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Comment by xbeta | Hacker News Reader

(Being a Chinese grew up in Canada, and now working/living in the Bay)

In my opinion, most people in the valley or in North America still refuse to give up their lifestyle. They look for something like self-driving cars, all electric-powered "personal" vehicle to invest. And those still drive on the same road/interstates/highway infrastructure and don't give you the benefits compare with high-speed rails.

They don't recognize the real priorities - how to transport millions people everyday efficiently, cost-effectively, and most environmentally friendlies.

They also don't recognize local economy, local businesses thrive with these connected network. It is proven to be the case in China and Japan.

High-speed rail network is what people want - to get from point A to point B quickly. It's not something even the most efficient self-driving car with the best MPG electric-powered vehicle can scale for millions of people everyday.

Instead of investing into some new technologies, they seem like they refuse to take decades of proven technology and just use it in US (high-speed trains were first invented in Japan in the 60s)

But as I understand very well in the culture here, the politics, the corruption, and the oil/automative conglomerate will never make this happen for the actual good for the people.

I would without a doubt to say the US is in its downfall as it didn't pick the priorities to fix the root of the problem.

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A lot of the political pushback in the US is two major factors:

1) Rail systems are almost never profitable. The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies. An investment in high speed rail entails paying taxes for it for many years or perhaps forever.

2) The US is much more rural than other developed countries. The land area compared to the population is huge compared to Europe/China/Japan. You almost need a car to get around because there's so much open space. Things are too far apart in many cases to make public transport realistic. Also, since nearly everyone has a car already the need for a rapid mode of transport is mostly met. Yeah it sucks in the big cities but a lot of the people that work there live far enough away that any rail system built would never reach their homes anyways.

You do see big public transport networks in places with extremely high density like New York, which has a similar density to most countries with well developed systems.

The notable exception I can think of to the trend is Russia, which has a lot of public transport compared to population density. This can probably be explained by a history of being a communist country as well as the relative lack of personal cars due to lower income and limited access to trade with countries that manufacture automobiles

> The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies.

The US gives $0.6 trillion / yr in energy subsidies, about 70% of which goes to oil. Which reduces the cost of cars and trucks.

Where are you getting the $420 billion per year in oil subsidies? US oil companies pay among the highest corporate income tax rates on the planet. Their taxes far exceed subsidies they receive.

$600 billion by comparison is the size of the US military and $420 billion is larger than the sales of Exxon + Chevron + Conoco + Occidental + EOG + Anadarko combined. It's an absurd claim.

I was quoting Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies

> The study found that "China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion)."

> The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period.

Apologies, it seems fossil fuels get 70%. Not just oil.

>A 2011 study by the consulting firm Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI)[28] estimated the total historical federal subsidies for various energy sources over the years 1950–2010. The study found that oil, natural gas, and coal received $369 billion, $121 billion, and $104 billion (2010 dollars), respectively, or 70% of total energy subsidies over that period

Over 60 years.

No, per year. Specifically $606 billion in 2013.

The cited study from the sentence I referenced in my comment:

> Estimated subsidies are $4.9 trillion worldwide in 2013 and $5.3 trillion in 2015 (6.5% of global GDP in both years).

> In terms of countries, China had the largest absolute post-tax subsidies in 2013 ($1,844 billion or 19.5% of GDP), followed by United States ($606 billion or 3.6% of GDP), Russia ($318 billion or 15.2% of GDP), European Union ($295 billion), India ($269 billion or 14.3% of GDP), Japan ($142 billion or 2.9% of GDP), Saudi Arabia ($129 billion or 17.2% of GDP) and Iran ($118 billion or 32.2% of GDP).

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16...

Here is the study that you quoted, it's total.

http://www.misi-net.com/publications/NEI-1011.pdf

edit:

The other study that you provided includes global warming and air pollution as a "subsidy", no offense but that's pushing the definition.

http://imgur.com/a/hNm6a

I'm pretty sure you're correct and those numbers are total since 1950. However, the study does seem confusingly worded - in the footnote on page 1 it says:

"All estimates quoted are in constant 2010 dollars, unless otherwise noted, and refer to actual expenditures in the relevant fiscal year, rounded to the nearest billion"

At least to me that reads like "all estimates refer to expenditures from the relevant fiscal year only". However, they later quote the same numbers as being "total spending since 1950". Am I just missing an obvious interpretation for the footnote?

I think you are. I interpret that as the estimates for each year are quoted in 2010 dollars unless noted and that those estimates (that is, the ones for each year) refer to actuals in each of those years. Then they are summed to produce the $600b.

"from the relevant fiscal year" implies that each value relates to a corresponding fiscal year. Your addition of 'only' is redundant.

But the estimates the footnote is referring to are in the first table. Those are not per year but already summed; there's no corresponding fiscal year to refer to (I think?).

Regardless, this is a tiny point so I'll drop it. I still feel confused though :(

Looks like they found that number here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Impact_of_fos...

Highways (tolls) tend to be far less profitable than rail systems (ticket sales). If the US didn't like government subsidies, we wouldn't have built all these highways.

Do you have a source on this? In my state the government used the tolls roads as a cash cow, they were massively profitable. The funny thing was the toll roads still sucked because they dumped all the money into the general fund to pay for everything else

Just like about a quarter of the motor-fuels tax that is supposed to go into the highway trust fund.

> If the US didn't like government subsidies, we wouldn't have built all these highways

You can't disregard the history of the highways, or the reason they were first built - for the military in the name of national security.

A moderate increase in user fees (gas taxes today, mileage fees in an electric future) could readily fund all capital and maintenance costs for the US interstate system. Gas wouldn't have to be that much more expensive than it was 4-5 years ago. The system would endure and could even be profitable.

No such fee structure could plausibly fund any rail system outside the NE Corridor. Prices adequate to sustain the network, let alone build it up, would put ridership into a death spiral.

If you've been to Tokyo or Shanghai/Beijing, you would know the New York public transport system is not well developed at all.

The Shanghai metro, while pleasant to travel on and incredibly cheap, closes at 11pm.

At least the NY subway is 24/7

NYC is one of the best system. It pretty much covers most of the city 24/7. I have yet to see a system that has similar coverage and frequency.

24/7 is in fact a negative as the state of the DC Metro and NYC system show especially in comparison to Tokyo's multiple system.

There's not enough time to do proper repairs and improvements.

What I don't understand is why more cities don't operate like Philly and operate 24 hour bus service in place of the trains at night. With a system like that the night workers can still get to work as early as others and the bar crowd can still go out with out the craziness of last train like in Tokyo.

NYC has buses covering pretty much the same routes as subway, it just takes much longer. Personally I use express buses for commute and these are amazing, though twice as expensive.

Some metro systems have a 24/7 bus system, but Philly's is an exact replacement for the trains. They don't make all the extra stops of the buses that serve similar routes. I'm unaware of anywhere else that does this

I've been to both Beijing and NYC as a tourist and I don't quite understand what do you have in mind. If anything I preferred the system in NYC.

I do agree completely with your statement on rural area with population. It's a fact that nobody can argue with.

But to think about it more, why do people have to live in such lifestyle with so much open "wasted" spaces?

Why everyone "has a car already"? All we talk about is the American lifestyle which most American still refuse to adapt or look different.

I don't know as much about China, but having been to Japan several times, I can say that the rail networks of Japan only extend to the urban cores of a city. If you want to live in a suburban or rural area, you have to get by with a car or take the local bus everywhere, which is slow. US urban rail infrastructure is already present, it just does not have the same frequency that Japanese rail has.

> Rail systems are almost never profitable. The US, at least in spirit, doesn't like government subsidies.

Excuse me? Japan privatized its rail system in the late 80s, doesn't subsidize any of the JR companies[1][2] (which are all publicly traded to boot), and has a profitable enough industry that there are now numerous private operators[3] of various sizes who successfully compete.[4]

1 http://www.railway-technology.com/features/featurelevel-play...

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyu_Corporation, and see the box at the bottom for lots more

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Greater_Tokyo#Oth...

Many people do indeed want to get from Point A to point B quickly. That's why there are around 75,000 plane flights per day. There are very few city pairs in the US with the potential volume to justify high speed rail.

There already is high speed-ish rail travel in the Northeast and it's very popular. But, for example, even if you could magically offer 6-8 hour train service between New York and Chicago, relatively few people would take it given that flying would be significantly faster.

I think your point is generally valid for the US. However, Chicago-NYC might be a bad example, since it actuality might be viable. The Shinkansen goes ~200mp/h and thus would be able to go back and forth in 4-5hrs. Given that trains are less weather dependent, can drop you off on there middle of the city rather than the outskirts and don't come with the same security theater you probably come out with a comparable time frame and more reliability on that connection. Things like connecting the west coast to anything but itself are completely unviable though because of the reasons you gave.

NYC to Chicago goes through a (smaller) continental divide though (the Appalachians) [ADDED in what's also a pretty built-up area of the country]. So HSR is problematic on that route. It's about a 20 hour trip today so cutting that by 2/3rds would be a significant achievement but probably still wouldn't be enough to make it interesting.

The somewhat controversial LA to San Francisco route through the Central Valley may make sense. We'll see in 15 or 20 years or whatever. Unfortunately LA is pretty spread out so you don't get the same downtown to downtown advantages that trains in the Northeast have.

The route that probably would have the biggest potential benefit is speeding up the Northeast Corridor to the point where Boston to DC was more practical vs. flying. Amtrak is apparently doing some upgrades but decided that the most aggressive improvements weren't cost-justified.

The Allegheny Front, where the continental divide runs between Altoona, PA and Frostburg, MD, wouldn't be a particular challenge for HSR, because they're good at hillclimbing, and the mass of the trainset is nothing like loaded coal trains or intermodal double-stack trains which currently frequent this area.

LGV Sud-Est has 3.5% grades, for example; the Pennsylvania Railroad (now Norfolk Southern) Gallitzin-Horseshoe Curve-Altoona stretch is 1.85%, B&O (CSX) Sand Patch Grade further south is 2%.

Rather, overcoming the general ruggedness of the terrain is the greatest expense. Slower railroads can meander along rivers, but a HSR needs large sweeping curves (with large radii), requiring expensive fills or cuts or viaducts. Some tunnels would be needed to cross some of the linear ridges, just like the Pennsylvania Turnpike (and the predecessor railroad that used the same right-of-way) did. In fact, it's likely that an alignment would closely parallel the turnpike, as the landscape gets significantly more rugged south of Maryland or north of I-80.

A gentler route following the Empire Corridor (roughly, NYC->Albany->Buffalo) may be cheaper to construct, but would be considered a "detour" by a casual observer -- and the expense of the NYC->Albany portion may not make it worthwhile.

Sadly, it's not very likely that such a Mid-Atlantic-to-Chicago passenger-only railway could be economical to construct and operate. US infrastructure costs routinely run much higher than the international average for comparable projects, and even the as-the-crow-flies distance (1100+ km, 700+ miles) between NYC-Chicago puts it too far out of HSR's ideal range, even in countries where people actually ride trains.

Newer trains can go 300+ mph, especially the levitating variety where noise is less of a factor. Given how long it takes to navigate through the unbelievable bullshit in most airports a train has a 2h head start the moment it leaves the station.

In addition, every train I have been on is more comfortable than any but the most expensive airline fares.

If they built that route what's the likelyhood it wouldn't also have stops in Philly, pitsburg, Cleveland which would add significant time. I can't see it being a direct route with no stops inbetween.

Shinkansen is actually quite weather dependent.

All trains will stop at the first safe opportunity in the event of heavy rain, winds, or snow. It's one of the reasons (no level crossings is another) there has never been a fatal accident involving HSR in Japan.

There are tons of city pairs but because the airline industry is heavily subsidized it's often cheaper to fly.

The Boston to Washington D.C. corridor could easily sustain itself if the trains put in place were reliable, expedient, and low-fuss.

There's no technological barriers here, as China has proven, only political ones. A lot of people see Amtrak as a problem, an anachronism, not a solution.

The corridor does sustain itself. In fact, it basically makes the money that Amtrak loses throughout the rest of the country. It doesn't really work (for most people) for Boston to DC trips but it's quite popular for NYC north and NYC south.

Airlines are subsidized? Not according to this article.[1]

[1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2015/04/14/u-s-airlines-...

Airports are a spectacularly expensive undertaking and require heavy subsidies to even exist. If the airlines had to pay for those with cash they'd be bankrupt unless they charged more. Then there's the subsidies paid to the oil companies that makes jet fuel more cost effective, and airlines burn a lot of that. As a portion of net cost, fuel is likely higher for aviation than for any other form of travel.

$250B sounds like a lot of money, but that's since the 1970s. In that time how many airports have been built or rebuilt? What's the net cost of that?

The footprint of a rail station is significantly smaller, the costs are proportionately lower. There's subsidies there, too, but they're significantly smaller, and many of those were provided in the early 20th century back when rail was a vital link.

Also Forbes is utterly useless as a site. Not only do they bitch endlessly about ad blockers, which I only use because the sorts of advertising sites like that promote are offensively stupid, but it splits up that short article into three pages with interstitial ads between each page.

Fuck that.

There are tons of good city pairs. People are paying to be carted like baggage by Spirit.

We subsidize highways and air travel at the expense of other ground options. It shouldn't be 70% cheaper for me to drive my family to Florida or the Carolinas for vacation from NY vs air or rail. But it is.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, do that I95 trip every year. There are dozens of corridors like that.

The "Texas triangle" is one example of some good city pairs, which are a lot more practically situated than the pie-in-the-sky NYC-LA route people always bring up as a reason HSR won't work in the U.S. due to distances (and this is not the only such set of routes, just a particularly high-volume set).

Houston-Dallas is a very high-volume city pair forming one leg of the triangle, of length around 250 miles. People do fly on this route, but most people don't, because between the airports' relatively inconvenient location (especially Houston's), security, delays, etc., it doesn't save you that much time. So most people just drive. But driving is just far enough, and stress/traffic-filled enough, that many people who drive that route regularly hate doing so (it takes 4-6 hours, depending on how good a day you're having, and much of that is with wall-to-wall traffic containing a heavy volume of trailer trucks in the mix). I've done it many times myself, and I'd love to take a train instead. For me personally, it wouldn't even have to be that fast: if the train could get me there reliably in 3 hours (i.e. average speed 85 mph, not even talking about Shinkansen speeds), I'd be very satisfied. Related things can be said about the other two legs of the triangle: San Antonio - Houston (200 miles) and the San Antonio - Austin - Dallas corridor (80+195 = 275 miles).

The topography here is also more friendly to rail than, for example, LA-SF, being mostly flat and open and with shorter distances. But unfortunately the state-level political geography is less friendly (at a local level rail is popular in all four of these cities, but the state is another matter).

But these are very spread out cities so if you fly (or take a hypothetical train) you now need to rent a car at the other end. I was in Dallas a while back and basically couldn't walk to a restaurant a mile away because there was no sidewalk.

That's a great point.

The train from Albany to NYC is at or near capacity daily, although it's only 150 miles. Similar use case in many ways... It's enough of a pain to drive that people want to avoid it, and it's better than a car to go to Manhattan.

My uncle used to fly LGA to BOS a couple of times a week... I betcha that train trip is shorter now given the security and other nonsense associated with flying.

Depends where you are coming from and going to. I do prefer to take the train driving from the western Boston suburbs to Manhattan (so RTE to NYP) but it's not actually faster than driving directly. Probably is faster than flying though.

These smaller routes do seem like a very practical case. Another is people going to/from the twin cities -> Milwaukee -> Chicago. You can do it on the Amtrak now but it's very slow and just easier to drive.

I'm not sure I understand. Even if rail were cheaper to get from, say, Boston to Charlotte, you'd then almost certainly have to rent a car for that vacation so it's hard to see a train being an economical option for most families.

And Amtrak does offer an auto train though from Virginia to Florida.

I like the train but I don't assume it's a particularly economic option.

There's this newfangled thing called Uner now. ;)

Any trip where people fly is a rail candidate. The hassle and bullshit associated with flying is high and getting higher.

Taxis/Uber don't really work in very spread out areas relative to having a car.

Amtrak could make a killing with a service that sent you via high speed rail and sent your car via regular rail either before or after you departed.

> There already is high speed-ish rail travel in the Northeast and it's very popular. But, for example, even if you could magically offer 6-8 hour train service between New York and Chicago, relatively few people would take it given that flying would be significantly faster.

Texan living in NYC here. I disagree. I would happily pay to take a 6 hour train to Chicago over a flight anyday. LGA/JFK are nightmares to book last minute flights and high-speed rail is a favorable experience to flying sometimes.

In contrast, there's no "useful" rail network in Texas — at all. If there was a rail network, like the single-high speed line proposed between Dallas and Houston, it would totally dominate and disrupt. People fly to/from cities in Texas all the time.

There are many many cities that would benefit from a rail network because the cost would be considerably lower than flying. If you build it, they will come.

Also a Texan who lived in NYC :D and now lives in the bay area. I'm constantly amazed that we haven't placed a solid, high speed rail throughout this area.

Housing costs are skyrocketing and you have people who work for all ends of the spectrum (Google down to dishwashers) moving away because they can't afford the lifestyle they envision here. Hour long commutes are the norm and every day I see at least one wreck on my way to work.

Coming from NYC where you can get anywhere in Manhattan w/in 20 minutes by train.. it's incredibly frustrating.

I agree we should also be looking outside of the bay area (connecting cities across America), but also see a pressing need here with a market that would use the rail system like crazy.

>if you could magically offer 6-8 hour train service between New York and Chicago

You know, that's not terribly fast... 1200 km in 6 hrs, so 200 km/hr. France started operating 320 km/hr trains in 1990's. Do you think people would go by rail if the journey was 4 hours, city center - to - city center?

"In my opinion, most people in the valley or in North America still refuse to give up their lifestyle."

You should try living in Europe.

There is no lifestyle to give up by using trains!

... so long as they are made correctly.

Imagine if there were fairly high speed trains that connected SF, SJ, outside the bay - and LA?

And the stations were easy to access through subways/quick trains?

So many fewer people would drive.

Having to deal with the BS of a car, be stuck in traffic, drive everywhere - is not a lifestyle advantage. :)

Once you have easy access to good subways/trams/high-speed trains - you likely don't want to drive unless you have to.

The US is in fact ascendant, not in decline.

You're using the rail example to imply downfall, and yet the US economy has embarrassed the Japanese economy the last 25 years. In the mid 1980s, the US and Japan nearly had the same GDP per capita; very soon the US will have twice the GDP per capita of Japan.

You're implying rail is so beneficial to economic growth, and let's say I agree with that: and yet the US has been embarrassing most of Europe on economic growth for the last 20 years (Germany's economy hasn't expanded in ten years for example).

If you were right, US GDP per capita should be far lower than the EU or Eurozone, when the exact opposite is the case. Germany has a GDP per capita of the poorest US states (it's nearly on par with West Virginia currently). France nearly has the GDP per capita of Puerto Rico.

I don't believe your premise has any legs to stand on based on the facts. The real implication here is that the US would be staggeringly far ahead if it corrected some of its obvious flaws.

I'm not sure GDP per capita makes sense for this comparison when ownership is distributed so unequally in the US. Taking the mean is basically dividing up wealth equally and that's not what happens.

What is there about the German standard of living for typical citizens that compares unfavorably to the US? How can this be measured? No single number works, but I would suggest looking at medians ahead of means.

There are some Median Wealth figures on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

The US apparently has about half the median wealth of many European countries, although notably not Germany, which is comparable to the US on this metric.

But I'm not sure how meaningful this is or what factors might be affecting the numbers. (And I'm not even exactly sure what's being measured.)

Not sure how seriously that can be taken either. Australia is so high but most of that wealth is in over inflated property values.

That's a symptom of broken governmental policy, not so much imaginary value. People still need to buy houses for them to sell, so it's not like the property bubble isn't backed by real money. It's just that people are placing disproportionate value on property over other investments.

For example, say your house went from 400k-500k in a year. For it to be 500k you still have to find a seller. Yes, there's a degree of paper value there however it's paper value only because other properties are selling for that. If you were to somehow remove property from being bought and sold, the money would just go into other investments. There is no way that 'most' of that wealth is wealth on paper in the form of property.

The reality is that Australian wages are very high comparitively. Australia is a wealthy nation.

>Germany has a GDP per capita of the poorest US states (it's nearly on par with West Virginia currently)

Wow. I did not know or even suspect that! Funny thing. I've lived in both. I'd rather live in a closet-sized apartment in Germany than in a McMansion in West Virginia. It seems like there might be an ocean of inquiry behind that narrow channel of facts. (At least for me personally)

Yes, but I'd rather pick free health care and five weeks vacation. :) Your numbers are correct, but I don't think they are meaningful.

Global influence is not just about GDP (not sure if there's a power influential index for each country).

We all know American culture for heavily depended on automative and roads don't work for most countries, probably only work in US.

These are demonstrably false claims.

GDP Annual Growth rate from 1996-2016 in Europe was 1.7%, in the US from 1995-2015 it was 2.1%. [World Bank, Trading Economics].

The German GDP per capita grew from $36,000 to $46,000 from 2006 to 2016. [World Bank], and it ranks in the mid 30's out of 50 states. [Wikipedia].

The per capita GDP of Puerto Rico is $28,529, the per capita GDP of France is $41,329. [World Bank]

For a fair comparison between the US and Germany/France, let's examine the inequality adjusted Human Development Index, as measurements that do not account for income inequality obfuscate the reality of most citizens.

Germany ranks 6th, France ranks 18th, the US ranks 28th. [Wikipedia].

Talking about GDP, I am not an expert, but just compared two examples: 1. ST3 project in Seattle metro area. http://soundtransit3.org/ This project will be finish in 25 years, with $53.8 billions in estimation, to construct 62 new miles light rail majorly. 2. The high speed rail project connecting Beijing and Shanghai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_High-... And this project completed in 3.5 years (from April 2008 to Nov 2010) by constructed 819 miles high speed railroad between Beijing and Shanghai (averaging 186 MPH), and the total investment is $34.7 billion.

In summary, 819 miles HSR vs 62 miles LR, $34.7B vs. $53.8B, and 3.5 Years vs. 25 Years So compared with other countries, how much the inflation US GDP has?

>>>I would without a doubt to say the US is in its downfall as it didn't pick the priorities to fix the root of the problem.

The US is in a downward spiral because we didn't build a government funded $2 trillion bullet train? Are you serious?

>>>High-speed rail network is what people want - to get from point A to point B quickly.

Wrong. What people want is to telecommute. I don't want to get shoved into a bullet train every morning.

> The ultimate goal is to have 45,000km of high-speed track. Zhao Jian of Beijing Jiaotong University, who has long criticised the high-speed push, reckons that only 5,000km of this will be in areas with enough people to justify the cost.

Do you agree with this 5,000km figure? If not, what figure would you choose?

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