Trying to Find the Truth in the Latest LA Times, NY Times CA High-Speed Rail Pieces
Earlier this week, both the New York Times and the L.A. Times published articles on California high-speed rail.
The NYT tells the overall story in an informative and fairly balanced way. The L.A. Times continues its long history of misleading high-speed rail articles by Ralph Vartabedian.
For Vartabedian’s latest piece, ‘Calculations show bullet train can complete the route within 2 hours and 40 minutes. Reality may prove slower,’ the newspaper used the public records act to request raw data on scheduling simulations from the California High Speed Rail Authority (CAHSRA). These simulations show that CAHSRA has designed its system to complete a two-hour, 40-minute trip between L.A. and San Francisco, which is the trip length approved by voters in 2008.
Hmm… Agency promises schedule. Voters approve. Computer simulations show that the designs meet the promised schedule. Shouldn’t this story be about a government agency making good on a pledge?
Well, not if it’s the L.A. Times reporting on high-speed rail.
There’s a rail vs. cars double standard here. Delivering on pledges is something that California’s freeway-builders routinely fail to do. Caltrans, using discredited Level of Service predictions, repeatedly boasts that its multi-billion dollar freeway widening projects reduce congestion and improve air quality. The Times gives rail projects hell for cost overruns and performance predictions. Freeway expansion projects apparently don’t merit anywhere near the same scrutiny from the Times.
Vartabedian, using a playbook common among lazy, biased transit journalists, quotes rail critics such as Robert Poole, a transportation “expert” at the Reason Foundation–which is a ‘think tank’ (that is, a lobby group) funded by the Koch Brothers and ExxonMobil, among others.
Vartabedian cites a 2015 report from the Spanish firm Sacyr Concesiones S.L., which, he says, states that “220 mph is higher than most if not all standard commercial speed for HSR, since it goes beyond the operating speed of similar HSR currently operating anywhere in the world.” He goes on to write that:
Many transportation experts, including state staff and independent analysts, have long dismissed the probability that any operational California bullet train will meet the two-hour-40-minute timetable. A state-appointed peer review panel warned the legislature in 2013 that “it is unlikely that trains would actually be scheduled to run during normal hours of operation within … 2 hours 40 minute limits.”
Let’s clear a few things up.
On page 11 of Proposition 1A, which voters approved in 2008 and the legislature affirmed in 2012, this statement appears: “maximum nonstop service travel times for each corridor. . . shall not exceed the following: (1) San Francisco-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40 minutes.”
Key there is “maximum nonstop service travel times.”
So, yes, it’s likely that few trains will make it in two hours and 40 minutes. The CAHSRA would probably operate one peak morning train and one peak evening train to get business travelers between S.F. and L.A. in time for morning meetings and then home again for dinner. That’s the letter and the intent of the voter-approved Prop. 1A.
But most other trains would make intermediate stops, say in Burbank, Fresno, and San Jose, and a few local trains would stop at smaller stations as well. Those runs would take closer to three hours from L.A. to S.F.–still very competitive with air travel, when one factors in the trip to the airport, delays on the tarmac, etc. Train systems in Asia and Europe that have similar run times have taken huge market share from airports. This is how they operate.
Vartabedian goes on to write that:
The Japanese Shinkansen, the inspiration for all of the world’s high speed trains, operates between Tokyo and Osaka, a distance of 344 miles. The fastest trip takes two hours and 22 minutes, yielding an average speed of 145 miles per hour, according to Japanese Railway schedules. The French Train à Grande Vitesse, or TGV, operates the Paris to Lyon line over 243 miles and takes one hour and 59 minutes, according to TGV schedules. The average speed is 121 miles per hour.
But the Los Angeles to San Francisco route, which would traverse three mountain ranges and five of the 10 largest cities in the state, is supposed to travel 438 miles in 2 hours and 40 minutes — requiring an average speed of 164 miles per hour.
These numbers are valid, but let’s get a little perspective.
The Tokyo-Osaka Shinkansen, although it has since been upgraded, was originally built in the 1960s. The French TGV line that Vartabedian has chosen to highlight was designed and built in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
Why not look at a newer line? Such as, say, the Chinese Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway, which runs at 220 mph (speeds were lowered temporarily but resumed this top speed last year). The French TGV, in tests, has reached a whopping 357 mph. That still holds the record, set in 2007, for a train on steel rails. Many other rail manufacturers have greatly exceeded the speeds referenced by the L.A. Times.
That said, there is a trade-off between how fast a train can go and how much it will cost in electricity and track wear.
In order to make higher speeds more economically feasible, rail manufacturers are constantly improving their equipment to reduce weight and power consumption. Off-the-shelf trains already exist that can fulfill that 220 mph speed requirement within the economical threshold of power consumption and weight. China has them, as noted above. There’s also the French Automotrice à grande vitesse, (AGV), which can cruise at 220 mph while consuming the same or less power than France’s current fleet. Manufacturers in other countries also have trains in operation that should be able to handle California’s mandate.
Vartabedian also writes that CAHSRA will depend on “human train operators consistently performing with the precision of a computer model.” Well, that’s already done around the world, since high-speed rail trains are basically controlled by computers–the train driver is in the system to make sure nothing goes wrong. In fact, there’s a famous case of a Japanese Shinkansen driver who fell asleep, and the train continued along at 170 mph, eventually pulling itself into the next scheduled station without incident.
There is no doubt that the first train to use California’s high-speed track spine in the Central Valley will not fulfill the speed requirements right out of the gate. Opponents of the project seem unaware–or deliberately obfuscate–that high-speed trains can (and do) slow down and use existing tracks.
If there’s a criticism to be made of the CAHSRA, it’s that it has not yet spelled out plans for intermediate services that could run while Californians wait for the full build-out of the system. For example, there are tracks–currently used by Amtrak–connecting Oakland to the northern end of CAHSRA’s 119-mile Central Valley spine. High-speed trains could use those tracks–towed by conventional diesel locomotive for part of the trip–to offer a much-improved Amtrak service.
That type of stepped approach is how high-speed rail was built in many places.
One example is the Eurostar train between Paris, Brussels, and London. From 1994 to 2007, this high-speed train went around 186 mph from Paris to the Channel Coast. When it popped up on the British side, it slowed to 90 mph or slower, and shared tracks with commuter trains–much as CAHSRA plans to do with shared Bay Area Caltrain service–because the UK originally didn’t want to spend the money to build a dedicated high-speed line to the coast. Specially designed trains could run on both France’s dedicated high-speed lines, which have overhead lines for power, and the UK’s third-rail-powered tracks. The total trip from London to Paris with this ‘blended approach’ took around three hours. Over time, more high-speed segments were built and train speeds increased. The Eurostar now takes about two hours and 20 minutes to do the same trip. And the newest trains go 200 mph. There’s also the Sables d’Olonne service in France, which uses a TGV towed by a diesel locomotive to provide a one-seat ride from Paris, traveling at high speed for part of the trip, and then at low, Amtrak-like speeds on other portions.
Vartabedian concludes with a Reason Foundation quote asserting that Florida’s future Brightline higher-speed rail would be a better, cheaper model. Brightline opened in January, expanded in May, and is operating successfully. It’s not news that building a ~100 mph facility is cheaper than a 220 mph one. The comparison is apples to oranges–or perhaps house-cats to cheetahs. Basically, Brightline is running at similar speeds to some of today’s Amtrak lines–albeit with more up-to-date trains both inside and out.
But the difference is true high-speed trains are transformative–on most corridors in Europe and Asia, airplanes are now the discount, low-ball way to travel, because high-speed rail has taken over the business market almost entirely. Perhaps that’s why an oil-backed group such as Reason is willing to throw a bone to Brightline–it’s nice, but it’s no threat to the dominance of petroleum-dependent, heavily subsidized transportation (mainly cars and airplanes).
Back to this week’s other HSR article, the New York Times ‘A $100 Billion Train: The Future of California or a Boondoggle? ‘ by Adam Nagourney.
If you only read one high-speed rail article this week, we recommend the piece in the NYT, which paints a much more balanced picture of a project that has faced a lot of adversity, but is getting built anyway.
Nagourney’s recap of the project’s tortured finances is an important recap for readers not steeped in the intricacies of CA high-speed rail funding. In 2008, voters approved $10 billion as a down payment on the rail system, under the assumption that, as with highway projects, the federal government would be an investment partner in this key transportation infrastructure. From the NYT:
The cost was originally supposed to be split among the state, the federal government and private business. But that arrangement faltered, as hopes for federal dollars faded with Republicans in power in Washington, and businesses shied away from such an uncertain venture. As of now, the rail authority has come up with less than $30 billion…
Nagourney’s piece includes plenty of project criticism. He quotes former Fresno mayor, now state assemblymember Jim Patterson, as saying “This is going to be the most expensive and slowest form of fast rail imaginable.” This is just hyperbole from someone who has always opposed the project. There’s no way that California’s high-speed rail will be the “slowest” anything.
But, in contrast with the L.A. Times, the N.Y. Times at least attempts to find a balance. Nagourney ends the piece on an optimistic note, quoting Karen Philbrick, executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute:
Approximately two dozen other countries have found HSR feasible, including Uzbekistan… there is no reason it can’t be done here.
…the non-stop trips are mandated by law to be capable of being done within the 2hr40min window. That’s really all it says, no? It doesn’t say *how many* such daily trips must be provided, or anything else about service levels.
I still question that they can make it in commercial operation at 2:40 — 3:00 would be just fine and should have been the legal standard set. I suppose, if no train runs non-stop you will never break the law. Think that the super express always has a San Jose intermediate stop, just as Amtrak’s NEC Acela or the Tokiado Shinkansen Nozomi both have intermediate stops, then you never break the law. They could run one fast special test run at 2:40, and then claim victory. It really doesn’t matter, but it was a big mistake to legally mandate a 2:40 travel time.
LOL at this hot take. Yeah, 85% of surface transport is by automobile . . . because no one is buying a TGV ticket to do their shopping at Carrefour. HSR competes with plane travel, not with local car trips under 20km. HSR was never meant to “get Europeans out of cars.” It doesn’t need to – that’s what the metro is for. Automobile mode share for JTW in Paris is 20%, in Barcelona it’s 27%, in Berlin it’s 30%. Transit dominates. And still, even though the EU has lavished money on building out an “interstate” network, VMT in HSR corridors has grown at 1/3 the rate of European VMT in general.
Amtrak has captured +75% of the combined air/rail market between NYC and DC and +55% of the market between NYC and Boston. Megabus? Seriously? NJ Transit carries more people in the NEC in 4 hours than all the bus companies combined can muster along the same stretch of the NJ Turnpike in an entire week. The NEC carries over 750,000 pax per day. At current occupancy rates a bus would have to pass a fixed point on I-95 every 3 seconds, 24 hours a day to come close to those numbers. Buses as a solution to line haul services (be they air, HSR, commuter rail, or metro) is a bad joke told by someone who doesn’t understand physics.
First: flights I found on Kayak and other websites, show SFO to LAX tickets starting as little as 88 dollars, not 180. I don’t know what options you plan but there are cheap flights.
Second: As for the civilized world…According to the European Union, nearly 85% of passenger ground-level travel in the 28 countries that form it is by automobile, high-speed rail has done nothing to reduce that. In 1990, cars provided 84.8% of ground travel in France. Since then, despite massive high-speed rail construction program, the percentage of ground travel by car was still 84.8% in 2015. While rail’s share grew from 9.3 to 9.9%, it did so at the expense of cheap buses, not cars. High speed rail has not gotten Europeans out of cars nor has it had a major effect on the airline industry, airline use is growing in Europe. Even when automotive fuels are 2-4 times the price what they are in the US, automotive use is still predominant mode of travel. Japan in 1960’s before the Shinkansen came online, less than 5% of Japanese households had a car. Even as the system expanded, automobile use exploded. 1990’s 65% of Japanese households had a car. 2015, about 79% of Japanese households had a car.
Third: Megabus or any bus get’s around using the highway 5, one of the most congested roads in the state. Still most would argue price and convenience over speed. With SF to LA Megabus prices starting for a dollar….For turning a 2.5 hour trip into a 6.5 hour trip but shaves 98% of your ticket price. And for a dollar, you still get free wifi, free onboard entertainment, power outlets for your devices, reclining seats, reserved seating.
The fact is, other than a few places, high speed rail isn’t profitable anywhere else. Megaprojects are inherently risky due to complexity and long time horizons. Truly, you really only need to know one thing about megaprojects, and that is: Don’t do them. This is especially true for
governments, but also for the private sector. It is much better to do things incrementally or to undertake projects that can yield rewards immediately without having to wait for the investment of billions of dollars. Of course, if Apple or Google want to spend some of their
surplus billions on megaprojects, that’s up to them. It’s quite a different story when politicians use other people’s money. Especially when in the not too distant future, by the time HSR comes online in California; the growing low cost bus providers or inevitably driverless cars will steal all their customers.
The Acela Corridor? You think that’s HSR? If you want “real world experience” take a trip to Asia or Europe and see what HSR really is. The Acela Express takes 7 hours to go between DC and Boston, an average of 65 MPH, which is why it can only capture 6 percent of that travel market. . Nobody in the world defines that as HSR. HSR is designed to be competitive with air travel. HSR trains may only travel half the speed of a commercial jet, but they make up that time by locating the HSR stations in downtown areas and avoiding TSA hassles.
And Megabus? Are you serious? That may be only $10-15, but it’s still at least 7 hours from LA to SF, longer than it would take me to drive.
Meanwhile, the only option left for me to get to SF tomorrow morning is a $180 flight on Southwest. No thanks. Let’s join the civilized world and give American’s a real alternative to air travel.
Bus providers do the same thing. The first seats, ordered days in advance, cost a dollar, then after several seats fill, the price rises til you get closer to departure time, all transportation systems do this, buses, trains, airlines. With estimates that HSR would carry 18 million annual riders. Greyhound by itself carries 18 million riders and a fleet expansion could double that in as little as five years. Megabus surpassed 30 million riders annually five years ago.
None of the articles, tell the basic truth….
California can’t afford high speed rail. The state has a whole host of infrastructure challenges to fix and spending what will probably be 100 Billion dollars on a boondoggle. The fact is Short-distance travel (2-15 miles) using passenger trains was made obsolete by buses, shuttles and taxis in the 1920s. Long-distance travel (500+ miles) passenger trains were made obsolete by planes in the 1960’s. Intermediate distance travel (50-500 miles) that’s the last industry the passenger rail enthusiasts want to capture but intermediate distance travel is a small portion of all travel and they want to spend Billions of dollars on infrastructure that’ll require hundreds of millions in upkeep. In an area that already has transportation infrastructure, any transportation technology that requires new infrastructure to be built is doomed to fail because it will be unable to compete against technologies using existing infrastructure.
Acela cannot get more riders because the feds limited the rolling stock. They are buying new trains that will be longer (8 instead of 6 cars), which is still shorter than what most of the commuter lines pull.
Look up prices. Its almost always cheaper to fly, because demand for Acela means all the trains go 95% full. Prices are based on demand. If the train wasnt full, the price would be cheaper.
According to the European Union, nearly 85% of passenger ground-level
travel in the 28 countries that form it is by automobile, high-speed
rail has done nothing to reduce that. In 1990, cars provided 84.8% of
ground travel in France. Since then, despite massive high-speed rail
construction program, the percentage of ground travel by car was still
84.8% in 2015. While rail’s share grew from 9.3 to 9.9%, it did so at
the expense of buses, not cars. High speed rail has not gotten Europeans out of cars nor has it had a major effect on the airline industry. Even when automotive fuels are 2-4 times the price what they are in the US, automotive use is still predominant mode of travel.
And Amtrak in the Northeast is only about 6% of the travel market, cheap buses, that start as little as a dollar like Megabus and Bolt, higher grades like Greyhound with prices of 10-25 and luxury coach services have grown at twice Amtrak’s speed.
Fine you don’t need the Reason articles.
How about real world experience. The only HSR system is the US is the Acela. And it travels thru the densest corridor in the US, The BosWash metro and it only carries 3.4 million daily riders. The Northeast is the densest region in America so why didn’t they start with HSR there with trains going 220. Amtrak is only 6% of their travel market, despite billions in subsidies and new trains they got 6% of the travel market in the densest region in America… And an Acela ticket even the cheapest ones, cost 56 dollars, for 9 dollars I can go on a Greyhound from Boston to New York or Megabus for….one dollar. High speed rail is a waste of money, for decades to come, That article came from the NY Times. The debate over HSR in California is not about technology, freedom, or anything. The debate is should California with it’s enormous financial liabilities already on it’s table, build a very expensive railroad between Los Angeles and San Francisco? The Answer, No. The State’s education system is in shambles, it’s current infrastructure is falling apart. Highway 5 between LA and SF is miserable, but it’s not the key transportation problem in California. For HSR to work it needs to get people out of cars which this project wont. HSR between Boston and DC connect the trains to functioning public transit systems in their respective cities. Not available for LA or the Bay area. The two cities are already spending billions updating their antiquated or dilapidated mass transit with no money in their piggy banks to fund it.
Aw well, that’s not too bad. 125 will appear to be ludicrously fast, to Americans. Even if there are a lot of slow sections, it should make the 50-mile trip from Stockton to Sacramento in about half an hour or so, much less than the current 76 minutes.
The way it typically works in journalism is a corporate or think tank PR group writes the entire story, they hand to the journalist with talking points if every question and then the journalist submits the article for publication verbatim as if he’d written himself, and it usually just gets published as-is.
This Is the reality of most journalism in the US now and it’s only online bloggers and such who still do any critical analysis or commentary. This is why “fake news” has arisen as well.
I used to work in just such a corporate PR department – that’s why I know about it: we did the exact same thing. Of course, I’d like to think we were just telling our side but it was disconcerting when we’d see our own copy appear unedited in print even with typos.
It’s true, but the highways you use, connect to the highways you don’t use. From driveway to highway from coast to coast, there’s no where you cant drive to. The Interstate highway system was built on a pay as you go basis. Those 46,000 miles of highway weren’t built all at once, they built a few miles to connect to state routes and the more people used it, the more revenue it got to expand and maintain.
According to the article, Los Angeles opened an extension of the Expo
light-rail line in 2016 that cost a mere $2.43 billion. With that extension, weekday ridership on the line grew from 46,000 to 64,000 trips. So, for $135,000, the region got, at most, one car off the road each day. According to the Southern California Association of Government’s long-range transportation plan, the region sees more than 62 million trips per day. So, for only $8.4 trillion, the region could build enough light rail to get all of the cars off the road. That’s assuming constant returns to scale, which is unlikely. How much would you have to pay for that…………tiny fraction
“Delivering on pledges is something that California’s freeway-builders routinely fail to do”
So a 100 dollar train ticket is the solution, versus just driving yourself or a bus.
For 19 dollars I can get a bus ticket on a Greyhound from LA to SF or vice versa and do so now. Instead of having to wait til 2025, 2030, 2040 for the rail to be finished.
Short-distance passenger trains were made obsolete by buses as far back as the 1920s. Long-distance trains were made obsolete by planes in the 1950s. When other transportation technologies, such as horseback riding, steamboats, and canals went obsolete, we let them go except for tourism and museums. Like Moore’s law for computing and Murphy’s Law for failure; Transportation should follow three basic laws.
1: UC professor Charles Lave insisted on observing the “Law of Large Proportions.” Investing $1 Billion on the option used by 95% of the people (Roads used for Drive Alone, carpool, buses, vans, shuttles, motorcycles, etc) will produce far more benefits than investing the same $1 Billion on the option used by less than 2.0% of the people (Rail).
2: “The Law of New per capita investments” In an area that already has transportation infrastructure, any transportation technology that requires new infrastructure to be built is doomed to fail because it will be unable to compete against technologies using existing infrastructure. Especially infrastructure that costs more to build per mile and more to maintain per mile as well.
3: Transportation efficiency isn’t always a matter of speed, convenience is also important and based on destination…. Station to station transportation technology is no match for something that offers door to door service. If you can be picked up from home, work, a street curb or bus station or alley, corner, parking lot….it doesn’t matter. Any technology that can pick you up from exactly where you are and take you exactly where you need to go is clearly superior.
Except for a few major urban areas, rail transit is obsolete.
As a single driver, I have only used a tiny fraction of all of the available interstate highway miles in the United States. And yet, as a taxpayer, I have to pay to maintain the entire federal highway system. It should be fairly obvious why we as taxpayers cannot choose to only pay for the infrastructure that we personally use. Although I may never drive on a highway in Texas, I still benefit from the commerce that takes place on that particular segment of the country’s overall infrastructure.
“Train systems in Asia and Europe that have similar run times have taken huge market share from airports.”
We have had this phenomenon in the US for decades now. The much slower Amtrak dominates the airlines in the Northeast Corridor. It’s preposterous to think that the same thing won’t happen in CA with much faster trains.
$170 billion is based on outdated assumptions.
It’s not anywhere near “off the rails”.
From what I’ve read, that portion of Phase 2 will be 125 mph max. That’s the same as along the Peninsula. Going faster requires full grade separation, which it turning out to be very expensive. The 220 mph part will be in the middle and was the carrot to get voter approval in the Bay Area and LA region.
Why is anyone getting gas at all? Leave it in the ground and go solar with electric cars.
You want to read puff pieces about HSR go here: https://www.cahsrblog.com/
The NYT isn’t even-handed when it’s writing about Donald Trump either.
It’s not the job of the press to publish puff pieces about a public works project that has gone seriously off the rails. Their job is to print the new and raise hell.
It’s less than 400 miles via I-5, about 383 miles.
It’s 407 miles hitting Fresno and Bakersfield.
Adding palmdale does add a bit, but the chosen route is less than 450.
Modern HSR is running at 1800-190mph sustained. 2 hours 40 minutes is still easily achievable with current technology.
I guess you haven’t actually ridden the San Joaquin, or you wouldn’t be making that assertion.
Wrong! 400 miles via I-5. Now go via Fresno and Palmdale. Recalculate.
Approximately 2 dozen nations have found HSR feasible….define feasible. In any business, you either have to sell 10,000 items for a dollar each or one item for 10,000 dollars or some ratio in between to cover your expenses; once you’ve worked those numbers, that’s defined as feasibility. The transit industry defines feasibility as being able to obtain funding from a secondary, tertiary even quarternary partner to cover expenses beyond what your fares otherwise couldn’t cover on it’s own, i.e. the Taxpayer, be it municipal, county, state, even federal.
It’s too bad they don’t audit HSR because even questioning the usual platitudes about
eco-sustainability. According to the European Union, nearly 85% of passenger ground-level travel in the 28 countries that form it is by automobile, high-speed rail has done nothing to reduce that. In 1990, cars provided 84.8% of ground travel in France. Since then, despite massive high-speed rail construction program, the percentage of ground travel by car was still 84.8% in 2015. While rail’s share grew from 9.3 to 9.9%, it did so at the expense of buses, not cars.
Even when automotive fuels are 2-4 times the price what they are in the US, automotive use is still predominant mode of travel. While very light weight fuel efficient cars are less safe statistically, It’s a moot point, that doesn’t matter since Europeans are probably better drivers (getting a license is vastly more difficult in Germany or UK), vehicle speeds in villages and urban areas tend to be low (Less than 25 miles per hour).
Completion of it’s first operating segment from San Jose and Bakersfield won’t be complete til 2027, and the first phase from San Fran to Anaheim wont be complete until 2033. The project has technical superlatives that’ll never be met. This train has to make 220 miles per hour…even the legendary Shinkansen, tops at 200. So operating a train at speeds higher than any current project that exists today. The projects costs went from 25 billion when it was conceived in 2000, to 100 Billion by 2008. When Governor Brown let the cat out of the bag, he knew the project was treading water financially so they turned it into a blended system with some high speed and some speeds of just 90 mph. The project has no clear funding plan, so far federal subsidies from the Obama administration and presently from carbon taxes of which California is the only state to enact. Going from 25 to 100 Billion, so downgrading performance to render it in at 64 billion. Since 2016 the projects costs has ballooned regardless to 77 Billion.
Even if construction is ever finished, the problems don’t end here. Estimates 18 million to 32 million riders in the opening year of the full, Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line, rising to 32 to 55 million trips by 2040, the full project based on delays wont be available UNTIL 2040. Those ridership numbers are overestimated. Amtrak only carries 12
million trips in the Boston-to-Washington corridor, which has more people and a better central anchor (New York vs. Fresno). Nevermind the fact for 20 dollars I can take a greyhound bus from SF to LA, the ride is admittedly 3 times longer but 3-4 times cheaper.
Even if it could cover operating costs, that won’t be enough for long, because rolling stock and fixed infrastructure wears out, as Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and DC transit riders know all too well. It means that taxpayers; Whether they USE IT OR NOR will have to start injecting about half a billion to a billion dollars a year (in today’s dollars) to keep the system moving. Even Quentin Kopp, the man who introduced the legislation in 2008, says this project is a failure and regrets supporting the program.
I agree completely. In fact, I really think what they should have done is started with the easiest part of the system that can attract the most riders: Sacramento south to Stockton and Modesto. You can double-track and electrify that for a pittance and start service right away without waiting for whole stations to be completed. Once you get people rocketing around the Central Valley at 220 MPH the people only 80 miles away in Silicon Valley are going to get jealous. The extra bonus is you gain operational experience and a sliver of revenue right away, before you have to operate the entire system.
There’s obviously demand on this phase of the project, since they recently established peak-hour service from Stockton to Sacramento under the San Joaquin title. It takes an hour to go the 35 miles from Lodi to Sac, which is absurd but people still pay for that.
One of the points that always seems to get overlooked is the 119-mile – what I will call the higher-speed “starter line” (in the San Joaquin Valley) – connecting Poplar Ave. in Shafter with the new Madera Amtrak station with direct connections south to Bakersfield and north to Merced and points north, respectively, projected to be open for passenger service in 2022, will offer riders a faster ride compared to what Amtrak “San Joaquins'” service currently provides, on smoother trackbed, on double- (not single-) track, on dedicated (no interference from freights or other passenger trains) right-of-way, completely grade-separated (meaning no intersections where road and railroad meet), all of which means uninterrupted service between stations. Once the riding public gets a taste of this upgraded level of service, it is my firm belief that the value and benefit of this will be clearly seen which, in my opinion, will prompt additional building and garner additional ridership, especially if travel times between stations surpasses that of highway travel – the service will sell itself, in other words. It is at that time that some if not many detractors will be “believers.” This always seems to be the case. It is imperative that this first 119 miles becomes operational.
“At almost $70 billion dollars, construction of a high speed rail system from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim is certainly an expensive project. But it will cost a fraction of what the state would have to spend to achieve the same level of mobility for a population expected to reach 50 million people by the year 2030. To move an equivalent number of people would cost $170 billion in new freeways and airport runway expansions in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, assuming those projects would have both the necessary public support and environmental clearance. And while others have said we should wait for newer technology, high speed rail is a safe, reliable and cost effective system of transportation, proven around the world.” –San Francisco Examiner
Whenever somebody quotes the Reason Foundation, I think back to the article published the month after the Expo Line opened (May 2012). Average weekday ridership for the first month, between 7th/Metro and La Cienega (it didn’t even go to Culver City yet), was less than 12,000. The article went into great detail about how this single statistic proved that the Expo Line was a failure, ridership would never increase from this initial value, and that the ridership forecasts (27,000 daily riders by 2030) were total BS, etc., etc.
Of course, history shows that the Expo Line has been a huge success, in spite of all of the design and operational problems. Ridership surged to more than 30,000 daily riders within two years, and doubled again to over 60,000 daily riders within a year after the line was completed to Santa Monica.
Meanwhile, all efforts to contact the authors of the Reason Foundation article were met with silence. These people will write anything that supports their worldview, using only the hand-picked statistics that support their thesis, and crawl into a hole when confronted with contradictory facts. They have an agenda, and a captive audience. Unfortunately for us, that audience includes most of the people in power at the federal level.
It’s the press’ job to print the news and raise hell, not to regurgitate CHSRA press releases and fanboy hype. And can you blame them for being skeptical of CHSRA claims and assertions? In 2008 the cost was estimated at $33.6 billion. That went up to $34.9 billion the following year. By November 2011 the cost was increased to $65.4 and $74.5 billion. The latest business plan shows costs at between $63.3 and $98 billion, with CHSRA suggesting a middle ground $77.3 billion. Seems the biggest block to finding the truth is CHSR itself.
“At almost $70 billion dollars, construction of a high speed rail system from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim is certainly an expensive project. But it will cost a fraction of what the state would have to spend to achieve the same level of mobility for a population expected to reach 50 million people by the year 2030. To move an equivalent number of people would cost $170 billion in new freeways and airport runway expansions in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, assuming those projects would have both the necessary public support and environmental clearance. And while others have said we should wait for newer technology, high speed rail is a safe, reliable and cost effective system of transportation, proven around the world.” –San Francisco Examiner
Uzbeck HSR is closer to Brightline than 220 m.p.h. future California.
Why is anyone still getting gas at Exxons or Mobils these days ? Just go across the street.
I did not find the NY Times piece to be balanced either and I take issue starting with the second word, well number: $100 billion.
The author cited the highest cost in a range starting at $77.3 billion but more importantly reiterates the idea the original estimate was $40 billion in 2008. A figure both supporters and opponents use.
The legislation we voted for itself makes no estimate or projection of the total cost since that could change drastically. The estimate included in the analysis section of the ballot measure was the CAHSRA projection of $45 billion in 2006.
Did anybody else even read the measure?
http://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2008/general/pdf-guide/suppl-complete-guide.pdf
The $45 and $100 billion estimates arrived by a different methodology as well. In order to make more accurate estimates, the Federal government now requires projections be made based on the cost in the year you expect to spend the money, adjusted for a projected inflation rate.
The $77.3-$100 billion is measured in year-of-expenditure dollars based on a completion of phase 1 in 2033 and the Central Valley-to-Silicon Valley segment completed in 2029.
It might all seem nit-picky, but if you’re going to criticize the costs, you should be using real numbers.
I’d started writing an item 3, “look for ways to accelerate upgrades to ACE and Capitol Corridor which have been running about as fast as the trains.” but didn’t want to get into the 125mph network.
For everyone else:
When the Channel Tunnel (Chunnel) opened it used an existing (read: crowded, slow) rail corridor the rest of the way to London until a new high-speed corridor, dubbed “High-Speed 1” (HS1) opened around a decade ago.
It doesn’t describe the benefits of HSR at all, nor does it describe the problem that HSR solves, nor the costs and benefits of competing solutions. You could write the exact same article except about sanitation: “Sewers: the future, or trillion-dollar boondoggle?” I doubt you would consider that treatment even-handed.
SF to LA is 400 miles. Getting there in 2 hours and 40 minutes means 150mph sustained, or 80mph with some 220 mph in stretches. Far from impossible with current technology.
Thanks for that clarification. I was talking about interim ways to get to the Bay Area/Oakland and SF from the Central Valley. And I disagree with what you’re saying about giving ammunition to opponents. In the UK, everybody who rode through the Chunnel had the same experience–you’d feel like 60~90 mph in the UK was ‘fast’ but then when the train emerged in France and quickly accelerated to 180+, it was kind of mind blowing. On the way back to London, the UK portion suddenly felt like you could get out and walk. I think this did wonders for growing support and momentum in the UK for HS1 (the connection from London to the Channel).
Under the 2018 CAHSRA business plan, in the summary and a section titled “Early Interim Services in the Central Valley and Between San Francisco and Gilroy” which would:
1. Start HSR service in the Central Valley between Madera and Bakersfield.
2. Complete Caltrain electrificaton/upgrades from San Jose to Gilroy, fund replacement of the last 25% of Caltrain’s diesel fleet, and start express service with Caltrain potientially running over 79mph
There’s also the funding the CAHSRA has already provided for Caltrain electrification and if the CAHSRA opened anything which was not “true” HSR (like HSR trains running under 100mph on the Peninsula) it would give ammunition to every opponent who believes trains will never travel faster than they do today.
I agree that the NYT piece is not quite even-handed – it gave more inches to the project critics than I would have – but, IMO overall, it tells the arc of the CAHSR project in a way that can orient people who aren’t all that familiar with what’s going on. There is a funding shortfall – that’s a problem, but not insurmountable.
Just because something is printed in an “esteemed” newspaper doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Ever heard of Jayson Blair, a NY Times reporter who made stories up for years? https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html
In 2012, the LA Times published a piece about the challenges of engineering HSR through areas prone to earthquakes–without once mentioning the 2011 tohoku earthquake in Japan, by far the biggest real-world test ever of HSR earthquake engineering. So let’s not pretend the LA Times is publishing unbiased critiques of CaHSR. https://la.preprod-streetsblog.alley.ws/2014/06/18/the-los-angeles-times-and-its-disgraceful-reporting-on-high-speed-rail/
Between 1985 and 2015 Reason has received $857,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation, $344,528 from the Charles G. Koch Foundation and $1,522,212 from the David H. Koch Foundation. Admittedly, Reason has started to get better at hiding behind intermediaries, to distance themselves from their funders. Anyway, take it up with Source Watch and other “think tank” trackers.
I disagree about recommending the NYT article. From the very title, they’re using misleading information. They then follow up citing a poll which is not in line with what other polls have found. Finally, all their “against” quotes come from partisan politicians, not experts.
Enlightening. Most of the nation already knows CAHSR is in the process of imploding. If not for the religious fanaticism of Jerry Brown, it would already be dead, and we would have moved on to other more worthwhile endeavors.
The $9 billion that voters approved won’t float the ~$100 billion of true cost, and the Feds are not coming to bail out this turkey.
Esteemed Pulitzer Prize winning publications such as the NYTimes and LATimes are now being called out by a couple SB editors? Hold your breath for Streetsblog Uzbekistan…
Thanks for this piece. What most concerned me was the assertion in the NYT piece that the project’s strategy now was to move construction forward in such a way that to cancel the project would be a political embarrassment. CAHSR should be able to survive on it’s merits, which the article hardly mentions. How are we having this debate in the era of climate change? However, I can only look at the construction and wish that they had prioritized building from the bay area south to Fresno as an initial operating segment instead of putting their resources into building out the spine all the way to Bakersfield.
According to NYT, the Kochs were Reason’s #1 funder in 2012.
“Reason TV and its magazine and Internet outlets are subsidiaries of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian research organization whose largest donors are the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation ($1,522,212) and the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($2,016,000), according to the foundations’ most recent filings. Both finance conservative and libertarian causes.”
Koch brothers and Exxon have not funded reason in over 30 years, but go on, keep peddling that notion to your readers.
Liberals have destroyed California.
The real question here is who is dictating these stories to these reporters? It can’t just be coincidence that Vartabedian and L.A.-based Nagourney come out with wildly negative HSR stories in national papers on the same day. Who do they go to dinner with?
Unlike the authors of this blog, I did not find the NYT piece even-handed. I think both pieces are complete garbage.