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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> it would cost between $125 million to $1 billion per mile to build the Seattle to Vancouver line

One of the problems with the American rail debate is you have people who like rail and people who like low taxes. The two don't overlap. Thus, the former sees any opportunity to lay rail as an opportunity to hose taxpayers.

"China’s high speed rail with a maximum speed of 350 km/h has a typical infrastructure unit cost of about $17-21m per km, with a high ratio of viaducts and tunnels, as compared with $ 25-39 [million U.S. dollars] per km in Europe and as high as $ 56 [million U.S. dollars] per km currently estimated in California" [1]. The Seattle/Washington per-mile costs above translate to $78 to $625 million dollars per kilometre.

[1] http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/07/10/co... 2014

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"One of the problems with the American rail debate is you have people who like rail and people who like low taxes."

US citizen here, in the highest of all possible US+California tax brackets, who is very enthusiastic about rail and non-bus public transportation.

It's not that I don't want to pay taxes for rail - I do - it's that we already ramped the tax collection all the way up to 11 without doing any rail.

Once you're at >50% effective tax rate[1], where do you go from there ? I can't possibly favor any tax increase - it doesn't matter what for - since we are already past (what I would consider) "peak" taxes.

[1] 53% - although in my case, closer to 48% due to minor things like 401k and HSA, etc. Yes, I am one of the suckers who is in the highest bracket but pursues no exotic tax avoidance.

How is your effective tax rate 50%? Even if you are in the highest tax bracket, only the income in that bracket is taxed at the highest rate. Even people earning $475000 in California still only have an effective tax rate of ~40%, which is what you'd need to be making to be in the top US+California tax bracket. And if that's the case you are still taking home nearly $300,000 per year.

I'm all for effective use of taxes, but your effective tax rate calculation seems way off.

Unless they make ~$5M a year or greater. This calculator shows effective tax rate >50% at that point.

https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#7N9mE...

Edit: it was 5M not 4M. Calculator shows FICA not maxing out. It'll get closer to 50% the more they make.

Don't forget about property taxes. It's extraordinarily expensive to buy a home in most parts of California.

If the average person buys a home that costs 3x their income, and property taxes are around 1%, that's an extra 3% added to your tax bill.

"I'm all for effective use of taxes, but your effective tax rate calculation seems way off."

I apologize for already going beyond the bounds of politeness, as far as discussing finances go - so forgive me for not going into further details ... but my calculation is about right on.

"And if that's the case you are still taking home nearly $300,000 per year."

That, on the other hand, bothers me greatly - this idea that at some level of income, the proportions stop mattering. The idea that, if one makes X income, it doesn't matter if that was 30 or 50 or 70% of what we made ...

"It ought to be enough for you".

I'm a big fan of rail. I wish we had a bullet train going from E to W coast through Kansas City. I would happily pay more taxes for it.

The thing for me is ive never understood why the cost per mile is so freaking outrageously stupidly full retard high for rail. Road doesn't cost nearly as much.

Is it the material? Labor? There isn't much material per mile. Why is it so high per mile? Who has done extensive looking into this and can explain it?

The track side equipment is really expensive and there is little competition in the rail-space. Everything is regulated to death and only huge companies have a chance. So you have maybe two or three companies who can bid.

> I'm a big fan of rail. I wish we had a bullet train going from E to W coast through Kansas City. I would happily pay more taxes for it.

You're in the "people who like rail" camp. So are many of my friends. (I'm the lonely S.O.B. in both.)

> Why is [our cost] so high per mile?

On why rail is so much more expensive here, we don't know [1]. "Many of the world's most expensive projects are in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, which, like the United States, have common-law systems," [2] so it might be that right-of-way costs dominate.

New York's MTA costs $4.11 per ride to operate [3]. The analogs for London and Paris are $2.61 and $1.93, respectively [2]. The cost difference appears to be explained by unnecessarily higher staffing levels in New York. So it might be that public-sector union and well-paid contractor costs dominate.

Measuring these things is hard, perhaps intentionally so.

[1] http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2015/03/31/high_costs_ma...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i...

[3] https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-New-Yorks-MTA-debt-pr...

It's a ton of stuff rolled in to one.

First, regular railbed isn't nearly as hard to build because the standards are much lower. When you're building for 70mph max freight you have a totally different need than 186mph+ HSR.

For example, HSR uses a high alignment specification. This means a great deal of effort goes into ensuring that there are as few variations in the alignment as possible to ensure it is stable.

You also have cost of catenary (overhead wires), cost of bridges, tunnels and grading for a much straighter tangent and finally all the electrical and signaling infrastructure behind it.

(Note that the signals are in-cab signals but modern systems such as those from GE/Alstom or Siemens still require lineside equipment.

You have a lot more route flexibility with standard rail as well, since the track doesn't have to be as straight. This is going to translate into lower site acquisition costs.

I agree with OP, though - even taking that all into account it seems like we're getting soaked.

I'm not an expert, but I've looked into this in the past when I was curious about it.

There's quite a bit of working that goes into preparing and grading the land. There's also the added expense of building bridges and tunnels - with the speed a bullet train is travelling at, you want to avoid at-grade level crossings where road vehicles could get into the train's path. You also probably want side barriers to prevent cows and other large animals from wandering onto the tracks. This means you'll also need game tunnels or bridges to enable animals to get cross under or over the tracks, especially in wilderness areas. The Wikipedia article about TGV track construction [1] provides some helpful information[1].

Acquiring the land to build the track might also be expensive. Although governments have some power to expropriate land, there's often (usually?) significant cost involved.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV_track_construction#Prepari...

>> "Why is it so high per mile?"

Our society is afflicted by Baumol's cost disease :(

See e.g. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost...

The rail advocates should fund or conduct an analysis regarding the economic costs of rail-related tax increases vs. that of time saved in traffic, automobile fuel, maintenance and risk, etc..

Maybe Elon's tunnels could solve this?

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