From The Daily Caller
5:19 PM 02/12/2019 | Energy
Chris White | Energy Reporter
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom abandoned a high-speed rail project Tuesday that sought to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco.
He suggested the high cost of the project made the idea a pipe dream.
Newsom dialed back anticipation for the project during California’s State of the State address. The Democrat suggested building a high-speed rail line between Bakersfield and Merced — a distance of 160 miles — rather than a project designed to connect the state’s two largest cities.
“Let’s level about the high-speed rail,” Newsom said. “Let’s be real, the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were.”
Former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan would have cost nearly $77 billion and taken more than a decade to complete, according to recent estimates.
“Critics are going to say that’s a train to nowhere, but I think that’s wrong and that’s offensive,” said Newsom, who was elected after Brown was term-limited in November 2018.
FILE PHOTO: California Governor Jerry Brown delivers his final state of the state address in Sacramento, California, U.S., January 25, 2018. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
“Abandoning the high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions and billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises … and lawsuits to show for it,” Newsom said, adding that he does not want to send the $3.5 billion in federal money allocated for the project back to the Trump administration.
The rail project has faced a lot of controversy throughout the years. Backers of a campaign to eliminate California’s most recent gas tax, for instance, pushed an initiative in 2018 directing Brown to halt the high-speed rail project and use any unspent funds on road improvements. (RELATED: California’s Gas Tax Opponents Push A Unique Way To Pay For Road Fixes)
The new ballot initiative would have required any funds not needed for repaying rail bonds instead go to other transportation work. Supporters said the measure staves off criticism that eliminating the state’s recent pricey gas tax makes it more difficult to make infrastructure improvements.
Newsom’s decision to ditch the project comes at an awkward time for Democrats. A document posted online fleshing out elements of the so-called Green New Deal suggests Democrats are looking to “[b]uild out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”
Some conservatives in the state are upset that the project will continue to exist in some form.
“Make no mistake about it: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement today is not about killing the wasteful High-Speed Rail Project, it is about keeping it very much alive,” Carl DeMaio, chairman of Reform California, said in a press statement Tuesday. “Newsom wants to spend tens of billions on a rail line between Merced and Bakersfield — a complete waste.”
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Too bad they can’t afford it.
I believe that the only reason Governor Newsom doesn’t want to return the $3.5B to President Trump is his fear the money will be used for the southern wall…as it should. In all fairness though, a train from Merced to Bakersfield won’t be a “Train to Nowhere”…it will be a “Train from Nowhere to Nowhere” and will spend Billions to move how many people daily? I would hate to have to buy one of those tickets. Any further experience on that pipe rail will just be good money after bad
Are there ridership estimates? How much would a ticket cost?
There ARE ridership estimates. They are based on assumed (and very optimistic) ticket prices. And the ticket prices – which are related to the subsidies – change with each new delay/postponement/cost overrun/ new earthquake zone discovered etc, etc. In addition, the most probable average speed attained is also a big mystery and it is safe to assume that if it is going to take almost as long to make ones total journey by train as it will to take the existing roads then the train will NOT be used – see Amtrack’s experiences.
Amtrak…358 average travelers from Merced daily
In reality if they built a train from LA to San Fran they wouldn’t include stops in Merced or Bakersfield. This is the only way the two locations can be included as stops on the future line.
As anyone who has tried to drive from LA to SF, or the other way, has found, the 2-lanes-each-way highway that is I-5 is inadequate, sometimes breaking down into bumper to bumper crawls for dozens of miles. If Newsome wanted to improve his state, he would start a project to have at least 4 lanes both directions on I-5. It would be good for business. It would help draw north and south of California, which are like two separate cultures, together. Of course that would mean giving up on hating the greatest freer of the American people….the automobile. Maybe he could promise electrical charging stations for the Teslas, etc., every 10 miles or so to make everyone ridiculous in CA happy.
Seriously? 2 lanes each way? We have 4 lanes between Brisbane and the Gold Coast with a much less population.
It’s 4 lanes each way from Atlanta to Tampa.
To be honest much of the I5 route is not able to be expanded, already cut into mountain sides, a lot can be. A better plan would be to teach the idiots in Cali how to drive. They are worse than in DC.
Democrat schemes always seem to lead to great costs accompanied by very few benefits. The ‘Green New Deal’ is another good example of this. Well at least the residents of Merced and Bakersfield will be able to visit each other very rapidly. It looks like a job half-done, half-baked and totally useless.
“great costs accompanied by very few benefits”
I suggest you look under the rocks to see the pay-offs and the rip-offs. They don’t burn the money. They steal it.
Third World countries are littered with abandoned grandiose projects. Governor Jerry Brown contributed his share.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Haiti+protesters+wasted+money&oq=Haiti+protesters+wasted+money&aqs=chrome.
We here in Florida tried to warn California and Obama, but they wouldn’t listen. Then Governor Rick Scott didn’t turn down money for high speed rail from Tampa to Orlando because he just hated trains,he turned it down because there was no way to make it work.
That’s fine. Instead they can spend it on California’s portion of the wall.
~¿~
+1
Besides, I’ve read where a mile of high-speed rail line costs FOUR times what a mile of border wall costs! Investing in keeping the US secure is as important as moving people, especially when there is already infrastructure to move people!
What? Ocasio must be outraged. 🙁
Now the progs will have to find something new on which to waste money.
No, no, they’re still going to waste all the money. They just aren’t going to actually build anything. It’s more efficient rent-seeking. The efficiency of capturing revenue streams and diverting them to lawyers fees and consultants is approaching 100%.
They are building something – mountains of paperwork, which includes status reports and secret payoffs.
There are always cronies but California has cronyism down to a perfected science. Just create a project that will never be feasible. Convince some progressive buds in D.C. it’s a great idea. Decide how much money you’ll need to fight it in court when you don’t want to give back the money you stole and, viola! You just made another 10,000 card carrying commies rich and paid armies of ne’er do wells to generate more votes for you to continue winning elections. You have to be blind or partisan as hell not to see this complete lack of ethics.
Ironic that within two weeks we have the Soylent Green New Deal promising the end of air travel and the rebirth of rail followed by the death of rail.
California was the only State that accepted Obama’s (Taxpayers) money for high speed rail (slow rail actually). Wisconsin and Florida both turned it down. Looked good on the outside, lots of cash, but when you got past the initial excitement and started looking at ticket prices, maintenance etc. it was a cash disaster for the States. Living in Wisconsin there was a great deal of debate about this Low Speed Rail between Milwaukee and Madison. Ticket prices would have been ridiculously high and ridership estimates were very low. In other words just another government bridge to nowhere.
The rail system is just as bad in California, billions of dollars with zero potential for taking cars off the road. Lots of money for unions, politicians and big corporations. It would be amazing if California ended up having to write a check to Trump.
What gets me is that in order to make any HSR project “affordable”, you would have to gut almost all of the environmental and historical preservation regulations and laws on state and federal levels. Look at Texas, you have a privately funded HSR proposed between Houston and Dallas and it is AOC and her ilk that are fighting it. The same goes for Brightline (now part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Empire) … The section from West Palm Beach to Orlando is being challenged by Uber rich lefties!!
Well, duh. What part of privately funded did you miss? Only socialist government is allowed to tear up the landscape and destroy historical landmarks. Privately funded means capitalists greedily extracting profits from the exploited masses. As the gov’nor says, “get real!”
I’ve crunched the numbers hundreds of times and a HSR between Dallas and Houston WILL NEVER BE PROFITABLE, even if gas goes to $10/Gallon. The Only way to make it profitable is impose new Tolls on I-45 of between $50 – $100, and that would surely send a lynch mob with torches/pitchforks to Austin.
Except on Holidays, busy weekends the average speeds on I-45 are nearly 75 mph (and are only getting faster). HSR may be faster Downtown/Downtown, but isn’t Suburb/Suburb. Point to point saves 2 hours over a car, but getting to/from HSR (Plus layover time) will easily burn those 2 hours saved making it a wash and then there’s the issue with being stuck with a Bus/UBER/light rail to cover a huge metroplex on each end. Maybe for a poor person with no car/lots of time on their hands, it will work… but then they can’t afford the HSR ticket prices. Fail.
Any private companies working on HSR are expecting massive government intervention, because the numbers just don’t add up.
HSR is most cogent for replacement of domestic airline routes, when you have to factor in getting to and from airports. It also makes sense to have one downtown and one suburb station at each terminus city. You will get taxi sharing for HSR passengers just like you get for JFK airport.
4-500km distance is most cogent for daily trips, up to 2000km for overnight journeys.
Also makes sense if an airport is at capacity and slots can be freed up through replacement of domestic air slots with HSR.
If you have litigation obsessions so that ridiculous extortion occurs to stymie attempts to secure the land route, then HSR is not for the USA.
France runs profitable HSR lines, but ueber capitalism does not rule there.
They didn’t listen to TGV’s route recommendation of using I-5 easements for the most direct route and least amount of eminent domain law suites.
As one who gets to LAX in one hour from Sacramento, the Train is a nonstarter, it was going to take 30+ more years to tie into Sacramento. The Capitol Corridor and bus connection take 3 hours from Sacramento to SF, which I can drive in 90 minutes.
Make direct commuter cities connections as fast as possible and without sharing Freight rails.
In the mind of the socialist, there’s communism, socialism, and uber capitalism.
Anyone who thinks the US is a “capitalist” country either doesn’t know anything about capitalism, or doesn’t know anything about the US.
No, France does not run any profitable HSR lines. The few lines that run a “profit” don’t cover the cost of capital – in other words they are money losers. https://www.economist.com/schumpeter/2014/08/13/all-change
I seem to recall references to studies that indicate there are no HSR lines in the world that run a true profit.
The historic French TGV lines, the ones with the better economics, break even.
The newer ones (at 10 € per mm) never will. Nothing at 10 € per mm does.
Also, union inspired rules are out of control. Jobs are ultra specialized in trains.
I have to agree. I would never invest in a rail line between my two home cities. However, there is a sizeable number of flights between Love Field and Hobby daily. That’s what the railroad will be competing against, not the car traffic. It’s for corporate travelers, not people going to the suburbs
There’s a sizable number of flights between any two moderate large cities that people want to travel to and from. From Sarasota Fl to Atlanta Ga there are I think 6 flights a day. That doesn’t even count the flights from Tampa Fl. A Tampa or Sarasota to Atlanta route would be about as good a route as you could fine for HSR it take one hour to fly and six hours to drive. The nonsense at the airport brings down the attractiveness of flying. And yet no rail route from Tampa to Atlanta has been proposed. Sarasota doesn’t even have a train station.
The most likely reason no one is seriously talking about HSR for that route is because they know that trains can’t compete against the airlines.
When Wisconsin was looking at the project for Madison to Milwaukee it turned out it was far cheaper and more convenient for bus travel. Busses at least could get people close to the capitol, the train “plan” had people stuck in the outskirts and then bussed to the Capitol. The Democrats screamed about losing the “free” money but Scott Walker managed to kill it. The State would have been on the hook for millions of upkeep, maintenance and car replacements.
Why bother when you have an excellent airline infrastructure.
MattS
Precisely.
Moreover, whilst a railway line of any description means ripping up hundreds of miles of valuable land, imposing compulsory purchase orders, physically dividing communities and increasing the likelihood of accidents (I understand 2018 was the first year there were no major commercial plane crashes across the planet) and inducing intrusive noise, airports have two respectably small footprints; an airport at either end of their journey with no disruption in between.
Quite how anyone can imagine that trains are an environmentally friendly solution to anything is quite beyond me. They are products of the early 19th Century and worked well when a man with a flag was required to walk in front of motor vehicles for safety reasons and aeroplanes that could fly at 300 knots whilst carrying hundreds of passengers weren’t even dreamed of.
One way flight between London and Glasgow, £66. I can guarantee an HS2 (the grossly expensive, proposed high speed rail line between London and the north of England…..it doesn’t even venture as far as Scotland!) train journey will be an awful lot more.
city centre to City centre, no check in, no TSA. 200 mph plus… what’s not to like?
The whole of Europe has 220 mph city to city trains… USA is way behind the curve here.
Griff, you apparently have never been to Merced or Bakersfield. These are not places you want to get to fast. They are sparsely populated farming communities. There is no real tourism there because there’s nothing much to do or see there. And don’t think there won’t be TSA or check in. The unions will demand it. Also, it won’t be 200 mph. In order to make it affordable, some sections will be shared with existing conventional rail. This is the biggest boondoggle in California history in my lifetime. Gavin Newsom knew this all along and said nothing.
Though they may be places you will want to get away FROM fast
Current driving time Merced to Bakersfield … 164 miles … 2hrs 30min.
Current rail travel Merced to Bakersfield … 3hrs 9min.
Rail must travel slowly through population zones
Odds of High Speed Rail actually reaching 200mph slim for about 50% of the travel distance and nil for the other half. It might reach 200 for 10 minutes between Merced and Fresno and for 15 minutes between Fresno and Bakersfield
Well actually I think I have been through Bakersfield… but on a coach and not sober at the time.
OK, then why not Washington to New York? New York to Boston? New York to Philedelphia? (excuse the E coast bias: I’ve only been to California and Washington/New Jersey)
Those all exist…. and when I’m on the east coast, train or plane is a toss up depending on the schedule.
Don’t go to Boston though, so not sure about that.
Actually we are ahead of the curve in that we haven’t wasted money on things people don’t want.
And, griff, how far apart are the cities in Europe? And how far apart are they west of the Mississippi in the US. Population density matters.
Don’t worry – your ticket price will be subsidized by everyone else.
Japan has about 4x the population density as CA and the HS rail makes better sense. The bullet train travels about 3 to 4x the highway speed limit without the traffic delay issues. Not sure how the economics work out. In Japan, the annual auto inspection cost was ~2k US a few years ago from what I can recall so their cost structures are much different than US.
Don’t you think that a little detail such as “how do the economics work out?” is importain to know before we put money down the HSR rathole?
Japanese rail has an operating profit (no idea on capitalization), but they also have a great bus system, including overnight buses, so you can address all price and schedule points.
Meeting in the morning in Osaka, and in the evening in Tokyo? Take a bullet train.
Visiting for holiday? Take an overnight bus and save on both the transit fares and skip a hotel.
Going to Aoyama in the winter for the snow? Take a slow train so the kids can see the countryside.
TomT – Yes the economics are very important. At 4x the population density in a developed country like Japan, HS rail between population centers would be more economical than in rural CA.
“HS rail between population centers would be more economical than in rural CA.” Much less across the vast reaches of the rest of the country. I notice the commenters supporting HSR don’t want to touch on the fact that Amtrak has a YUGE problem keeping regular trains on the tracks, and Amtrak is what HSR would be. Add to that how many times each week some idiot parks on a RR crossing and gets hit. Do that at 100-120 and the loss of life and property damage would go up exponentially.
Hell, just contemplate the nightmare of building HSR lines in the Northeast Corridor, DC to Boston. Unless they shutdown existing system, rip it out, and replace with HSR lines they will have to run all new right of ways. Through heavily populated areas covered by privately owned property. Yea, that will work out fine. 😉
That is a good point one that I make whenever this comes up but it seems to be lost on the people I talk to.
Somehow the above comment got attached to the wrong place.
London/Edinburgh 410 miles.
Paris/Marseilles 482 miles
London/Paris 214 miles (but I guess rail route longer and it goes also to Brussels…)
‘The whole of Europe has 220 mph city to city trains… USA is way behind the curve here.’
No, Grift – we left trains behind a century ago – in favor of freedom of movement.
Joel, honestly… giving up trains (which you haven’t BTW*) = Freedom of Movement? Next time I’m on a train (in Europe) I’ll ask my fellow passengers how they feel now they’ve given up their freedom of movement. Perhaps if they had more guns they’d feel more free. I doubt it.
* USA 2017 10.6 Billion Passenger Kilometers
Really? So in Europe I can load 1000 pounds of tools and 2000 pounds of materials on a train and drive it directly to my job site? Or I can load 6 head of livestock and 2000 pounds of feed and supplies on a train and drive it to any remote location I need to deliver then to? Really? Those are some seriously magical trains they got.
Interesting how to a European, going where the government wants you to go, and when the government wants you to go, is freedom.
BTW, I just love the ignorant rant against guns. Typical socialist.
griff: You can’t find a single thing not to like about it? We yanks are not so lacking in the capacity to see what we don’t like. Won’t take the time to give you an example, if the greens promoted high speed canals you’d say, “what’s not to like?”
Oh, he’s just here to push this bullshit – pure advocacy.
Joel Snider: Agreed, but he gave me a chance to promote hi speed canals. In the old days, canal boats towed by mules went, say, 4mph. If we could get that up to 20mph (an incredible 400% increase!) and prohibit “little people” from getting cars… ok I’ll stop.
Merced has 87k in population. The route is so unimportant that the Bakersfield-Fresno-Merced drive doesn’t involve an interstate (you can go out-of-your way if you want to use one, though). There are no flights between them…just a 164 mile drive.
The notion of passenger train service being important between Merced and Bakersfield is not “way behind the curve”…it is from the days of the old west.
The only reason to have this section is to connect SF/NoCal and LA/SD/SoCal. And that clearly is a pipe dream. The only reason this section went first is because it was supposed to be the cheapest and easiest…and it has been a nightmare.
Mainly because the 1 or 2 hr flight becomes an epic journey of 5 or 6 hours once you battle with queues, TSA, and getting to/from the airport if you are talking about major cities. That is only if everything goes right. I once took 9hrs to get from La Guardia to Dulles, which is nominally less than an hour flight.
Train travel in Europe is an enjoyable option , taking you to the city centre vs all the overheads of air travel, even if it is far friendlier than the TSA infested US.
Welcome to Australia’s take on the same thing. We’ve been talking (and only talking) high speed rail for some 2 generations with nothing to show for it. Although the first line between stops might have been more useful, such as between 2 capital cities, it never materialised either.
In all the time proponents and opponents have been hammering it out, cheaper air travel got in the way and likely everyone else got sick of hearing and expecting nothing to ever happen except in Europe or Japan. The only thing that likely did happen, was for proponents to continue living off funds by keeping the idea alive, but that’s all. But if it ever would happen, I’d expect constant cost overruns in construction all the way to running costs and beyond, including most sections of the line to be severely speed limited because saaaaafety.
“…..‘Let’s Be Real’…..” ????
What kind of environmentalist IS this? Doesn’t he know that the laws of Physics, Chemistry and Economics can be suspended if you wish hard enough? He sounds like a shrill for Big Oil to me.
Have him called out on Twitter….
Wait …
a California Governor said “Let’s be real” !?
Is it April 1st in California already?
As Bugs Bunny said “I know this defies the laws of physics but I never studied law”
No need for it when you when you have the ‘Tesla tube’ an idea ever bit as good as Springfield’s monorail
High speed rail is a great idea.
Then you work out the specifics and see it’s not so great.
Then, for all the usual reasons, Democrats go ahead with the good-sounding idea anyway.
I’m amazed that a Democrat found the courage to admit the folly.
With each passing day, Democrats are extending Trump’s “Best Week Ever”.
Too. Much. Winning.
Gavin may use this for “triangulation” during an eventual Presidential/VP run, but dude, bad timing when the ENTIRE Democrat party JUST all jumped on the GND and basically told the airlines “your planet destroying planes will be obsolete… OBSOLETE!!!!!”.
Couldn’t this have waited until AFTER the Democrat Implosion/Freefall stabilized? Slap down/Knife in-twisted Tweet from Trump in 3…2…1….
Trump’s “best week ever”?
You mean the week that he got exactly NOTHING for his wall, not penny one? The wall he’s been promising his sycophantic supporters for four years now, and that the Mexicans would pay for it? And so now this week Trump was forced to eat that sh*t sandwich and declare it tastes’ great?
If that is Trump’s best week ever, you must not be tired of losing yet.
The Trump Derangement Syndrome, a Fake Disease used by Trumpkins to fend off reality and realists, actually applies to the Trumpkins.
Trump’s followers understand how politics in Washington DC works. Despite the Democrat obstruction, Trump is building the wall, and will continue building it until it is finished.
I suppose Trump might refuse to sign the legislation, saying it wasn’t enough, and then offer to sign a continuing resolution that would continue government operations through the rest of the fiscal year which ends in September, and declare a national emergency at the southern border and build his wall that way.
The Democrats have included in this bill spending on things they want, but if Trump forces a continuing resolution, then the Democrats don’t get to spend any new money. They don’t get what they want, and Trump still continues building the wall. Works for me. If the Democrats want to push it that far.
Trump’s initial mistake was in letting Paul Ryan talk him into signing the Omnibus bill. Ryan promised Trump he would fund the border wall if Trump signed the Omnibus Bill. Trump signed, and Ryan never gave Trump the funding for the wall. Trump’s mistake was believing a supposedly rock-solid Republican. Trump is learning the game a little better now in his second year as a politician.
Rasmusen Poll: Trump 52 percent approval rating. Yeah, I would say this has been a good week for Trump. His base is still stronly with hm (which is what got him elected) and on top of that, his popularity among Blacks and Hispanics has doubled since the election. So Trump can probably pull in a whole lot more votes now than he pulled in during the 2016 election (63,000,000). My guess is it is up to about 73 million now. 🙂
Btw, Mexico will pay for the wall.
The U.S. currently runs a trade deficit with Mexico of about $100 billion per year. Trump has negotiated a new trade deal with Mexico, which, after Congress signs off on it, will keep a large percentage of that $100 billion in the United States instead of Mexico (don’t know the exact details of the deal), so when those tens of billions of dollars per year stay in the United States, they increase the tax revenue going to the government and this increased revenue, that would not be there without the efforts of Donald Trump, will pay for the wall. Trump said from the very beginning that doing this trade deal would be one way to pay for the wall.
Of course, Trump could also say he is going to get China to pay for the wall, too, because currently the U.S. Treasury is taking in billions of dollars a month in tariffs imposed on China. Trump has already paid for the wall many times over with the China tariffs, and the money from China will continue to flow in when Trump completes the trade deal with them.
Like Trump said, “Before, China didn’t give us one thin dime. Now, they are paying us tens fo billions of dollars.”
TDS is real. find a mirror. Only someone delusional would think this was a good week for Democrats.
EL Chapo doesn’t get to keep his $Billions and last Time I checked, he was Mexican.
Add that to the $1.3B from Congress in a bipartisan compromise (which ALWAYS helps a President with independents).
I’m not “Trumpkin”. I’m just a guy looking at things objectively. Trump went from ZERO for his wall to $1.3B and who knows how much else he’ll weasle out for it, plus he has someone to blame for not getting the wall finished that Rust Belt DEMOCRATS have been asking for years.
People with TDS can’t drive a wedge between Trump and his “Trumpkins” and he’s actively appealing to moderates and swing Democrats, while the Democrats go straight up Communist Revolution. Objectively, his Best. Week. Ever.
China doesn’t pay tarifs. US consumers pay the tarifs. YOU and ME!
not one penny? are they only reporting the news overseas or something?
Wow, HuffPoishness here?
As usual, Duane only sees and knows what his handlers want him to see or know.
Then again, it’s not like he has the mental capacity to handle a real job.
Great article. but, pngpicture.com provide best funny images.
I am like in this position.
My initial thought was this blows a giant hole in the green new deal, what’s left of it anyway. One of its main goals for reducing/eliminating fossil fuels was to eliminate air travel (except for the private jets of the elite) and replace it with HSR. Now California has proven that the government can’t build the HSR needed.
In terms of high speed rail, the Asians are handing us our a$$es on a plate. link
The gray and yellow lines in your link aren’t HSR. They are just ordinary old railways.
I keep pointing out that Amtrak can not keep regular trains on the rails and now people want them to run 120mph trains. That is always followed by silence, then the sound of people stomping away in a huff. Add to that the fact America has been ripping up railroad tracks like eating potato chips for the last 40 decades. They say one thing and do the exact opposite, as usual.
The main problem is that most US railway lines are actually in use. By freight trains. It is not a good idea to run freight and passengers on the same line, since the passenger trains can’t run any faster than the freight trains. Alternatively you can run short, light, fast freight trains between passenger trains, or at night only, like in e. g. Sweden and then you will lose most of the freight-carrying capacity.
So either freight or passengers must go some other way, by air or car or on dedicated parallell tracks, which will in most cases be insanely uneconomic.
I had a friend who was a train dispatcher with the BN railroad and he used to run freight trains and passenger trains on the same set of tracks.
He said he used to have nightmares about running those trains together, even though it had never actually happened to him. That would be a stressful job.
If we ever get population densities similar to Japan’s, rail will work here as well.
Are they really or are you comparing apples and oranges
So, is Gavie going to get back all the money already pissed away on this?
Heck, he isn’t giving back the money that hasn’t already been pissed away.
TRump should withhold $3.5 billion if CA fails to return the money. Notice how he phrased it – “Sending it to the Trump administration ” He would be sending it to the Federal govt.
i like Senator Cruz’ suggestion that Trump use El Chapo’s confiscated $14 billion drug fortune to build the wall.
I’m not sure how readily available this $14 billion is, but it would certainly be poetic justice to use this money to build the southern border wall. Most of it is probably money originating from the U.S. anyway.
… readily available….
spend it now, before another obama (this thing just tried to make me capitalize “obama”!) is elected and tries to send it back, as cash, to the Mexican government.
Isn’t he a guy who obeyed selected laws only when he was a mayor of San Francisco? That’s the was to a governorship .. also to a senatorship for Kamala Harris.
That’s funny my taxes go to the same place.
Having lived in California I have to agree that many billions will be wasted any way. Just not as many billions. Jerry Brown left office with a measure of popularity and this useless train project was his baby. By ending it and explaining his decision the way that he has Newsom creates a little political space for himself. Not a bad move politically.
Trump is winning. His approval rating is about 52% just below his best number since taking office. And that’s coming off a government shutdown that had my 87 year old mother nervous about her VA retirement check.
I just saw a new Gallup poll taken after the government shutdown that shows Trump’s favorability rating increased from 38 percent to 45 percent.
So most of these polls are showing pretty much the same thing which is that Trump approval ratings are climbing, no matter where the starting point is in a particular poll.
This HSR is going to be an economic catastrophe. Asian/European experience shows that you need at least 10 million population at each end of an HSR to generate sufficient traffic.
The Tokyo-Niigata line in Japan has for example has always been run at a loss, despite having the traffic to World’s largest winter sport area in Nagano to help out.
And if you wonder why it was built: prime minister Tanaka was from Niigata.
Maybe it’s autophagy described in 2010 here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990190/ and the person ( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yoshinori-Ohsumi ) that worked out what was not known in 2010 to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2016.
Which means there’s hope for the Green Left provided they all go on a diet and lifestyle change that promotes fixing their brains. I.E., the extreme low carb diet with fasting.
To paraphrase Kenny Rodgers:
“On a warm summer eve, on a bullet train bound for nowhere………………”
Democrats always seem to have a knack for putting the doggle in boondoggle.
A pity they don’t knock HS2 in the UK on the head.
Initial costing £33 bn, now £66 bn, and likely to end up £100 bn.
And that is just the initial phase, with no benefit to the North of England which was the original reason for building it.
The £100 bn would be better spent improving the Northern railways.
StephenP
From what I can gather there is gathering momentum in parliament against HSR now.
I also understand that a grossly expensive high speed line will save 20 minutes or so between it’s two extremes.
As you say, far better ways to spend the money.
In the meantime Texas Central is moving ahead with a high-speed rail project from Houston to Dallas… without the State of Texas spending a dime.
https://www.texascentral.com/facts/
If it delivers as promised, it will be a 90 minute ride each way. I currently commute between Dallas and Houston. The Houston station is an hour from my office if I take the bus, 20-30 minutes by Uber. The Dallas station will be a similar distance from my house. They say that the ticket prices “on the high end, tickets will be competitive with the cost of flying, and on the low end, they will be competitive with the cost of driving.”
Flying on Southwest can be really cheap, particularly if you rack up bonus points on a Southwest Airlines Visa card. I rarely pay for tickets. When I buy them far enough in advance, it’s about $200 round-trip. Uber from the office to Hobby airport is usually ~$20. As long as I don’t drop $50 in an airport bar, the total cost is anywhere from $60 to $260. I have to get to the airport at least an hour before the flight, the flight, if on time, is about 1 hour.
Assuming I stop 2-3 times (I drink about a gallon of Diet Coke on the drive) and allowing for traffic, it’s about a 4.5 hour drive from my office to the house on Thursday or Friday afternoon and a similar time from my house back to my Houston apartment on Sunday afternoon. My Jeep burns about 28 gallons of gasoline each round trip. At $2.00/gal, that’s $56… not counting wear & tear… and I’ve put 50,000 miles on my Jeep since March 2016.
Round-trip Comparison
Driving: 9 hours, $56 + wear & tear
Flying: 6 hours (if flight is on time, a big if), $60-$260
Rail: 4-5 hours, ????
If a round-trip ticket is less than $100, I’d probably take the train, rather than flying. If it’s less than $60, I’d take the train all the time. If they offered a commuter pass and run early enough in the morning and late enough in the evening, I might even ditch the Houston apartment and ride it every day.
Another one that won’t die is a train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. Demoted I see to a “Higher Speed” train project. Cost – $.5 billion. Average speed – 60mph.
On the parallel Interstate Highway the speed limit is 70 and people go 80.
https://duluthnewstribune.com/news/4570636-rail-twin-cities-draws-closer-look-amtrak
It does seem tailor-made to benefit you, Dave. However, people like you are a rarity. A train needs substantially more passengers than the routine commuter crowd to break even on its excessive overhead and construction costs. They won’t just need to replace all of Southwest. They will need a substantial number of additional passengers. While I do have a lot of family in Dallas, I wouldn’t fly or train up there. I need a car to get to the suburbs on both ends and not rely on family to ferry me. I’d just rather drive.
If the costs pan out to give a single dime of dividends to their investors, I’ll eat my hat.
I will be shocked if it’s ever actually built… Although they are talking about starting construction this year.
Even if they build it, I doubt I’ll still be doing this commute when it’s up and running. However, if it was running now, I’d probably be a frequent railer… 😉
Southwest Airlines Houston-Dallas flights from 6-8 AM and 4-6 PM are usually packed Monday-Friday. The volume of business travel between Houston and Dallas is YUGE. Is it big enough to support rail and “the company plane”? I don’t know… But they do appear committed to building it and they aren’t dependent on tax dollars (yet).
Good it will have 1 passenger, but those prices are big ifs.
What is the benefit of going from Merced to Bakersfield a little faster on a train? In the Nashville area we instituted a commuter rail line (not HSR) from Lebanon into downtown. The cars are vintage 1940’s so a little historical interest which I like. Supporters of this money pit rolled out our neighbor Charlie Daniels the musician to help sell it. The train is virtually empty as it runs limited hours with a handful of stops. It loses more money every year than was ever projected. It’s a play thing and nothing more.
Nobody would miss it if it was gone. That’s passenger rail in the USA except for the Northeast corridor I am told.
I went to Bakerfield once. I see no benefit in going there at any speed.
It was a long time ago though, maybe its blossomed, I am always ready to be educated 🙂
troe…
The Devil took the train to Georgia? …. I had a somewhat odd experience hearing Charlie Daniels’s song in the early eighties! My brother was a fan of Charlie Daniels and he and I were going to our summer cottage on the island of Öland Passing over the 4 miles bridge built 1972 our R Luxembourg medium wave signal was blocked out by an arabic transmitter (1440 kHz) but having reached Öland OLD LUXY was back…and they played “The Devil went down to Georgia”…(!)