Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

Big things cost a lot of money. I expect better arguments than "$X billion is a lot of money" and "theyre only doing it to spite Trump" if someone wants to argue against a big infrastructure project.

Rail is a good and useful thing. The USA should probably have more of it. I have no real knowledge about this specific project, but my priors are that any "crazy", "green" project from California is perfectly fine, sensible governance that is probably saving lives, the environment and money, and that the people screaming about it don't know what they are talking about.

But I'm open to credible info to the contrary.

(A quick glance at Wikipedia tells me that the people of California think it's a good idea, and that the people who don't are generally older and republican leaning, which pretty much meshes with my priors, so I'm fairly confident it's a good thing overall).

View on HN

California HSR is projected to cost $100B for 500 miles. That’s $200M/mile.

By comparison, the 160 mile LGV Méditerranée in France cost €3.8B in 2001 [0]. That’s roughly €25M/mile. Even after accounting for exchange rates and inflation, that’s still roughly an order of magnitude cheaper.

Yes, big things cost a lot of money, but they shouldn’t cost 10x more what they cost in other industrialized countries. High speed rail is great, but it should not be funded with a blank check.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Méditerranée

I glanced at Wikipedia earlier to learn about the California project and they claim that despite costing x2 or x3 what similar European and Chinese efforts cost, that's mostly due to the cost of land and 3 mountain ranges being in the way.

It also mentions that it's costing less per mile than HS2 in London. So if this is extravagant waste, it's not that extravagant.

>I glanced at Wikipedia earlier to learn about the California project and they claim that despite costing x2 or x3 what similar European and Chinese efforts cost

This is based on an outdated cost estimate that's roughly 2x lower than the current projected cost. From Wikipedia:

>In July 2014, The World Bank reported that the per kilometer cost of California's high-speed rail system was $56 million, more than double the average cost of $17–21 million per km of high speed rail in China and more than the $25–39 million per km average for similar projects in Europe at the time.

That was in 2014. Costs have ballooned 2x to $125M/km; this has not happened in Europe or China.

>the cost of land and 3 mountain ranges being in the way

If you want to control for mountain ranges, consider the Suseo–Pyeongtaek branch of Korea's high speed rail network, opened in 2016. It's a 38 mile line, 31 of which are in a 50 meter deep tunnel. It cost ₩4.18T (approximately $3.2B), which comes out to ~$85M per mile. Again, 80% of the line is in a 50 meter deep tunnel.

That's still less than half the cost per mile of California HSR, which will not be 80% underground. There is simply no excuse for the inflated costs of CHSR.

>It also mentions that it's costing less per mile than HS2 in London. So if this is extravagant waste, it's not that extravagant.

HS2 is notorious for being a boondoggle with massive cost overruns. Not exactly a flattering thing to compare to.

HS2 seems to be similalry rated as "expensive but probably worth it overall", so if its still less than that it seems okay.

I'm not looking for perfection in big projects, but I am looking for vaguely informed comment.

By this logic we shouldn’t question how much we spend for anything.

Florida is connecting Miami, Ft Lauderdale, and Orlando this year for a total cost of $3-4 billion. That’s $7.3 million per mile, and it was mostly paid for by private enterprise instead of the government. Development started in 2012, with Miami to West Palm Beach opening in 2018. CHSR started development in 2008, and isn’t slated to operate anything until 2029. When it does operate, it’ll link Merced and Bakersfield.

Florida will be operating the fastest trains in the US this year.

This thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline

That's not a high speed service. There _was_ a planned high-speed service with a similar route (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_High-Speed_Corridor), but it was killed.

Conventional rail is, of course, a lot cheaper than high-speed rail; this isn't a revelation.

It's also a one train per hour service. CHSR:

> In addition, the achievable operating headway between successive trains must be less than 5 minutes

While CHSR _is_ definitely on the expensive side for high speed rail, it's a little silly to compare it to the Florida system, which is a fairly standard intercity rail.

Incidentally, I'm not saying there's anything _wrong_ with the Florida system; I've no idea of the background, but it may be that the expected ridership didn't justify a high-speed high frequency system. It's very much not comparing like for like, though.

I wonder though.

I live on a dirt road, out in the country. It was built by a contractor, who was selling farmland for housing, 50 years ago.

Instead of digging down, putting aggregate(gravel, etc), the road was just laid over farmland, with a foot of gravel.

Once the municipality took over, it was fine for a while, but maintenance costs were through the roof. Springtime flooding, washouts, and heavy trucks woild sink (no drainage, mud) in the spring.

Eventually, the municipality had to dig down 4ft, put in proper drainage and gravel base, to reduce failure and ongoing maintenance costs.

(I'm in Canada, and frost/snow/ice creates loads of maintenance, especally without drainage.. a southern American in Arizona might wonder what the big deal is)

Anyhow, now there are laws for road quality and developers here, 50 years later, bit I wonder....

Could that private rail developer be shifting initial cost, to higher maintenance costs?

And further, mountains have issues with freezing/etc, and it does make a massive diff...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com