# California Hi-Speed Rail



## GoldenSpike (May 14, 2012)

Article from the LA Times. Most of the 135 comments to the article are anti-HSR.

 

High-speed spending: Bullet train may need $3.5 million a day


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## George Harris (May 14, 2012)

I have spent the better part of 40 years doing civil engineering work in rail transportation projects, and there has always been the same song sung by many in the media and public: It costs too much, it takes to long to build, and nobody is going to ride it. In all cases that I have had anything to do with, after the first useful segment was opened, the entire perspective turned around.

There some professional anti-passenger rail of all types that show up for every rail project in this country. They have now reached sufficient sophistication that they like to be puppet masters and have other people's names on the anti rail propoganda.

Washington Metro is a good example: There was a large system first proposed sometime around 1960, maybe earlier. Then, about 1969 the first segment got started on what was to be a 25 mile system. In the early 70's the ultimate system was supposed to be 98 miles. Then in the late 70's it got cut to a 65 miles and never to be any more system. Then the ridership was good and more people wanted it, so the 98 mile system came back, with about another 3 added to one line. Then as that began to approach completion, one of the dotted in "probably never' segments was added. Now the segment out to Dulles Airport is about to be underway.

After you can get anything started on construction, at least the first segment will probably be built, but you have to start with something somewhere, anywhere.

It is not the sort of work to get into if you like instant gratification. You are lucky to see anything through to operation in the same decade, but if you can stand it, ultimately you can see something happen.

Dallas DART is a good example of that. In the mid 1980's serious planning got under way. It was decided to pick a part, any part that could possibly make sense and start construction. Did not happen because the powers that be could not agree on what part. In 1988 the whole concept was killed. A couple of years later, the decision to build one piece came back. One area of the city basically said never, never for us, but after the first segment was opened the noise from the same part of the area started begging to be next.


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## Devil's Advocate (May 14, 2012)

Back in the 1970's and 1980's passenger rail was merely too old and too expensive. Now that passenger rail is being intentionally confused with claims of socialism and graft it has a much higher barrier to political success, as we're already seeing as the non-riding public has begun to turn against it. The stakes have probably never been higher. After watching virtually every other high speed rail project crash and burn CAHSR remains the one and only project still standing at this point. Kill that one and nobody will be taking high speed passenger rail in America seriously for a very long time.


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## leemell (May 14, 2012)

George Harris said:


> I have spent the better part of 40 years doing civil engineering work in rail transportation projects, and there has always been the same song sung by many in the media and public: It costs too much, it takes to long to build, and nobody is going to ride it. In all cases that I have had anything to do with, after the first useful segment was opened, the entire perspective turned around.
> 
> There some professional anti-passenger rail of all types that show up for every rail project in this country. They have now reached sufficient sophistication that they like to be puppet masters and have other people's names on the anti rail propoganda.
> 
> ...


It is not just rail or even transportation, I have seen this happen in all kinds of big projects, very large computer projects have all the same characteristics and can be be extremely complex on top of the rest, a danger that the system engineer must be on the lookout for. Look at the Interstate Highway system, trucking associations opposed it before any was built. How many now would say that?


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## Devil's Advocate (May 14, 2012)

leemell said:


> Look at the Interstate Highway system, trucking associations opposed it before any was built. How many now would say that?


I have never heard that. What was the reasoning behind it?


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## GoldenSpike (May 14, 2012)

Texas Sunset said:


> leemell said:
> 
> 
> > Look at the Interstate Highway system, trucking associations opposed it before any was built. How many now would say that?
> ...


This appears to explain the issue:

 

Moving the goods: An interstate era begins


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## Anderson (May 15, 2012)

GoldenSpike said:


> Texas Sunset said:
> 
> 
> > leemell said:
> ...


From what I can tell, the main complaint was that the trucking industry was going to get socked with most of the bill for the IHS because of the gas tax provisions.


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## George Harris (May 15, 2012)

Anderson said:


> GoldenSpike said:
> 
> 
> > Texas Sunset said:
> ...


That was true. It was and still is also true that trucks pay far less in taxes on fuel in proportion to their directly related road maintenance costs than automobiles and other light axle laod vehicles. Their lobbying has always been highly effective. Allowed axle loads for trucks and vehicle sizes are now far in excess of what they were in the 1950's.

While number of lanes and some geometric standards are based on automobiles, or more accurately traffic volume in total, bridge design, pavement design, and clearances are all based on heavy trucks.


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## Blackwolf (May 15, 2012)

California High Speed Rail given conditional blessing

SacBee article just posted up detailing how one Peer Review committee has given its "thumbs-up" to the revised rail plan.


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## me_little_me (May 27, 2012)

George Harris said:


> I have spent the better part of 40 years doing civil engineering work in rail transportation projects, and there has always been the same song sung by many in the media and public: It costs too much, it takes to long to build, and nobody is going to ride it. In all cases that I have had anything to do with, after the first useful segment was opened, the entire perspective turned around.
> 
> There some professional anti-passenger rail of all types that show up for every rail project in this country. They have now reached sufficient sophistication that they like to be puppet masters and have other people's names on the anti rail propoganda.


On the other hand, unrealistic cost estimates end up with huge overruns. The costs are intentionally minimized in official statements in order to maximize the buy-in then only later does the truth come out. Makes for skeptical people. Sure there are unexpected obstacles - but most of them are known possibilities or even probabilities.


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## George Harris (May 27, 2012)

me_little_me said:


> On the other hand, unrealistic cost estimates end up with huge overruns. The costs are intentionally minimized in official statements in order to maximize the buy-in then only later does the truth come out. Makes for skeptical people. Sure there are unexpected obstacles - but most of them are known possibilities or even probabilities.


For the most part you are just flat wrong. There is a considerable effort made to include reasonable probabilities and possibilities. Sometimes the politicians choose to adjust numbers for their own purposes. That cannot be stopped by the engineers and estimators. Just a thought: It was not the designers or builders of the Titanic that claimed that the ship was unsikable, nor even the operating side of White Star Lines. They knew better. It was the publicists and politicians that came up with that nonsense.

The poster child for your statement has been Washington DC Metro, and to a lesser extent MARTA. What everyone using these as examples is the runaway inflation we were dealing with between initial cost estimates and construction.

Conversly, the first round of DART, because the estimates were realistic the propoganda you just presented was used to kill it for several years. Then when construction actually started quite a bit came in *under* the estimates that were made some 5 years previously.

There are a lot of individuals, political and other agencies that are doing their best to make sure that they get things added to drive up the costs of the HSR system that will then with great joy and enthusiasm be amoung the first to blame those that were trying to keep things reasonable.


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## me_little_me (May 28, 2012)

George Harris said:


> me_little_me said:
> 
> 
> > On the other hand, unrealistic cost estimates end up with huge overruns. The costs are intentionally minimized in official statements in order to maximize the buy-in then only later does the truth come out. Makes for skeptical people. Sure there are unexpected obstacles - but most of them are known possibilities or even probabilities.
> ...


Please reread my statement. I never said the designers or estimators made those misleading claims. As an engineer myself, my estimates were pretty accurate - but management often underpriced or underestimated the time needed to win the business or get the funding. And all the variables that could result in higher costs were simply ignored.

Many of those issues are also not technical but political. For example, without guaranteed funding, projects often end up costing much more than estimates. And so is the fact that political as well as social and environmental issues will cause delays. Then there is higher inflation - it is coming! But* these area known issues*. They happen all the time. When the first segment of a HSR project is done, watch all the issues that "arise" to block the second or third phase resulting in higher costs. To not take that into account is political. It is misleading. It is untrue.

Remember the Boston Big Dig? Huge overruns.

Your Titanic example has nothing to do with the issue except it does show that "official" pronouncements are untrustworthy.


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## Anderson (May 28, 2012)

George,

The number of overruns that are run into makes me suspect that there is, in general, a tendency to "sit on" the cost estimates as much as possible. Part of the problem is that when we're given estimates, we're rarely given a good "confidence interval" on those estimates (i.e. "What are the odds that you are off by 20%? 40%?").

Mind you, this isn't exactly limited to passenger rail...a lot of other projects suffer from this sort of problem. Some of this can simply be inflation (always hard to estimate, especially for "non-standard" items, and some of it is that people don't look at the cost "in real terms" from the date of the estimate when there have been delays in getting it started. But there seems to be a bit too much credulity on the part of a lot of elected officials to just take estimates at face value rather than either seriously examining the numbers or demanding responsibility for long strings of wildly undershot estimates.

If estimates were, on average, "good", then as a rule we should see about as many projects come in under budget as come in over budget (let's be honest...if inflation were the issue, it would be easy enough to adjust "standard" inflation projections to reflect known history and/or to stick a quick one-page appendix on the back of a proposal estimating the cost assuming different dates of starting and finishing the project). Yeah, there might be a slight bias towards projects coming in at the higher end of a projected range...but the relative number of overbudget projects vs. underbudget projects that one hears about suggests sloppy accouting.


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## leemell (May 28, 2012)

Anderson said:


> George,
> 
> The number of overruns that are run into makes me suspect that there is, in general, a tendency to "sit on" the cost estimates as much as possible. Part of the problem is that when we're given estimates, we're rarely given a good "confidence interval" on those estimates (i.e. "What are the odds that you are off by 20%? 40%?").
> 
> ...


I've never been in a project that the budget estimates were not given with at least best and worst included along with what drove them. No engineer I know would have not included them. Whether or not management presented them to funders was another issue.


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## GoldenSpike (May 28, 2012)

me_little_me said:


> The costs are intentionally minimized in official statements in order to maximize the buy-in then only later does the truth come out. Makes for skeptical people.


That could be the case here.

In 2008, 52% of voters approved it when the estimate was $40 billion. However in 2011 it rose to between $98.5 billion

and $118 billion.

A 2011 poll was taken:

64% want the opportunity for a revote.

59% would reject the plan if they could revote.

37% who voted for it would now reject it.

Fare estimates increased.

There are a gaggle of lawsuits foreseen.

*Joe Vranch*, HSR advocate (former CEO, HSR Assoc. - former Executive Director NARP - past member of the

Amtrak Reform Council) in a 11:45 minute video at the link speaks before a CA hearing stating, "_This is the first time _

_I am unable to endorse a high-speed rail plan_," and that he found the CA HSR Authority's work to be "_the poorest_

_I have ever seen._"

There are many other issues discussed in the link.

Ballotpedia


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## Anderson (May 28, 2012)

leemell said:


> Anderson said:
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> 
> > George,
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And I think this is the problem: When I hear a plan pitched, it generally includes _one_ number. Not a high estimate, middle estimate, and low estimate...you get one number. For example, on a Tier I DEIS in Virginia, there was a price tag given for upgrading the CSX Peninsula Subdivision. It was $330m for 90 MPH and $430m for 110 MPH (no idea what was actually included, but I'm assuming lots of double tracking was involved in both cases). It wasn't "90 MPH: Low case $330m, middle case $380m, high case $420m", it was a single number.

Bringing this over to CA, we heard $30-odd billion to begin with. We weren't given ranges of numbers, we were given a single number. What do you think the odds are, particularly given the size of the project, that we _weren't_ given the low estimate.


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## mfastx (May 28, 2012)

The longer they wait to build it, the more it will cost. I wish people weren't so short sighted and would just build the damn thing!


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## Shawn Ryu (Jun 3, 2012)

It aint happening. What a waste of money and was nothing more than a false hope.


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## Texan Eagle (Jun 4, 2012)

Sorry if this is a very dumb question- why are they not considering a conventional rail link that can be constructed and run with decent ridership without having to put in a gazillion dollars and decades of lawsuits, surveys and then construction? It is very amusing to me that two of the largest urban centers in the country, with sizeable population towns enroute has *NO* trains running between them (don't remind me about Coast Starlight- at that slowpoke speed taking twice the driving time it is a leisure tourist train, not a means of transport). Los Angeles to San Francisco via Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, San Jose is 421 miles according to Google Maps. Boston to Washington DC is 448 miles as per same maps. If the NE Corridor can have decently high speed rail network with dozens of daily departures, won't a similar corridor that can make the LA to SF run in 5-6 hours also get patronage? Once that is made and gets successful among the locals, then think of increasing the speeds by gradual improvements. If you show a huge daydream to the people and not build anything, obviously the sentiment is going to be hugely anti-rail. Build something, let the people get used to it, and then offer improvement to the same level that was daydream earlier.. much greater chance of acceptance. Just my two cents.


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## AlanB (Jun 4, 2012)

Texan Eagle said:


> If the NE Corridor can have decently high speed rail network with dozens of daily departures, won't a similar corridor that can make the LA to SF run in 5-6 hours also get patronage? Once that is made and gets successful among the locals, then think of increasing the speeds by gradual improvements. If you show a huge daydream to the people and not build anything, obviously the sentiment is going to be hugely anti-rail. Build something, let the people get used to it, and then offer improvement to the same level that was daydream earlier.. much greater chance of acceptance. Just my two cents.


Of course such a corridor would see patronage even at slower running times than the current HS proposal.

And the idea of showing people that trains can work and people will ride them is something that California has been working on for years. They've got the Pacific Surfliners, the Capitol Corridor, and the San Joaquin's. And despite the steadily growing ridership on all three, there are still plenty of people in California who don't believe that people will ride trains.

In fact one of the primary complaints/talking points of the opposition is that the first segment is being built out in the valley. They believe that if that gets built and then nothing more ever gets funded, that they'll have a monument to nothing. That it will never be used and that no one rides trains in the Valley.

The fact that a little more than 1 million people took a ride on the San Joaquin's last year and that those same trains will be able to use the new line if the HSR plan falls apart is lost on them, if they're even aware of that fact. Many aren't aware as those that they listen to omit that fact.


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## PRR 60 (Jun 4, 2012)

AlanB said:


> ...
> 
> The fact that a little more than 1 million people took a ride on the San Joaquin's last year and that those same trains will be able to use the new line if the HSR plan falls apart is lost on them, if they're even aware of that fact. Many aren't aware as those that they listen to omit that fact.


Although it is required that any segment of the new high speed rail line be made useful for rail service, Amtrak is not at all enthusiastic about using it for the San Joaquin service. By its nature, the route would have very limited stops compared to the San Joaquin route. If Amtrak would move all the trains to the new line, many towns which now provide significant patronage would lose rail service. If Amtrak would move just some of the trains to the new route, service would still be reduced to some towns, and two routes would have to be maintained.

In short, if a segment of the new high speed rail line is built, it is available to be used for conventional service, but there is some doubt that it would actually be used, at least as far as Amtrak is concerned. There is very little likelihood that all the San Joaquin service would be moved, and putting just one or two trains a day on the new line would be costly.


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## Anderson (Jun 4, 2012)

PRR 60 said:


> AlanB said:
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Well, and there's also the fact that even if you get on a 125 MPH express from Oakland or San Francisco down the valley, you're _still_ on a bus from Bakersfield to LA. I've said this about twenty times, I know, but _anything_ reasonable linking LA and the Valley, even if it were a directional service with no intermediate stops before LAX (since I think some of the freight stuff is directionalized because of the single tracking), something that is admittedly less than ideal, would still be an improvement.

The faster track makes sense if you can use it for expresses. For example, if you had 3-5 train on the present line as "San Joaquin Locals" and then 3-5 trains on the other as "San Joaquin Expresses", then even with a forced transfer from a local to an express at Bakersfield I suspect that the operation would be a success.

Also, I'm just wondering...if you save an hour in the valley running a fast train with limited stops but you lose that hour back in the mountains with a batch of slow track, how much traffic might you generate simply on dropping the bus but with no net time improvement?


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