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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

The choices here are to spend $100bn adding a lane to I-5 or a $50bn high speed rail between the cities. Adding a lane doesn’t reduce traffic in the long term, and doesn’t reduce drive time even in the best of traffic conditions. (You still can’t go as fast as the bullet train). I think even at double the price it would still be the superior choice. But how will the highway construction companies lobby to get the work for the extra lane?

Car-centric lifestyle has to go. It is maddeningly stupid and wasteful.

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Interstate 5 goes many places other than just Portland and Vancouver. Of course the train can add in additional stops, reducing its speed advantage but will never be able to compete with a road in terms of destination count or the network effect. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea, just that there needs to be enough people going between just the destinations served to compare to the number that would the additional road lane. Induced demand exists but is a sign of success of utility of the road. The comparisons even when everyone is being honest aren't all that clear cut and involve a huge number of variables. Also consider most companies that build roads can also build rail infrastructure or at least parts of it. A rail line isn't starvation for them and they would likely get a piece of that pie.

“ Induced demand exists but is a sign of success of utility of the road. ”

Oh boy. That’s one way of putting it. I’d argue, however, that it’s a dangerous perversion of what induced demand is because it doesn’t respect the negative externalities of the action.

The US, especially the NW, is not that dense which means the infrastructure must accommodate automobiles. The country is simply way too spread out to implement something that resembles rail systems in EU and Japan. While I would like to see high speed rails in the states, I believe the focus is rather myopic considering that it doesn't necessarily solve the underlying transportation problems.

I-5 will still be there. They are talking about adding a $100bn lane to the highway vs a stated cost $50bn bullet train.

Adding lanes to freeways only encourages and perpetuates such lack of density. Cars will do just as well with the current number of lanes. Induced demand is a real thing.

The infrastructure in the US, especially the NW, is built to accommodate automobiles, which means it is not that dense.

> The country is simply way too spread out to implement something that resembles rail systems in EU and Japan

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

The only thing that’s lacking is political will to invest in public infrastructure.

Well I would argue that there’s also a significant cultural difference. The American car culture is not going to go away. People here love their cars. In addition, people in China didn’t have broad access to cars until 1990s. Even now, it’s likely below 30% per HH. So in that sense investing in alternative transportation infrastructure makes a lot of sense. I just think we are expecting almost an insurmountable change in our culture if we were to actually utilize a fully flushed out rail system.

This is a tautological argument that can always be used to defend the status quo. No one loved rural electrification, social security, medicare, or even car culture itself until those things were in place and made part of our cultural fabric. It’s all “if you build it, they will come.” Do you think high speed rail wouldn’t integrate itself into American life were it put in place?

Correct! The numbers are clear not enough people use rail to make it viable and the are numerous examples of the same experiment: dump a few billion into public transport because “if you build it, riders will come”. They don’t. It’s the opposite of green or progressive, it takes tax funds from poor people and gives it to engineering firms to build vanity projects that nobody uses.

The only comparable example to rail networks are rail networks in other wealthy countries, which are great, heavily used systems (barring maybe the UK, where conservatives intentionally sabotaged the system through a badly-implemented privatization scheme).

There are numerous feasibility studies in regards to high speed rail system connecting the Pacific NW corridor. You can go see for yourself. Just because you build a rail network doesn’t mean people will stop driving cars. In fact, proliferation of autonomous cars eliminates any prospect of high speed rail in the US. We are talking about investing in a system that could be made obsolete in 20 years.

Autonomous cars are wildly inefficient compared to high-speed rail and would likely require similar sized infrastructure upgrades and ongoing maintenance in order to operate at scale. Assuming the 20 year timeline us actually feasible, their better suited for short distance trace anyway.

I generally agree that one-off projects are a bad investment and that we should be building a nationwide network of high speed rail. But your original comment was to the broader concern of high speed rail’s viability relative to the size of the IIS.

Worth noting that Seattle, Portland and Vancouver all have made significant investments in public transit, so once you're in the city, you also can do pretty well without a car.

You certainly can - I have. We moved to downtown Seattle and sold both of our cars. Almost everything is available within a few blocks of walking, I bike commute to the office and can take bus/light rail to most places we need to go. About once a month we rent a car for a day to do further out errands - there are many options for this downtown - ShareNow, Zipcar, Avis etc. It typically costs < $200/mo including insurance etc.

It would cost far more than 50B. If you think that cost is accurate, I have a boat to sell you.

In my comment I noted that I think that even at double the price I still think it would be worth it.

That's pretty much true for everything related to construction...

It's true for every major project, of any type. I can't think of any multi-year, >$10B software projects that ended up being completed on-time and on-budget, either.

Do you think the 100B number for the highway is aaccurate?

I would wager it's closer to reality than the number for rail. We've built enough highways that we have a pretty good idea what the costs are. High speed rail has fewer companies bidding on it and less experienced overseers.

My guess would be that the rail line would need entirely new right of way which would radically increase the variability of the cost and may result in it being down right impossible. (Speaking as someone who closely watched the drama around getting new right away along I5 for high voltage transmission) While the highway expansion probably already has the land they need for most of the project.

because like any of these proposals supporting high speed rail the numbers are always bullshit. first they don't even have their route down and even when they do it will be years in courts as every little concerned group gets a word in edgewise and their payout. the road costs are pretty much safer and likely cheaper as right of way is already secured and unlike rail you don't need to complete it all at once to have service nor complete it in connected stages. plus you have all those wonderful exits which will always be in greater frequency than train depots and they all have industry or other features using them

then comes the one aspect of rail they always love to leave out, maintenance and ongoing costs. part of the reason the rail transit systems used by Amtrak and even those in cities have nearly a hundred billion dollar deficit. rail is always cheaper when you don't maintain it.

then of course passenger numbers are always dream state numbers. Oh its quite fun to dream up stuff, rail always has this odd romanticism about it, but in the end who does it serve?

Actually the reason Amtrak runs a huge deficit is their long haul routes (cross country). Their local routes like the eastern corridor and even the ones on the west coast are profitable. Even their regional routes either break even or are very close.

I would point you to the following Wendover Productions video that gives a great analysis.

Amtrak’s Grand Plan for Profitability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSw7fWCrDk0

The chance that this train will cost just $50b? None. Look at CA HSR. The price started out with a $40B cost and now it’s trending towards over $100B, with reduced coverage and service compared to what voters expected. It will probably end up being 4-5x its original cost in the end, if the original promise is delivered. I have higher confidence that the road will be significantly closer to its original cost estimate.

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