Posted on 02/27/2010 11:22:28 PM PST by Steelfish
Some Fear California's High-Speed Rail Won't Deliver On Early Promises
There's concern that local, state or federal subsidies would be needed as projected ticket prices between L.A. and San Francisco have almost doubled. And building costs for the first phase have grown
By Rich Connell and Dan Weikel February 28, 2010
Despite a new $2.25-billion infusion of federal economic stimulus funding, there are intensifying concerns -- even among some high-speed rail supporters -- that California's proposed bullet train may not deliver on the financial and ridership promises made to win voter backing in 2008.
Estimates of ticket prices between Los Angeles and San Francisco have nearly doubled in the project's latest business plan, pushing ridership projections down sharply and prompting new skepticism about data underpinning the entire project.
"This just smells funny," said state Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), a supporter of high-speed rail and chairman of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee.
New inflation-adjusted construction figures show that outlays needed to build the first 520-mile phase of the system have climbed more than 25%, from $33.6 billion to $42.6 billion.
And some government watchdogs are concerned that a linchpin commitment to taxpayers in the bullet train's financing measure -- that no local, state or federal subsidies would be required to keep the trains operating -- may be giving way.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
If California was willing to destroy its agriculture industry because they were told it would endanger a 2 inch fish, imagine what its going to take to implement high speed trains in that state.
You really nailed it!
at least this money is spent in the US.
....................
Iraq,, A’stan, and who many other enemy
countries are living off the US taxpayer
who —> how
The only aspect of this train that will ultimately be successful will be that which leads out of California.
dead on the money.
(Hint: the answer is zero.)
The US government had to require, by legislation, the continuation of passenger rail just to get the mail delivered in the 1930's. Freight has paid for itself, and supported passenger service for 100 years.
The math on this is ridiculous from every perspective.
They are counting on 40 million boarders ? That is 110,000 people taking a high-speed train per day every day of the year. Do that many people really need to travel between San Diego, LA, San Fran, Sacramento ? Daily ?
They are saying they need to charge $105 per fare. Why ? The freight company CSX moves a ton of freight 400 miles by rail for a few dollars according to their commercials.
They need $4B per year to meet operating costs ? That seems like an awful lot.
You can’t figure it out?
Cargo is moved bulk. Weight wise a single train car can guestimated hold three thousand people. Cargo will sit, with out air, water, waste or human service on sidings for days.
Cargo doesn’t care about departure or arrival terminals.
I don’t think you want to be priced out at the same weight volume as bulk cargo.
Oh, well then, that’s totally different.
/sarc
highspeed rail through earthquake country is about the dumbest thing I can think of to waste more money
I would think 5 people in cushy air conditioned comfort would weigh less than 2,000 lbs of freight. Your estimate of the freight a train car can carry is a bit off — a standard freight container is 40,000 lbs or about the weight equivalent of 200 passengers not 3,000. That cargo can sit on a siding, requiring coupling and uncoupling of cars and coordinating all that doesn’t sound like a savings compared to a train that is all passengers, stays coupled together all the time and loads and unloads immediately upon arrival. A single train employee for each 100 passengers might add $3 to each fare. And cargo shippers actually do care about terminals, usually involving very expensive cranes, equipment operators, truck loading docks, and warehousing costs.
So how do you get from $3 to move 2,000 lbs freight to $525 to move 5 passengers the same distance ? Somebody is planning on lining their pockets big time.
Only a government could run a railroad that way. As a boondoggle of a jobs program instead of a profitable private enterprise.
A rail car can carry a 100 tons cargo. At a 150 pounds/person, that’s over 1,300 people.
1 employee per 100 customers? Yeah, that will be attractive. Plus, I take it that doesn’t included the clean up, food beverage, admin staff. ( Well just not count these, eh?) And, no doubt being union, they’ll be a fine set of service personnel.
Anyways, you are right on this being a raid on the public purse.
So, you would get the usual construction boondoggle, , and then the thing that killed off passenger rail, unionized labor, all forever, supported by taxing others.
People spend billions, every years on mp3 players just to listen to music. Billions on greeting cards. Billions on lawn care. All because that is what they want.
People don’t freely spend billions on passenger rail travel because they don’t want it. Those people that do, are not enough, and even they will not pay high enough to meet the costs of the rail road. ( These are the people that want to tax other people, who will then have less money to buy what they want. )
but sadly some reside on planet.....Choo, Choo!
To be purely accurate, maybe that should read passenger choo, choo! I have another idea. For those crazies dying to travel by train. It would be cheap, easy to do, and solve two problems. Add a pleasure dome to a boxcar, or a caboose to the train, that would hold passengers, and they can be carried on the freight train. After everyone figured out it was faster by car or airplane, you could quietly fold the passenger operation, without having to have new right of way new cars and engines and a planet load of cash and credit subsidized by government “forever”.
Here’s a perfect example of something that’s just too expensive to implement.
If it’s $42B for the first 520 miles of an 800 mile system, let’s go ahead and double it to $85B. We know the final price would be higher. And that’s just to build the thing.
Now to borrowing costs. Let’s pretend that there are people or institutions who would buy 30-year CA bonds in the first place. But we can’t pretend as well that they’ll go along with a couple of percent interest. Let’s say the bonds pay eight percent.
Just doing the simple math of $85B at 8% instead of working int out with a loan calculation program gives $6.8B per year in interest needing to be paid. Divide that by the article’s ridership figure of 60M people per year to get a fare of $113 per person as an absolute minimum just to pay the bond interest for what they built.
Oops, excuse me, according to the article, a fare of $105 drops ridership by 1/3, from 60M to 40M, moving that bond-interest-per-ride figure from $113 to $170, which by the same economic reasoning would cut ridership some more, etc. We’re looking at $200 per ticket to break even on interest payments alone.
I leave it to others more familiar with the day to day costs of running a business to offer suggestions as to how much more needs to be added to that $113 fare for the expenses of running the railroad itself — fuel, salaries, advertisements, etc.
NFW can this thing be anything but a complete money pit.
Make the politicians pay when the costs soar!
If we required politicians to post a personal guarantee bond, payable to charity, if the costs of projects they supported soared, I bet these boondoggles would never be approved.
BTW that would be a one-way fare between SF and LA, using the article's description of ridership numbers.
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