With great fanfare, Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown and a host of other politicians signed a rail in Fresno as a symbolic gesture toward starting construction of California’s high-speed rail project. But, despite what they say, California can’t afford to build it, and the plan they can’t afford won’t really be high-speed rail all the way from Los Angeles to San Francisco anyway.
Recall that back in 1994, California estimated that this high-speed rail line would cost less than $10 billion (about $15 billion in today’s dollars). At that price, experts at the University of California calculated, taking the train from Los Angeles to San Francisco would cost almost twice as much as flying and more than driving.
By 2008, when the measure reached the voters, the project’s estimated cost had grown to $33 billion in 2008 dollars (about $36 billion in today’s dollars). Soon after voters approved it, the cost quickly zoomed to $65 billion in 2010 dollars (about $71 billion in today’s dollars).
To make it more “affordable,” the state developed a new plan that would take longer to build and result in trains that wouldn’t really go high speeds over much of the route. This plan was projected to cost “only” $56 billion in today’s dollars, or $68 billion in “year-of-expenditure” dollars (assuming inflation remains at roughly current levels). Finishing a true high-speed train that would connect Los Angeles with San Francisco in 2 hours and 40 minutes–which is what voters were promised in 2008–would cost another $30 billion to $40 billion in year-of-expenditure dollars and won’t be completed until after 2040, assuming the state still has any money.
The state only has about $9 billion in hand now, but Brown persuaded the legislature to dedicate 25 percent of cap-and-trade greenhouse gas revenues. That “could eventually deliver billions,” enthuses proponents. It could also deliver industry out of California and into other states that don’t try to extort money from businesses.
At the rail-signing ceremony, Federal Railroad Administration director Joseph Szabo brought up the hoary old claim that one two-track rail line can carry as many people as a sixteen-lane freeway. Let’s check his arithmetic. One freeway lane can move 2,000 cars an hour. Each car can hold an average of 5 people, for 160,000 people an hour. One subway line can move about 30 trains an hour. If the trains are ten cars long and each car is stuffed with 150 passengers, each track moves about 45,000 people, or 90,000 for two tracks.
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But high-speed trains aren’t subways. They typically have 80 seats per car and no standing room. Nor can they safely operate every two minutes at 200 miles per hour; the highest frequency high-speed rail line I know of can run fourteen trains per hour. Assuming ten-car trains, two tracks can move 22,400 people an hour, slightly more than two freeway lanes. Thus, Szabo’s claim isn’t true for any rail line, and it is no where near the truth for high-speed trains. (Of course, the cars in freeway lanes aren’t all full, but neither are trains.)
In another piece of hype, someone compared the high-speed rail with the Golden Gate Bridge as two examples of projects that “they” said couldn’t be done. But the Golden Gate Bridge was 100 percent paid for with tolls from bridge users, whereas fares from train riders will cover zero percent of the cost of high-speed rail.
Some of the more absurd comments of the day came from Jerry Brown himself. “There’s no anti-texting rule on the trains,” he said, so “if there’s no other reason [to ride them], it’s you can use your iPhone.” I don’t know how much Apple paid for this plug, but Brown is apparently unaware that there is no anti-texting rule on planes either (except during take-off and landing), and passengers in automobiles can also text all they want. Drivers can probably text, and can certainly talk, if they have hands-free hardware in their cars.
“The line will last 100 years,” said Brown. That’s true–if you remember to completely rebuild it as many as three times during that 100 years, as most of the infrastructure has a 30-year design life. Oh, and don’t forget to maintain it in the intervening years at at cost of as much as $493,000 per mile, or about $250 million a year for the planned 520-mile route. Of course, none of these costs will be covered by rail fares either.
The rail proponents who stood around Jerry Brown carrying signs saying “I will ride” remind me of little kids who want everything they see in the toy stores and are too young to understand the value of the dollars they are demanding their parents spend. As long as they get the benefit while someone else pays the cost, they don’t care how much it is. If they had to pay the full cost of a ticket, which would probably be about $500 to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco, there is no way most of them would ride and then ticket prices would have to be raised even further.
Ground may be broken eventually (though it wasn’t on Tuesday), but the California high-speed rail line will never be completed. All it will take will be one more fiscal crisis–and California seems to have those a couple of times each decade–and whoever is governor at the time will pull the plug just like Jerry Brown pulled the plug on tax-increment financing.
I wouldn’t accept your numbers, I imagine the actual average number of riders in cars to be below 2. So with that tweak the high speed rail capacity is closer to 4 freeway lanes. But even if I’m more wrong and the actual capacity is equal to 8 freeway lanes there is still the problem of those freeway lanes coming to my house and my eventual destination. Of course, they don’t I have to get off the freeway to make it home/work and I have the freedom in the meantime to make detours to grocery stores, cleaners, etc. Even the Elian Musk proposal failed to consider the personal freedom attraction of the automobile. Such statists! They are trying to force everyone into the same mold, unlike capitalists who try to force the mold to attact everyone to it on their own free will. NUTS!!
The Antiplanner was talking about the maximum capacity of both modalities, which is the same thing the rail shill was doing when he trotted out that rail capacity lie.
Though I agree with The Antiplanner that the current California High Speed Rail plan can only fail, I must also point out a more general example of the Dunning Krueger Effect just posted here:
“…Even the Elian Musk proposal failed to consider the personal freedom attraction of the automobile…”
Huh? It looks like every airline in existence also fails to “…consider the personal freedom attraction of the automobile…” Of course, this statement isn’t as fundamentally dumb as The Antiplanner’s failure to see his calculation of freeway lane capacity being off by 10-fold, let alone when was the last time you got 5 people per car for EVERY car on a freeway? Doesn’t happen.
Boys, if you want credibility, get your basic arithmetic and concepts right before posting anything in public.
let alone when was the last time you got 5 people per car for EVERY car on a freeway
When was the last time you saw Amtrak at standing room only? I understand you’re either being intentionally obtuse or this is simply above your head, but he was countering the claim of rail having as much capacity as a gigantic freeway. If the liars are implying that capacity @ full rail cars, a freeway’s capacity ought to be figured with full cars. The freeway beats the rail handily even with one person per car, much less 2 or more. I know this makes the Lionel toy trains seem rather antiquated, but that’s not our problem.
oooohhhh I am so burned!!!
msetty–
In what way is the Antiplanner’s caltulation of freeway lane capacity off 10-fold? I checked it and it seems correct to me.
It’s off 10-fold because it makes rail look bad.
Just ignore mshtty. He’s a hit and run troll who doesn’t read the article and is just here to mshtt on everything because he has a limp d!ck and choo choo trains are his Vi@gr a.
He calls the antiplanner dumb, but clearly he is the one who cannot or will not read:
“(Of course, the cars in freeway lanes aren’t all full, but neither are trains.)”
I know. I just feel like somebody needs to point out that he doesn’t even do his simple math correctly.
Assuming you aren’t intent on wilfully misinterpreting Szabo the claim obviously refers to typical utilization, not theoretical capacity. If you wanted to infer the latter why talk about cars at all, buses are a much more efficient use of highway space. A typical highway lane might move 3000 people per hour, 16 lane freeway would move 24,000 people per direction. Less than that if it was one freeway, not multiple smaller ones, all the merging from people getting to exits means each lane would move less than it would in a smaller highway. Bidirectional Lex express moves more than 48,000 people out of or through GC/42nd st during peak hour.
As for CAHSR capacity, are the stations built to only hold ten car trains? Sixteen car HSR consists in Japan and France can hold at least 1300 seats, I think E4 max shinkansen consists were over 1600. What’s the terminal capacity for the line? That might be the limiting factor, not throughput at any intermediary point. Paris-Lyon is supposed to be upgraded to at least 16 trains per hour over the next decade. Getting to 18 or 20 is expected to be feasible with improved brakes.
Ahwr,
I am not surprised that an advocate of nuclear power is used to defending lies. The lie about rail capacity is obvious and clear…nothing confusing about it. And nothing confusing about the fact that it’s a lie.
Completely off topic, but what’s your problem with nuclear power metro?
Over-promising and under-delivering, as well as the long history of accidents, . Of course, unlike a boondoggle rail project, which can only hurt pocketbooks, a reactor incident can contaminate and destroy like nothing else in the world.
Environmentalists should love nuclear reactors. Especially when they have accidents. Chernobyl has created a large zone without humans, the dream of environmentalists, and lots of wildlife have returned to take over the land. The radiation even accelerates evolution, the holy grail of environmentalists.
Regarding msetty’s comment about the airplane not considering the “personal attraction” of the automobile . . .
Yes indeed the freedom of the automobile or whatever it is that constitutes it’s “personal attraction” is very much at work in the markets that the airline industry participates in. Cars still carry ninety some percent of intercity travelers. This is true until the trip is longer than ten hours or so, driving. But there is even a sizable minority of people who drive coast to coast instead of fly.