Posted on 10/03/2009 6:18:08 AM PDT by Willie Green
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced on Friday that his state would build the first bullet train in the nation, a project that would provide a 10-billion-dollar economic boost to the state.
"I think it is disgraceful for America to be so far behind when it comes to infrastructure," Schwarzenegger told a press conference.
"In Europe and Asian countries, they're traveling now up to 300miles or 480 kilometers (per hour on bullet trains), while we're traveling on our trains at the same speed as 100 years ago. That is inexcusable. America must catch up," he said.
The governor added that to build the 800-mile (1280-kilometer) fast-speed rail from San Diego to San Francisco, California had applied for 4.7 billion dollars in federal stimulus money.
If built, the train can whisk people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 2 hours and 40 minutes, create hundreds of thousands of jobs and bring in revenue of billions of dollars.
Schwarzenegger said California deserved to get more than half of the 8 billion dollars in federal stimulus money set aside for high-speed rail development because it was further along in planning than other states and is ready to break ground in 2011, a year before the federal deadline for getting the money.
"Those stimulus dollars will go further in California than in any other state because California has pledged to match -- dollar for dollar -- all money received (from the federal government), " Schwarzenegger promised.
In November, California voters approved issuing 9.95 billion dollars in bonds to fund construction of high-speed rail. More money would come from state, local and private matching funds.
>>In air flight time for such a trip is about 1.5 hours. With additional overhead that flying takes in terms of time on the ground etc, you are looking at absolutely comparable travel times.<<
How do you figure that times will be comparable? Passengers will still have to travel to and from the train station- just as they have to travel to and from the airport if they wish to fly. Do people really live or want to go to places closer to the train station?
euronuts and asians have faster trains.......SO ?
Bullet train passenger cars are laid out similar to planes in seating configurations. 4-5 across the train depending on the model (ones I’ve seen) with say 15 rows per car (WAY MORE LEGROOM). Much wider isles than planes and lets say conservatively 8 passenger cars. That’s 15x5 per car x 8 cars = 75x8=600 on a very conservative estimate.
Of course the thing about trains are, you can add another car, and you can have other amenities that are just not possible on planes.
I have no doubt that a bullet (though I would prefer if you are going to spend that kind of money go maglev and not 40 year old tech, but that’s another story) between SF and LA would be commercially viable and successful if built, it should have been built by cali $$’s not fed $$. Cali has wasted 100’s of times the cost of this project on failed social programs over the last 40 years.
IDK the California market but if they can fill this train close to capacity it probably would make sense in a variety of ways.
You don’t have to arrive 2 hours early, you don’t have to wait for security, etc etc etc. If you don’t think you lose an HOUR in airports per flight, you don’t fly much.
Of course airplanes travel nearly twice that speed with about one percent of the friction. Are they going to pack rail passengers in like sardines the way airlines do? If not I don’t see how rail can ever bee more efficient.
Trains are more efficient because they don't have to defy the Law of Gravity.
Probably for the same reason trucking companies didn't build the interstate highway system.
I will wait ... People don’t ride trains in the USA, unless it’s for fun.
That's impossible to do without taxpayer subsidies because it requires more energy to drive the train at half the speed. The bullet train fares in Japan are more expensive than comparable Southwest Airlines fares if they were available, and Southwest takes no taxpayer money, pays taxes, and makes a profit.
If you don't think passengers on this train will have to get to the station an hour early to get through security, you're fooling yourself.
The Interstate Highway System isn't a limited-access mode of transportation.
That’s a really naive argument, let me ask you this.. do you think building a refinery would end up being a losing money proposition??? No, of course not. Yet, not a single one has been built here in 30+ years.
The issue with a project like this is there is a huge up front and infrastructure cost to get it up and going. The initial costs are astronomical. Lets see what a private company would have to do to do something like this.
1) If it doesn’t already have it, acquire the land rights for 500 miles of California. While this was a simpler proposition in the 1800s when the original rails were being built, its a costly and difficult process today.
2) evironmental impact studies for every inch of that 500 miles.
3) court cases and NIMBY groups.
4) regulatory overhead above and beyond those items.
This creates the need to raise billions of dollars in capital to even attempt it, and ANY one of the items could wind up shutting the entire project down.
While the reward could be potentially very great, no private company is going to tie up $10 Bill. plus dollars and a decade of work if not more before it sees a thin dime back knowing full well that any 1 little item could halt the entire project. The risk factors are too high for the investment. Not to mention the companies that have the capital to even attempt it are nearly all publicly traded and driven by next quarters earnings reports, not 20 year investment returns.
Now you and I can debate how much incompetent government is responsible for creating most of those risk factors, and how much being a publicly traded company always obsessed over quarterly reports instead of long term growth and how those risk factors and short term thinking impede development, technical advancement and growth, but thats the reality of the world we live in today.
Like it or not, government involvment is the only way projects of this scope get accomplished. Hell, cite me just 1 major city airport that has been built 100% by private companies or individuals in the last 50 years. And that’s a project where you are talking land just in one county, or city, and generally a relatively confined piece of land.. let alone a thin stretch spanning 500 miles.
By your logic, “no private company would do it” there wouldn’t be a single major modern airport in any US city, among other things.
I don’t travel a lot, but I am aware of the security and time to get on the plane.
But doesn’t Amtrak have security and time requirements as well? And don’t you think they’ll increase this with the new and expensive bullet train?
Then why doesn't private enterprise build and operate the train? Either it will be profitable or not. If not, then it shouldn't be built. If so, then a private entity should build it. Government should not be involved.
Article I - Section 8. The Congress shall have power to...
To establish post offices and post roads;
In 1838, it was established that all exisiting AND future railroads were "post roads".
If a road carries the US mail from one Post Office to another, it is a "post road".
It doesn't matter it the road is dirt, gravel, brick, asphalt, concrete, steel rail or maglev, it's still a "post road" and Congress is empowered to build it.
No, I’m not. Bullet trains don’t drop 30,000 feet when they have bombs go off on them, in fact, no one of them to my knowledge has even jumped the tracks even after having a bomb go off on them.
Will there be security? Sure, but will it be what you deal with during air travel? Nope.
Magnetic levitation trains do.
Security related to trains is not the same as planes, anywhere... if you want to destroy or derail a bullet train, you generally have to comprimise the track, not the train itself. Even in cases where terrorists have blown up bombs on bullet trains in motion, I don’t believe a single one has derailed.
You can’t Hijack a plane and make it go somewhere else, you can’t drive a train into a ski scraper, you basically can’t use it as a weapon.
This means the security needs are completly different. Do you really thing the post Sep 11 security changes have anything to do with protecting you as a passenger? Trust me when I tell you that is the lower worry from a security and risk standpoint, the higher risk is that plane being used as a missle.
Bullet trains and trains in general do not pose the same general risk even if an event happens. Risk is only to the passengers on the train itself, not to the greater public at large. Security for bullet trains is nowhere what it has to be for airplanes.
Can’t drive a bullet train into the capital or a sky scraper, or a nuclear tower.
Maglev does it far more efficiently than air travel ... just sayin.
Magnetic levitation trains do.LOL! Yeah... but Maglev doesn't have to climb to 30~40K feet in altitude!!!
The cost of highways is almost always borne by the users of those roads. We pay gas taxes, tolls, vehicle registration fees and all sorts of other costs to the government to use said roads.
If the true cost of trains were passed to customers, no one would ever ride them.
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