Bad news today:
🚆NEWS: Over $3 billion in federal funding is headed to California High Speed Rail!
That means:
♻️Reduced transportation emissions
🚄Less time in traffic
💸More good-paying jobsProud to have championed @CaHSRA’s application for this Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding! pic.twitter.com/uwAMUGehOs
— Senator Alex Padilla (@SenAlexPadilla) December 5, 2023
Californians passed a bond measure for HSR between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2008. It is now 15 years later and we aren't even close to finishing the first little segment. In fact, let's review a few facts and figures from the latest CAHSR business plan:
- The initial "train to nowhere," a 171 mile segment from Merced to Bakersfield, is still seven years away even if the latest schedule is met. It will supposedly be completed by 2030 after more than a decade of work and attract 12 million riders per year. Between Merced and Bakersfield!
- The other 350 miles linking San Francisco to Los Angeles will take only three more years. You betcha.
- By 2035 the authority will be running 120 trains daily between the Bay Area and Greater LA. Assuming an 18-hour day, that's one train every nine minutes. You betcha.
- Ridership will clock in at 32 million per year compared to about 12 million who fly between Greater LA and the Bay Area today. That's 800 passengers per train and 90,000 passengers per day. You betcha.
- The authority continues to claim that the full LA-SF trip will take 2 hours and 40 minutes, even though this would require continuous operation at average speeds higher than any HSR in the world. You betcha.
Oh, and it still lacks about $80 billion in needed financing even after today's $3 billion infusion. Hell, even the train to nowhere is still $10 billion short.
What's remarkable is that all of these assumptions are actually more realistic than they used to be. They've gone from pure fantasy to applied fantasy, but they're still fantasy. And now we're sinking another $3 billion into it. Sigh.
Well, don't forget about the time change between LA and SanFran.
😉
I just wish we had more interesting boondoggles. Doesn't anyone want a giant pyramid anymore? Say it focuses Moon Man energy, that's just as realistic.
Actually I think this is for an entirely separate HSR project, apparently a private one to build a line between Rancho Cucamongo and Las Vegas:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-05/socal-to-vegas-in-two-hours-high-speed-rail-comes-closer-to-reality-with-3-billion-award
Seems bewildering to me, but at least the route seems easier (more desert) and the price tag’s cheaper?
EDIT: oh wait, the LA to SF one also got a separate $3 B grant. I’m the one who’s confused!
The route to Las Vegas is Interstate 15, so a 200 mph train running down the median would be a terrific advertisement to the captive audience in automobiles. Rancho Cucamonga ties in to LA Metro, so it does reach downtown.
The rest of the money is private, and the company involved has already built a line between Miami and Orlando, so they have some credibility.
It doesn’t go to LA though, only to Rancho Cucamonga. Seems kind of weird to me.
the problem with Brightline is that it's a private business that only cares about getting train service running as fast as possible. a public entity running the train would actually dig in their heels and figure out how to handle whatever competing right-of-way currently monopolizes most service on that last 20-mile leg between RC and LA *before* launching anything. Brightline can't be bothered to deal with that now; they'd rather prove they can do RC-to-Vegas immediately and then use that success as leverage to milk whatever public funds are required to get the rights from Union Pacific or whoever to run on that obvious final leg to LA.
exactly. it would be better if it weren't literally the Brightline model where the private sector gets to capture all the money, and even better if it actually connected directly to the LA Metro instead of requiring some very stupid additional connection from Rancho Cucamonga at like Union Station or something.
but a LOT of people drive between Vegas
and LA, and it's likely that any halfway well-designed, reasonably-priced train will soak up quite a bit of that car traffic.
The HSR project is a fiasco at this point. It was supposed to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles and I can guarantee you that the majority of people who voted for it were in those two cities. It is currently going from Madera to Bakersfield and I can guarantee you that the people who it will serve are the people least likely to have voted for it and least likely to use it.
The New York Times had a really good article on the project about a year ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html
the problem is that the only way to square this circle politically was to fling ice cream at these people's elected representatives EVEN THOUGH there is very little point in centering the project on the Central Valley. the *obvious* solution, if we're thinking about this technocratically, is to bypass Modesto to Bakersfield *entirely*, run the main HSR service as express between SF and LA along the I-5 corridor or whatever, and think about adding a connecting spur in between the Central Valley and that main HSR line once it seems like lots of people will use it.
except if you do it that way, the D state senators representing Fresno and Bakersfield will throw a monumental fit and kill funding for the entire thing. you have to bribe them with their own stations even though it makes the whole project somewhat worse, because without them they will angrily kill it all.
Interesting that you use a very outdated map to support your argument Kevin…San Francisco to Bakersfield, Bakersfield to Palmdale, and Burbank to Los Angeles are all environmentally cleared.
That and many billion additional dollars of funding will get us the opportunity to buy an overpriced cup of coffee on the train.
quora/chat-gpt claims there are around 50 million auto trips per year between sf and LA. The HSR would expect to capture a big chunk of that market as well as part of the air-traffic market. And we would expect CA population to increase over the next 10 years.
I for one certainly hope California’s population does not increase.
Also, you should discuss the costs of upgrading airports and freeways and compare that to the cost of HSR.
It is interesting that we rarely see fact based comparisons to the cost of highway and airport upgrades/expansions. Although i realize its a lot of work to put together a meaningful apples to apples comparison.
What they're building is the world's most expensive commuter rail connecting Fresno and Merced to San Jose. That's what it will be used for if it ever gets built. The idea that there are millions of riders in Bakersfield chomping at the bit to get to Merced each morning, shaking their fists in the air as they sit in traffic on the 99, is pretty hilarious.
There are some things that I can't say much about.
- Completion dates are a guess, and the USA seems particularly bad at building things on time.
- Number of passengers is based on a model, and the assumptions are a big part of that - though we have seen instances of passenger numbers being quite high when there is fast, convenient transport available.
Some others might be exaggerated, but not wildly.
- I can't say that they will run 120 trains a day, but the Paris-Lyon route sees 70+ (over less than 18 hours).
- 800 passengers per train is certainly possible. A double TGV-Duplex carries over 1000.
- I don't know if the trip is practical in under three hours, but the TGV now reaches operational speeds of 200 mph.
Worth it no matter the cost.
As far as I'm concerned, they should
spend whatever it takes.
Since we never object to huge overruns in highway projects, I see no reason to wring our hands here.
Call me when the budget exceeds $1 trillion. I'll cheerfully support another $1 trillion. We can pull that money from highway and airport spending - they're just pointless boondoggles which enrich fossil fuel interests while killing Americans.
FWIW, at least the Northern CA portion could be completed in 3 years as it runs down existing Southern Pacific right of way which is being electrified for the existing Caltrain commuter line. That project is about 95% complete from SF to San Jose. Kevin, of course, ignores this as he prefers cars and airplanes. That said, given that they haven't removed most of the at grade crossings I expect there will be routine delays from train assisted suicide just as there currently are for Caltrain.
I’m not sure any at grade crossings have been removed. Certainly not in the parts of the lower peninsula I haunt.
Since I don't live in CA I haven't followed this closely but I've seen Kevin post about it periodically. It seems incredible that they didn't pull the plug on this years ago. Is the general public still for it?
As a Democrat I want, broad public faith in government to make good decisions, and positively improve people's lives. This stupid train project is a value destroyer on many fronts...
how is this still ongoing? haven't CA voters figured out this is a massive boondoggle yet?
The transcontinental railroad was also a train to nowhere. Once it got past Chicago, the route was through wilderness. There's a reason it was opposed by the Southern states. It was just government waste, and it only got approved during the Civil War when all the sensible legislators were backing the Confederacy. Estimates in the 1890s were that about $3B was pissed down the tubes which would be something like $300B today. Worse, it employed all kinds of genetic inferiors like Chinese and Irish immigrants.
If they actually get the thing built, we'll know in another 10-20 years. Transportation infrastructure induces demand. It just takes a decade or two for development patterns to respond.
Yes, it's very expensive, but in contrast to the privately funded rail endeavors like Brightline in Florida and the predictably doomed HSR project in Texas, the project in California at least seems to be putting money where it counts long term: grade separation, centrally located stations, and integration with existing transit systems. Hopefully, lessons can be learned from it that will help bring the exorbitantly high costs of such infrastructure in the US down to a level more in line with other countries. So many regions of the US could be wonderfully served by high-speed rail. If California can point the way (as it has so often done before), that in itself would be of immense value.
The rare corollary to the standard Kevin Drum post, "That thing you're worried about isn't a big deal to me, Kevin Drum", today we have a "That thing you don't care about really pisses me, Kevin Drum, off!"