As I already mentioned earlier, their ridership projections are also in question.
Fresh questions about the ridership and revenue projections that underpin the state's $43-billion bullet train project have been raised in a new internal report by the agency charged with building the system.
Among the key conclusions of a California High Speed Rail Authority panel of experts is that forecasts of up to 117 million annual riders by 2030 — which have helped support predictions that the system would generate billions in profits — need to be recalibrated to be more conservative and better reflect important factors that could affect ridership.
The new critique comes as the authority is racing to complete a business plan for the Legislature and break ground next year on an initial segment in the Central Valley.
The analysis echoes some of the concerns of transportation experts at UC Berkeley. They concluded last July that the patronage models were so unreliable that they could not accurately predict whether the train would be profitable or run severe deficits.
I don't think that the price will go up, I think we're already at or near the ceiling because synthetic aviation fuels are already being used as of this 2008 article: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2008/May/Pages/Market2236.aspx
The airlines seem unconcerned:
http://ir.united.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=83680&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1420753&highlight=
The world is a pile of anecdotes. "Argument by anecdote"? It's called "proof by counterexample". To show that "all positive odd numbers greater than one are prime" is false, one needs only establish that nine is odd and nine is composite. ONE counterexample disproves a universal "all x is y" (as in "infrastructure projects return $3 in economic activity for every $1 invested by taxpayers": the keynesean argument of your first piece of evidence). Yes, that's not a direct quote.
Facts? Like the H-3 freeway, the bridge to nowhere, and Hetch Hetchy dam? Is it not a fact that these were proposed (and built, in the case of H-3 and Hetch Hetchy dam)?
I take "cost effective" to mean "positive return" so we have no argument here. Seems to me advocates for tax support of infrastructure projects, in general, underestimate the role of interest group politics and outright fraud in the determination of where to direct public money.
You completely misread it. It's a statement about political authority in general. A "formal model of (political) authority".
The italicized part is a quote, right? Much of this is technology dependent, whether it makes sense to aggregate construction and centralize control. Not all countries operate airports. In some locales, homeowners rely on wells or roof catchment. If power were cheap enough, waste treatment would not involve wasting valuable clean water just for transport, and each home could just incinerate waste. Telecom? You really prefer the Bell monopoly to the competitive market of today? Electric power? Edison proposed DC power, which would have had generators in each factory or apartment block. NOT("good to have"="good for the government to supply"). And clearly, in each of these examples, it's easy for government officials to misguage the demand for the service and over-build.
"Upon our planet"? Could you be more pompous?
It's essentially what he proposes for the moon, in a series of these types of prizes. It's not defined beyond that. But based on the overall drift, it would be privately owned. So if a government researcher wanted to go to the moon base, he'd go on the same exact basis as a tourist - as a paying customer. But that's just my guess on how it would work out.
Did you mean "irrelevant"? How so, since it's directly related to revenue?
Cite?
Really? You have investor committments for 50% of the cost? And if revenues aren't enough to pay the investors, do taxpayers pick up the slack?
Huh? LAX and John Wayne airports combined carry just 2 million passengers a year to San Francisco. And LAX alone has over 28 million enplanements per year (and 68 million passengers total). The ridership projections (I know, you don't care about those) assumes 6 million passengers switching from flying to driving - 2 million more than fly the route now, assuming every one of those 2 million take a round trip.
And what is your cite for these figures for road and airport construction? And the evidence this figure drops to 0 with HSR?
People want to teleport around Star Trek style so they don’t need to travel at all but that doesn’t mean they get to do it. The universe is funny that way; it doesn’t provide things just because we want to have them.Sure - b/c everyone wants to travel at half the speed
People start using more natural gas and the price goes up, not down. That’s how supply and demand works. It’s also worth pointing out that all fossil fuels effectively receive a large subsidy as it is, in the form of having the cost of their CO2 emissions socialized.
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?c=AM_Route_C&pagename=am/Layout&cid=1241245648567
Looks like a passenger train route to me. How often do you ride it?
blah blah balh. It's a scheduled train, just like Wildcat pointed out. On the Amtrak schedule, not on bus schedules. And terrain issues make driving that route impractical. Ever been stuck in the fog rolling in along there?