CA High-Speed Rail System (Split from: Jerry Brown proposes teaching less science...)

[Dymanic]

A couple of related articles:

Facing uncertain budget prospects, California State University officials announced plans to freeze enrollment next spring at most campuses and to wait-list all applicants the following fall pending the outcome of a proposed tax initiative on the November ballot.

The university is moving to reduce enrollment to deal with $750 million in funding cuts already made in the 2011-12 fiscal year and position itself for at least an additional $200-million cut next year if the tax proposal fails.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/20/local/la-me-cal-state-20120320

The US High Speed Rail Association sent an urgent email today [June 19, 2012] to rail advocates:

We are truly at a make it or break it moment for high-speed rail in California and in America. The California Legislature must decide by July 1st to release Proposition 1A high-speed rail bond funds to match $3.3 billion in federal grants.

HSR remains a top priority for a broad and diverse set of leaders and stakeholders all around California, including business, labor, and transportation and livability advocates, who agree that we cannot delay getting started.

HSR will help the economy and the state budget NOW because of massive job creation. Quality middle-class jobs will not only better the lives of thousands of families and improve the economy now, the tax revenues generated by new jobs will help bolster California's finances.

Long-term, HSR provides a foundation for ongoing economic prosperity because it provides a solution to our overtaxed transportation system and will free us from volatile fuel costs, helping businesses and individuals prosper.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/19/1101459/-CA-High-Speed-Rail-Critical-Decision


After much thought, I find myself forced to conclude that High Speed Rail, while extremely cool and all, is a misallocation of resources. It's geared toward a future economy which I now seriously doubt will ever exist. I am strongly in favor of stimulating the economy through government funded infrastructure projects, but the end goal should be to leave behind something that will actually be useful, or we might as well be paying guys to dig holes and fill them in again.

HSR is not the lowest hanging fruit. I wish it were. The lowest hanging fruit is the maintaining of existing roads, so as to optimize fuel economy and minimize vehicle maintanence costs, and expansion of conventional rail service (the bottleneck there, as I understand it, has more to do with a lack of rolling stock than with a lack of rails).

Diesel-powered locomotives are already vastly more fuel efficient than trucks for moving freight or automobiles for moving people (though you can't take full advantage of that better efficiency with the latter because of the problems associated with stacking people like cordwood) -- and that advantage would only increase in the face of the very sharp increases in fuel costs (including diesel, obviously) which I find it reasonable to predict as the global energy crisis deepens.

We cannot escape that crunch through a large-scale shift toward the use of electricity in transportation, because that requires a corresponding increase in electrical generating capacity, so until we get going on that, we're stuck making the best of what we've got. It means most of us will be doing less travelling than we're accustomed to (air travel in particular), but that's just tough.

Sorry, Travis.

 

[Travis]

After much thought, I find myself forced to conclude that High Speed Rail, while extremely cool and all, is a misallocation of resources. It's geared toward a future economy which I now seriously doubt will ever exist.

What are you talking about? It's geared towards the economy we have now. It's designed to allow rapid movement between major population centers. This will become more important as air travel costs skyrocket over the next decade after Southwest Airlines goes out of business.

I am strongly in favor of stimulating the economy through government funded infrastructure projects, but the end goal should be to leave behind something that will actually be useful, or we might as well be paying guys to dig holes and fill them in again.

You don't think this will be useful?

HSR is not the lowest hanging fruit. I wish it were. The lowest hanging fruit is the maintaining of existing roads, so as to optimize fuel economy and minimize vehicle maintanence costs, and expansion of conventional rail service (the bottleneck there, as I understand it, has more to do with a lack of rolling stock than with a lack of rails).

No the bottleneck is about a clash of companies and archaic FRA rules.

UPPR owned railways are off limits to passenger rail.

And the FRA won't allow High Speed Trains on existing rail lines. That means dedicated rail lines will have to be built.

Diesel-powered locomotives are already vastly more fuel efficient than trucks for moving freight or automobiles for moving people (though you can't take full advantage of that better efficiency with the latter because of the problems associated with stacking people like cordwood) -- and that advantage would only increase in the face of the very sharp increases in fuel costs (including diesel, obviously) which I find it reasonable to predict as the global energy crisis deepens.

Okay, so? The freight railroads are going to be as they always were except that the valley BNSF line will see substantial improvements where it parallels the HST.

We cannot escape that crunch through a large-scale shift toward the use of electricity in transportation, because that requires a corresponding increase in electrical generating capacity

The high speed lines are going to draw their power from new power sources which will all be sustainable.

I'd advise you to read through the business plan and through the strategic energy plan.

 

[Travis]

As much as I'm disgusted with the boondoggle that is the train project, Travis is correct that it's not a trade off with the school budget. It was approved by popular ballot and Jerry Brown could not defund it if he wanted to. It's a classic example of what too much democracy can do- every time there's statewide ballot initiatives California voters want more services from the government but less taxes to pay for them.

Out of curiosity why do you consider it a boondoggle? Do you think the project is fixable so it would no longer be a boondoggle in your eyes?

 

[Careyp74]

Having driven in California a couple of times, I can see how the desire for a HSR system is high. They have a very poor transportation infrastructure. Isn't California also very high in regards to education? Couldn't they afford a little less science?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy

A flawless example.

Thanks for the info, I like learning new (to me) theories that go against the mindset of society. (ha, just read their term for it, real-world behavior.)

The idea there is, sunk costs should not influence future decisions, which is like chasing the pot in poker. Sunk costs may make a decision more favorable, by changing the needed investment, but should not be a reason on its own.

It is also a good example of how people act irrationally.

Hey Travis, TubbaBlubba is calling you irrational.

 

[Dymanic]

What are you talking about? It's geared towards the economy we have now.

More precisely, it's geared toward a future economy based on the assumption that the economy we have now will continue to grow even in the face of a decline in supply of our main source of energy.

It's designed to allow rapid movement between major population centers. This will become more important as air travel costs skyrocket over the next decade after Southwest Airlines goes out of business.

Rapid movement between major population centers is only one the things which we presently regard as a "need" but may soon be forced to redefine as a "luxury".

You don't think this will be useful?

Useful, yes. And fun besides. But I also think that our best hope lies in a massive shift from road to rail, both in passenger and freight, and that it is therefore absolutely vital that we get the best possible return on every dollar (and joule) of investment. "Useful" can't be the test. We need to set the bar at "most useful" (and that allowing for the widest possible amount of variation in socioeconomic conditions).

No the bottleneck is about a clash of companies and archaic FRA rules.

I'll see if I can chase down my source on that, since I was working from memory on the rolling stock thing, and get back to you on that. You may be right about clashing interests and obsolete rules being the main bottleneck, but then, it's not like HSR has not had its own issues there. The weight of government policy and government subsidy has overcome those sorts of obstacles in the past, and may do so again. We nationalized our passenger rail system, and if the security of our country demands the nationalizing of our freight rail system as well, each passing day makes it easier for me to imagine circumstances under which it could happen.

And the FRA won't allow High Speed Trains on existing rail lines.

Not hard to see the logic, either. The Onion piece on the "High Speed Bus" quickly comes to mind.

The freight railroads are going to be as they always were except that the valley BNSF line will see substantial improvements where it parallels the HST.

Freight railroads haven't been as they always were for a very long time -- and if they stay the way they are, the cost of moving freight is going increase enough to cause a significant decline in standards of living for a lot of Americans.

The high speed lines are going to draw their power from new power sources which will all be sustainable. I'd advise you to read through the business plan and through the strategic energy plan.

Here are a couple of things that bother me:

"At present there are neither adequate financial and spatial resources, nor infrastructure available to power the train directly with 100% renewable energy. The high speed train operations require a highly reliable and stable source of power to minimize interruptions to train service from outages. The powerful trains will also represent a substantial load of approximately 20 megawatts (MW) which varies as the trains pass through the 30 mile electrical sections."

"There are three key strategies for powering the train with 100% renewable energy that will be guided by the project’s refined renewable energy policy. These strategies include: develop a strategic renewable energy procurement plan, continue to minimize energy loads, and integrate onsite renewable energy. Before taking actions to support these key strategies, CHSRA needs to define its net-zero energy approach and implement its renewable energy policy."

So the resources don't presently exist, and the plan for procuring them includes coming up with a plan for procuring them. See why that bothers me?

 

[ravdin]

Out of curiosity why do you consider it a boondoggle?

The project as of today is about 50% over the budget approved in 2008, and I expect it will get worse. It's not looking very likely that we'll reach the federally mandated milestone in 2017 of connecting Fresno to Bakersfield- so the best case is that we burn $3.5 million per day to connect two cities that few travelers have as a destination, and the worst is that we burn that much money and are forced to abandon an uncompleted project.

A recent update from the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bullet-risks-20120514,0,4603595.story

Do you think the project is fixable so it would no longer be a boondoggle in your eyes?

I'd say the chances are slim to none.

 

[Puppycow]

Having driven in California a couple of times, I can see how the desire for a HSR system is high. They have a very poor transportation infrastructure.

Some of the congestion problems could probably be solved with congestion pricing rather than building new infrastructure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing

 

[Puppycow]

As much as I'm disgusted with the boondoggle that is the train project, Travis is correct that it's not a trade off with the school budget. It was approved by popular ballot and Jerry Brown could not defund it if he wanted to. It's a classic example of what too much democracy can do- every time there's statewide ballot initiatives California voters want more services from the government but less taxes to pay for them.

The high speed rail project is being funded with bonds. That means people invest in the bonds and the state defers payment. So it isn't the same fund as the education funds. You can't compare the two. It the rail project was dropped the money already spent would still be owed and there would be nothing to show for it.

Unspent money would not then be freed up to go toward other needs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility

It's still early enough in the process that losses would not be that big if they stopped right now.

 

[Travis]

Hey Travis, TubbaBlubba is calling you irrational.

I don't really care. This project will be built and and California will be saved.

More precisely, it's geared toward a future economy based on the assumption that the economy we have now will continue to grow even in the face of a decline in supply of our main source of energy.

Rapid movement between major population centers is only one the things which we presently regard as a "need" but may soon be forced to redefine as a "luxury".

With the roads and airlines overcapacity I don't think the word "luxury" is quite the way to go there.

Here are a couple of things that bother me:

"At present there are neither adequate financial and spatial resources, nor infrastructure available to power the train directly with 100% renewable energy. The high speed train operations require a highly reliable and stable source of power to minimize interruptions to train service from outages. The powerful trains will also represent a substantial load of approximately 20 megawatts (MW) which varies as the trains pass through the 30 mile electrical sections."

"There are three key strategies for powering the train with 100% renewable energy that will be guided by the project’s refined renewable energy policy. These strategies include: develop a strategic renewable energy procurement plan, continue to minimize energy loads, and integrate onsite renewable energy. Before taking actions to support these key strategies, CHSRA needs to define its net-zero energy approach and implement its renewable energy policy."

So the resources don't presently exist, and the plan for procuring them includes coming up with a plan for procuring them. See why that bothers me?[

It is problematic. But they are working on it.

The project as of today is about 50% over the budget approved in 2008, and I expect it will get worse. It's not looking very likely that we'll reach the federally mandated milestone in 2017 of connecting Fresno to Bakersfield- so the best case is that we burn $3.5 million per day to connect two cities that few travelers have as a destination, and the worst is that we burn that much money and are forced to abandon an uncompleted project.

A recent update from the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bullet-risks-20120514,0,4603595.story



I'd say the chances are slim to none.

Of course the LA Times has been trying to kill the project from get go.

And yet the current plan will have high speed trains traveling to and from San Fran to LA for only $32 billion. Those outrageous $68 billion prices are essentially meaningless as they come from long discarded design options like elevating the train all through Fresno on a viaduct.

 

[Dymanic]

With the roads and airlines overcapacity I don't think the word "luxury" is quite the way to go there.

I don't see capacity as the central issue. Energy conservation was always the selling point for me: Provide those people who simply must, for whatever reason, travel between LA and SF every day (or whatever) with an alternative to making the trip via the least energy efficient modes of transportation we've got. Ideally, it would not add capacity, but replace it. If large numbers of people who presently make those intercity trips by air or road do not become HSR riders, the whole thing is a waste of resources. But the worst of the congestion problems along the I-5 corridor are a result of local traffic anyway, and improving local mass transit systems seems like a more parsimonious way of dealing with that.

As for "luxury", I'm applying the standard definition: a product or service that is associated with affluence rather than with essential need. I suspect that a lot of those trips would already qualify as not vitally essential to the smooth functioning of our economy or our society. Not all, but a lot. Five plus decades of cheap oil have conditioned us to the idea that we may take certain things for granted, the ability to easily and cheaply travel from one place to another being one of them. HSR is a plan for the future which seems to assume that we can continue to treat that as a given -- it being simply a matter of making a few technological tweaks here and there -- and I find that assumption deeply flawed.

During the oil crises of the '70s, Americans found that they didn't actually have to drive as much as they thought they did, but they quickly forgot about that once we patched things up with OPEC and oil started flowing from the world's last major undeveloped sources of conventional oil, the North Slope and the North Sea. Not counting nukes, we have one vast untapped source of easily available energy left: our dormant capacity for conservation. Everything I see in the direction we are headed economically and politically (particularly with regard to our energy policy, or, more precisely, the lack thereof) tells me that we are about to embark on a painful and mostly involuntary exploration of the depths of that resource, one that will make the gas lines of the '70s look like high times.

I wish I could be more optimistic. Believe me, the idea of sitting back in air-conditioned comfort while watching the landscape flash by at 200+ miles per hour is as appealing to me now as riding the monorail at Disneyland was to me as a kid in the early sixties. In a sense, it would be at least a partial fullfillment of an implicit promise: according to "them", this is what my world was supposed to look like in the new millennium. I mean, it ain't an anti-gravity belt, but it's something.

I'd just hate to see us all tooled up for Buck Rogers only to discover that the future looks more like Gilligan's Island. Which emphasizes the importance of teaching science (you know, the purported topic of this thread). That bunch wouldn't have lasted a month without the Professor.

 

[Puppycow]

And yet the current plan will have high speed trains traveling to and from San Fran to LA for only $32 billion. Those outrageous $68 billion prices are essentially meaningless as they come from long discarded design options like elevating the train all through Fresno on a viaduct.

I'm not sure where you get the $32 billion figure.

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/assets/0/152/431/72e92f77-014b-45a0-ad04-6cfd6d79c778.pdf

It says here that the "initial operating section" (phase 1) from Merced to San Fernando Valley will cost $31 billion, but the whole thing from SF to LA will cost $68 billion.

 

[Travis]

I'm not sure where you get the $32 billion figure.

http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/assets/0/152/431/72e92f77-014b-45a0-ad04-6cfd6d79c778.pdf

It says here that the "initial operating section" (phase 1) from Merced to San Fernando Valley will cost $31 billion, but the whole thing from SF to LA will cost $68 billion.

Aw, that's if they build the gold plated separate tracks all the way into both downtowns.

The new plan is to only build new tracks from San Jose to the San Fernando Valley. There they will upgrade existing tracks that will be purchased from UPRR and Metrorail respectively. Doing so will save them at least ten billion. And that will probably cost around $50 billion. Or for the cost of roughly five new Bay Bridges.

Now I brought up the $31 billion figure because there is a plan to only build new tracks as far north as Merced and then get FRA waivers to use the highspeed trains on regular tracks into Oakland and Sacramento. Naturally they would have to go at a much reduced speed and the tracks would have to be electrified but it is still on the table.

Another option being kicked around is to try and get just a bit more money from the Federal government and build a link to Livermore where it would interface with BART.


And the elephant in the room is private investment. Before the earthquake and Tsunami Japan was willing to give California almost $30 billion in low interest loans. They did that based on a report by the SNCF that confirmed the California system would be profitable for operators. Now China is the frontrunner to be the big private investor. No one knows just how much they are willing to invest but it will probably come after the ICS is done.

The ICS is what is being talked about right now. It is the segment from Merced to Bakersfield. It will also serve as a test track. After that the focus would be to get the new tracks through the mountains to LA basin.

And surely this all beats $150-80 billion for new roads and airport expansions.