys their land. The people that suffer are the ones living next to boarded up houses and buildings. This I don't get. Why doesn't the municipality just pass an ordinance that these unoccupied structures be bulldozed within (say) 30 days of a sale. No crack houses. No dens full of bums. Just flat land. Lease it to a parking management outfit (for example) for a few years until it's time for construction. And someone will have an incen
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Because cars got more efficient, there's less gas tax revenue to fix them.
No, there's less gas tax revenue because gas taxes have not being increased to keep up with inflation. [washingtonpost.com] So the money you're getting now doesn't go as far in road maintenance expenses than it did before.
Re:By the time this is finished it will be obsolet (Score:2)
Once selfdriving electric cars become a thing. There's literally no purpose for this boondoggle anymore.
How many cars can sustain 200 miles per hour for 4 hours? And electric, self driving cars still take up far more space per passenger than trains. Electric and self driving cars aren't magic pixie dust that make everything work.