$11B Later, High-Speed Rail Is Inching Along | Hacker News Reader

$11B Later, High-Speed Rail Is Inching Along

nytimes.com

41 pointsdanso47 comments

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Welcome to the 21st century, the century of China.

China has built almost 7000 miles of high-speed rail in less than 10 years.

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

The US still has zero miles.

Shanghai had 0 miles of subway in 1993. Now they have the biggest subway in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metro_systems#List

I believe the first 2 miles of the Second Avenue subway will be done in a few more years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway#Current_de...

It quite embarrassing how lame the United States has become.

It helps when your government has as much control as the Chinese government.

7000 miles vs 0. You think it's only about government control?

In a sense, it is, but in the opposite direction the parent article intended.

A lot of the issue with building new rail lines in the U.S. is that despite advantages like eminent domain, things inevitably get bogged down in politics and turf-battles between agencies, which in conjunction with bizarrely dysfunctional (although probably originally well-intended) contracting rules, etc, lead to huge amounts of cost/schedule inflation.

Private organizations suck in many ways too, but they have a lot more incentive to keep focused on the goal...

And as lax safety and building standards.

So, are you suggesting that liberal democracies are outmatched by authoritarian governments and central planning, or are you pointing out that corruption and incompetence have become so pervasive in the US that even statism would be an improvement?

If the former were true that would be really bad news, but I don't believe that's the case.

It's silly to draw overarching conclusions of a country based on their choice of transportation.

The US flew 846 billion passenger miles last year. Does that make us better or worse? (Answer: neither.)

http://apps.bts.gov/xml/air_traffic/src/index.xml

Trains aren't an end, they're a means to an end. In the US we use jets and cars instead of trains.

And before you object based on efficiency -- trains aren't that much more efficient than flying. Only 20% by Amtrak's measure.

http://www.amtrak.com/whistle-stop/energy-efficiency-rail-tr...

With the increased speed of flying, trains don't seem like such a natural fit for a spread out country like the US.

No one said that we should build HSR across the US.

Does it really make sense to get fly from NYC to Boston or D.C? From LA to SF?

Btw, China is almost as big as the US.

But where does the energy come from? Trains are much easier to electrify than planes so they can use a variety of energy sources.

Airplanes won't be flying anywhere once the price of liquid fossil fuel goes nonlinear, so the efficiency objection is moot.

And before you object based on efficiency -- trains aren't that much more efficient than flying.

Below is a link to a PDF with more information about energy efficiency:

http://adl.stanford.edu/aa260/Lecture_Notes_files/transport_...

These figures suggest that the train is the most efficient form of travel and that plane is one of the least efficient forms of travel (although it is better than hovercraft for long distance travel).

And we talk about what a technological advance it is that the Dreamliner is 20% more fuel efficient. Which would still put it trailing behind the Prius in fuel efficiency.

China is also a deeply corrupt authoritarian klepto-state. These things are good for infrastructure output, perhaps not so healthy for morale and morality.

>China is also a deeply corrupt authoritarian klepto-state.

Kind of like the US in that respect. Part of the reason for the enormously high cost of HSR in America is the corruption tax. There are a lot of entities on the take in an undertaking this large.

That doesn't really follow. Too much corruption and you can't get things done, because resources for getting things done tend to get siphoned into personal accounts, or just pissed away wholesale. Corruption and incompetence are the reason infrastructure projects fail in the US, while China seems to be able to get them done in spite of it.

I mean, whatever the reason, the US can't get this shit right. Make all the excuses you want, whinge about freedom until you're blue in the face, it won't change the fact of it. If the US is supposed to be the example of what a liberal democracy can do, then liberal democracy is in a lot of trouble. Fortunately, the US is a really poor example of what a liberal democracy is capable of, if it is really a liberal democracy anymore, in the first place.

Note that while I'm sure Shanghai has a nice subway, that Wikipedia list is pretty crap.

Not that the information in it is actually false (I haven't checked), but rather that the criteria for entry seems to be fairly meaningless/arbitrary.

In particular, it seems to (1) only count a single organization for each city (how chosen, I don't know), and (2) use some unknown, and apparently inconsistent, definition of "metro," which doesn't even seem to match the page's discussion of that topic.

So rather than something useful, like "amount of metro-like rapid-transit in each city," it's really more like "largest organization running something metro-like in each city, with the definition of 'metro-like' varying widely between cities." ><

[This especially affects Japanese cities with their tendency towards having many private urban railways (although well-integrated operationally) in each city, rather than single city-wide entities.]

In 2004, the Republican Party platform said that "Republicans support, where economically viable, the development of a high-speed passenger railroad system as an instrument of economic development and enhanced mobility". In 2002, it was a part of Rick Perry's ambitious massive transportation plan for Texas. Even Ron Paul signed a letter asking the federal government to give Texas money for rail studies and to help it build "a truly ambitious and world-class high-speed rail network".

It sure sounds like Republicans were on board for high-speed rail. What has changed since then? I hope this is not another one of those things that they are now against because they don't want to be on the same side as Obama.

In 2004 the Tea Party didn't exist.

I guess I'm not seeing what's newsworthy about the fact that a 500 billion dollar, 25-year project isn't finished after 11 billion dollars and 4 years:

http://www.ushsr.com/ushsrmap.html

It will never be finished. That will be newsworthy. Fiber optic will always be cheaper.

Tōkaidō Shinkansen was operational in just 5 years. That's the 320 mile line between Tokyo and Osaka. The only reason this is fantasy talk is because of mismanagement of funds and resources. It didn't used to take 3 years to upgrade a 3 mile stretch of freeway. If it did, our interstate infrastructure would have never been built.

“High-speed rail can be a good idea; I just think it should be left up to the private sector,”

Ludicrous, the private sector has absolutely no incentive to build something in which they have to wait 25-30 years to receive a return on their investment.

> Ludicrous, the private sector has absolutely no incentive to build something in which they have to wait 25-30 years to receive a return on their investment.

But they do have an incentive to find transportation solutions that have a return on investment of a couple of years. I'd argue that a faster cycle is much better with anything that deals with technology. Let's not spend decades to build the best horse drawn carriage in history only to have it passed by an automobile the day it launches.

I'd agree, but transportation is inherently slower to build than your average tech gadgets. By that logic, we probably just shouldn't build anything at all. A 10-15 mile highway expansion project here in Philadelphia has been going on for almost 2 years now.

I imagine something like a new airplane design would be approaching that (speaking from ignorance here, I have no idea what that actually looks like for Boeing).

Also, what about home loans?

Home loans would be a terrible example for your position.

Mortgage interest is paid off disproportionately sooner than the principle and the bank still has a claim on the property until the last penny is (re)paid. So long as they didn't finance a home beyond its value, they're ahead on paper well within the first year. (only needing to recoup the costs and commissions associated with closing the sale before the paper shows profit)

Further, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage didn't really exist until the government got into the business of subsidies and guarantees. Before that, the standard were balloon payment mortgages with larger down payments, far shorter terms and the eponymous balloon payments due at maturity (which greatly favored the bank's end of the deal in practice).

Some more info on the first high speed rail project:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/08/booker_federal_rail...

"It wasn’t long ago in this region that airlines dominated travel to Washington, D.C.," he said. Now, Szabo said, Amtrak accounts for 80 percent of travel between New York and Washington.

Critics of high-speed rail, including many Republicans in Congress, say the benefits are outweighed by the huge costs.

The problem with the California project, which hopefully isn't indicative of the other projects, is that they're building the wrong line first.

The plan is to build the Stockton to Bakersfield line first. The one that will get by far the least traffic!

If you really wanted to show value and increase public support, you'd build the Stockton to SF line and the Bakersfield to LA lines first. Those lines would get 1000's of daily riders as people switched to the train from their 2+ hour commutes.

Then use those profits to build the connecting line.

"If you really wanted to show value and increase public support, you'd build the Stockton to SF line and the Bakersfield to LA lines first."

That plan would show results too early. Results are scary, because they might not live up to the promises by politicians currently in office. Politicians do much better with hoping, wishing, and grand visions.

Ha! You do have a point. I suppose this is where private enterprise would be better. :)

"We will be building 130 miles of brand new, passenger-only track. While we will not begin high speed service on that immediately, the current Amtrak trains, rolling onto our track at Madera, will be able to open their throttles and go 110-120 mph with existing equipment, shaving 75-90 minutes off the trip."

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/californ...

The problem with high-speed rail is that for decades it will only benefit large urban population centers. As such, people in rural communities or more sparsely populated cities have little to no incentive to go along with funding it. If a person has to drive for an hour in the wrong direction just to get on the train, then the train has no real benefit to them.

80 percent of Americans live in urban areas.

Yes, but the census defines an urban area as containing over 50,000 people. There are going to be an awful lot of urban areas that are not at all conveniently close to a high speed rail station.

Source: http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-rural-2010.html

That's correct. It'll only be convenient for 40 or 50 million people.

25 million Americans live in the 10 biggest cities.

33 million Americans live in the 20 biggest cities.

44 million Americans live in the 50 biggest cities.

I think any of those is a reasonable number to build a rail system for.

If you count by census statistical area, the 10 biggest MSAs contain ~80 million people. There's 180 million people in the top 50 metropolitan areas, well over half the USA, all living in conurbs of at least a million people.

People are rapidly choosing to urbanize which means for decades this will become less and less of a problem.

Who says the train has to benefit everyone? The government spends plenty of money on things that don't benefit me. Should I be demanding a refund on my taxes for those things?

I don't know about that. California's high speed rail will go through Central Valley, which is the poorest part of the state. And for some people, it might be driving an hour in the right direction to take the train.

At least in the case of the California plan, if you have to drive an hour to get to one of the stations then you live in BFE and would have to drive an hour to get any damn place. It's going to have a station in Hanford (pop. 50k)!

Before spending tens of billions of dollars on high speed rail, which is only a baby step forward, why not give NASA $100 million to try out evacuated tube transportation? I believe ET3 (http://et3.com/) is planning to break ground for a proof of concept line in 2015.

I rode high-speed and low(regular?) speed trains around Korea for a summer they were a nice way to travel. Its too bad they don't seem like a feasible options for North America.

Inching along after fighting Palo Alto resident after Palo Alto resident is OK with me. It's a big project.

While high speed rail would be great if it could be delivered on time and under budget that is never going to happen.

Why not nationalize the existing rail lines and invest those dollars into increasing their capacity (so that passenger lines are not second class to freight traffic). Remove the passenger monopoly from Amtrak and let market forces have at it, e.g., Virgin Rail or similar.

This was tried in the UK. It resulted in ballooning ticket prices, underinvestment in infrastructure, ridiculously confusing pricing (this is a competitive advantage in oligopolies) and lots of attempts to capitalize on the confusion by issuing fines when the obscure rules caused by the confusing pricing were broken.

Market forces didn't work as predicted because, oddly enough, the London-Edinburgh rail operator doesn't feel much competitive pressure from the London-Bristol route.

It was all an exercise in transferring state assets into private hands at a knock down price so that they could be milked for profits. In that respect it was a resounding success.

The article is about providing rail service in California, with billions in public funds. And where is the land coming from for this new rail line?

http://cchsra.org/cahsr-eminent-domain/

My proposal was for taking the existing rail lines, which had government subsidies, and making them a commons and improving them so that all players had better service.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentations...

The rails themselves become owned by the public and are improved so that more freight and more passenger traffic can utilize it.

As it stands now, passenger traffic here takes a back seat to freight and it makes traveling by rail on the west coast fit only for tourists with plenty of time on their hands.

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