Hacker News Reader

Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

IMHO every claim of performance on speed/completion/timeline/budget made by CA-HSR so far has been false and no claim has been true. But point taken on claimed speed - we have only their claims to go on. It isn't fair to examine them on the slow speed only, which is what I was doing.

However, I am somewhat curious about your certainty of the quality of this thing. I am willing to do the following on longbets.org:

- CA-HSR will not deliver regular service on IOS by current predicted 2029 date

- 10 years from now, budget estimates will be at least $160 b

We can pick terms at your convenience. I will commit a maximum of $10k to this through an intermediary who will meet you in San Francisco. If I lose, you get the $10k to a charity of your choice. If I win, you will donate to the charity of my choice 125 tickets (equal value at the CA-HSR-claimed $80/ticket) on CA-HSR for SF-LA.

View on HN

I’m not gonna bet any money on this and I discourage anyone from doing so. Willingness to bet proves nothing about a merit of a prediction, and only loosely about ones faith in it.

10 years is a long time, and a lot can happen in that time. In 2017 there was an administration in the White House that was quite hostile to public infrastructure projects and withheld all the federal funding the previous administration had promised. For all we know there will be another administration like that in 2 or 6 years which does the same (or even more) to sabotage the project.

In 2018 a new CEO took over the project and took a hard policy against over promising. This is when we saw the initial operating segment being scaled back to only include Bakerfield to Merced by the end of this decade. Since then we’ve actually seen a lot truer projections which have come true. For example Construction Package 4 is almost complete and pretty much on time and on budget.

Right - and if you asked the new guy if they will actually run at 2:40 minutes - and he answered, the answered would be - no way.

Project is still badly managed. This was in early 2021:

“It is beyond comprehension that as of this day, more than two thousand and six hundred calendar days after (official approval to start construction) that the authority has not obtained all of the right of way … ” wrote Tutor Perini Vice President of Operations Ghassan Ariqat to Garth Fernandez, the contracting chief at the state rail authority.

And that has only continued. They literally are asking Tutor to build on land they don't own, utility relocations have been going on for YEARS.

And the costs to now tunnel back to the coasts (long tunnels near seismic fault lines!). I don't think any plan is credible on that front. The rights of way as you get closer to SF and LA are going to be BRUTAL to get.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com