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Comment by barney54 | Hacker News Reader

The question is why? Why should the U.S. spend billions on a great passenger rail system? High speed rail is almost always a serious money loser. What are the benefits?

Japan and Europe's high speed rail is nice, but it hasn't necessarily resulted in a greater share of passengers taking rail. "Since Japan introduced high-speed bullet trains, passenger rail has lost more than half its market share to the automobile. Since Italy, France, and other European countries opened their high-speed rail lines, rail’s market share in Europe has dwindled from 8.2 to 5.8 percent of travel. If high-speed rail doesn’t work in Japan and Europe, how can it work in the United States?" http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/highspeed-r...

And some environmentalist don't like it either. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/california-hi...

Most people don't know that the U.S. has a great freight rail network. U.S. passenger rail obviously isn't great, but U.S. freight rail is the best in the world. http://business.time.com/2012/07/09/us-freight-railroads/

I just don't know why the U.S. should build high speed rail, other than the fact that it is fun to ride.

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You are kidding, right? Do you have any idea of how many hours of lives are lost in traffic? If you sum up all those hours and divide by average lifespan, I bet it comes out to few thousand people getting killed each day.

Trains also hugely impact how much people must pay on housing. In areas with great train network, people can chose to live farther and still can avoid unreasonable commute. Just imagine what if Californians can spend their earnings on meaningful activities rather than just housing.

When I visited Russia, I just began to realize how important is train network and how badly neglected it is in US. Moscow has one of the absolutely best train network anywhere - all built by Soviets. Trains comes every 2 mins, they are fast and there are plenty of routes with plenty of stops to basically go anywhere without wasting your life getting stuck in commute, finding parking and pay bucket loads of money on gas.

In US, governments are extremely inefficient - no matter what party is in White House (this is not to say Russia is better but trains are something they did got right). People are always busy in philosophical issues around abortions, gay marriage, gun rights while doing 3 hours commute one way everyday in frustrating traffic never asking why government isn't fixing it for decades.

The idea of self-driving cars was only possible in the USA. In Europe it seems very alien because of the trains.

Utter nonsense. Automated driving aids have been developed for a long time by European car manufactuerers. Audi is now testing a fully automated var. Daimler just released a partially self driving truck.

Volvo is working on it as well. They are currently running a year-long experiment with a hundred self-driving cars in southern Sweden.

Aids and full auto is not the same concept at all. What they're doing now is no indication of where the idea came from. So no, it's not "utter nonsense". No matter how many downvotes you pour on me, the fact that it was Google that brought this idea to mainstream in undeniable.

Not to mention the 1.24 million killed by motorists every year http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_st...

vs a couple of hundred in train incidents.

>High speed rail is almost always a serious money loser.

Passenger rail is a public good, just like tax-funded public roads (which also don't make a profit, by the way.) Both are necessary for an effective and fully functioning transportation system.

>Since Japan introduced high-speed bullet trains, passenger rail has lost more than half its market share to the automobile.

This is largely due to an increase in rural car ownership since the 60's and the closure of unprofitable rural lines. The profitable Tokaido Shinkansen's ridership continues to increase, with 75% of passenger trips between Osaka and Tokyo using the line. The Shinkansen between Tokyo and Hiroshima, which is a comparable distance to that of LA to SF, carries more than half of the passengers between those two cities. http://www.jrtr.net/jrtr48/pdf/f06_Tak.pdf

It seems to me that California High Speed Rail will have the greatest impact on medium distance trips where it is too far to conveniently drive and not cost effective to fly. For example, it may become more practical to commute between the central valley cities the Bay Area.

Some benefits of a functioning railway system:

- increased throughput compared to highways due to lower volume per passenger (something the US is trying to achieve with carpooling lines),

- increased reliability (there are no train-jams),

- increased passenger convenience (no need to look for parking or do maintenance on the train you ride),

- increased passenger productivity (you can work or read on a train),

- ease of transition to green source of energy.

Advantages of the car over the train:

- greater flexibility (generally roads offer denser network than railways, even in Europe or Japan),

- car is much more convenient for families with children.

I love trains. I love driving. I find that the latter is much more fun and convenience in places where the former works well. San Francisco's 101 could be one of such places if Caltrain was more like SBB.

EDIT: one more important benefit of the train:

- increased safety (much fewer fatalities per passenger; also no need for a designated driver when you go to a party).

Most of your train benefits are only relevant to local trains. The interstates outside of the big cities aren't really crowded at all (e.g. The 101 through central CA).

That hasn't been my experience with the 5 going from north to south or south to north.

> -increased reliability (there are no train-jams),

``Ding dong Due to planned maintenance/a defective signal/ a computer error/ a tree on the tracks (or a leaf, or snow)/a collision with a person no connection is possible between Utrecht Central and Amsterdam Central.''

Generally you can take a detour, or busses will be employed to ferry people (after several hours usually), but it's not a very uncommon situation, I'd say we have a really major jam about 2-4 times a year, hard to judge. Still prefer the train over the car, but when I need to go to the airport to catch a plane I won't risk it.

Also, our main rail maintainer, train provider, and the Gov't officials involved are a special kind of screw-up. So it might be a whole lot better if you can get the right people in charge.

> -increased reliability (there are no train-jams)

Exactly, and let's not forget the ongoing strikes in France, very common among SNCF employees (who are akin to civil servants and go on strike at least a dozen times a year). If you job depends on it, you are screwed.

"Due to planned maintenance/a defective signal/ a computer error/ a tree on the tracks (or a leaf, or snow)/a collision with a person no connection is possible between Utrecht Central and Amsterdam Central"

Are you joking? Utrecht to Amsterdam is a local train. That's like saying that CalTrain is frequently delayed, therefore we shouldn't build any high-speed lines. Appels en Peren.

Oh don't get me wrong. I like rail-networks, I was just pointing out that while trains might not get jams there is still plenty of comparable ails they suffer from. I only picked Amsterdam and Utrecht because they popped into my head first.

Also of note is that you mention the Netherlands, which for routes like the one you mentioned still has the option for alternative routes with, in that particular case, at most a 30-60 minute delay from your original travel plan. At a larger scale / longer distances, that's no longer the case; if the track between Meppel and Zwolle has an issue, it'd be better comparable; that basically severs the north from the south. Compare NL with France, too: http://www.fairriqh.nl/stations/Spoorkaart/Spoorkaart%20Nede..., http://www.bonjourlafrance.com/france-trains/images/france-t..., NL looks more like a subway system.

there are way, way more lines in france than are depicted on that rough map.

http://www.bueker.net/trainspotting/map.php?file=maps/french...

(a more detailed map can be found on the website of RFF, the agency that runs the network: http://www.rff.fr/cartes/pdf/carte-reseau-2011-medium.pdf)

That is a political problem. We had a considerably more reliable railway system before the whole faux privatisation nonsense.

We screwed it up exactly because the political obsession with creating a more Americanised version of capitalism, partially forced down our throats by the divide and conquer strategy of the EU.

Some clear issues with long distance railway system: - it costs TONS of money to built. - you need to buy tons of land. - to keep straight lines in a place like Europe, it often means you have to go through places where people live, and you need to have villages partly destroyed by it. Yay, democracy. You'll notice that high speed train systems are usually very much correlated with socialism (France and Japan are both well known socialistic countries - no surprise here at all). - Above certain distances it makes no sense to take the train over the plane. I take the train in Japan every week for work between Kansai and Kantou, and it takes about 3 hours. A plane takes one hour, and it is 40% cheaper. Remind me why we need trains there? - The maintenance of a railway is a huge ongoing cost. - if there is one incident on the main railways, your subsequent trains are delayed or blocked. Yay for flexibility and "reliability". - Try working in economy class in TGV in France. It's about as narrow as plane economy, and it sucks for working. In Japan the situation is much better but don't make a generalization there. - green energy ? Oh, like in Japan where most of the electricity is produced by gas, petrol, imported at high costs from overseas since they have no such natural resources? Yay for efficiency! (truth is, Fukushima did not help, and electricity bills have been doubling since then (even home bills)). - Anything that does not depend on railways can be upgraded, transformed, improved. We will have self driving cars at some point, and we will be stuck with high cost trains running on linear tracks forever, because there's no improvement to be made there. It's a 18th century concept pushed to the max.

There are cases for high speed trains, but even in Japan what they are doing is stretching it - nobody takes a train from north Japan to south Japan even if it's possible. It is just too expensive and takes too much time to be actually worth it.

I agree that planes are faster over longer distances, and cheaper too. The amount of hassle involved in planes is definitely more though, more waiting, you're supposed to be there earlier, more transit time to and from the airport. I think a 3h train and 1h flight are pretty comparable in the end.

Couldn't agree more. Short haul airlines are only profitable because they treat passengers' wasted time as free (and for some reason passengers agree).

> The amount of hassle involved in planes is definitely more though

This is very much post 9/11 though. It was not as much of an hassle before that.

"it costs TONS of money to built. - you need to buy tons of land. - to keep straight lines in a place like Europe, it often means you have to go through places where people live, and you need to have villages partly destroyed by it. Yay, democracy.... if there is one incident on the main railways, your subsequent trains are delayed or blocked. Yay for flexibility and 'reliability'"

Yes, because highways are free, require no land, never go through places where people live (/self warily eyes the massive elevated freeway overpass system lurking near my home...), and never have congestion.

With the exception of "trains aren't good for all distances", none of your arguments make much sense. They apply equally to all forms of mass transit.

> Yes, because highways are free, require no land, never go through places where people live (/self warily eyes the massive elevated freeway overpass system lurking near my home...), and never have congestion.

A single car accident does not block the whole highway usually. For trains, it's very much likely it would or seriously delay the following trains.

As for the land part, sure, highways take lands too, but they don't have to be only in straight lines and they usually have to accommodate with the local populace. Numerous highways make detours around mid-size cities, which is simply impractical with trains designed to be on linear tracks as much as possible.

> With the exception of "trains aren't good for all distances", none of your arguments make much sense. They apply equally to all forms of mass transit.

Take this one then. In France all TGV lines converge to Paris. Try going from Lyon to Bordeau, and you are fucked, you need to go up to Paris and then down to Bordeau, which is utterly stupid. Either a car or a plane trip is faster. Japan is slightly better in that regard simply because all cities are on the coast. For large surface the amount of lines you need build is just not worth the investment.

> In France all TGV lines converge to Paris. Try going from Lyon to Bordeau, and you are fucked, you need to go up to Paris and then down to Bordeau, which is utterly stupid. Either a car or a plane trip is faster.

Isn't that just because traveling from Lyon to Paris or Bordeau to Paris is far more common than traveling from Lyon to Bordeau. No one is saying that trains should replace all other modes of travel, just that they are useful for high traffic routes.

> France and Japan are both well known socialistic countries

I can't tell if this post is serious, or just trolling.

Clearly trolling. Calling Japan a "well known socialist country" ignores most of late 20th century Japanese politics: the fact that Japan was generally ruled by the LDP, often described in Japan as "neither liberal, nor democratic, nor a real party." The only socialist prime minister was Tomiichi Murayama, who managed to stay in power for all of 1.5 years.

You know, the Culture of Socialism does not always need the parties to be called Socialist. Look at the spending of Japan governments and please tell me with a straight face that this is not the spending of a Socialist state. Have fun.

I can't tell if you are a human or if you are an anti-trolling algorithm that is stuck.

I take the train in Japan every week for work between Kansai and Kantou, and it takes about 3 hours. A plane takes one hour, and it is 40% cheaper. Remind me why we need trains there?

So, you take the train despite having a cheaper and faster option, and you're asking us why the trains are needed? We should ask you why do you use the train, if the planes are so much better.

Hyperloop

You'll notice that high speed train systems are usually very much correlated with socialism

My god, socialism. Building high speed rail are they? The fiends. I bet they spend all night twirling their extensive mustachios wondering how to destroy the economy with high speed rail projects.

>car is much more convenient for families with children.

How so? Kids can not travel in cars alone because they have no license. Kids can travel in trains alone.

Remember the US is the nation of the helicopter parents, where it is common to drive the kids to school and everywhere else until they get their own driving license.

And cops are common to pick up younger kids which are around on their own because it is so unusual

Putting a kid on its own on a train would be absolutely unthinkable.

I rode trains through out my teen years in the USA. No issues!

And that world no longer exists.

Jesus. In Switzerlans i saw kids as young as 7 walk to school alone taking trams and walking.

"Kids can travel in trains alone."

Parents can't even let their kids walk to school alone. I seriously doubt they would allow their kids to ride a train alone.

That case was an aberration. That's why it became such big news. If that were the norm, it would not have become national news.

This said, helicopter parents are real. I've ridden on amtrak many dozens of times, but never saw an unaccompanied child.

I've seen many on Caltrain in the mornings but many many more in Japan.

The only time I used Amtrak there was a child in the opposite seat. Staff put a sticker over his seat announcing that he was alone, which I thought was odd.

Meanwhile round here in London children get free bus travel, so it's very common to see them on local buses, and sometimes trains (tends to be wealthier kids on trains).

The bit you've quoted from Cato is not a solid point, in my opinion. It is conflating two different things - local / commuter rail, which is in competition with cars, and high speed rail, which is not.

Clearly there has been a massive long term trend towards increasing dominance of the car over the last sixty years, but there has never been any expectation that high speed rail could reverse that trend - after all, the vast majority of journeys and of journey miles are not between cities, but everyday local transport, which has nothing to do with high speed rail.

The benefits are really to do with bringing city centres closer together, to be able to get on a train in London and arrive in Paris (220 miles away, and across a sea) within two and a half hours, or in Manchester (170 miles away) within an hour - the latter is the subject of the next high speed line project in the UK.

It would take four hours to drive London to Manchester, on excellent motorways, and an hour would hardly get you from the city centre to the start of Heathrow airport security. Having another city within an hour of two of hassle free travel just alters fundamentally the sense of distance between those cities. Bridge building is also often not profitable, but has a long term effect on interconnectedness and the development of the area around.

Being profitable shouldn't be the only measure to implement or improve a public transit system TBF; faster transit times, cleaner fuel, lower highway usage, less stress from driving, working on the go (if people work in coffee shops they can work in the train), tax benefits, cheaper commute costs, all of those should be taken into consideration too. It's not a crime for a government to fund an unprofitable business if said business does good things.

In fact, it might be considered one of the purposes of a government.

it's exactly why education, especially primary schools etc. are financed by the government in a lot of countries, because educating the mass is not profitable.

passenger rail system and 'high-speed rail' are two different things. If I want to take the train from Hamburg to Frankfurt, I can take the more expensive and faster ICE or a cheaper and slower EC or IC. personally I would not fly or use the car from Hamburg to Frankfurt, I would take the train, Fast, no check-in, city center to city center, full internet access (free for me).

Plus I have a BahnCard 100, which allows me to use the whole German train system for one year. Fast and slow. local public transport and ICE. That beats the alternatives easily.

> BahnCard 100

Nice! How much does that cost you? Also, why would you have that? (Those are really expensive)

http://www.bahn.de/p/view/bahncard/ueberblick/bahncard100.sh...

4090€

It's not a money loser. TGV is highly profitable in France. All the major intercity routes in the UK run at a profit and these operate at 125-140mph, which is high speed by US standards.

> TGV is highly profitable in France.

LOL. French here. I am not sure where you get that impression, but TGV lines cost dozens of billions of euros to be built, and the ROI is calculated in 30-40 years time, so saying the "TGV is highly profitable" is a pure lie, because we don't know in 40 years if people will still take it as much as now. On top of that, the SNCF (public company operating the TGV) is a sponge debt and if it were not for the ongoing government spending to keep it alive every single year with huge cash injections, it would have disappeared long ago.

Yeah "highly profitable", hey.

The national highway system isn't making anyone any money, and we don't criticize it for costing upkeep and the billions it cost to build.

I'm of the opinion that good infrastructure should not be turning a profit. If it were profitable out of the gate you would just let private enterprise build it. The reason you get the state involved is because good infrastructure like high speed rail is a force multiplier on the effectiveness of everyone around it, even when it isn't turning a profit in and of itself (and usually you get the best societal value out of these things when they are a loss leader, and tickets are not prohibitively expensive...).

You want a high speed rail system in California so that hundreds of thousands or millions of workers could stop spending significantly more combined time and money on the much more inefficient road network when it comes to commuting. It would be a net positive in less need to maintain over-capacity highways, less car deaths, less anxiety and stress from the traffic conditions, and more workplace mobility along the rail lines.

> and we don't criticize it for costing upkeep and the billions it cost to build.

Why shouldn't we criticize it ? Ever read Bastiat ? The money you spend somewhere is money you don't spend somewhere else. Wouldn't that be better to spend those billions in better schools, better hospitals, better metros, etc ? The choices you made have long ramifications in time and billions do not come cheap.

By we I mean average, not all. More in the "nobody criticizes it, even though there are plenty of reasons one could or should" less in the "nobody has a right to criticize a massive government spending project that has demonstrably warped society as a result".

I've gone through way too many debates on the costs and benefits of free public roads, and I've argued from both sides. Be critical - just don't be hypocritical (which a lot of people are when they make a false dichotomy between the value and feasibility of rail vs road).

> The reason you get the state involved is because good infrastructure like high speed rail is a force multiplier on the effectiveness of everyone around it, even when it isn't turning a profit in and of itself

This is absolutely true. I live a distance from Toronto that can be covered in about 40 minutes of driving, but the traffic jams in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are absolutely insane, and as a result it is not uncommon for this 40 minute trip to take 1.5 to 2 hours, with a random but not infrequent chance that it will take 3 hours instead, based on an accident.

A study in 2013 (http://www.canadianbusiness.com/economy/the-end-of-gridlock/) found that gridlock was costing Toronto $11 billion CAD every year. That's just Toronto, and says nothing about surrounding communities. The cost to Ontario as a whole has to be in the tens of billions annually. There's no way that the agencies that build and run public transport in Ontario will earn billions of dollars in annual profits from it, but that's not the point - the point is to create public infrastructure that generates a healthy economy which does return money to the public purse in the long run.

The national highway system is funded in the main by user fees like the Federal gas tax and could readily be funded entirely by such fees if politically desirable.

It strains belief that Federal rail service could similarly survive without infusions from general revenue.

But if you are comparing to highways in the US then surely a fair comparison would socialise some of the capital and maintenance costs of the infrastructure. Even so 30-40 year payback on the whole lot is not that bad. SNCF is probably in debt because commuter rail is heavily subsidised, something that is necessary to do to keep cities flowing.

Also, The "Cour des Comptes" (Government level Court of Audit) recently pointed some lines were inefficient due to poor stations selection. Because everyone along a line want their share of it, the trains stop too much and cannot be "high speed" long enough. They argue the TGV should connect a handful of hub stations and delegate the rest to local transportation network, which is also well developed.

If governments tax carbon, then electric trains will be profitable, especially in nearly carbon electricity free France. (France uses mostly nuclear power)

If governments don't tax carbon. We'll be toast.

You are made of carbon :) Just saying.

While I strongly support a good rail network, while it may be possible that specific routes in the UK run at a profit, note that the vast majority of UK rail franchises only return a profit because of massive subsidies. The overall UK rail network is heavily subsidised overall - the few franchises that return more in franchise payments than they receive in subsidies hardly makes a dent in the overall subsidies.

The exact breakdown from DfT and Network Rail are easily accessible on gov.uk.

> High speed rail is almost always a serious money loser. What are the benefits?

When people make this statements is usually because they forget the cost of building and maintaining roads and highways (that is payed by all taxpayers, even if they don't use the car), the actual cost of the land occupied by paved roads and parking (almost 50% in most cities), the deaths by traffic accidents, the deaths caused by the pollution, etc...

Another thing that people use to forget is that low cost flights, the main competitor for high speed train, will be less and less competitive when the fuel prices will rise again.

Taking cars out of the road is always a good investment.

> If high-speed rail doesn’t work in Japan and Europe, how can it work in the United States?

This article uses one fallacy after the other. Some have been answered by others; but no one who has put a foot in France, and specially in Japan, would say that High Speed train doesn't work there.

Market share is misleading as high speed trains have been deployed on only a few corridors. These are expensive systems that need high volumes - in which case they work. Checking train share of market by corridor gives a better view. Regarding info from Cato or Reason, I'd take it with caution. They used to produce good research but unfortunately they seem to be driven by ideological choices more than facts. Still a good read but needs fact-checking. Last - about environmentalists: the overall impact of high speed train depends on how many people ride it. California should be a no brainer as traffic potential is huge. I wouldn't say the same of Spain (where lines are under used). Overall: don't trust the definitive arguments. Most people have hidden agendas on the high speed rail topic. From a realistic analysis of facts, you may conclude that California hsr should easily be a commercial success, therefore environmentally good, and has a good chance to be profitable if properly managed/built. Texas hsr is the same. North east has a great potential but the costs are so high that just a small deviation ends up in huge sums of money in overspent. Guaranteed commercial success but risky from a construction/financial standpoint. Other projects can be more questionable. I've participated to a review of all them for a potential investor and this is what I remember of it. Don't take it as truth, check the facts.

What is valuable and what we need more of isn't regional trains is light commuter rail. This is the rapid transit system the SF Bay Area could have had today had people had more foresight to approve it back in the 1950s.

http://www.jakecoolidgecartography.com/regional-rapid-transi...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4080507945/sizes/l/

Imagine the San Francisco Bay Area with a commuter train system comparable to that of NYC and the great NY Metropolitan Area.

The question is why? Why should the U.S. spend billions on a great passenger rail system? High speed rail is almost always a serious money loser. What are the benefits?

How much money does the state road infrastructure make? What are the benefits?

Why are you quoting political thinktanks as verbatim. Their job is to pick out facts and arrange them so that it suits their narrative. Let's shine some light on their spin:

(a) Japanese HSR. It started in 1964[1]. Is anyone surprised that it lost 50% of its market share to cars if cars were literally at the verge of becoming popular when it started? Japan is a huge car country. The relevant statistic here is that an average Japanese does 25x the rail kilometers per year an American is doing[2], yet has less car km per year[3]. They are second only to Switzerland in that statistic. Japan's railway companies are profitable, both as HSR[5] and local transport in big cities[4].

(b) Rail in Europe: Why are two countries picked out and then their success is measured by the market share in all of Europe, including the severely underdeveloped East? Europe is a big and diverse place too.

The freight train system in the US is a good point - IMO Europe and Asia should take it as an example. I still don't see the relevance for passenger rail though, it's a separate issue. The question is: Does is make sense to push public transport, both locally and regionally. Given that (a) we have examples like Japan that clearly show how it can work and (b) environmental footprint of each person needs to be drastically lowered if we want to survive as a 6+ billion species, I'd put my money on 'yes'.

Edit: The USA is still the only big country with a carbon footprint way above 10 tonnes per capita and year. Americans still emit 1.8x the CO2 of Japan, even though Japanese houses have no isolation to speak of (earthquake safety / corrupt builders). It's getting better, but there's still a huge gap between the USA and and the rest of the highly industrialized world. Everyone needs to get better there, but there are a few countries that absolutely need to do a lot, or we're all fucked. So far I'd put USA, China and Russia on that list, soon probably India and Brazil as well.

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_usage_statistics_by_countr...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re... (I don't have the source for car km per capita, but you can deduct it from this table)

[4] https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/280/201

[5] http://www.jreast.co.jp/e/investor/financial/2013/pdf/2013_f...

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...

Less cars on the road?

That has to actually happen to be true. The OP's point is that it doesn't actually result in more people taking rail.

Correlation is not causation? How does the introduction of high speed rail reasonably result in people deciding not to take the train?

Generally, non-hs trains go as fast as you would on the highway or a bit faster anyway. In the Netherlands our normal trains have a speed limit of 90 Mph I believe, but Wikipedia tells me that 80-120Mph is the normal range for intercitys. HS lines are often 180Mph+.

Yes, but train tracks are often a more direct line, and they rarely have to stop or slow down for anything; when driving, your speed is generally reduced severely once you get off the highway. Of course, it also depends heavily on where you're coming from / going to; the train commuters often live and work nearby a train station (I do).

Rail has a side-effect of also highly urbanizing travelers where secondary mass-transit systems (bus, subway, etc.) makes it easy to get from/to the train station.

Because you don't spend time driving in traffic, you get from A to B way faster, and if properly designed you pollute much less.

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