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Comment by thrownaway2424 | Hacker News Reader

Well, no. You just made that up. HSR is intended to meet a future need for transportation. The equivalent air transportation infrastructure to meet the same need is believed to cost at least $500bn, according to the environmental impact report. That's making the generous assumptions that this level of air travel is even possible without serious air traffic congestion problems, and the aviation fuel costs do not rise faster than general inflation.

The main cost of CAHSR will be the opportunity cost of not having built it.

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The main cost of CAHSR will be the opportunity cost of not having built it.

I wonder: this is from an LA Weekly article from 2011 -- I remember it being an eye-opener when I read it back then [1]:

The authority had projected that 41 million people annually would ride the train between Anaheim and San Francisco, for example. But currently only 12 million customers fly nonstop on the extremely busy air route between Los Angeles and San Francisco each year.

The article goes on to say that Acela gets 3 million riders in the very dense east coast NY/Washington corridor but in less-dense California they were projecting a ridership around 10x of Acela's (!).

The LA Weekly has had a bunch of articles about the project over the years criticizing everything from its cost to its leadership to its utility. If the picture they paint is mostly correct, perhaps the only way to win is not to play.

And it's not just the LA Weekly -- a third party independent review came to similar conclusions apparently, as described in this LA Weekly article from Jan. 2012 [2]:

On top of skepticism from the state auditor, inspector general and legislative analyst -- as well as university researchers, federal transportation experts and this very news blog -- a "peer review group" for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, formed for the sole purpose of independent review, has declared the project neither physically nor financially feasible at this time.

The train's roster of supporters tells us everything we need to know:

"The project has won major support from organized labor, some big-city mayors and many state lawmakers," reports the Los Angeles Times today.

The article quotes the following from the report:

"We cannot overemphasize the fact that moving ahead on the HSR project without credible sources of adequate funding, without a definitive business model, without a strategy to maximize the independent utility and value to the State, and without the appropriate management resources, represents an immense financial risk on the part of the state of California."

[1] http://www.laweekly.com/2011-11-24/news/100-billion-bullet-t...

[2] http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/01/california_bullet...

> The article goes on to say that Acela gets 3 million riders in the very dense east coast NY/Washington corridor but in less-dense California they were projecting a ridership around 10x of Acela's (!).

And...so? California has dense areas in the north and south and a big (relatively) empty gap between them. California HSR is designed to connect those dense areas. The overall density of the state (or the corridor) is pretty much a side issue.

The question is how many people really need to travel between the Bay Area and SoCal? Right now it is about 12 million trips a year. That would increase if the link is cheaper, but to what economic gain? These two areas are strongly connected economically, not like NYC and DC are.

NY Boston however accounts for a lot of Acela traffic (based on my experience).

Ya, those areas are strongly connected. There was a typo in my above reply, I meant to say that SF/LA are not as strongly connected economically as NYC/Boston/Philly/DC.

I'm not so sure it's a side-issue, in that the northeast corridor train routes don't just allow people in, say, NY to go to Washington, but also people in Philadelphia and Baltimore to go there as well, since those cities are on the Acela route.

And, if your city is not on the Acela route, you may well be able, due to the area's density, to take a commuter rail or another train to get to a city that is on the Acela route.

Similarly for Acela's Boston-NY route -- New Haven is on the route, so people from Connecticut can likely get to it.

And, of course, people in NJ can easily pop into NYC and grab Acela as well.

By contrast, the lack of density in CA would mean that aside from LA - SF (and a bit of traffic to and from Sacramento), you wouldn't likely have that sort of potential passenger-base.

> By contrast, the lack of density in CA would mean that aside from LA - SF (and a bit of traffic to and from Sacramento), you wouldn't likely have that sort of potential passenger-base.

Actually, since California has a large total population, and its mostly concentrated in a few major urban areas, what that means is you have a natural constituency for high speed rail with few stops, spending more time at speed.

LA (and San Diego) to SF (and Sacramento) is a lot.

But why would lots more people start going from LA to SF or on any of the other routes? As a comment to your previous comment below asks[1], what would the economic gain be?

There might be a bit more interaction between LA's entertainment industry and the Bay Area's tech industry, but how many additional people would be travelling for this purpose?

I expect that, given that the northeast corridor comprises the nation's capitol, its financial capitol and its academic capitol (the latter two also being high-tech centers), one would expect movement between these places and would want high-speed transport.

I just don't see a similar dynamic operating in CA. Sacramento cannot compare to Washington, D.C. and LA and SF are pretty self-sufficient, as I expect San Diego is as well.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6203129

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