California High-Speed Rail No. 9 – the Chairman's Turn Again | Hacker News Reader

California High-Speed Rail No. 9 – the Chairman's Turn Again

theatlantic.com

25 pointscurtis20 comments

"Current standard LA-SF airfares are more in the range of $250 one way."

What planet does the author live on? I just kayaked flights on a weekend exactly one month from now and got perfect friday/sunday timing (which should be pretty congested) for $150.

I am such an enormous supporter of rail, but we will never get there if people keep lying about the cost competitiveness.

don't forget to add costs for getting TO the airport. BART costs ~$15 (for either Oakland or SFO), by cab (Uber) ~$50. So while $250 might be on the upper side of things, I think $150 isn't exactly right either. so the low $200 range.

To be clear, I got $150 round trip; they said $250 one way. My numbers fit roughly with my experience. Their numbers are ridiculous.

The thing is we won't have cheap air travel in the very near future. It's high time to plan and build a system that doesn't rely on cheap liquid fuels for its operations.

I guess I would also point out that nobody books rail travel a month in advance, either. In places with real rail networks you just walk into the station and buy a ticket at a machine or at most buy them a day in advance if you want first class reserved seats or something. If you want air tickets to LAX tomorrow returning tomorrow it's going to cost a lot ($400 or more).

Peak time rail travel can certainly be expensive. In the UK, a walk up standard class anytime return from Manchester to London (~180 miles) is £321 ($530.) Depart after 9.30am it goes down to a more reasonable £79.

walk up first class off-peak period return to That London £164 (to see the Kate Bush gig - stealth boast). I bought off-peak 1st class tickets in advance for £36, cheaper than standard class (£52).

I tend to align with what Alon Levy called "technicals" in my criticism of CA HSR[0]. I think Fallows comes across as uninformed as to the details of railroading and public transit in CA, and Dan Richards is a rather one sided mouthpiece. The biggest challenges to HSR that I see are:

1. Pacheco vs Altamont. Altamont is faster, involves less travel through the Santa Clara County suburbs, is faster to Sacramento, and gives us a second bay rail crossing.

2. Tejon Pass vs the detour to Palmdale. Yep, HSR is going to make a big detour out to Palmdale to help build up exurban sprawl. Never mind that its more properly a Metrolink concern, the state is subsidizing sprawl.

Finally, this whopper from the article: "Uh, I helped build that project [JF note: Dan Richard was on the BART board from 1992 to 2004] and it is a smashing success. The ridership projections proved inaccurate in its first few years only because of the effects on air travel of Sept 11th and the ensuing economic downturn. Within five years, the project was quite robust and today is operating at 105% of its costs from downtown SF to the airport, extraordinary for an urban mass transit system. "

Jesus, what a joke. BART to Millbrae ruined SamTrans financially, and has been underwhelming performance wise. Does anyone think the current system works well? What should've happened is that the people mover at SFO should've been extended to Millbrae or San Bruno. The Millbrae BART station is nothing more than a massive gift to contractors (my god, how much concrete was used?), and is horrible to actually get around in. Oh, BTW there are three BART tracks in Millbrae, and one is never used.

I remember hearing plans of building an HSR tunnel under Millbrae BART (in a world where money grows on trees) rather than having BART give up a track or two.

[0]http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/polit...

Does anybody else find this squabbling kind of embarrassing?

It's quite clear that California has no political, fiscal or operational capability to finish (or even begin!) this project.

Given this premise, how would you evaluate the discourse surrounding it?

It's a ploy from the rail companies to have the tax payer foot the bill to build these high-speed rail lines, knowing full and well that there is just not enough demand at the price (per trip) they are proposing.

Sure there will be the occasional passenger train to warrant keeping it around, but the long term goal is to have the rail companies step in and say "See, no demand for passengers, but since you have all of these tracks built, we'll gladly use them to haul our freight."

Oh, I'm sure they'll begin it. We'll get a shiny new sixty-billion dollar rail line from Bakersfield to Fresno, and probably two or three trains a day along it.

Criticism 9

The speed limitations and cost overages are not what Californians voted on. This is a bait and switch.

The authority has stated over and over again that the travel time will be as good or better than the ballot measure protected. The ballot measure did not promise any particular cost. It only said it would cost 19.4 billion to pay off the initial 9.95 billion in bonds.

This article doesn't even mention the Hyperloop once. In doing so, it makes me think that the author has a one-track mind, hell-bent on making "high-speed" rail the answer to any and every question.

Ignoring serious technological advances won't make them go away. I admit, the Hyperloop hasn't been built before, but is that really an issue for a guy that runs a company that makes rockets that routinely go to space and back, or electric cars that people actually want?

Given the merits of Musk's proposal, we should really be rethinking the entire California rail project. If we don't, we could be saddled with yet another expensive and obsolete infrastructure project for a long time to come.

A CAD drawing and a nice powerpoint is not a 'technological advance', even if it comes from Elon Musk. A working prototype (even small scale) would be a big step forward. If someone starts shooting hamsters in capsules through a tube, call me, but until then the Hyper Loop is Vapor Ware.

Yeah, you'll note that even Elon Musk hasn't mentioned the Hyperloop (as far as I've heard) since he sent out a press release and a back-of-the-napkin drawing.

A small-scale prototype wouldn't cost that much, surely?

> A small-scale prototype wouldn't cost that much, surely?

Some ideas can't be meaningfully tested on a small preliminary scale:

1. Fusion power.

2. A trip to the moon.

3. Marriage.

I doubt that any practical small-scale model would educate us about the full-sized system.

The Hyperloop -can- be meaningfully tested on a small scale model. For example, the scaling laws of fluid dynamics are fairly well known. Building a scale model with knowledge of the scaling laws can at least give us a sense of the performance/cost of the full scale system.

Other small scale test that can be done. A 100m long full diameter segment of the track could be built and then kept at the vacuum pressure needed for some extended period of time while pushing simulated hyperloop vehicles through the length. This can inform us to the real costs of maintaining the vacuum, and give some hints towards real maintenance costs.

A key part of the Hyperloop proposal is the cheapness of fabricating the track and pylons. Actually building the track and pylons in limited quantities is important so that a) areas where efficiencies can be introduced can be identified and b) give a sense of just how much efficiencies can be gained.

As far as I know, the actual compressor drive that the Hyperloop runs on has never been used on such a scale before. At least building a single full scale demonstration model is surely prudent before even considering it.

Maglev was tested with real prototype trains on real prototype track for decades before commercial use. Transrapid (which made the Shanghai Maglev) has a 31km long test track that was in use for over a decade before they started working on the Shanghai line.

Until something of roughly that magnitude is built, the Hyperloop is an interesting (and well thought out) idea, but nothing more.

Exactly. Arguably the bank drive through deposit tube is a small scale prototype, but I suspect hyperloop is a greater technical leap than either SpaceX or Tesla.

Not to mention building a right of way from SF to LA is 100x harder politically than rolling back the car dealership laws that Tesla has been fighting.

Elon Musk may be a great entrepreneur, but he is not a magician.

A proposal substantially similar to the Hyperloop was proposed in the early 1970s, the principle difference being that the right-of-way was to be buried underground (greatly increasing construction costs over Musk's estimate). It was the Vactrain, by Robert M. Salter of RAND.

http://www.infowars.com/l-a-to-n-y-in-half-an-hour-10000-plu...

http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html

http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P6092.html

The proposal failed largely for other reasons shared with the Hyperloop, however.

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