High speed rail

[DanS]

Table 2 is interesting. I note that the economically justifiable investment for passenger railroads is given as "not available."

Most of the economically justifiable investment differential is in spending for highways. In our metropolitan areas, it almost seems as if more highways are always justified -- you could pave every last inch of the city and suburbs. But at a certain point, this pretty much makes the city suck.

[DanS]

On the topic of transportation infrastructure, here's an article from today's WSJ detailing China's transportation infrastructure spending. A few pretty comparative China-US graphs included.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122635482375915243.html

[snoopy369]

The graph comparing it to the US isn't really that interesting, since we have two totally different situations (one a country with no highway system building one, and another a country with an already-fully-functional highway system). I'd expect China's expenditures to be many times that of the US, frankly; it interests me to see that it's not.

[DanS]

These figures haven't been adjusted for relative cost of construction, on the other hand. China's cost of construction should be much lower. Also, the US has been increasing spending on highways the last several years (spending the money when times were good).

I thought the logistics cost as a percentage of GDP was interesting too.

[Kidlicious]

One thing that interesting is that someone said China probably won't be able to increase spending on infrastructure because they are already spending so much, and good point by DanS about the costs being much different.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by DanS
Table 2 is interesting. I note that the economically justifiable investment for passenger railroads is given as "not available."

Most of the economically justifiable investment differential is in spending for highways. In our metropolitan areas, it almost seems as if more highways are always justified -- you could pave every last inch of the city and suburbs. But at a certain point, this pretty much makes the city suck.

Quite the contrary actually: It would make the city not suck at all - and that would be a problem, cause you´d have to revamp the whole drainage system.

EDIT: My opinion: It should be built and then, they should put some extra tax on gas, and use that money to reduce the prices for the train, so that it will be everyone´s first choice... It is totally ligit to use taxation in order to change people´s habits.

[Dinner]

I'd very much like to see that. It could fund not just the bullet trains but also local light rail projects. It would also help if the state would drop the ban on off shore oil drilling and put a 10% royalty on all hydrocarbons extracted. The oil and gas could help pay for a great mass transit system.

[Unimatrix11]

Actually those should be funded first, because that´s what commuters use - and those really need to go from A to B, whereas you dont really have to go to LV when you live in LA - well at least not on a daily basis.

[Dinner]

Several cities have at least some light rail in California but currently it isn't enough. The Bay Area is well covered with BART and the Muni and LA has the beginnings of a nice subway system with Metro Link covering regional passenger rail but they need more subway lines and some actual local light rail. San Diego has a halfway decent light rail with its trolley network but it only covers the old parts of town which existed prior to say 1950 while everything built after 1950 isn't covered by the trolley network. They'll have to greatly expand that for it to be a viable option. Sacramento has a few small trolley lines but that's about it. Everything else in the state has at best bus coverage or no coverage.

The long term goal is to first build the bullet trains so that there is fast and affordable intercity rail in the state (as opposed to AmTrak's horribly slow and expensive system) then to have cities build light rail to feed into the bullet train network. That's more of a 30 year plan though but at least they're working on it.

[Unimatrix11]

So a top-to-bottom approach... might serve effieciency when its done, but endangers the whole project from the beginning until its done, IMHO. Cause it might well happen, you build a couple of Intercities, then they wont work properly, because the feeders arent online yet. Then people will scream: ´this is just a waste of money !´- funds may stop and you sit on a half assed something. I´d prefer the bottom-to-top approach, as you can stop at anytime and the system built up to that point will at least have a local function (and the investment units are smaller i guess - smaller steps so to say). But of course, the vision of the final stage should always be kept in the back of the head...

[DanS]

High speed rail will not provide inexpensive transport. Or, put another way, if you're looking for inexpensive transport, don't look to high speed rail.

We need to be realistic about the cost of these services.

[Unimatrix11]

oh- i think i am realistic - but at the same time utterly ignorant (as in ´i know it´s too expensive, but i dont ****ing care !´)

[DanS]

I was referring to what Oerdin said. "Fast and affordable." For most, it will be slower and about as expensive or more expensive than flying, even if it is better run than Amtrak. Our experiences on the Northeast Corridor suggest that this will be so.

[Unimatrix11]

Well in Germany (and i think it is roughly comparable to Cali) we have such a thing. So has France. And Japan, too, i think.

Granted ours is more like transforming the railways from the poor man´s travel opportunity to rich-man´s express, for the ICE (InterCity Express) is the most profitable of them all - because of high prices for the tickets - the others got priviatized (and were made profitable again) or closed entirely (little sidetracks to villages). But the german railways... guess the name of its chief architect... yeah, right, Albert Speer (the son of hitler´s architect). They want to privatize the whole thing now, and thus are pushing for profit wherever they can (and also fake bilances - dont buy !), so they can raise as much capital as possible when they go on the stock market (it´s practically gonna be like this: Let people spend their money on our overpriced railsystem (which used to be theirs anyways), so we can serve the well-pocketed costumers with our supertrains, they only dream they could afford (which is the reason they are gonna buy the stocks, which will, of course, just drop, just like the telekom´s did, due to overhyping and balance-fraud at emmission).

[DanS]

For the ICE, what's the price from Munich to Berlin and how much time does it take?