> Newsom said the state will complete a 110-mile (177 km) high-speed rail link between Merced and Bakersfield.
Wow. Merced to Bakersfield. I mean, why not light the money on fire instead?
The point of something like this is to essentially warp the topology regarding what constitutes "nearby" between smaller cities and large metro areas. If you can do that, you've massively changed how both labor costs, real estate prices, and even tourism/recreation work.
OK, "light the money on fire" is probably overstating the case -- there's probably some multiplying effect in making the central valley more connected, and maybe it's also the easiest segment to actually get built. But the magnitude of positive effects is also probably an order down.
Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare, and Kern counties have a combined population of ~2.9 million. For the $77 billion price tag, you could buy a Toyota Prius for every single resident of the entire area served by HSR (including children), and still have ~$8 billion left over.
"there's probably some multiplying effect in making the central valley more connected"
There is no law of the universe that says a multiplier must be greater than 1.0. It is entirely possible, and indeed, easy to build a piece of infrastructure that will never pay back.
Why not complete it to San Jose at least. People headed to SF could catch a train into the city.
But the real advantage would be home buyers. Instead of saving up for a 800 sq foot house without a garage that cost $1.2 million they could ride the train a half hour where the same house would cost what $400K in Fresno?
I live close to LA but if I have to drive to Bakersfield for the train I may just as well keep driving. This makes no sense and I bet in typical US fashion they will stop there and people will say that public transit doesn't work.
You can't just build a train in the middle of nowhere. You need some level of connection to population centers.
The simple truth is, heavy rail does not work. There is no where outside of Japan with its very high population density that it does work. Europe you say? On average a European resident will use urban and intercity trains only five hundred miles more than Americans will. It is romanticism, ribbon cutting, and not realism, that keeps this illusion that trains will solve transportation issues alive. In Europe driving and flying are growing far faster than trains except in limited parts of Britain and Switzerland
so with regards to American implementation, even the urban light rail systems are all follies outside of NYC simply because they are not where the people want to be but instead where planners want people to be. then to top it off they cannot be volume adjusted because you cannot just reroute a train. buses are by far more economical and flexible, they just aren't sexy for ribbon cutting whores that politicians are.
on a side note, one hole in California's budget is the same in every high tax state. The law change to the Federal Tax system to have the rich pay more of their share by not letting them deduct as much from the Federal Taxes. This did two things, for the rich to pay more of their money in taxes and keep high tax states from off loading their taxes indirectly to lower tax states.
California has a homeless problem that is incredible and needs to get its prison population numbers down. spending the money to help the poor is a far better solution than funding a rich man's train.
There's a wise saying--"never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing."
California high speed rail is a great idea if they commit to it and deliver the full product. If that would be prohibitively expensive, take a step back, figure out why this country can't build things anymore, and address the blockers you can while swallowing the cost of the blockers you can't address. Either that, or give up. There's no damn point building a multi-billion-dollar monument to the decline of American civilization.
$77B is outrageous. We have to fix infrastructure costs in this country.
California would be better establishing an agency that progressively acquires, upgrades, and runs rail throughout the state as a single integrated system. We've been planning CAHSR for over a decade, and yet we still haven't electrified Caltrain, or Capitol Corridor. Incremental upgrades like that and improving curves and so on would've yielded huge benefits for the state by now. HSR would be the natural product of this this down the line when you would simply go the next step of adding a dedicated passenger high speed line connecting the Northern and Southern systems.
Look up how much it costs to build a mile of highway. On level ground, in undeveloped areas it's still amazingly expensive.
Now try to build something through developed areas, maybe not at grade, and dealing with traffic rerouting, other infrastructure interruptions, and NIMBYism.
$77B was after they did severe "cost cutting". It used to be $100B. And, if the past is any indicator, it would have ballooned to $120B - $150B by the time it was done. At what point do you say it's not worth it?
I don't agree with the claims that $77B is an outrageous amount of money. I also don't agree that a project should be killed because it's cost has increased ~$20B over what was approved in 2008.
First, 10 years of inflation alone from 2008 to 2019 accounts for $10B of price increases. While the 10 year delay can be blamed on poor management, the fact that the cost increased due to inflation is not really a reason to cancel a project.
Second, $77B sounds like a really big number, it is not paid all at once. It is a bond paid over many years. To put it in context, California has 40 million residents, so that comes out to a $2000 loan on a per person basis. The annual payments on the bond would be around $1B/year, out of a total annual budget of $200B. You can explore the budget here [1] to see if you think the opportunity cost is owrth it, eg. would it be ok to reduce unemployment insurance from $11.4B/yr -> $10.4B/yr if it means we can build a HSR from San Jose to Los Angeles?
I think the Governor's choice is very short sighted, and the laughable assertion that a train from Bakersfield to Merced is a good idea is clearly a face saving measure. In 2040 are we still going to be flying from SFO/SJC to LAX? I wish our government was more willing to take on long term infrastructure projects.
It's not just that $77 billion is outrageously expensive. It's that it's not what Californians voted for in 2008.
If you go back and read the original text and fiscal impact estimate of proposition 1a, it was supposed to cost around $10 billion dollars to build, and was expected to cost the state around $20 billion after accounting for interest and bond fees. There needs to be some sort of circuit breaker that trips when your original assumptions are so utterly out of touch with reality.
Just like the actual text of the brexit was essentially "Would it be cool if we, like, left the EU?" -- the public should not be voting on things that have not been fully fleshed out.
I love fast trains but we need them much more inside our metro areas than between distant parts of the state.
Commutes within the major metro areas in California (SF bay area, Los Angeles, Sacramento) are horrendous and just imagine how much good $77bn could do for those.
A well designed and fast transportation network within metro areas would do much more to improve the lives of Californians and the environment, as well as make our cities much more livable.
Newsom said the state will complete a 110-mile (177 km) high-speed rail link between Merced and Bakersfield
I suspected this would happen -- the project would get canceled and we'd end up with a small segment of rail that few will use. Merced -> Bakersfield is only a 2.5 hour drive and you almost certainly will need a car when you get there.
They should have started with a corridor that would see real usage, like SF (or even Oakland/emeryville) -> Sacramento (but afaik, the proposed route didn't even include a direct SF to Sacramento segment)
Then as (if?) that route demonstrated the technology and had good ridership, they could expand from there.
It is amazing that Japan was able to complete a project like this in the 60s, yet the US is so shortsighted we cannot dream of having even just one high speed rail system in the entire country. Absolutely embarrassing.
It's simply crazy there is no decent rail link between SF and LA. It is really the perfect distance for HSR, and I imagine once it was up and running there would be a lot of very valuable customers willing to pay top dollar for a sub 3 hour ride.
I really can't see what the solution is without HSR, the journey by car is long and very congested. SFO has very little land to expand on with its location.
Does this also kill Caltrain electrification? Also, the transbay transit center is also pretty useless without this as I believe CaHSR was going to pay for the expansion of the tunnels to the TTC.
Ironically, just last week the Green New Dealers said the entirety of the US should move to high speed rail.
One thing climate change debates have taught me is that people generally can't think past implementations and have incredible difficulty updating their implementation-specific mindsets.
Cars and planes have been 'bad' for climate change as they were inevitably burning fossil fuels, so the natural answer was public transit and high speed rail. Today, we have EVs and within about a decade short-haul electric planes (ie, exactly the routes high speed rail aims to serve). The answer to climate change (at least as far as transportation goes) should very clearly be "EVs", with these "electric vehicles" being cars, trucks, semis, and short-haul planes. Unfortunately, you won't see this reflected in GND thinking.
>The answer to climate change (at least as far as transportation goes) should very clearly be "EVs", with these "electric vehicles" being cars, trucks, semis, and short-haul planes. Unfortunately, you won't see this reflected in GND thinking.
From the resolution [0]:
overhauling transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—
(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;
(ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transportation; and
(iii) high-speed rail;
So it seems like EVs are definitely part of the thinking. Perhaps you're referring to a line in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' website's FAQ, which has since been edited? She's definitely a prominent advocate and policy force of the Green New Deal but she is not "the Green New Dealers," who consist of many people [1], with many different opinions about implementation.
I don't understand how Newsom's decision argues against nationwide high speed rail or is in any way ironic - the decision is not that it was tried and found wanting, but that it "would cost too much and take too long." The Green New Deal is specifically about applying massive funding and political will towards projects that are generally considered politically unrealistic today but are quite technically feasible, not about trying ideas that are inherently novel.
One thing climate change debates have taught me is that people generally can't think past implementations and have incredible difficulty updating their implementation-specific mindsets.
Hmm, interesting. I don’t mean to argue the facts, but just a quick google for the GND resolution [0] seems to contradict this claim. If anything the submitted resolution is overly idealistic, promoting an “everything-plus” strategy against climate change that won’t happen at all without a dramatic and underspecified political upheaval.
In fact high speed rail is listed as “(iii)” in a list where “(i)” is “zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing“.
Here’s my question: do you think it’s possible that what you’ve actually been taught is a cognitive bias, that might be leading you to ignore disconfirmatory evidence about how other people think in favor of simpler but less predictive models?
Cars suck though. Seriously. Roads take up a ton of space, traffic meets whatever capacity we provide it. They're pretty dangerous. I would much prefer to reimagine cities with fewer cars, and take care of long distance transportation with other (clean) means. Cars are getting greener, but they still have a ton of other negatives.
I see your point, but still EVs are not that great for environments compare to trains, forget the energy for moving. Energy to build, the tire residues that goes to our public water and ...
It is way better than what we have now, but still we could do better.
Cars, regardless of their energy source, are still a problem. Even if we solve the climate impact of cars, we still need to solve the traffic problem. If our large urban centers want to continue their growth then desirable alternative transportation options need to be implemented, otherwise 2 hour commutes through traffic will just become the norm.
While it's likely a non-starter legislatively, I believe the answer would be to pass a carbon cap & trade or tax system that simply prices greenhouse gases. That way we get what we want (less greenhouse gases) without proscribing a specific solution, whether it's high-speed rail, electric vehicles, or people keeping their gas vehicle and carpooling to work. If we get the incentives right, people will figure out how to minimize the increased cost in the way that is least painful for them.
Some are saying this is inaccurate, that Newsom is instead trying to reorganize the project to reduce cost overruns an focus on the central valley portion first, but that SF to LA is not canceled.
I don't know if this has anything to do with the decision, but there is also a massive amount of lobbying of the California government by the airlines as Bay Area to/from LA/OC/SD is a major cash cow. Should someone create a more convenient method of getting between the two, it'd be a major loss for them.
The Shinkansen in Japan has to be the most convenient thing I've ever traveled on. Show up 20 min before the train, buy a ticket, two hours later I'm over 200 miles away. Sure the ride itself is longer than the flight, but there are all those other time sinks from flying that no one thinks of - commuting, boarding, security, waiting for your baggage, etc. that add up.
Say I travel from Santa Ana to San Francisco. It takes me 30 minutes to get to the airport, if I'm parking there, say 15 minutes to find a spot and walk to the terminal, up to 30 minutes to get through security, probably 30 minutes at the gate because you make time in case things go wrong, and 30 minutes of boarding. That's 1.5 hours spent (without the commute) before the plane leaves on its 60 minute flight.
A modern high speed train would complete that trip before the plane even left.
Sacramento to San Francisco at 210mph, would be a 25min commute. East Bay commuters would be jealous. Zone the Sacramento terminal area as residential, minimum 10 stories, and you might have a solution to the Bay Area housing nightmare.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday the state will not complete a $77.3 billion planned high-speed rail project, but will finish a smaller section of the line.
Is this really the Governor's call? Doesn't the legislature need to, you know, pass a law to rollback the earlier plans?
In June 2014 state legislators and Governor Jerry Brown agreed to apportion the state's annual cap-and-trade funds so that 25% goes to high speed rail.
I don't understand California but it's weird that then-Governor Jerry Brown had the authority build as much of this train as he did.
IIRC, the voters approved a train that did LA-SF in 2h40m and met some affordability criteria. The project cost and projected time from LA to SF exceeded what the voters approved, it seems like there was a court case about whether the vote 'counted' for a train system that didn't meet its obligations.
> Abandoning high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises and lawsuits to show for it.
This seems like a nice adherence to the sunk cost fallacy.
It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of the cost difference to abandon now and demolish vs finishing (including any economy boosts) in the next <big number> years. If it's possible to save money demolishing, I would like to see this put up for a vote and the funds redistributed to something more useful.
Thats probably why it was mentioned that the state could only find/allocate 30-odd billion, for a project that had potentially ballooned to 98 billion.
Sure there is the possibility of some administrative process to make this announcement, but I'm not aware of it, so feel free to find a potential problem. Legislatures often delegate wide authority to their head of state, so it could be a really old and obscure power of the Governor.
Very discouraging. It's hard to see how we'll be able to reach any climate goals without world class high speed rail across the country. Perhaps the sticker shock and lack of political will is too much to tackle climate change before it's too late.
Genuinely curious: From a purely economical / engineering PoV (i.e. conveniently ignoring politics for now), I wonder how much would it cost had it been built by Chinese instead? While China has a tried-and-true HSR formula, would the labor market difference be large enough to throw the plan off balance?
This was the predicted outcome when this project was first announced and financed. People at the time criticized the Cassandras saying they lacked faith in the California government's ability to execute a complex long term project like this on budget.
The Cassandras were right.
Anyone who has worked with the government in Sacramento knew it was going to be a boondoggle where unions, politicians, and connected private contractors would get paid, and the public would get screwed. But the California electorate and its money are quickly parted.
If you are frustrated by the amount of looting of the public purse that you see in this state, you should move. There is no mechanism through which it will stop short of state bankruptcy. The tax base is so large and diverse that the money faucet will keep pouring lucre into filthy pockets until the unfunded pension liabilities destroy the public finances (should be around 2035).
> "Abandoning high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises and lawsuits to show for it,” he said."
Sounds like sunk-cost fallacy.
> "And by the way, I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump.”
Sounds like a misleading personal appeal to CA residents that dislike Trump.
Why would we settle for a high speed line ONLY between Merced and Bakersfield? Merced is a dinky little town of 80k and is several hours out from SF and San Jose via public transport and via car. Who is going to use this high-speed rail?
Traveling SF to LA using this new line would mean:
1. Either driving 2.5 hours to Merced or taking a 3 hour, $30 Amtrak
2. Getting on the high-speed train (ticket price tbd)
3. Taking a 3 hour, $45 Amtrak from Bakersfield to LA
So using this new line I can take 6 hours + (high speed rail time hours), two transfers, and cost $75 + (high speed rail ticket cost).
Or I could take a $30 dollar greyhound in eight hours
Maybe it's time to contract out the entire operation of the California state government to some more trustworthy entity. Someone who can actually build public infrastructure. Someone like France. Or possibly Singapore.
Building a uselessly short stretch of HSR is less cheap and indefensible.
This decisions fits in with the lack of focus that has been one of the most commented on features of Newsome’s ml short tenure as governor so far.
EDIT: Reviewing the source again, it's even worse: despite abandoning any intention of the state building the rest of the system, Newsome wants to complete environmental reviews on the whole SF to LA líne and seek federal and private funds for it, as if the state abandoning the rest of the line makes outside funding more realistic.
The least incompetent interpretation I can see for this is that the Newsome Administration just horribly botched an attempt to announce that they were not going to expend state resources on land acquisition or construction outside of the initial 119-mile segment until and unless new external financing (which has always been envisioned as essential to project completion) is secured; that this is a refocussing not a cancellation. Otherwise, it's just flat-out bonkers.
[+] [-] wwweston|7 years ago|reply
Wow. Merced to Bakersfield. I mean, why not light the money on fire instead?
The point of something like this is to essentially warp the topology regarding what constitutes "nearby" between smaller cities and large metro areas. If you can do that, you've massively changed how both labor costs, real estate prices, and even tourism/recreation work.
OK, "light the money on fire" is probably overstating the case -- there's probably some multiplying effect in making the central valley more connected, and maybe it's also the easiest segment to actually get built. But the magnitude of positive effects is also probably an order down.
[+] [-] alexhutcheson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerf|7 years ago|reply
There is no law of the universe that says a multiplier must be greater than 1.0. It is entirely possible, and indeed, easy to build a piece of infrastructure that will never pay back.
[+] [-] rmason|7 years ago|reply
But the real advantage would be home buyers. Instead of saving up for a 800 sq foot house without a garage that cost $1.2 million they could ride the train a half hour where the same house would cost what $400K in Fresno?
[+] [-] rubicon33|7 years ago|reply
I'm seriously dumfounded. I have lost a ton of faith, what little I already had, with this government.
Does ANYONE have a reasonable explanation?
[+] [-] muzz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
You can't just build a train in the middle of nowhere. You need some level of connection to population centers.
[+] [-] martinald|7 years ago|reply
A lot of stuff is already built on this route, many viaducts and bridges etc.
[+] [-] Shivetya|7 years ago|reply
so with regards to American implementation, even the urban light rail systems are all follies outside of NYC simply because they are not where the people want to be but instead where planners want people to be. then to top it off they cannot be volume adjusted because you cannot just reroute a train. buses are by far more economical and flexible, they just aren't sexy for ribbon cutting whores that politicians are.
on a side note, one hole in California's budget is the same in every high tax state. The law change to the Federal Tax system to have the rich pay more of their share by not letting them deduct as much from the Federal Taxes. This did two things, for the rich to pay more of their money in taxes and keep high tax states from off loading their taxes indirectly to lower tax states.
California has a homeless problem that is incredible and needs to get its prison population numbers down. spending the money to help the poor is a far better solution than funding a rich man's train.
[+] [-] User23|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|7 years ago|reply
California high speed rail is a great idea if they commit to it and deliver the full product. If that would be prohibitively expensive, take a step back, figure out why this country can't build things anymore, and address the blockers you can while swallowing the cost of the blockers you can't address. Either that, or give up. There's no damn point building a multi-billion-dollar monument to the decline of American civilization.
[+] [-] ummonk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kozikow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seppin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdminhbg|7 years ago|reply
Newsom explains in a quote given in the article: not spending the money means "giving it back to Donald Trump."
[+] [-] erentz|7 years ago|reply
California would be better establishing an agency that progressively acquires, upgrades, and runs rail throughout the state as a single integrated system. We've been planning CAHSR for over a decade, and yet we still haven't electrified Caltrain, or Capitol Corridor. Incremental upgrades like that and improving curves and so on would've yielded huge benefits for the state by now. HSR would be the natural product of this this down the line when you would simply go the next step of adding a dedicated passenger high speed line connecting the Northern and Southern systems.
[+] [-] hinkley|7 years ago|reply
Now try to build something through developed areas, maybe not at grade, and dealing with traffic rerouting, other infrastructure interruptions, and NIMBYism.
[+] [-] jdavis703|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1024core|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcell|7 years ago|reply
First, 10 years of inflation alone from 2008 to 2019 accounts for $10B of price increases. While the 10 year delay can be blamed on poor management, the fact that the cost increased due to inflation is not really a reason to cancel a project.
Second, $77B sounds like a really big number, it is not paid all at once. It is a bond paid over many years. To put it in context, California has 40 million residents, so that comes out to a $2000 loan on a per person basis. The annual payments on the bond would be around $1B/year, out of a total annual budget of $200B. You can explore the budget here [1] to see if you think the opportunity cost is owrth it, eg. would it be ok to reduce unemployment insurance from $11.4B/yr -> $10.4B/yr if it means we can build a HSR from San Jose to Los Angeles?
I think the Governor's choice is very short sighted, and the laughable assertion that a train from Bakersfield to Merced is a good idea is clearly a face saving measure. In 2040 are we still going to be flying from SFO/SJC to LAX? I wish our government was more willing to take on long term infrastructure projects.
[1] https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2019CAbs_...
[+] [-] ohazi|7 years ago|reply
If you go back and read the original text and fiscal impact estimate of proposition 1a, it was supposed to cost around $10 billion dollars to build, and was expected to cost the state around $20 billion after accounting for interest and bond fees. There needs to be some sort of circuit breaker that trips when your original assumptions are so utterly out of touch with reality.
Just like the actual text of the brexit was essentially "Would it be cool if we, like, left the EU?" -- the public should not be voting on things that have not been fully fleshed out.
[+] [-] buxtehude|7 years ago|reply
Commutes within the major metro areas in California (SF bay area, Los Angeles, Sacramento) are horrendous and just imagine how much good $77bn could do for those.
A well designed and fast transportation network within metro areas would do much more to improve the lives of Californians and the environment, as well as make our cities much more livable.
[+] [-] Johnny555|7 years ago|reply
I suspected this would happen -- the project would get canceled and we'd end up with a small segment of rail that few will use. Merced -> Bakersfield is only a 2.5 hour drive and you almost certainly will need a car when you get there.
They should have started with a corridor that would see real usage, like SF (or even Oakland/emeryville) -> Sacramento (but afaik, the proposed route didn't even include a direct SF to Sacramento segment)
Then as (if?) that route demonstrated the technology and had good ridership, they could expand from there.
[+] [-] opopopoopo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martinald|7 years ago|reply
I really can't see what the solution is without HSR, the journey by car is long and very congested. SFO has very little land to expand on with its location.
Does this also kill Caltrain electrification? Also, the transbay transit center is also pretty useless without this as I believe CaHSR was going to pay for the expansion of the tunnels to the TTC.
[+] [-] martythemaniak|7 years ago|reply
One thing climate change debates have taught me is that people generally can't think past implementations and have incredible difficulty updating their implementation-specific mindsets.
Cars and planes have been 'bad' for climate change as they were inevitably burning fossil fuels, so the natural answer was public transit and high speed rail. Today, we have EVs and within about a decade short-haul electric planes (ie, exactly the routes high speed rail aims to serve). The answer to climate change (at least as far as transportation goes) should very clearly be "EVs", with these "electric vehicles" being cars, trucks, semis, and short-haul planes. Unfortunately, you won't see this reflected in GND thinking.
[+] [-] intopieces|7 years ago|reply
From the resolution [0]:
overhauling transportation systems in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in— (i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing; (ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transportation; and (iii) high-speed rail;
So it seems like EVs are definitely part of the thinking. Perhaps you're referring to a line in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' website's FAQ, which has since been edited? She's definitely a prominent advocate and policy force of the Green New Deal but she is not "the Green New Dealers," who consist of many people [1], with many different opinions about implementation.
[0]https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolutio... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal
[+] [-] geofft|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] separatrix|7 years ago|reply
Hmm, interesting. I don’t mean to argue the facts, but just a quick google for the GND resolution [0] seems to contradict this claim. If anything the submitted resolution is overly idealistic, promoting an “everything-plus” strategy against climate change that won’t happen at all without a dramatic and underspecified political upheaval.
In fact high speed rail is listed as “(iii)” in a list where “(i)” is “zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing“.
Here’s my question: do you think it’s possible that what you’ve actually been taught is a cognitive bias, that might be leading you to ignore disconfirmatory evidence about how other people think in favor of simpler but less predictive models?
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolutio...
[+] [-] TACIXAT|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mars4rp|7 years ago|reply
It is way better than what we have now, but still we could do better.
[+] [-] babypuncher|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] freefal|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uxp100|7 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/Scott_Wiener/status/1095414245024362496
[+] [-] Teknoman117|7 years ago|reply
The Shinkansen in Japan has to be the most convenient thing I've ever traveled on. Show up 20 min before the train, buy a ticket, two hours later I'm over 200 miles away. Sure the ride itself is longer than the flight, but there are all those other time sinks from flying that no one thinks of - commuting, boarding, security, waiting for your baggage, etc. that add up.
Say I travel from Santa Ana to San Francisco. It takes me 30 minutes to get to the airport, if I'm parking there, say 15 minutes to find a spot and walk to the terminal, up to 30 minutes to get through security, probably 30 minutes at the gate because you make time in case things go wrong, and 30 minutes of boarding. That's 1.5 hours spent (without the commute) before the plane leaves on its 60 minute flight.
A modern high speed train would complete that trip before the plane even left.
[+] [-] jmpman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apo|7 years ago|reply
Is this really the Governor's call? Doesn't the legislature need to, you know, pass a law to rollback the earlier plans?
In June 2014 state legislators and Governor Jerry Brown agreed to apportion the state's annual cap-and-trade funds so that 25% goes to high speed rail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Leg...
[+] [-] crowdpleaser|7 years ago|reply
IIRC, the voters approved a train that did LA-SF in 2h40m and met some affordability criteria. The project cost and projected time from LA to SF exceeded what the voters approved, it seems like there was a court case about whether the vote 'counted' for a train system that didn't meet its obligations.
wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail#Leg...
[+] [-] nomel|7 years ago|reply
This seems like a nice adherence to the sunk cost fallacy.
It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of the cost difference to abandon now and demolish vs finishing (including any economy boosts) in the next <big number> years. If it's possible to save money demolishing, I would like to see this put up for a vote and the funds redistributed to something more useful.
[+] [-] gammateam|7 years ago|reply
Sure there is the possibility of some administrative process to make this announcement, but I'm not aware of it, so feel free to find a potential problem. Legislatures often delegate wide authority to their head of state, so it could be a really old and obscure power of the Governor.
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40acres|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rlanday|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greggeter|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dqpb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smilekzs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|7 years ago|reply
The Cassandras were right.
Anyone who has worked with the government in Sacramento knew it was going to be a boondoggle where unions, politicians, and connected private contractors would get paid, and the public would get screwed. But the California electorate and its money are quickly parted.
If you are frustrated by the amount of looting of the public purse that you see in this state, you should move. There is no mechanism through which it will stop short of state bankruptcy. The tax base is so large and diverse that the money faucet will keep pouring lucre into filthy pockets until the unfunded pension liabilities destroy the public finances (should be around 2035).
[+] [-] bruhbruhbruh|7 years ago|reply
Sounds like sunk-cost fallacy.
> "And by the way, I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump.”
Sounds like a misleading personal appeal to CA residents that dislike Trump.
Why would we settle for a high speed line ONLY between Merced and Bakersfield? Merced is a dinky little town of 80k and is several hours out from SF and San Jose via public transport and via car. Who is going to use this high-speed rail?
Traveling SF to LA using this new line would mean: 1. Either driving 2.5 hours to Merced or taking a 3 hour, $30 Amtrak 2. Getting on the high-speed train (ticket price tbd) 3. Taking a 3 hour, $45 Amtrak from Bakersfield to LA
So using this new line I can take 6 hours + (high speed rail time hours), two transfers, and cost $75 + (high speed rail ticket cost).
Or I could take a $30 dollar greyhound in eight hours
[+] [-] johan_larson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|7 years ago|reply
Abandoning HSR is cheap and defensible.
Building a uselessly short stretch of HSR is less cheap and indefensible.
This decisions fits in with the lack of focus that has been one of the most commented on features of Newsome’s ml short tenure as governor so far.
EDIT: Reviewing the source again, it's even worse: despite abandoning any intention of the state building the rest of the system, Newsome wants to complete environmental reviews on the whole SF to LA líne and seek federal and private funds for it, as if the state abandoning the rest of the line makes outside funding more realistic.
The least incompetent interpretation I can see for this is that the Newsome Administration just horribly botched an attempt to announce that they were not going to expend state resources on land acquisition or construction outside of the initial 119-mile segment until and unless new external financing (which has always been envisioned as essential to project completion) is secured; that this is a refocussing not a cancellation. Otherwise, it's just flat-out bonkers.