Posted on 11/16/2011 2:45:16 PM PST by goldstategop
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has created a set of models and scenarios to answer the objections to its earlier models and scenarios. These will be parsed in much more detail than I can do here, but it is best to note the assumptions. First, its model assumes that the rail passenger fare will always be cheaper than airfare or driving. A ticket from San Francisco to Anaheim will be $72 in 2005 dollars. This is projected out to 2030.
Second, the ridership will be immense — anywhere from 28.6 million to 37.1 million. This admittedly may appear realistic compared with the 90 million once promised. It is, however, not far from the 39 million projected in 2009. The agency can't go much below this. It needs high ridership or the model for turning a profit falls apart.
But these kinds of projects always overestimate their ridership. Actual ridership of the BART line to San Francisco's airport, for example, was in 2009 only 25% of the 2003 prediction. If California high-speed rail captured the same percentage of riders as Amtrak's Acela does today in the Northeast corridor, an area with a long tradition of rail travel and a higher population than California, it would have about 5 million riders, not 28 million to 37 million. Uh-oh.
Read the fine print. The report contains a disclaimer. The ridership projections are estimates. They are "subjective judgments" and "may differ materially from the actual future ridership and revenue." They should not be "construed to constitute a guarantee, promise, or representation of any particular outcome(s) or result(s)." You have been warned.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The Socialists nailed down their primary cornerstone, being socialized medicing. The next big step movinvg us into a hard socialist country is to push for rail travel and get us out of our cars.
They are completely transparent. Sadly, they have been getting everything they wanted since the 1960s. There has been no stopping them with the uninformed, apathetic, taker mentality of the collective electorate. I pray the middle class voters wake up and stop this but I have no reason to be optimistic.
Boo hoo hoo.
Snake the line from the San Francisco airport right through all those high-priced suburbs, down to Los Angeles International Airport, two of the busiest airports in Calfornia. For all those limousine liberals that think high-speed rail is just the ticket, having a 200-mph train swooshing past their neighborhoods five or six times daily should fully satisfy their desire for the government to “do something” for them. Or to them.
With resistnce from NIMBY protestors, let’s see how long this “high-speed rail” takes to be put in place.
My bet is never. Doesn’t mean that years and years of fighting it all out in courts won’t provide a number of lawyers and other professionals with lifetime employment.
And it still won’t ever be built.
The liberals are insisting it be built in the GOP Central Valley because they know affluent liberals would never stand for a train swooshing several times a day through their populated coastal enclaves. That’s how much they like the bullet train.
They’re NIMBY on it directly connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Maybe they should stick to playing with model railways, in the basement.
Such models are based on very optimistic assumptions and a lot of fudging.
For all their claims to be forward-looking, liberals are fascinated with a nineteenth century technology that’s as relevant to today’s life as antique steamships and the horse buggy and whip.
He’s against this project and he’s an expert on railroads.
No genuine high speed rail proponent thinks this California proposal is viable.
California is tinkering with committing a trillion dollars to a project that in all likelihood, will never see completion, even in the unlikely event it ever gets off the ground.
Are these models written by the same people who wrote those models predicting the worst if we don’t stop producing carbon dioxide?
Yup. Predictive modelling is as worthwhile as gazing the future in a crystal globe. No one can project with absolute certainty what the world looks like tomorrow, never mind 20 years from now.
Bankruptcy judge skeptical about Las Vegas Monorail plans
The Las Vegas Monorail was developed at a cost of $650 million — but based on its meager ridership and revenue levels it’s now worth just $16 million to $20 million.
That caused a bankruptcy judge to express skepticism Monday about Las Vegas Monorail Co.’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy in which it would still be encumbered by $44.5 million in debt — more than twice its value as a company.
On top of that, Judge Bruce Markell noted, the monorail’s own financial projections show it facing a deficit of $38.4 million in 2019.
“I don’t buy it,” Markell told Monorail attorneys during a day-long hearing
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So the Las Vegas bankruptcy judge thinks that a monorail already running in a high density corridor is essentially worthless, and now the state wants to build an even bigger boondoggle in CA?
That was Harry Reid’s contribution to LV. Now he’s disowned it, of course.
It has nothing to do with him. Why, nothing at all!
Who the heck wants to ride between the bay area and LA every day? Of what value is that in reality. I think they would be hard pressed to get 200,000 riders not 5,000,000.
Its basically subsidizing a niche train for the very affluent. Liberals have a funny idea of how to spread the wealth around!
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