77 billion for a train in 2033 ? And people wonder why we in the US think the government is completely unable to run these types of projects effectively. Total joke.
If we doubled the population, it would be pretty OK, and we have the job market for it, but that would require constructing housing, and California doesn't do that.
Then again the fact that there isn't much need for this train due to the low potential ridership makes it so the heart of the state was never in the project, and no one was really committed to it.
Meanwhile in the US we spend nearly 700 billion annually on the military (roughly 75% of the Japanese government's entire budget). Get what you pay for (in our case, missiles).
That’s an ironic comparison. Japan is not allowed to have a military, just a small self defense force. Japan is okay with that state of affairs because the United States has tacitly committed to defend Japan from its belligerent neighbors. Your example illustrates in the same breath why US military spending is so high while it is so low in other countries.
Also, the new bullet train lines mostly are built with private money so there is that too.
That's kind of my point. Japan just has a small self defense force and has instead focused its energies on education and infrastructure. Whether that is by choice or not is irrelevant.
On the other hand, it was definitely a choice by the US to spend our money on military involvement in places like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria instead of using it on schools and trains.
> Japan is okay with that state of affairs because the United States has tacitly committed to defend Japan from its belligerent neighbors. Your example illustrates in the same breath why US military spending is so high while it is so low in other countries.
Yes, I understand the reason the US has such a big military budget is because we insist on stationing submarines, aircraft carriers, and ground troops in every corner of the world to "keep the peace."
My argument is that doing so is a catastrophic misallocation of resources.
> Also, the new bullet train lines mostly are built with private money so there is that too.
The Shinkansen was mostly built by private companies, mainly JNR, but public money played a huge role. JNR racked up nearly $300 billion in today's USD of debt, and that debt was taken on by the government when JNR was disbanded and reorganized (again by the government). I don't think the railways in Japan can be thought of as being completely privatized or completely nationalized. Even when officially managed by private companies, the government continues to play a role in planning and funding.
Correction - 77B for a train that will be relatively slow when it was scheduled to be unveiled in 2033.
My generation never took Amtrak seriously because it was relatively slower than other transportation modes. In 2033 and beyond, those generations will ignore CA HSR for the same reasons.
SF -> LA in <= 120 minutes or GTFO.
With the Californian project, the cost is nearly 80M$, and it's only the budgeted cost, not the cost after all the inevitable delay and unforeseen spending.
As someone living in France, I've no idea as to what can explain this x2 or even x4 in cost. Is there a rational explanation?
But Spain has also areas that are even worse than Switzerland, where high speed train is being deployed. And Spanish companies have built the Mecca - Medina line, which is a little engineering marvel.
You could buy a lot of self-driving vehicles for that price.
Of course, you could just build a restricted access freeway, instrument the heck out of it to help the self driving cars, and put the self driving cars on it as a kind of track...
Edit: It is 1275 km from SF to LA om I-5. If we put these cars, evenly spaced on that road, both ways, they are about 2.2 m apart from back bumper to back bumper.