New estimate for high-speed rail puts California train $100B in the red
calmatters.org
calmatters.org
Where local governments haven't take advantage, private citizens have. It's NIMBYism at grand scale. The grand irony to me is that our lack of experience building such a project is probably the smallest problem. We have or can buy the expertise. Our government just isn't set up for this.
Isn't this what the transit authority is supposed to be? An independent company paid by the cities to manage and build the train system.
The California project is designed for political payoffs sadly, so it is functioning as intended.
If they don't build this now, then it will take and cost longer to build later.
We’re 27 years since the California High-Speed Rail Authority was established and not a single passenger has been carried yet.
Mass transit systems have some peculiarities that private transportation systems don't have, such as creating mass demand and concentrating it on specific spots. Each train stop is a natural generator for demand for housing and services in volumes that urban sprawl does not, and this leads to more affordable housing with shorter commutes and with far better services that lead to a far better quality of living.
But this potential to be realized needs urban development that takes advantage of it, which require investment.
I'm not sure if the figure is $1T but there are examples in the world where railway operators get their main source of funding and incentive to grow their network by being granted favourable conditions to invest in real estate surrounding new train stops.
> (...) and declining usage of existing public transit.
I'm sorry, the US is notorious for having self-sabotaging public transportation services, designed to pay lip service for the need to provide mobility alternatives,but actually designed to be impactical and outright hostile to commuters.
If the US learns basic lessons from the many case studies from throughout the world, nothing stops the US from benefiting from identical adoption rates seen outside of its borders.
That is an extraordinary claim. 10x of 100 billion is a trillion. The GSP of the entire state of California is ~3.5 trillion USD.
I routinely drive by one of the overpasses built in the Central Valley, a constant reminder of a shattered dream of quick transit to the Bay Area.
That would be a fair comparison to a long distance bus.
Yes, absolutely, in fact the US government did their own study on this question
https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/spring-1996/economic-i...
The folks I was responding to were discussing the direct economics of maintaining and operating the trains, and not their economic benefits. No one pays money to use the interstate, why should they need to pay money to use the train?
> The mode of transport seems to be fundamentally broken.
You're American aren't you?
The target audience for the railways is less upper middle class, and more middle and lower classes.
But economically viable and subsided are mutually exclusive because when at that moment the question is not being asked wether the person consuming the good would pay the full price of the service. Economically viable does not mean an expert or technocrat gets to decide for you wether or not something it worth it. Deciding wether or not something is worth is fundamentally an individual’s decision. Of course the expert may say, “look, the cost of getting x amount of people from a to b is y times cheaper using this solution”. But that never takes into account if the people would have preferred a different mode of transport all together. For example, some may prefer the greater carrying flexibility of a car or the ride comfort of one. Of course that is not to say that automotive transport isn’t subsided and that the owners pay the full cost of ownership. The TLDR of it is that economically viable requires people to put money where their mouth is. Someone else CANNOT by definition make that decision unless you believe that some people have “correct” values and others don’t.
Just like most airports then ?
Also some countries see it as a service, not a source of revenue
Rail has very low externalities, which is why we might want to subsidise it.
Length: 97 miles.
Project kicked off in 2005, service for three stations (Albuquerque/Los Ranchos/Sandoval) started in 2006, first phase (Belen to Santa Fe, eight stations) completed in 2008, second phase complete in 2017 with fifteen stations operational.
Total capital cost: around $385 Million dollars. That’s Million…with an M. Operational deficit of about $20 Million/year that is now covered by sales tax.
Folks liked it enough to pass the sales tax to cover operating losses, being viewed positively by both locals and the tourism industry. A horizontal complement to the vertical Sandia Peak Tram (4000’ elevation change, 2.7 mi length, two stations, completed in two years, opened 1966).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_Rail_Runner_Express
Or another comparison, Florida's brightline currently connecting Miami to West Palm Beach, with plans to make it to Orlando. 70 miles + 170 to Orlando. 1.75 billion across incredibly flat land, expedited by utilizing existing tracks.
All that is to say, California's project as defined currently seems a lot more difficult in terms of terrain and scope. There are probably a lot of inefficiencies built in, as well as mismanagement. But it's not the most apt of comparisons, at least not to NM or FL.
So strictly less than 22.3 miles of new track. For $385 million.
15 years later, the project is more than 15 years behind schedule, give or take. Instead of taking 12 years to connect SF and LA, it's now taking 22-25 years to connect Merced and Bakersfield (the easy middle third), with no timeline at all for connecting San Jose and Anaheim.
The estimated cost of the project has ballooned from $33B (~$1,000 per Californian) to $88B-$128B (~$3,000 per Californian), a figure that almost seems certain to be an underestimate given the monotonic climb of past estimates.
And remember, the cost of $3,000 per Californian is not the cost of getting to ride the train between SF and LA. It's the cost of getting the OPTION to buy tickets for a train that's slower than planes, more expensive than planes, and projected to operate at a loss and need further taxpayer subsidy.
When I read the project's current marketing materials, I feel saddened.
The project managers brag that the project has generated ~$14B in economic output.
But their accounting is reversed. Until the first passenger takes a trip, the project has CONSUMED ~$14B in economic INPUTS.
There is no economic output of a half-built train that doesn't run. At that point, you might as well have been paying people to dig holes in the desert or construct pyramids. The value of labor is not when a bank computer subtracts a number from an employer's account and adds it to an employee's account. The value of labor is the utility that that labor produces.
Similarly, the project managers brag about the environmental benefits of the project.
But again, until the first point at which a flight is replaced by a train trip, the environmental impact of rail construction is entirely negative. If you pour concrete, mine iron, smelt steel, and rip up habitats, those are all environmental costs. Benefits don't accrue until the first airline defers a flight due to diminished demand.
Ultimately, the goal of transit programs should be to transport people.
If you run transit programs with the goals of (a) creating jobs or (b) signalling your commitment to transit, then you can very easily run into trouble, as cost overruns start to look like good things. Spending more money just mean you’ve created more jobs, and that you're signalling even stronger commitment to transit.
Put simply: If you run a project with the goal of paying contractors, it's very easy to get ripped off by contractors. You both have the same goal.
Do they forecast much demand on the middle bit alone?
Britain's current high speed rail project has been criticised for rising costs, but at least they have the sense to build the part that will generate the most revenue first (London to Birmingham) even if it means politically appealing investment north of Birmingham has to wait.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/09/hs2-costs-so...