CA high-speed rail is Exhibit A for how America can’t build big things anymore | Hacker News Reader

CA high-speed rail is Exhibit A for how America can’t build big things anymore

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57 pointsmjirv75 comments

In 1989 Texas created the Texas High Speed Rail Authority to connect Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Their goal was to award a semi-private high speed rail franchise from high speed rail vendors. SouthWest petitioned to be included in the authority and effectively killed it

https://txarchives.org/tslac/finding_aids/20071.xml#:~:text=....

>SouthWest petitioned to be included in the authority and effectively killed it

Is there more on this? I skimmed the link and it looks like southwest sued and was able to get some sort of injunction, but it didn't mention why they were suing. Also, I couldn't find any mentions about them "petitioned to be included in the authority".

Why would an airline sue to stop a HSR project?

Because Southwest's business model, especially back then, is short haul flights between cities that are just far enough from each other to make driving inconvenient. Guess what else is a good and way more convenient transportation method for that?

Because they had a nice revenue stream running short-hop flights between those cities and didn't want high-speed rail cutting into it. Routes under 300 miles or so are the sweet spot for HSR where you can actually save time going from downtown to downtown instead of dealing with the airport rigamarole.

Annie Duke on EconTalk had the best analysis of why it’s failing. The project is perennially having its funds being directed to solve the easiest problems (how to build high speed rail on flat ground in Central Valley) and ignoring major structural challenges (how to cross the mountain ranges into LA). So we’re don’t actually know how much it’ll cost to complete because the hardest parts of the project haven’t even begun.

Secondarily there’s all sorts of weird decisions being made that cripple HSR like limiting it to using Caltrain track in the Bay Area (limiting it to 110mph or even less in practice due to stops / contention / etc) and having HSR have a bunch of stops instead of keeping it non stop at high speed and using local light rail to connect to it. For example, as I understand it, the line in LA makes a weird circuitous out of the way bend to service a suburb of LA which adds significant transit time for very few people vs keeping a straighter route and connecting that suburb with light rail / subway / buses.

Finally, the project is being built as all or nothing instead of the sane way (at least IMHO) of starting in LA and the Bay Area where it might have the possibility of generating revenue and value earlier. You’d need to actually decouple it from local rail so that you stop in San Jose and SF and use CalTrain if you need to stop elsewhere (and maybe one other stop somewhere in the middle). Going from San Jose to SF at 200 mph would be a game changer. It would also be nice if they designed the track to support 300-400 mph trains in the future without needing to rebuild the rail.

You explained it well: it is hard so we just don’t build it.

Of course it is hard.

I think my point may have been missed. We need to build the hard stuff, especially stuff we haven’t done, first. The Californian terrain is challenging but we’re building the easy parts of the terrain first. It doesn’t make sense except to do it this way except that it’s being run as a political project which causes problems because suddenly everyone wants their fingers in the pie.

I’m saying we SHOULD do it, but the project is horribly mismanaged by the political powers in charge.

I think it speaks volumes that most of the international firms who excel in building rail pulled out or no quoted California.

Sometimes the risk of working for an erratic customer outweighs the money you could make

This is the strongest argument against CA HSR.

The people who actually have success building and operating HSR have quit the project.

They didn't quit; they didn't accept the client.

> For example, as I understand it, the line in LA makes a weird circuitous out of the way bend to service a suburb of LA which adds significant transit time for very few people vs keeping a straighter route and connecting that suburb with light rail / subway / buses.

Unless the routing has recently changed radically, this isn’t really true (or, rather there is a very good reason for the chosen route north of LA).

One of the most expensive aspects of rail projects is right of way acquisition, and the plan is/was to use the existing Metrolink ROW through LA to Antelope Valley.

Another expensive aspect is crossing mountains. From Antelope Valley, the line will cross the Tehachapi pass, which is the only really practical place to cross the mountains separating the LA basin from the Central Valley (without a 35 mile / 50 km tunnel through bedrock and a major fault line).

At this point I’m in favor cancelling the whole HSR project at this point, but the LA-Bakersfield routing isn’t really a valid criticism of the project.

Reusing Caltrain ROW for the Bay Area segment was a smart move, for the same reason. A new ROW through the peninsula would have taken a century to acquire.

Mandating 220 mph speeds, vs say 160, has exploded project costs. If advocates were willing to settle for 110 mph in LA and SFBA and 160 mph though the Central Valley we would likely already have an operating train, and for only the the original projected cost.

Governments have very strong eminent domain powers. There’s a political cost but operationally it shouldn’t take long to acquire the land. Just expensive. But the cost will remain the same and acquiring it early is smarter.

But yes. Generally I listed those as secondary criticisms and they may not be shared by everyone.

The core problem though, and I hope we agree strongly here, is that they’ve spent a shit ton of money on the easiest parts of the project vs getting things operationally as fast as possible and also focusing on completing the most difficult parts first.

> Governments have very strong eminent domain powers. There’s a political cost but operationally it shouldn’t take long to acquire the land. Just expensive.

Well... not in California, apparently. Caltrans recently abandoned the I-710 to I-210 connector in LA, after 50 years of trying to finish acquiring the land. Some people just don't want to sell for any price. Maybe it's the house they grew up in or maybe it's ideological.

If choosing a more direct route delays the project for 50 years, that's effectively the same thing as blocking it. That's why I say they made the right call on re-using Caltrain and Metrolink for the Peninsula and LA, respectively.

> The core problem though, and I hope we agree strongly here, is that they’ve spent a shit ton of money on the easiest parts of the project vs getting things operationally as fast as possible and also focusing on completing the most difficult parts first.

I agree that is an important problem, but not the core problem. The core problem, as I see it, is that purists demanded a 220 mph system from the start, and that caused a cascade of decisions that delayed operations.

If CAHSR could be built with a max speed of 160 mph instead of 220 mph, almost all of the land acquisition in the Central Valley goes away. If 110 mph were acceptable in urban areas (including cities in the Central Valley), most of the grade separation work goes away.

If even lower speeds were acceptable in mountain sections, CAHSR could have used the sinuous ACE commuter rail line through the Altimont pass. Do that, and all the challenges and costs of building across the Pacheco pass go away (there's a reason no railroad tried to build that route in the 1800's).

The only new thing you need to build in that scenario is a new route through the Tehachapi pass. Sure, it doubles travel time, but the first trains would be running already.

Why does the line have to come up the peninsula anyway?

It should have always gone up the east bay and then crossed over to sf on a bridge or tunnel.

High-speed rail requires a new railway that has no grade crossings of highways, has wider-radius curves than freight lines, can have higher grades than freight lines, and has better rails and sleepers.

There is no chance of getting new high-speed railways built through the outskirts of major metro areas, so there will always be long end sections operating at less than 90 mph.

Smaller cities along the lines will also want service, so trains will have to decelerate, loiter, and accelerate multiple times between major metro areas.

The end result is that in the US high-speed rail is impossible to build, and it would operate on average at far less than the maximum speed.

Acela on the Northeast Corridor is about as fast as it will get. Even there, Boston to NY times could be improved by realigning some tracks in eastern CT and RI to remove tight curves, but even that has not been done.

The problem in US infrastructure is that money is spent for its show value as opposed to effectiveness.

If we were spending money effectively, it would be many years before any rail infrastructure funds would go to any network outside the NorthEast corridor. Almost every project there will provide tons more value than anything in the rest of the US.

And once the corridor is fully operational in an effective manner (there is no reason, for example, that flights between Boston and NYC, and DC and NYC, should even exist…Amtrak should be able to wipe them out by running 15 minute trains and eliminating some of the unnecessary slowness you’ve described), it can provide a working model to the rest of the nation, which is the point at which we can start spending rail infrastructure funds elsewhere.

Once the line is in, later work can address the slower sections.

HS1 (the section of high speed rail from London to the channel tunnel), was probably partially built as it was embarrassingoy obvious going from french HSR to the British Victorian era railways.

Infill can always come later once the core is there.

HSR in Japan they just have different trains on the same tracks but double the tracks at some stations so the non-stop train can pass the stop-at-every-station-trains. So you can service the smaller towns and the still have a maximum speed train

> The end result is that in the US high-speed rail is impossible to build, and it would operate on average at far less than the maximum speed.

> Acela on the Northeast Corridor is about as fast as it will get.

None of this is true—you’re just assuming it.

HSR stations in smaller cities exist everywhere in the world—the way you make it work is that not every train stops at every small station. It’s not that hard.

The way you avoid slow zones is usually by keeping HSR out of the center of small cities, and having the station on the outskirts. Unfortunately CA HSR has mostly failed to do this, but it can absolutely be done elsewhere in America. And it’s not a problem unique to America at all! Even countries with excellent HSR like Italy have slower sections in major cities. It’s not a dealbreaker as long as you only do it where necessary.

Again, absolutely nothing you mentioned is unique to the US. Nor are many cities in the US actually too far apart for HSR to beat the pants off driving and flying. Sure, isolated cities like Denver and SLC may never get HSR. But LA-SF could be done in probably 2:15 with an optimal route (and even 2:45 with the actual bad route), which totally beats a 5-hour drive or a 3.5-4 hour airport odyssey. Alon Levy is an expert who has actually done the work (based on globally-proven mathematical models of ridership) instead of making vague evidence-free vibes-based assertions. [0] [1] [2]

Acela is absolutely not the best the Northeast Corridor can get. Boston-DC is possible in about 3:20 with normal developed-world infrastructure. Levy again: [3]

CA HSR is indeed a one-stop shop for everything that’s wrong with rail development in the US. But that doesn’t mean the answer is to curl up in the fetal position and surrender. It can and must be done right.

[0] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2022/12/22/midwestern-urb...

[1] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/12/20/metcalfes-law-...

[2] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/02/13/metcalfes-law-...

[3] https://pedestrianobservations.com/2020/04/29/some-notes-abo...

Noah Smith seems to be perpetually wrong about pretty much everything.

Some ideas are bad. You have to update your priors at some point. The politicians in charge can also be bad. He isn’t wrong about that. But swapping out Newsom for some new guy isn’t going to fix hsr. The state will vote in someone who is basically the same.

There’s a lot of “foolish consistency” when it comes to hsr. Update your priors, admit you were wrong and move on. There are better ways to spend those billions.

I consider Noah Smith to be an inverse indicator. He’s usually one of the last people to cling to a dying idea. His advocacy of an issue usually signals to me that the trend is reversing. There are a lot better examples of America being unable to build, California HSR is a weak example.

You seem to be making a more general point about Noah Smith. I’ve never been a follower per se but generally nodded my head when coming across his takes.

I’m game to update my priors on that, can you share some evidence?

What? Noah’s point about America’s inability to build things has nothing to do with swapping out Gavin Newsom.

Noah Smith and Scott Galloway are national treasures for their ability to be wrong about seemingly everything they open their mouths about...lots of value as nearly perfect contras.

It doesn't help his case that Noah Smith has no original ideas, is ungenerous with people who do have them or who disagree with his strictly conventional, mainstream takes, and is smug and obnoxious in general. He's even, physically, a gross slob hiding behind a 'heroic' avatar, which makes it doubly offensive to have things 'explained' by him.

The ol’ Matt Yglesias midwit pundit.

Twitter posts are so impersonal. Anyone can complain on Twitter. It is sad that people have forgotten how to write articles and do the news stories that they want to see instead of just going and posting something negative in a few words. It really has taken society down a notch in itself to try to get people all emotional with so little effort.

In many cases is it NIMBY, but also all the regulations about labor and the fact people in the US do not want to pay any taxes. Even if the tax helps people here, the answer is always no.

California is a very high tax, and people are very willing to approve deferred taxes (bonds). California has had a record surplus for the last few years, and even sent money back to citizens. If HSR is starved for cash, it isn't because California is frugal or doesn't have any money to spend.

California made it mandatory for the govt to hold a certain percentage of their budget in a surplus fund after the last time the state almost went bankrupt which also has a cap - hence the surplus and the refund. Otherwise, I agree. CA definitely has the money to build a HSR. Tax collection has been extraordinarily good the last few years in spite of all the challenges.

Maybe it's fine?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwNthD-LRTQ

I skimmed the transcript it seems to be a pretty poor video. The argument presented seems to be "yeah california HSR is behind schedule and over budget but that's fine because road projects are also behind schedule and over budget", followed by some pot shots at the usual enemies (ie. "americans" who hate/don't belive in transit, corporations, koch brothers, neoliberalism).

The argument is that the payoff will be worth many times more than whatever they go over budget by, as proven in Japan.

I don’t agree with the argument because Japan was connecting cities that already had, or built out, incredible public transport, and not a city like LA which is almost designed to make public transport as ineffective as possible. I’m not sure LA-SF will be as effective when the rider has to then rent a car on the LA side at least, which means it’s almost certainly cost and maybe even time effective to just drive.

The argument that you’re pointing out is a defense against the loud criticism CA HSR is receiving, and is actually a valid argument…if we had to criticize stuff, when you consider the cost inefficiency of a lot of the money being poured into roads, CA HSR would not be on the top of the list of public infra projects to criticize.

> I’m not sure LA-SF will be as effective when the rider has to then rent a car on the LA side at least, which means it’s almost certainly cost and maybe even time effective to just drive.

While that’s a damned good point I hadn’t considered, SF-LA is one of the busiest air routes in the world, and the second busiest in the country. So plenty are getting to LA before renting a car.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_...

https://twitter.com/__zena_/status/1605421214255550464

Not to mention, HSR would also service LA denizens who visit more public transit-friendly SF.

It would be interesting to make a list of politicians and decision makers along that route, and then map their "influences". For example, Politician X receives $Y from the airline industry or the auto industry. Or Consultant Z is married to VP at company that will suffer from the rail line being operational.

These strings exist. Who is pulling them?

Politics is the problem?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-...

I can remember when Governor Moonbeam wanted to build HSR in California in the 1970’s.

Short-sighted individuals just wanted to build wider highways.

I believe the film "The Candiate" (Robert Redford) is set in CA. You could remake that film today and mo one would know it was remake.

Good? The advertised price tag (let alone whatever the actual cost would be) seems totally out of line with the value provided. If the goal of the project could be clearly stated, it would be apparent that HSR makes no sense.

The cost is my objection. I don't find other transportation options in California so bad that I want to spend 100 billion dollars so some people don't have to take an Uber from the airport to downtown. I think California needs to spend that money on desalinization plants.

China has passed 25,000 miles of HSR.

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

China’s development of both low-speed and high-speed maglevs seems promising too.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-12/15/c_139591288.htm

Plenty of cities could use trains that travel smoothly at 70 mph.

California chooses who they elect for reasons other than they are effective politicians. The government’s main expertise is incinerating taxpayer money while simultaneously convincing their constituents that their enormous tax burden is a useful thing.

The fact they have re-elected Pelosi multiple times while never investigating her for inside trading is a positive indication of priorities.

Pelosi is an incredibly effective politician. Just look at the clusterfuck that is the house republican caucus to see how successful she has been with a caucus of her own that is just as divided. Sucks that everyone in congress is on the insider trading game, but that’s not a good reason to get rid of one of the most successful politicians of this century.

Really? Which one is it? She’s an effective politician or California has HSR?

And that’s throwing out delivered on time, on budget, and there was no conflict of interest with her husband’s business partners?

Pelosi isn't in charge of HSR. That's the California High Speed Rail Authority, created under Governor Pete Wilson in 1996. You managed to get both the level of government and the branch of government wrong in choosing whom to blame.

Really dedicated to bringing that Reddit-quality argumentation to us, eh? You’ve been corrected on your misinformation, and jus double down on it. Thanks for nothing.

Investigating Pelosi for something that is explicitly legal for politicians is the definition of incinerating tax money.

Also, considering nearly every house politician engages in insider trading (again, because it’s explicitly legal for them), there nothing unique about California re-electing Pelosi, that voters from every other state are also not doing.

Edit: This is not an endorsement of insider trading by politicians. This is a reminder of the ridiculous situation where insider trading is legal for politicians. Investigating Pelosi for something that is currently legal makes no sense (also, why only Pelosi…nearly every House and Senate member engages in insider trading).

Pelosi is in a federal position. What state rules is she subject to that she could be investigated for?

If she were in a state or local position, there's some things (Form 700 and things), but those don't apply to federal positions.

The state officials not incinerating tax dollars on a federal matter is good sense, especially since, afaik, there's no indicitation that the trading referenced is prohibited.

cannot be said enough: insider trading is legal for Congress. It should not be. Until it is illegal, congress critters will do it and there’s no point “investigating” them for it because nothing will happen, because, again, __it is legal__ and nothing will actually happen to them as a result of an investigation, because there’s nothing to do about it.

We should instead be pushing congress to make it illegal to trade stocks outside of index funds controlled by outside entities. Once that’s done you could actually go after congresspeople for insider trading if they did it in the future.

I see you're in Kansas. Why not sit this one out and let Californians worry about their state?

As a public transit advocate, I have to say the sheer expansive distance between cities on the West Coast makes it ill suited for rail.

“Sheer expansive distance between cities…”

Perhaps we should elaborate? If a train leaves city A traveling at 220 mph towards city B… How far are we talking before we are too far away to travel by HSR in say, 4 hours?

Yes and that's why America flies instead of building high speed rail. Why go 220 mph when you can go 500+?

This argument has been debunked repeatedly

People says it's debunked but never tell me why. People are so into their "Asia has high speed rail but America sucks because it doesn't" argument that they don't stop to think we already have a solution.

I’m sure it has been answered hundreds of times but every time you simply start over. Sort of like climate deniers saying “the climate is always changing “

How about making an effort and telling us what has already been explained to you?

Here are two routes: Los Angeles to San Diego and Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Explain how going to an airport is a better solution.

I'm not opposed to HSR, I'm opposed to the expense. We already have a solution with fast jets so I'm content to let people who travel between major cities pay for the inconvenience of an airport themselves. I'm sure they would prefer the coolness of HSR, but it costs too much. The 100 billion dollars projected is needed to build desalinization plants.

As long as the government continues subsidizing highways and the road network, high-speed rail will always be the unattractive option.

How should we factor in Bent Flyvbjerg's work?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235953040_Delusion_...

It is interesting that deceased Richard Blum (husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein of California) is the primary property holders of many old and shuttered post offices (with intent to build train stations).

Blum Capital probably now is the largest investor of California High Speed Rail consortium.

The twitter comments are mind boggling

That's entirely a California problem, not an America problem.

Do other states have high-speed rail? (Or other large projects, but I’m personally a big fan of rail)

The question is pointless: Do other states even _need_ high speed rail? The USA is sparse. Most of the western United States is empty.

East coast?

Yes, many regions would benefit greatly from high speed rail. Texas and Florida would see massive economic gain as well as the obvious east coast corridor.

Not this argument AGAIN. “Why would anyone want to build a HSR from NYC to Los Angeles”. “Don’t you know the western US is sparse?”.

What about the rest of America?

There’s always someone who comes and tells us America is sparse so we don’t need HSR.

There are plenty of places where there’s sufficient population density and sufficiently close.

https://i.redd.it/d0ioc9idrtf31.png

Look at this map - hsr is most useful for connecting nodes of mega regions that are often sparsely populated inbetween. Distance of about 600 miles or about from Canada to the southern tip of Nebraska. I can see many places it would work.

Does 125 mph count as high-speed rail? Brightline in Florida is scheduled to start service between Miami and Orlando in 2023. Brightline has been building a new rail line for the last couple of years (not exactly sure when they started). The rail between Cocoa and Orlando is definitely all new - I've watched that section being built from scratch over the last couple of years and it's nearly finished.

There is the 110mph Acela between Washington and Boston (with stops in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, etc.)

I assume that the infrastructure required to put in a real bullet train, i.e., double the speed or more, is cost prohibitive.

There are other routes where they would potentially make sense, such as between Dallas and Houston, where a Japanese company has been trying to put a 100% privately funded one in for a decade or more. I'm a rail fan and would love to see it.

However, nothing has happened and I doubt anything ever will, not because of Southwest Airlines (anymore) but because landowners are opposed to having their farms cut in half and Texas Republicans are (not totally unreasonably) afraid that it doesn't really have a business case and that it will go bankrupt, leaving the state either holding the bag for operational or cleanup costs. And as unpleasant as going through the whole flight routine for a 50 minute flight is, planes do get the job done. There are other things to spend money on.

I think that particular line would work (I would have used it when I made that drive regularly), but much as I love trains I think the critics generally have a point. The use case in America is very, very limited and quite possibly California is not it.

It's always interesting that when Democrats fail at something, they try to broaden the blame. They're in charge, yet it is "America" that can't get it done. California has been controlled by Democrats for a very long time, with any other viewpoints shut out. And yet, they keep doubling down on what doesn't work.

Isn't the first step to change admitting you screwed up?

Perhaps the first step is admitting two-party systems are already too flawed.

California is effectively a one party system. It shows that there are issues with building big projects that can't be blamed on "the other side". Same for projects in one party red states.

The CA HSR began under Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican, and was planned by a Republican administration.

This is why the train detours through the highly Republican Central Valley rather than directly connecting LA and SF.

That's some desperation there. Wilson served until 1999. What were you doing in 1999? What's been going on in CA since then?

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