The latest business plan for the California high-speed rail boondoggle estimates costs will be about $5 billion more than the last one, which were already 150 percent higher than the estimates in effect when voters approved the project in 2008. As noted in an AP news report, the latest estimates indicate that “it could take $105 billion to finish the route.”
Click image to download the plan.
Note the word “could.” The state report is actually estimating the cost will be $86.7 billion to $88.2 billion, but admits it could go as high as $105 billion. The previous (2020) plan projected the final cost would be $82.4 billion to $83.6 billion, with an upper limit of $99.9 billion. So the high-speed rail authority has basically added about $5 billion to all of the estimates.
Of course, the agency doesn’t have enough money to finish the project even if it cost only the 2008 estimate of $40 billion. It has spent about $8.6 billion so far and has another $2.5 billion in the bank. It thinks it can squeeze another billion out of the federal government plus $12 billion more out of the state, but it is probably optimistic about some of that money. Even if it gets all that, the total adds up to just $25 billion, well short of what is needed to complete the project.
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The agency is hoping to be eligible for some of the $6 billion in rail projects funded by the infrastructure bill. “We just think that this is a great opportunity to really move the project forward,” said the authority’s CEO, Brian Kelly. With opportunities like this, who needs a war in Ukraine?
The reality that the authority refuses to face is that both the Biden administration and Congress are unenthused about throwing good money after bad. “Given the embarrassing failures this project has racked up, I’d be surprised if the feds decide to throw more money at it,” says Jim Patterson, a state legislator from Fresno. The White House has admitted that it didn’t put any high-speed rail money into the infrastructure bill because the Obama high-speed rail funds accomplished essentially nothing.
The question isn’t: where will California get the money to finish the rail line? Instead, it is: when will California stop spending money on a dead project?
Let airlines and automobile owners pay the full price for the emissions they are creating, both noise and carbon and let’s see how quickly HSR will become a profitable business.
How about the huge amount of Carbon generated building HSR vs the small number of people who will use it unless the proponents make it’s competitors illegal?
And you think highway construction does not cause carbon emissions?
Today’s WSJ has an article headed, “California’s Laughing Rail Stock — The bullet train’s price tag goes up again, this time to $105 billion.”
It includes a photograph of unfinished rail construction next to and paralleling Highway 99 near Fresno, CA. It should be titled, “Redundant.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-laughing-rail-stock-high-speed-rail-authority-105-billion-11644444340?st=h2ljy4t8y9kvwvx&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Indeed the highway is very redundant. Highways are an inefficient technology. Rail can transport way more people per unit of space and can run at very low emissions.
@UTISOC.
HSR isn’t even a profitable business in Japan and Europe…… AND DID MORHING TO DETER AUTOMOBILE use. I stopped worrying about climate change CO2 when I turned 21. Outlived every failed environmental prediction that was supposed to kill me in my childhood, teens….CO2 is greening this planet.
Even Japan and Europe do not let automobile owners and airlines pay the full price for their emissions. If they would nobody would drive there anymore. Higher gas prices have worked in Europe and other developed countries. See here: https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/articles/52/
Stop worrying about climate change CO2 was not smart. The environmental predictions of the past were not backed by research. Climate change CO2 is backed by research. That is the difference.
Noise emissions by roads, highways and airports are just another fact. Letting automobile owners and airlines pay for the noise they create would bankrupt them.
All the new troll has is whataboutism. So precious!
I don’t think you know what this term means, otherwise you would not have written this.
High speed rail doesn’t take you to tthe grocery store….or doctors office or to school. EVEN in Japan cars usurped trains in modal split. Japan they drive more scooters, motorcycles, 3 wheeled street vehicles and small/micro cars with small (less 1 liter) engines. Japanese didn’t surrender mobility.
“High speed rail doesn’t take you to tthe grocery store….or doctors office or to school.”
No, but other trains do. I just went to my otolaryngologist using a tram a few days ago.
I don’t have to go to the grocery store by HSR. Thanks to transit and rail my city can be compact enough to have 4-5 grocery stores within 5-10 minutes walking distance. One grocery store is just down the road in 2 minutes I can be there if I want.
“EVEN in Japan cars usurped trains in modal split. Japan they drive more scooters, motorcycles, 3 wheeled street vehicles and small/micro cars with small (less 1 liter) engines. Japanese didn’t surrender mobility.”
Japanese like Europeans on average drive far less than Americans on a per capita basis. This is because much more trips are made by other modes of transport and because Japan and Europe are more compactly built. Modal split by transport distance is a deceiving number. Of course people tend to prefer the car over longer distance, as long as even in Europe and Japan automobile owners do not pay the full price of their environmental impact.
Japanese like Europeans on average drive far less than Americans on a per capita basis.
namely Because fuel prices/taxes. Even with gasoline 3-5 times more expensive, Cars still dominate…..Modal split data…Cars percentage of passenger miles accumulated vs. all modes
USA: 85%
EU-27: 79%
Japan: 77%
It’s almost as if you were too lazy to read my prior comment. Everything you just wrote there I have already addressed.
Here some more data.
Gasoline consumption per capita (in liters)
United States: 4.39
Japan: 1.22
Germany: 0.84
Modal split by trip for cars
Houston: 91%
New York City: 55%
Berlin: 26%
Tokyo: 12%
”
Rail can transport way more people per unit of space
” ~utisoc
If you were sincerely concerned about wasting space, you wouldn’t be here.
Given how quickly projected costs have risen, more than doubling in the last decade, it seem unlikely that $100 billion is anything like what it would actually cost to build. Add to that they have on of the easiest section geographically – it’s wide open and flat – to build in the world and they’ve completely mucked it up….
… add all that together and I’d expect they”ll fail at being able to do anything more complex, like the tunnels they’ll need to reach Merced.
”
Japanese like Europeans on average drive far less than Americans on a per capita basis.
”
Woop-dee-do. What else would you expect when you pack 80 million people into a space the size of Maryland. They barely have room to breathe, let alone drive.
Why are people like you always so obsessed with their safe space? Don’t worry, there is enough space to breathe here. Not scared by other people either. There is lots of nature here thanks to compactly built environments.
”
. Japanese didn’t surrender mobility.
” ~lazyreader
Well put.
Japanese like Europeans on average drive far less than Americans on a per capita basis…..
Restrictions on mobility and high fuel prices and taxes…generally make them poorer by comparison.
“Restrictions on mobility and high fuel prices and taxes…generally make them poorer by comparison.”
Absolute nonsense.
Randal O’Toole wrote circa 2000 …
These data should lay to rest any claim that light rail, commuter rail, or even most heavy rail lines are anywhere near as productive as freeways.
These data suggest that, for an average urban area outside of New York City:
Light rail makes sense as a transportation investment if its cost per directional route mile is less than a fifth of the cost of freeway lane miles (two-fifths per route mile);
Heavy rail makes sense if its cost per directional route mile is half or less of the cost per freeway lane mile (or equal per route mile);
Commuter rail makes sense if its cost per directional route mile is a tenth or less of the cost per freeway lane mile (or a fifth per route mile).
Few if any rail transit projects of the last decades or any proposed today meet these criteria.
http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-ot-rail%26fwy98.htm
(Data at the link)
Not included in the above is the fact that automobile commuting is door-to-door and is available on-demand 24/7.
You mean if automobile owners and airlines do not pay the full price of the emissions they generate, rail is not profitable?
You mean that rail has way more users per unit of traffic space compared to the car?
You mean with less sprawl rail is becoming more competitive?
You have got to learn there is very often a very big difference between moving a lot of train seats back and forth, versus wasting lots of energy because most of those seats are empty most of the day.
They are empty, because drivers do not pay the full price for the emissions they create, especially noise. Noise makes cities very loud. If drivers would have to compensate for that alone, there would be no driving.
UTISOC wrote in part …
“Here some more data.
Gasoline consumption per capita (in liters)”
I just checked. Every automobile manufacturer I know of is developing battery powered electric cars. This will likely lower gasoline consumption. Possibly to zero. Probably before California gets around to finishing its “High Speed Rail.”
“I just checked. Every automobile manufacturer I know of is developing battery powered electric cars. This will likely lower gasoline consumption. Possibly to zero.”
But not energy consumption.
“…But not energy consumption.”
The local transit agency swore that with a commuter rail, thr energy consumption per trip would go down
It turns out that energy consumption and CO2 emissions per passenger mile on their commuter train are 5 times higher than on their Vanpool rides.
And, since like you, they are prisoners of bad narratives about transit, they sabotaged their once great vanpool system in order to expand their crappy commuter rail system. [The data for this comment are in the “Sustainibilty Reports” for the Utah Transit Authority in 2010 and 2014.
]
Sorry I am living in a country where Diesel electric trains have been mostly abandoned. I am all for electrification of rail.
Short-distance trains were rendered obsolete by buses back in the 1920s. Long-distance trains were made obsolete by planes in the 1950s. When other transportation technologies, such as horseback riding, steamboats, and canals went obsolete, we let them go except for tourists and museums.
When Japan introduced its bullet trains in 1964, Technological envy may have ensured a desire but what it didn’t do is entice a business model… Never mind that our jet airplanes were several times faster than Japan’s trains and achieve 70% improvement in fuel economy since the 70’s and will get more efficient.
Congress began funding passenger trains in 1965, and once a federal program gets started, it never goes away no matter how inefficient it becomes…..Special interest groups dedicated to keeping it going forever. The USA has the finest, most advanced rail system in the world. That’s because it is mostly privately owned rail, private freight rail system that moves efficiently ONE TRILLION TONS of goods and cargo.
Automotive pollution has declined 90% since 1970s…. LA once the Smog city now has cleaner air than ever…
Europeans and Japanese drive for most of their travel too.
https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/traffic-in-paris-picture-id594465190
This grandiose dream Europeans “Dont drive”
UTISOC’ ejaculatory fantasy……..
So Europeans that don’t drive is a fantasy? Interesting, then I must live in a fantasy, because I am European and I don’t drive, just like 50% of NYC households.
Sure, many Europeans still drive especially for longer distances, but thanks to density and transit, Europeans drive far less. The modal split by trip (not passenger miles) is what matters. In Germany, modal split for cars by passenger mile is 75%, but modal split by trip is 57%. In German metropolitan areas modal split for car by trip is only 38%. In Berlin only 27% of all trips between 1 and 3 km are done by car. The rest is done by either walking, cycling or transit. Is this enough? No of course not, there needs to be far less driving in Europe. But does this show, that less driving is possible? Yes, it does. Maybe it’s time to leave your suburban American bubble and learn how other cities around the world function.
The car is an outdated technology for several reasons:
(1) Cars take up too much space.
(2) This increases the urban footprint and sprawl.
(3) Sprawl is environmental destruction and economic waste.
(4) Sprawl increases car-dependency.
(5) Driving is a waste of energy, it creates emissions like CO2 and noise.
“Automotive pollution has declined 90% since 1970’s”
According to EPA, the nominal reduction of the pollutants they focus on, as produced by newest IC engine powered cars, is down ~99% since late 1960’s with the Clean Air Act. Lead from auto exhaust is down 100%. Nox emission limit for 2023 car engines is about 40 miligrams per mile.
Those are rather good reductions.
For comparison, the diesel electric locomotives of the Commuter trains run by the Transit agency in northern Utah actually produce more NOx than the lower powered diesel electric locomotives used in commuter train service in the 1990’s because of the incrreased fuel they burn as they do jack rabbit starts to try to make a short train compete with cars on highways for speed.
More on this tomorrow.
That’s why diesel electric trains should be replaced with electric trains.
Trains were introduced in America about 1830. That makes it a terribly antiquated paradigm.
The relatively new diesel electric commuter train built here in 2008 and 2013 is also antiquated. You can tell that just by watching it, For every other trip down the Wasatch Front, it is driven forward. For the alternate trips, it has to be driven backwards the full 84 mile length of Utah’s most heavily developed region.
Electric train technology was inventedd in America in 1892 with the building of a 1,000 hp electric locomotive by the great electric rail electrical-engineer/pioneer, Frank J. Sprague.
The motorized car was introduced in 1885 by Carl Benz. The concept of bathrooms is even older. Are bathrooms outdated technology? No of course not, just like rail, bathrooms have further developed. The new S-Bahn and U-Bahn in Berlin are high tech and look not like trains from the 1830s. The electric train was invented by the German company Siemens in 1879.
If it’s cleaner energy who cares how much we use?
UTISOC revealed true colors, grinding anti-humanist misanthropy.It turns out that humanity will be much better off – including in Africa – in a scenario of high fossil-fuel use than it would be even if we succeeded in achieving a benign low-CO2 world.
“If it’s cleaner energy who cares how much we use?”
All energy sources are limited, even the energy of the sun, but even more so the capabilities for producing solar and wind energy. Clean energy can only work together with less energy use and the only way to achieve that is getting rid of driving as much as possible.
“It turns out that humanity will be much better off – including in Africa – in a scenario of high fossil-fuel use than it would be even if we succeeded in achieving a benign low-CO2 world.”
Nonsense.
USA 85%
EU 79%
OH THE DIFFERENCE
LazyReader is too lazy to read. This is the reason why LazyReader comes up with modal split in passenger miles over and over again.
Modal split in passenger miles is a deceptive number. It does not tell us anything about the total miles driven per capita and the modal split by trips. Both are important numbers to understand the drastic differences between the types of mobility in the US and elsewhere.
I have little hope LazyReader will read this comment.
@UTISOC:
Spending 105 Billion (and climbing) to chase away a few hundred thousand tons of co2, (Allegedly so) works out to tens of thousands of dollars per ton, which makes NO sense whatsoever. Even At four dollars a gallon, a gallon of gas has 20 lbs of CO2 Therefore a ton of CO2 costs 400 dollars to emit, spending 10,000 dollars to deter something with an cost 400 dollars worth of Carbon dioxide.
In other words ANY supposed climate scheme no matter how intrinsic or sophisticated is destined to fail, because at 10,000 dollars per ton the cost of eliminating a nations CO2 emissions exceeds any nations GDP.
Another reason is High speed rail doesn’t take you out of cars. Inter-city transportation is a minority of the overall travel market. Germany’s S-Bahn commuter rail moves 1.5 million per day; Out of a nation of 83 million, that’s 1.8% of the travel market. The Tokaido Shinkansen on average before pandemic, moved 1 Million passengers a day of a nation of 126 million.
In 1960, when construction began on the Shinkansen, automobiles accounted for less than 5 percent of Japanese passenger travel, while rails carried 77 percent. But a nation that is rich enough to build high-speed trains is rich enough for its residents to buy and drive autos. By 2000’s 12% is by rail and 77% is by Car. Even where gas is more than 2-3x expensive than in the US. Japanese instead turned to motorcycles and what they call “light motor vehicles.” These are three- or four-wheeled vehicles with engines smaller than liter displacement or below 700 cc. Japanese and Europeans aren’t giving up their mobility. The US has the highest GDP per ton emitted is 3,700 dollars per ton, almost 3.4 times that of China (1,100). GDP per ton threshold is how you quantify something suitable. China has spent hundreds of billions, going 850 BILLION in debt building 22,000 miles of high speed rail, trains powered by a Coal fired grid!…….co2 emissions. Still going up………
Notice how LazyReader never elaborates on the content of the comment LazyReader is replying to. LazyReader’s comments are always completely out of context and have no connection to anything you wrote before. This is no surprise, LazyReader loves to talk to LazyReader and never reads the other comments.
S-Bahn is just one out of many commuter rail options in Germany. There are regional trains, U-Bahn, light rail and trams as well.
The modal split for cars in trips is just 57% in Germany. The rest of the trips are done by other modes of transport.
“The US has the highest GDP per ton emitted is 3,700 dollars per ton, almost 3.4 times that of China (1,100). GDP per ton threshold is how you quantify something suitable.”
Funny how you are cherrypicking China here, knowing that both Japan and Germany have a higher GDP per emitted ton.
”
… because I am European and I don’t drive, just like 50% of NYC households.
”
The core problem is utisoc believe the world revolves around him. If he don’t do it or see it, it don’t happen or ain’t worth doing.
No, the problem with people like you is, that they are talking about places they have no idea about.
”
… because I am European and I don’t drive, just like 50% of NYC households.
”
The core problem is utisoc believe the world revolves around him. If he don’t do it or see it, it don’t happen or ain’t worth doing
The problem with prk166 is, that he talks trash about transit and cities while not living there.