The Los Angeles Times has a special report finding that the California high-speed rail project will cost far more and take far longer than the rail authority is promising. The official cost estimate remains $68 billion for an abbreviated system despite the fact that a 2013 Parsons Brinckerhoff report to the authority said there was no way the project could be done for that price.
P-B’s report was “never made public” and the rail authority refused to release it under the state public records act. However, “an engineer close to the project” slipped a copy of the report to the Times.
The rail authority has established a record for ignoring such reports. In 2012, another consultant told the authority that costs should be revised upwards by 15 percent. The authority simply fired the consultant.
A large part of the problem is tunneling, as various routes being considered by the authority will require 72 miles of tunnels (36 route miles with tunnels for trains going in either direction). One of the tunnels may be 14 miles long; though nowhere near as long as the longest railway tunnels in the world, it would be 50 percent longer than the longest in North America. But most of the longer tunnels were not done in areas as seismically active as California.
The Times offers a number of pithy quotes from geologists and engineers about the rail authority’s chances of completing its project on time and within the forecast cost.
- “No way. The range is far more complex than anything those people know.”
- “I don’t think it’s possible.”
- “From a civil engineering perspective it is very, very ambitious — to put it mildly.”
- “Given the complex geology it is optimistically biased.”
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The idea that California’s rail project would go over budget is nothing new, as both the Antiplanner and Wendell Cox (writing with former High-Speed Rail Association president Joseph Vranich) have insisted on this for years. It is nice to see the Los Angeles Times admit it, as the newspaper was one of the biggest boosters for the project. Since the original cost projection back in the late 1990s was under $10 billion, the Antiplanner has to ask, once again, how costly does rail have to get before its advocates admit it is too expensive?
Meanwhile, an article about self-driving cars in the Daily Telegraph casually (but accurately) mentions that “Driverless cars will destroy high-speed rail, usher in a new golden age for individual transportation and undermine cities by encouraging longer commutes.” Such self-driving cars will be a reality long before California first operates a high-speed train. If taxpayers are lucky, some future state governor will pull the plug and the state will never have to bear the burden of running such trains.
Because at the end of the we just don’t know. A project like this is far too large and complex to have a decent idea of the costs involved. We seem to love to bullshit ourselves into believing that we know we shouldn’t believe the so-called estimates.
Something this large should be broken up into true iterations. Each iteration a project in and of itself and able to stand alone. Of course, this can’t be done. There’s no political support and clearly no need to carry people on a HSR between Stockton and Bakersfield.
As Kurt K. might write, so it goes.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-final-20151025-story.html
But Bent Flyvbjerg, a University of Oxford business professor and a leading expert on megaproject risk, said the lagging schedule, litigation, growing costs and permit delays arising so early in construction are warning signs that even more delays and higher costs are coming.
“You have an 80% to 90% probability of a cost overrun on a project like this,” Flyvbjerg said. “Once cost increases start, they are likely to continue.”
The current California high speed rail “plan” will collapse of its own weight.
Robocars will have nothing to do with it: http://streets.mn/2012/03/13/cars-vs-phones-why-robocars-will-not-save-us/. There is nothing I’ve seen written by robocar neomaniacs that is more convincing than this nearly four-year old article.
Correct, technology like this won’t affect change until it is democratized. And at that politics follows, not leads, social change. Funding for politically driven projects like LRT won’t dry up until it’s painfully obvious it’s toast.
@msetty, I don’t understand what is compelling about that article. Assuming the technological issues are solved, we’re faced with questions over transition and…. well, transition.
The author has an incorrect understanding of what roads deaths mean in terms of liability. He does nothing to fuss out what ones involve criminal charges nor liability.
The stuff about air trafffic controllers and broken auto trunks confuses me more and more. If there’s a point in there, the author has well burried in a mess of words.
”
Airplane crashes really disturb people, and for good reason. So, as a result, airplanes come with two pilots. And because even they doze off or use their computers while flying the plane, we have a ‘backup system’ costing billions of dollars in place, staffed by highly trained people whose only (very stressful) job is to coordinate 28,000 daily US flights.
”
This is an example of that mess of words. It’s the sort of thing that comes about when you bizarrely equate a bloated, technologically backward air traffic control system with being a back-up to flying a plane.
Prk166 and msetty are going to meet later to exchange hand jobs.
Robocars will have nothing to do with it: http://streets.mn/2012/03/13/cars-vs-phones-why-robocars-will-not-save-us/. There is nothing I’ve seen written by robocar neomaniacs that is more convincing than this nearly four-year old article.
I have no idea what you found convincing about that article and I don’t wish to rehash every aspect of the debate over autonomous vehicles, but for the sake of argument here is the first comment posted beneath it:
(1) Statistical value of life is about $5.8 million at USDOT, so the cost of unsafety is much higher than you suggest http://ostpxweb.dot.gov/policy/reports/080205.htm
(2) The human is either in the loop all the way or out of it. I feel much safer if the human is entirely out of the loop. If we can drive 32,000 fatalities down to 3,200, hooray (you can figure out the economic value of that).
(3) Yes, liability laws will need to change, we will need no fault insurance, etc. But the insurance companies should be all for this as it will increase safety faster than it reduces premiums.
(4) Many people cannot or will not ride bikes. Many places are not easily connected by bicycle. While surely there can be more bikes, that cannot solve the general problem of moving people and goods longish distances. If we can automate this mundane task and increase safety and productivity, all the better.
”
Prk166 and msetty are going to meet later to exchange hand jobs.
”
~Frank
Is there a particular reason you’re choosing to behave like an asshole?
I am surprised the Antiplanner even asked this question:
“Since the original cost projection back in the late 1990s was under $10 billion, the Antiplanner has to ask, once again, how costly does rail have to get before its advocates admit it is too expensive?”
As the price goes up, there is more money to give to favored contractors and more money to hand out to “advocates”. The higher price thus makes it more likely, rather than less, that the advocates will continue to support this boondoggle.
The Antiplanner should keep a tally of cost-estimate failures in transportation projects, then submit that information to every EIS he comments on. They really should have to print and analyze in the EIS how often all previous EISs for these projects have failed to be accurate.
prk166
Regarding Frank, think of it this way. Grifters grift. Cats scratch and chase mice. Assholes do and say asshole things.
MJ, regarding the comments on the article I referenced. The author never said everyone would ride bicycles. So I don’t understand the point. And I don’t fall for the religious tone many technophiliacs (e.g., neomaniacs) have about robocars.
The author of the article makes a lot more sense about putting pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users before automobiles and robocars in our cities and towns. That is, adapting automobiles to the human environment, not the other way around. The latter is what we’ve done to our cities and towns for over a century, and it is way past time that the situation be reversed. Why some people don’t get this is beyond me, other than being explained by pseudo-religious beliefs about technology or mistaking over-dependence on automobiles (of whatever ilk) for “freedom.” (Yeah, such “freedom” like $1,500 to rebuild my currently failing differential…)
And add another juicy example of technological snake oil that would fit nicely as an example in the new book, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception.
Here’s another reason robocars will never finish the “transition” from 100% human driven cars: they’ll drive like your road monitor grandmother!. See if you’ll like getting stuck behind a robocar on a curvy mountain road where they’ll all go 20-25 mph, even though a human-driven car could go 35-40 mph
I find it interesting that people who are continually lecturing us to be open to alternative transportation modes such as trains, bicycles etc. desperately latch onto any possible problems to prove that self-driving cars will never be practical. We should all greatly increase our travel times by using their preferred modes, but the possibility that new technology will allow us to travel quicker and safer is unacceptable.
”
Here’s another reason robocars will never finish the “transition” from 100% human driven cars: they’ll drive like your road monitor grandmother!. See if you’ll like getting stuck behind a robocar on a curvy mountain road where they’ll all go 20-25 mph, even though a human-driven car could go 35-40 mph
” ~msetty
That’s a bit of… what’s the term? When a claim by it’s very nature disproves itself? We already have more than plenty of granmotherly drivers – of which I am one in most situations – and it doesn’t stop people from driving. I can’t imagine it would stop others.
As for the human built environment thing, thank you. I overlooked that aspect of the article.
The author made a comment about better spending money on bicycles than more technology.
MJ, regarding the comments on the article I referenced. The author never said everyone would ride bicycles. So I don’t understand the point.,
The author makes no secret of the fact that he prefers bicycle travel and apparently believes everyone else ought to as well, or at least some mode other than a car.
The author of the article makes a lot more sense about putting pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users before automobiles and robocars in our cities and towns. That is, adapting automobiles to the human environment, not the other way around. The latter is what we’ve done to our cities and towns for over a century, and it is way past time that the situation be reversed.
The fact of the matter is that cars are part of the human environment in most contemporary cities because they are the preferred mode of transportation for most users. And apart from urban planners, environmental activists, and a few armchair architecture critics, I don’t really see anyone complaining that the situation needs to be reversed. The good news is that in most cities there are a diverse set of built environments, including some (typically older neighborhoods) that are difficult to navigate by car.