California approves final high-speed rail link connecting San Francisco to LA | Hacker News Reader

California approves final high-speed rail link connecting San Francisco to LA

sfchronicle.com

86 pointsedward168 comments

Is this like a perpetual approval or does it expire in 5 years and have to get a new environmental review? My understanding of this project so far is that it will need 2 more democrat presidents with infrastructure bills to get 78% funded and somehow we’ll figure out the other 22% later or have japans sovereign wealth fund foot the bill

The sad thing is, I can't tell if this is a joke.

I’m being snarky but Japan does support other countries railroad projects (like how they loaned Delhi Metro) which is how they can get the projects done, so maybe it could work for us too

I'm on board with Japan doing it.

Financing is different from doing it. Also, from my country’s experience they usually give loans (and are not a partner/owner); so they don’t really care about the project outcome.

JR Central is partnering with the people that want to build a bullet train from Dallas to Houston. We'll see if it ever happens. I'm hoping so!

That seems like such a great route. I’m not as familiar with the area but I’m presuming the land acquisition part won’t be too bad?

Isn’t that this one that temporarily died due to Texas legal stuff until 1 month ago when Amtrak helped save it? Yeah I hope it succeeds but there’s a lot of influential Texans who want it to fail or kill it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-21/texas-hig...

One of Hong Kong's "exports" is its subway system. The MTR is the corporation behind several cities' subway systems (Stockholm, Beijing, Macau, Shenzen, Sydney, Melbourne, and more), , so snark aside, its not an idea to be rejected out of hand. I hear great things about the on time performance of Japanese trains.

that's more to do with a toxic work culture than anything, but as someone who regularly gets the DB between Frankfurt and Basel maybe a bit of toxicity might do some good...

Of course what they should do to fund it is what they figured out in Hong Kong or Singapore decades ago. Have government requisition land around stations and redevelop it as high density towers and profit on the sales.

Wouldn't they have to confiscate the land first?

Caltrans would buy it the land this case. They've got a pretty significant real estate portfolio that they've acquired for a variety of projects over the decades.

One random house I think they still own is Julia Child's childhood home in Pasadena.

I imagine the price of land thats going to be rezoned into residential would be much higher than land thats marked for transportation.

If you dont want government to compulsorily purchase land first, you can also do "value capture" which is in essence saying "anything developed to the new planning controls needs to pay money based on the difference between old and new controls". The economics is quite simple for developers to cost in but it needs to be there early, not imposed after all the developers have bought land without factoring it in.

It’s better and more transparent if done early but later is better than never

Later just doesnt work as developers wont be able to make a profit so they wont build. Most of the 'profit' (plus or minus some risk premium depending on site/location/timeframe purchased/etc.) will have already gone to whoever sold their land to the developer so government will find it impossible to extract in the same way

All long-distance transport construction requires "confiscating" land. Somehow it's completely routine to take huge swathes of land for freeway widening, but build one little train line and everyone loses their minds.

Why is "confiscating" in quotes? Is that not exactly what eminent domain takings are?

You generally don’t get paid ~market rate for confiscations.

The constitution says the government cant confiscate anything without due process, so not sure why thats relevant.

Eminent domain is considered due process

Eminent domain requires paying market rate

Which… was my first point.

You said you don’t get market rate.

I was saying that you get paid approximately market rate, which makes it obviously not merely "confiscation", ergo using scare quotes "confiscation" to describe eminent domain is pretty reasonable.

I take the view that land is not chattel and they should not be conflated.

That is not exactly the case. In Los Angeles, the 710 freeway was abandoned due to people losing their minds over the eminent domain shenanigans.

https://imgur.com/inSyTTV

It was abandoned because they made the mistake of trying to build it through South Pasadena which is very wealthy and full of politically connected old money families that didn't want anything to do with that kind of traffic. They dragged Caltrans through decades of lawsuits and Caltrans spent who knows how many millions on property in the area so I don't know if eminent domain was really an option, at least not in the 21st century. Their last ditch attempt was going to be a tunnel that cost >$1 billion per mile but the city shut that down fast too, even though it wouldn't have required seizing any land.

Source: South Pasadena is my home town and I left shortly after Caltrans officially gave up. The year after Caltrans dropped the project altogether, a massive chunk of the city's budget was reallocated back to the schools and roads which made a huge difference to the infrastructure.

Is the solution to build things through poorer neighborhoods where people still feel exactly the same but can't stand up for themselves?

The issue wasn't that they tried to put the freeway where someone didn't want it because nobody wants a freeway nextdoor, the issue is they tried to force it upon people who could fight back.

> Is the solution to build things through poorer neighborhoods where people still feel exactly the same but can't stand up for themselves?

Pretty much. The history of US highway construction is full of politicians using freeways to bulldoze and split poor communities. That's how the euphemism "urban renewal" got its name.

This reminds me of what happened in Sydney, Australia. Sydney has this freeway (the M4, formerly the F4) which starts in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, the western edge of the Sydney metro area, around 55 km west of the city centre. And it heads due east, towards the centre of the city. And they built the western portions of the freeway first, since the land acquisition costs were cheap. By the late 1970s, it finished 15 km short of the city centre. And the government had acquired the land to continue it to the edge of the city centre, another 13 km or so. But a lot of local residents didn't want the freeway built. So in 1977, the recently elected centre-left Neville Wran government decided not just to cancel its construction, but also sell the land reservation to property developers to ensure it never could be built.

Did that actually stop its construction? No. The state government ended up building the eastern section anyway, starting in 2019, and it opened in 2023. But the surface reservation had been lost, and reacquiring it through eminent domain would have been prohibitively expensive due to high property prices, and politically too controversial too, so it had to go through a tunnel. A surface freeway would have cost AU$1–3 billion, with underground tunnelling the cost was well over AU$15 billion (around US$10 billion)

Wran's 1977 decision to sell the freeway land reservation was arguably one of the most expensive decisions ever made in Australian history. In the long-run it had made life worse for local residents, as the freeway dumped commuter traffic 15 km short of its primary destination, and they had to put up with that traffic traversing their local roads–which made the eventual completion of the freeway almost inevitable

South Pasadena is not wealthier than outlying communities including the ones that 710 currently goes through.

https://imgur.com/4Uxg7kn

There is a pretty substantial difference between eminent domaining the land required for rail, and taking much more than necessary so that the state can flip it for a profit.

You could stretch the definition of “required” here to include the land required for housing development to fund the railway ?

The railway is a common good, and the housing development profits are just a means to those ends.

Money is fungible, it's pretty unreasonable to say that a given housing development is required because the state needs money to fund a railway. They could raise taxes or what have you. (My preferred solution would be land value tax, which would make the railway self-funding, but that's a bigger argument).

there is also a difference between "much more to flip for profit" and "a reasonable amount to sustainability run a railway system". People don't want to pay more taxes, so having a self sufficient system would be preferable one to one that constantly requires taxpayer funding.

Taxes or fares are a sustainable ways to run a railway system.

It isnt about sustainability, it is about who pays, and the public not wanting to pay for something you use isnt a good enough reason size private property from a small number of individuals.

By that logic, we could do away with taxes entirely if the state simply confiscated everything it needed form select individuals.

Yes if we take the logic to ridiculous ends we can have the state confiscate everything it needs from select individuals, but the problem with that is that it's ridiculous. it's absurd. we can use different logic in different places.

using eminent domain to get land for a shop attached to a train station isn't a slippery slope to the cops coming in and confiscating your car just because they want it.

Taxes and fares aren't enough to run a transportation system properly because of politics and culture.

Well, in the real word eminent domain literally is routinely used to hand the land to developers to profit from. Famously, shopping malls, but any development can be framed as an economic benefit.

I hate when people seem to justify handing private land to private developers to build a shopping mall for profit but get the vapors when it’s the public wanting to build a subway. Same as the conservatives who did bush v gore and then get the vapors when the other side wants its calvinball relief when the circumstances justify it.

The slippery slope is real and once you open the bloodgates to private interests you really ought to open it to others as well. Like draw me a coherent line as to why a developer sucking up land via eminent domain should be legally allowed but the public building a train is not. If you want to argue the former should be rolled back then fine but that’s a thing that will ruffle numerous feathers, and in the meantime we have a public who’s tapping their watch waiting for the train.

Abstract disagreement with the legislative and legal realities doesn’t make the existence of eminent domain for speculation or the calvinball court ruling any less of a concrete power. This is a thing we do, and if you want to campaign to end eminent domain then fine but right now the law says we can eminent domain it, develop it, and sell it.

I dont think it is as routine as you think and citizens typically get completely outraged by actions like Kelo v. New London, and are far more OK with eminent domain for public infrastructure. Do you really think public sentiment is the opposite?

>Like draw me a coherent line as to why a developer sucking up land via eminent domain should be legally allowed but the public building a train is not

My whole point is that building a train is a legitimate use (IMO), but taking the adjacent land just to sell to developers make the state money is not.

It seems there are cases that are troubling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berman_v._Parker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Many freeways are simply expanding into existing right of way.

Technically private property, but also already shared, public space.

I’m all for eminent domain when it comes to providing infrastructure, but I feel icky about it being used just to hopefully profit. Reminds me too much of Kelo v. New London

“Profit” is a misnomer. It’s to allow the taxpayers to recoup the costs of the project they funded. Who profits normally from such public investment is typically an extremely small set of landowners who happen (coincidentally or not) to be near those public investments.

Which of those actually seems more fair?

How about the taxpayers recoup the cost through the value they receive from the project?

It seems like this is just a way for the average taxpayer avoid paying for the asset they want.

Major social projects should be selected based on the value they provide to the public at large, and paid for by the public at large.

There are other types of public-private collaboration available if the goal is to benefit a niche group.

How is spending millions, if not billions, avoiding paying for the asset we want?

Investments cost capital. The point of investing is to make things better that they are today. It's essentially impossible to exactly 'break even' on your returns, given uncertainty in the variables we know and the unknown unknowns in the variables we don't.

Society is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits here. I don't see the problem. 'california' is not a niche group of Californians -- it is the group.

I think you misunderstand my point.

Im saying the tax payers should pay for the project, because everyone benefits. They shouldnt try to foist the cost on some niche group, as suggested above.

We already have a tax system which captures a portion of benefits from the social endeavor to each person.

Arguments that specific landowners stand to benefit more, and therefore should pay for the train instead of taxpayers is faulty. It is faulty because it ignores the benefits of a train to the general population, and it ignores that those with disproportionate benefit will pay more taxes.

That isn’t foisting the cost…? It’s capturing the upside/preventing its capture by random disinterested parties.

No one is suggesting specific landowners pay for the train…?

>No, the upside from infrastructure projects is largely not captured by the public nor the state.

Are you claiming that infrastructures are a loss to the public and state? If there isnt enough public upside to justify the project, then the public should not take it on. IF there is enough upside, then spillover is acceptable and much of it will be captured in taxes anyways.

You didnt say foisting the cost, but you did suggest seizing private property to reduce the taxpayer expense and prevent owners from benefiting.

Im quite similar with Georgism, and think it is economically outdated in a service economy. Beyond that, it is only appealing if you oppose property ownership and think the purpose of the state is to optimize allocation of resources for tax farming.

Is there any reading you could link to to explain why you think Georgism is outdated in a modern context?

Unfortunately not, as it is primarily my conclusion based reading about it and engaging with proponents. Maybe I should write a blog post or something.

In short, I think it is outdated because it is a material consumption and utilization tax applied relatively regressively.

Henry George lived in the 1800s when economic value creation primarily was primarily through agricultural and industrial utilization of natural resources (farming, mining, manufacturing). Since then, the value creation in industrialized countries have largely shifted to service and knowledge economies (finance, medicine, entertainment, technology, arbitrage, and IP). Service and knowledge economies are much more detached from natural resources consumption. As and example, a banker might make a million dollar trade consuming little more than the electricity and a PC, whereas a farmer needs hundreds of acres, Water, tractors, fuel, and fertilizer.

One might think that the tax burden would get passed along from the primary users of natural recourses to the end consumers, and this is may be true to a degree. However, differences in consumption is much more flat between individuals than income or wealth. Your Warren Buffets of the world might have an income 100,000 X higher than the average person, but they dont consume 100,000X more material goods like food, water, housing, ect.

Does Caltrans have any history of developing profitable mixed used properties around new stations, like with the MTR Corporation?

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

Did MTR have a history of developing profitable mixed use properties around stations before they started developing profitable mixed use properties around stations?

I might be fairly cynical but after recent public infrastructure massive bids and failures it seems obvious this will result in $100B of wealth transfer from the public to the private for 0 miles of rail.

This doesn't seem like that cynical of a take at all. The US is terrible at infrastructure projects. I feel like you would never go wrong betting against them. Or at least betting that they take 10x the time and cost than predicted.

The initial bill for HSR was one of the first things I remember voting on. If I recall correctly, it was a bond for 8b dollars. I voted against it because I had extreme doubts that would be the end of it.

If it actually cost $8B, I would have supported it.

The Brightline rail in Florida which connects Miami to Orlando began construction in 2014 had its first service in 2018 and full route in 2023. I took it last year, it was just fine. I’ve begun to see that sometimes the private sector can be much, much better at managing these infrastructure projects than the State of California .

There's a strong argument that the money would have been more effective on local mass transit projects since they'd see more immediate use and are easier to complete.

$100 billion for 463 miles of track is outrageous, and that's surely to double by the time it's completed. In 1964, Japan was able to build its 320 mile long Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka in just 5 years for less than $12B, inflation adjusted.

New York has the most famous mafia, but it does seem like Americans have just accepted that all our urban infrastructure construction is rife with corruption. See also the Central Subway in SF, the Big Dig in Boston, and the general perception that anything infrastructure related will cost infinity dollars and approximately never be completed.

American exceptionalism

It’s largely a factor of all this being ‘nice to have’, no one having a reason to cut through the BS, combined with an outrage driven media/culture.

Because let’s be serious - California doesn’t actually need high speed rail.

No one sane wants, or needs, to rock the boat - especially since doing so just gets a giant eye of Sauron pointed at them. Extra bonus? Turning the crank endlessly on this while everyone complains gets them rich.

Do we really need airports? Or paved roads for that matter? Hell, Vermont gets by just fine with dirt roads, and they're better to drive on than many roads in CA.

Also HSR is something that a large contingent of people in CA have been kvetching about for decades, not sure your "everyone is afraid to say anything" holds water here.

> have been kvetching about

Yeah but they don't want this bullshit route. They want to go from LA to SF and MAYBE go through Santa Barbara, or go to Las Vegas or San Diego.

Plus, Even with inflation, it's super cheap to fly from SF to LA. Who is going to pay more than airfare to go between those two cities in a longer amount of time?

SF to LA through 101 corridor would have been a smart move for commuters and new housing areas

Yes, that is the case, but the extra stops also screw with the ‘longer high speed rail’ case. It’s tricky. Having one stop which transfer people to a slower parallel line might work better for that. (Also the Japanese approach)

Stopping burns a lot of energy and time.

When did I say ‘everyone is afraid to say anything’? Everyone kvetches about everything in California.

I said folks are afraid to cut through the BS - by telling people with less important kvetching to sit down and shut up. Because if they do, the how dare they outrage will follow them around forever and make their life hell.

You know, so it can be built now, and actually solve a problem, instead of it costing 50x times more than is reasonable and be done decades from now.

Because let’s get real - people have been kvetching while driving their cars on I5 and flying for decades, and even with this approval will continue to do so for at least a decade more. And will likely kvetch about how it sucks and that is why they don’t use it later.

> When did I say ‘everyone is afraid to say anything’?

> No one sane wants, or needs, to rock the boat

That's generally what this idiom means. What did you mean?

My first sentence. Are you serious?

I’m surprised that you are surprised that there is a difference in both property and labor costs between a japan 19 years post allied strategic bombing and present day california.

Im surprised you think the issue is labor and land costs.

What would you peg it on then? Profiteering subcontractors? I’d file that under labor.

Why don't we have foreign workers temporarily come and do this cheaply then?

Pay what it costs for people to live good lives

Labor for public projects is so messed up that we basically can’t build anything without paying 10-100x what China would pay to do it. Eventually we simply get economically outcompeted, or maybe we invent robots to make the projects feasible again.

> or maybe we invent robots to make the projects feasible again.

In the introductory, "disruption" phase it will come in at about half the current cost. Then, once the current market and expertise has been destroyed, they can rack-in maximum profit by jacking up their prices, with added, predatory inconveniences, such as "cleaning costs".

That’s because China is an authoritarian dictatorship that uses forced labor. That’s who you’re pining to be.

It really isn’t. I’m as big a critic of China as anyone, but assuming its workers are all slaves who aren’t advancing up the tech chain is really dangerous, very stupid.

I didn’t say all labor was forced, I said they use forced labor. Which they do. Your middle of the road ultra-orthodoxy is the dangerous attitude here.

China doesn’t use forced labor for anything important. It’s mostly just a more extreme version of work in American prisons, although they focus more on the re-education than work aspect (it sounds like a good thing, but it isn’t). The people building bridges, viaducts, and tunnels, are not forced, are actually getting really skilled at it. China could stop all liaojiao and laogai tomorrow and virtually nothing would change about this.

What if you have to make the actual choice of paying them what can be afforded ir not paying at all?

Your dreams of having slaves are so revealing

There may have been a typo but your reading comprehension seems pretty horrible. Let me rephrase.

The choice is never between "Pay what it costs for people to live good lives" and paying less than that. The choice is between paying what the company can afford or having no job at all.

I'd prefer everyone be making enough money to buy a 2000 sqft house and groceries with enough left over for leisure but that option isn't on the table.

It’s not on the table because you don’t want it. That’s it.

Company A makes Widget for $20. It takes 1 Employee B hour to make a Widget. Widgets cost Company A $8 to manufacture. After accounting for management overhead, logistics and the cost of storage, Company A clears $10 per widget. Company A can only afford to pay Employee B $10 to break even, this is not a living wage.

In this scenario, you'd prefer Widgets not exist and Employee B not have a job.

Since you're going to say, "Raise the price of Widgets!". $20 is the ideal price point for product, any more or less and the volume sold * profit falls and the possible wage for Employee B will drop.

The money isn't going to the workers.

Complying with environmental regulation, permits, planning, etc

As if those are all detrimental to the society at large.

When they're obstructing the transition from road/air to rail, then yeah, I'd say those are indeed detrimental to the society at large. They shouldn't have to be detrimental, of course, but their routine abuse is something that needs acknowledged and mitigated.

Are profiteering government employees and environmental NGOs considered "labor"?

Please explain specifically what you’re suggesting here? Links welcome.

You know exactly what I'm suggesting, but here you go. California is as corrupt as NY.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-los-angeles-depu...

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-14/a-guide-...

https://www.sfexaminer.com/forum/san-francisco-government-sy...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/city-hall-corruption-...

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/san-francisco-deve...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_scandals_in...

Bribes like these are absolute peanuts. It would be hard for them to add up to $100m, let alone a significant part of $100b.

Ah yes. First the problem isn't there. Then the problem is there, but it's too small to be an issue. If you have heard of the "narcissist's prayer," that is the defense that the ruling parties of CA and NY always run when you call them out.

These are just the ones who were both obvious and politically disfavored enough to get punished. Read about building in SF if you want to hear about the big boys.

Dragging projects out years dealing with bureaucracy, avoiding the actual efficient routes to minimize eminent domain, etc. It’s lots of legal, engineering, and planning work that just wouldn’t exist at all in a country serious about public works projects.

So the costs manifest both as labor that shouldn’t exist, costs just because the project is extended so long (administrative salaries and interest on loans), and costs to buy land from entitled owners.

If it was down to cost of labor and everything else was the same, we’d just pay double and be done in the same amount of time.

Labor + corruption

Most of the land for the Shinkansen route was actually acquired in the 1930s, before any strategic bombing.

Ok well Brightline, a private company, built 170 miles of high speed rail in Florida for $5 billion 6 years ago.

Not only is 100 billion a bad deal, given CA’s track record they could easily spend $200 billion and never complete it

The travel speed is only about 125 mph, so not as complex as the high speed lines built in some European countries, but at about $18 million/km they are in the same ballpark kilometer/mile cost. A job well done.

This line will last for 100+ years - I really don't think it's that much for a state with a GDP of $3trillion+ to connect many of the major cities.

The other thing to think about is what is the alternative - road or airport construction in california is not cheap. Replacing 2 bridges on I-5 in stockton is going to cost nearly $1b alone.

And I think a lot of the benefit won't just come from the main SF LA route, it'll be intermediate stations to SF or LA too. It'll only take 19 minutes to go from Palmdale to LA for example - compared with 1hr+ now. In a way it would have been better to have the IOS be one of those routes, but they are also the most difficult geography.

> it'll be intermediate stations to SF or LA too. It'll only take 19 minutes to go from Palmdale to LA

Is there evidence that people will want to pay the high price of such a train ticket... And then what, once you're in LA? The last mile problem in LA and San Francisco (mind you HSR is not currently planned to enter the city, and BART is insanely expensive) is real.

Feel like by the time this rail is done, last mile will be fully covered by robotaxis

No. By the time this rail is done, the last mile will be done by teleporters.

BART is insanely expensive? I went from Oakland to San Francisco last night for $4.70, which is cheaper than the bridge toll. I don’t know if that’s expensive compared to other systems, but it’s totally fine by my standards. It might be a lot for a poor person though, hopefully they have some discount programs for those who need it.

The bridge toll is also one way, and if you're poor, you likely won't have such easy access to those programs (which is a lot of paperwork anyways) on the other side of rail (LA resident accessing SF e.g.). And if Amtrak is any indicator, the HSR will be more expensive than planes anyways.

I don’t know where the HSR is expected to stop, in or near SF (although last I heard was the Caltrain corridor to 4th and King), but Bart is neither especially expensive if only travelling on the peninsula, nor is it the primary transit for SF (Muni).

Eventually new stations at 4th and king and transbay transit center.

Ok well that's certainly better I was under the impression the terminus was in Oakland

I mean every other country in the world? You can get pretty high takeup at fairly high prices - people will pay a lot not to sit in traffic for 2-3hours a day.

Not exactly expensive, but public transit in LA/SF are nowhere near European levels, let alone Japanese levels. Like, to/from the train, you’ve got a slog of Caltrain, Bart/subway, and bus connections…on both sides well, maybe driving is competitive time wise. The same can be said for Chinese HSR stations that aren’t very centrally located, except they have more metros and cheap taxis to make that pretty viable.

But why is it exponentially more expensive to build infrastructure in the US than in other countries? Germany just built a tunnel under the sea to Denmark for a lot less $ per mile. Surely it's not just the wages and cost of living--it has to be all the consultants and cronies who take their cut.

HS2 in the UK is about double per mile.

The US does have some real problems though, the built in america stuff kills projects like this where there isn't a US supply chain in place. And the US tends to have very high standards for "safety" for rail especially.

Keep in mind that you can't compare all projects like this. CAHSR total price includes trains, stations and (probably?) operational costs for x years. You often can't compare two projects on a like for like basis.

Yeah under the sea where nobody owns the land and the only residents don't have lungs to scream at you for ruining your beautiful view.

Building rail is a nightmare here as well because nimbys reign supreme.

Most of the studies I have read chalk it up to two factors. First is changing project scope. The regulatory and political environment in the US means that projects often go through several planning changes, introduced in the middle of development, leading to wasted resources not just to overcome red tape, but executing on the plans that become obsolete.

The second that I have seen is codified labor specialization. This leads to many more workers on a site, where each has a niche role, but low workload.

Don't forget the abusive use of "expert consultants".

Denmark has just started building the tunnel, though Danish salaries are higher anyway.

(Germany isn't much interested in the project.)

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

> Germany just built a tunnel under the sea to Denmark for a lot less $ per mile.

How did you come up with that? It seems that the tunnel is $450m euros per km, while SF to LA will be $80m per km.

Notably, Palmdale, CA is the city where residents have the longest average commute of anywhere in the US, largely because people are commuting from there into the city of LA to work. Palmdale is probably one of the only places where you can afford to live / own a home / etc. if you work in LA and don't have a very high income. If you live in Palmdale and work in LA your one-way commute is probably somewhere between 1.5 - 2.5 hours. Just the Palmdale -> LA stretch of this project would massively improve those poor folks' lives, if the ticket prices are reasonable and the boarding process efficient enough for a daily commute. Unfortunately as a CA taxpayer I don't have high hopes for either of those things.

There’s no single answer to why infrastructure is ludicrously expensive in the United States. It’s too easy to delay, so the costs go up. (Especially in California with its multiple rounds of public feedback.) Laws requiring American contractors, mean no one has experience building large complex projects, so things get delayed. Add in contractors along every link in the chain charging a government job premium, and the fact that government agencies have been gutted so whose left is easily bamboozled by the private grifters, or forced to hire expensive consultants to do jobs that used be done more cheaply in house, it’s no wonder everything is expensive.

It’s simultaneously too much regulation, and too little government oversight.

https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs...

>In 1964, Japan was able to build its 320 mile long Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka in just 5 years for less than $12B, inflation adjusted.

Another important factor here is the cost of construction: the California project will all be above-ground, AFAIK. However, a significant portion of the Tokaido line between Tokyo and Osaka is through tunnels, so the difficulty of construction was far greater.

For a more apples-to-apples comparison, Japan is currently building the [Chuo Shinkansen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen) line between Tokyo and Nagoya (286km/178mi), which will be a 505km/h maglev train that's 90% underground, as they have to tunnel through various mountains. It's projected to be finished in about a decade I think. Current costs have risen from the initial projection, and are at about 7 trillion yen for the first leg (Shinagawa to Nagoya), which at the current exchange rate is about USD$44B. But remember, that's about 160 miles of tunnels through mountains, plus all the rolling stock (which doesn't actually roll LOL), including the deepest tunnel in the country, and a line which isn't even conventional rail, it's a maglev track. By comparison, California is spending all that money on an above-ground train, in a place with excellent weather, using the same rail technology Japan was using 50+ years ago.

Or more recently, Brightline built a private high speed rail in Florida for $5 billion, spanning 170 miles. It’s hard to imagine a plausible reason this should cost 100 billion, especially given the fact they already have Amtrak rail running through California

“High speed” ended up being about 70mph. Max of 77mph in Florida.

> Max of 77mph in Florida.

Not exactly what can be found on Wikipedia. [0]

The article reads: Orlando-Cocoa: 125 mph (200 km/h)

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

They have made some changes to combat the negative press but still wrong.

Orlando to Miami 236 miles. Time listed on Wikipedia 210min or 3.5hrs. 236/3.5=67mph.

Many previous articles complained of slow speeds but they are listing unloaded speeds or something.

Speeds to Miami:

West palm beach 54-60mph

Boca Raton: 60mph

Fort Lauderdale: 60mph

Aventura: 67mph

> Orlando to Miami 236 miles. Time listed on Wikipedia 210min or 3.5hrs. 236/3.5=67mph.

As an average speed, that is of course correct. But that includes 6 stops along the way, as well as the time needed to enter and exit the stations before being back on high-speed tracks, and the time needed to decelerate/accelerate.

So that doesn't preclude a top speed of 125 mph on some portions of the track.

Ideally you would want a high-speed train on dedicated track, with dedicated stations, and few stops, as done in France, for example. You can choose to have train connections from stations inside city centers, as done in Germany, but than you will loose a lot of time actually getting to these stations, and consequently have a substantial lower average traveling speed.

Current tracks are still being built for roughly the same cost.

Your Japanese example comes in at about $23 million/km built.

I was recently looking at the costs of the Paris-Strasbourg line (opened in 2016), which cost €5.15B for 406 km of track, so about €13 million/km.

Have they ever defined what 'high speed' means? I well remember travelling to Florida in the nineties when motels offering 'high speed Internet' meant they had high speed modem dial up in each room.

In Japan and China they have trains running in excess 0f 250 mph. In America the only train I know over 100 mph is the Acela which runs from Washington D.C. to New York City. Although they are promising that Acela will go 150 mph sometime in the future. France had trains going over 150 mph in the seventies when I was first there.

Yes. In fact California defining how fast their high speed rail must go is part of what put them in their current situation because they aimed too high when no one in the USA has ever built anything like what they are trying to do. In their own legislation for the project the train must have a top speed of over 200 miles per hour and must go from LA to San Fransisco in 2 hours and 40 minutes, which necessitates an average speed of over 150 miles per hour.

If they went with a more modest goal of 250kph (155mph) maximum speed (Class I HSR), it almost certainly would have been easier and cheaper to build. The problem with that is that the Bay Area -> LA times would have been 4+ hours which would have been a pretty hard sell vs flying or even driving.

I'm sorry, but most of what you wrote here is wrong.

First, Japan doesn't have any (operational) trains going 250mph. The Tokaido shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka has a top speed of 300kph, which is 186mph. The Tohoku line in north Japan reaches 320kph (200mph) according to Wikipedia, and this seems to be the fastest in the country (I haven't ridden that one myself, but I have ridden the Tokaido multipel times and verified its speed with a GPS speedometer app.). The new maglev Chuo shinkansen, when it's open for service in 10 years, will go 505kph (314mph). China does have some maglev train currently; I can't be bothered to look up its max speed, but it's a short line that just goes to that city's airport. It's not a long-distance train line, really more of a demo.

America has at least 2 trains that go over 100mph: the Acela, which runs from DC to Boston (not NYC), and the Northeast Regional, which runs on the same route on the same tracks. The Northeast Regional hits a max speed of 125mph, and the Acela hits 150mph. The catch is, these trains only hit their max speeds for somewhat brief durations on certain parts of the line (mainly between Philly and Newark NJ), so their average speeds are actually rather lousy because in other places they have to slow down a lot because the track sucks, the tunnels are a century old, there's a cargo train in the way, etc. If the US built an all-new track (with new tunnels where needed) between DC and Boston, they could use the exact same trains they use now and have much, much faster average speeds, but they really don't want to do that.

Finally, there is a definition in the US for "high speed rail", and the Acela meets that definition because its max speed is pretty high. (Of course, the definition completely ignores average speed.)

Amtrak reaches 110 mph in a few places in diesel territory (outside of the NEC). The Empire Service and Lincoln Service, for example.

I doubt it will ever be completed. If they can at least linkup the Bakersfield area with SoCal that would be a win. There are a lot of people commuting between the LA area and Bakersfield.

I would welcome this when I was traveling between LA & SF many years ago. I drove to Bakersfield to catch the Caltrain that takes me to Oakland. May not be a reason for many as the Caltrains weren't that packed.

They might be busier if they can take a high speed train directly between Bakersfield and LA, though.

If they succeed in getting it through the Tehachapi's, it will be a civil engineering feat without precedent in California history.

I am not holding my breath that it will come in 10 years, or even in my lifetime.

https://hsr.ca.gov/2024/06/27/news-release-california-high-s...

https://www.buildhsr.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

I voted for the initial 10 billion bond many many years ago.

It's amazing how long it's taken, how does a train take over a decade ?

Even just high speed from Bakersfield to LA would help tons of people.

There's no reason we can't have high speed throughout the nation. Imagine taking a train from LA to NYC in 30 hours.

Too many pockets to line...

> * Imagine taking a train from LA to NYC in 30 hours.*

Who is the customer for that ticket?

People who can't spare 72 hours to travel on The Ghan ?

Long train journeys are a thing for some- with a private car there's also the appeal of views out the window while working on a script | program | report and having a car on a transport flat behind.

Not for everyone, but there are customers.

> Not for everyone, but there are customers.

A tiny, insignificant number which could never justify the cost

That wasn't the question though, was it?

it was, if we pay attention to the context and phrasing

I have flown from Pensacola to Rochester, MN and it basically takes almost a day with plane changes, delays etc. 1000 miles distance. With a delayed flight it was 17 hours, I could almost have driven that distance by car in the same elapsed time.

With security and other hassles you basically burn a day in flight; so 30 hours NY/LA and being able to sleep, have high speed Internet, make normal phone calls, move around a bit, and eat (hopefully) normal food would not really cost any more time.

You're comparing the worst case scenario of flying to the best case scenario of HSR and the flight is still better.

How long is that train ride going to take when a guy kills himself on the track?

People who'd like to go from NYC to Chicago in 10.

Denver to LA in 15.

I largely hate flying even though I've accepted it's the only way to travel overseas.

I'd love to take the full 30 hour train ride vs the 70 it takes now

Reading https://www.flightsfrom.com/LAX-JFK, https://www.flightsfrom.com/LAX-EWR and https://www.flightsfrom.com/LAX-BUF there are about 40 direct flights on that route every day. I guess that’s about 4,000-ish people.

That probably is not enough to make a train line profitable (they have larger capacity than airplanes, and you’d need fairly frequent service)

Luckily, as the crow flies, it is about 4,000 km from LA to NY, so a train route connecting population centers would probably be about 6,000. With a fast train (300+ km/hour top speed), the target of 30 hours will allow for some stops.

That will increase demand, with most passengers doing only part of the route.

You're going to have to scale that number down significantly to the people willing to take a 30 hour train ride instead of a 6 hour flight.

Not NYC to LA but BOS to SF route is something I used to do maybe half a dozen times a year. I might have done a 30 hour train trip once if such a thing existed though probably I’d want a sleeper for the experience. But otherwise I’d fly.

> There's no reason we can't have high speed throughout the nation.

We are a nation of middlemen. Everyone at every level needs their cut and we will invent more levels if there is a possibility of money being left on the table.

It burns me that other countries can build things like this and we can't.

> It's amazing how long it's taken, how does a train take over a decade ?

Honestly, as some living in France, with a lot of high speed train lines, I'm not surprised. For example one of the most recent lines [0] took more than a decade.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Bretagne-Pays_de_la_Loire

Meanwhile China has pretty much built up an entire nations worth of high speed rail in that time and India is adding 5000kms of new railway lines per year (about the size of Switzerland’s entire system).

IMHO, those distances of 463 miles (745 Km) seem more suitable for maglev trains, which I imagine would put those cities at a distance of around 3 hours, including wait times at station to board.

By airplane, I imagine the total time from Los Angeles airport to San Francisco airport, including wait times to board and latter to pick up luggage, may be around 4 hours?

Just crossed my mind quickly, I did not made numbers.

If LA could just make their existing SLOW heavy trains go to the airport (Amtrak/Metrolink/SD's Coaster), an incredible amount of traffic could be reduced. I live in SD and would like to take LAX more often, but the closest station is Union Station and a bus ride or uber is required between the two, which limits viability. LA metro rail leaves a lot to be desired safety wise.

For anyone who's used high speed railin Japan, Europe or China knows how much more efficient it is than flying.

It really is sad just how hard it is to build anything in the US at this point.

As a San Diego resident, it's also sad that it was a state representative from San Diego that first introduced this idea to the state legislature, and yet now, San Diego has been dropped from the planned route. 8-(

It really depends. I try to train in Europe when time and price aren’t overriding considerations but flying is often faster/cheaper over any real distance—especially between countries.

Tangentially, one of my big hopes of this upcoming election in the UK is that Labour get a big enough majority in parliament that they can force through a lot of infrastructure projects with minimal process. We could have a golden age again where parliament pass individual acts supporting simplified processes for HS2, a third Heathrow runway, etc, given the upcoming super-majority

third Heathrow runway?...say that often and loud enough and your Labour majority goes up in smoke

This won’t get done in the next 25 years, if ever.

Why do we keep trying to import european/chinese ideas and force them to fit the american mode. LA has plenty of transit options, trains and buses that never get used... Americans hate public transportation and no one ever uses them even when they are built.

Why does the government keep trying to do these giant infrastructure projects that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of consultants and have very little chance of completing on time and on budget?

Why does socialism keep creeping into every inch of our republic? Leave these ideas to private industry which is proven to be more efficient over and over again....

Does the predicted revenues (predicted fare * predicted ridership) exceed the interest on the bonds?

I ask because it didn't in previous iterations.

Why cant they start a daily airbus between the two cities. It will most certainly cost less and adoption can be evaluated before putting in massive costs

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