Look, don’t get me wrong here. I’m on record as saying I like the idea of a high-speed rail system running from San Diego to Sacramento and San Francisco. High-speed rail in Europe is competitively priced with air travel, more efficient than flying, more accessible, and in many ways more pleasant. Even after the Madrid bombings in 2004 security is light and safety seems both high and unquestioned. It could be that way here, too; I do not buy in to the idea that Americans will never embrace rail travel in the European or Japanese style.
But when the original high speed rail measure was put on the ballot, the numbers and timing seemed optimistic to me, and the proposed route seemed odd, with too many stops in too many central valley cities. I questioned whether that was the right way to build ridership and thus a base of users who would support the remainder of the project, especially when the initial construction of the project was to be between low-population density central valley cities rather than either Bay Area or L.A. area cities so as to service commuters. Frankly, the project has been so mishandled I’ve questioned whether it will happen at all.
So it’s with a heavy but unsurprised heart that I see the chickens coming home to roost this morning. The San Jose Mercury News reports that the California High Speed Rail Authority now believes that its project will wind up costing nearly triple their original estimate, and will not be running until 2033, 13 years later than originally represented to the voters. Although the Mercury News article is ambiguous on this point, coupled with previous information, it seems likely that in 2033, the high speed rail will be running on a sixty-one mile-long stretch between Corcoran and Madera. Corcoran, for those of you out of state, is famous mainly for its prison, the home of Charles Manson. Madera is… a lovely city near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Between them, these cities have a non-prison combined population of about 85,000, with Madera having about three quarters of that.
Compare the ridership potential of Corcoran-Madera to that of Anaheim-Los Angeles, or San Jose-San Francisco. Right now, it’s about an hour’s drive from Madera to Corcoran. High speed rail would cut that time in half, twenty-two years in the future, at a cost to taxpayers of a hundred billion dollars. I don’t know what more evidence needs to be offered to indicate that this plan is a waste of money and time on a staggering scale. Bear in mind, I want high speed rail — but I’d kind of like to see it up and running before I’m scheduled to collect Social Security, and while I’m willing to see the state invest in infrastructure, I want that investment to be managed intelligently.
This boondoggle needs a reboot.
Put me in charge. I’ll get ‘er done.
You’ve totally got the job, man. You certainly can’t do any worse than the ones running the show now.
Everybody would be horrified. Including me.
I had a great time living in California, and I love going back to L.A. to visit the in-laws.
But never, never, would I consider living in that state absent a top-to-bottom restructuring of its political system.
You can always vote Republican.
When Californians call themselves a model for this country I shudder with fear. Imagine if Dems ran this country the same way they ran CA.
9th in the world in terms of GDP sounds good about now. but hell, they’re in a liquidity trap too…
Are you thinking Arnold or Pete Wilson?
Oh, SNAP
I want a city-to-city transit method that has a departure every hour and takes less than two hours to go from SF to LA.
But, y’see, I’ve already got what I want.
Why am I going to spend dozens of billions of dollars to build another one?
We spend billions of dollars subsidizing the one we’ve got.
It’s not particularly efficient, the whole “overcoming gravity” part.
Now, switching requires us not only to build the other one, but to stop subsidizing the one that we’ve already got, which is where high speed rail comes off the rails.
Too many embedded favors in the air traffic system.
So we’ll solve the problem of a system that requires billions of dollars in subsidies by spending more billions to build a system that’s also going to require billions of dollars in subsidies.
(Unless you think that the passenger load that can’t keep airplanes flying is going to keep trains running.)
“It’s not particularly efficient, the whole “overcoming gravity” part.”
Trains have to worry about physics too, Einstein.
On a load per linear mile basis, trains kick the crap out of airplanes.
In addition to inertia, which they both have to overcome, planes have to deal with drag, which is a considerable issue.
If we stop subsidizing air travel, it would naturally follow that a good portion of that ridership (if not all of it) would transfer to rail, which would further improve the megajoule per passenger-kilometer cost.
Einstein.
“If we stop subsidizing air travel”
Please explain how air travel is being subsidized. Note that the definition of “subsidy” here is “money given to a private concern by the government”, not “stuff that is totally just like a subsidy”. The existence of air traffic control and weather forecasting are not “airline subsidies”.
How is the existence of air traffic control not a subsidy? Weather I can stretch.
Sources here, figures in Millions.
The federal and state governments, combined, collected a total $29,447 in revenue from air travel in 2007.
The federal and state governments, combined, collected a total $0 in revenue from rail in 2007.
The federal and state governments, combined, collected a total $108,141 in revenue from highways in 2007.
Federal and state governments, combined, spent $122,289 on the highway system in the same year.
Federal and state governments, combined, spent $45,074 on air travel in the same year.
Federal and state governments, combined, spent $1,528 on rail travel in the same year.
Now, one can quibble about what constitutes revenue and expenditures, I suppose, but I’m using the Bureau of Transportation’s published numbers, so if you disagree with them I think you’re the one that needs to come up with better ones.
By my math, this means that we subsidize the highway system to the tune of $14,148 a year (in millions, remember), or about $14 billion. We subsidize air travel to the tune of $15,627 a year, or about $16 billion. Rail is a paltry $1,528 per year, or under $2 billion. Not all numbers are federal, though, which can be misleading if you’re reading alternate sources who only look at governmental expenditures at the state or federal level, not both.
By energy intensity, rail works out to 2,435 BTUs per passenger-mile in 2009 (source here), whereas air travel comes in at 2,735 (domestic) and 3,211 (international – which for obvious reasons we ought to exclude from this conversation). Airlines have a load factor of 81%, which is a nice very high number (not too many empty seats per plane)… whereas trains are typically between 40-50% (source here, which means that if airlines were traveling at closer to their true cost-of-market capacity their BTUs per passenger mile would go *way* up, while trains would correspondingly go *way* down.
What this says to me is that we spend a lot more on subsidizing air and car travel than we do on rail, and that if we cut these subsidies this will encourage (via the market raising the prices of those modes much closer to the true cost) more people to ride the rails, which will improve their utilization efficiency even if we don’t spend any *more* money on rail (as we’re currently at underutilization), yielding a huge net advantage in cost efficiency.
Now, granted, there are other problems *with Amtrack* that we can get into, but on a pure economic and physics basis, trains beat the snot out of cars or planes.
“How is the existence of air traffic control not a subsidy? ”
In the same way that code-mandated easements and setbacks and rail-related traffic controls aren’t subsidies of rail travel.
It’s also the case that the free market was never permitted to develop an approach to traffic control, because the government did it right from the get-go.
You draw a conclusion, from your math, that air travel is more heavily subsidized. I look at those numbers and say that spending two dollars on air travel returns one dollar to the government, but spending one-and-a-half billion dollars on train travel returns zero dollars to the government. (I’m going by your quoted figures because I can’t find the equivalent table in the source you linked. Which, by the way, thanks for providing it instead of just throwing numbers out there.)
“I look at those numbers and say that spending two dollars on air travel returns one dollar to the government, but spending one-and-a-half billion dollars on train travel returns zero dollars to the government. ”
This doesn’t necessarily imply that rail must always generate zero revenue and have cost.
You do have a point that it’s not a complete ROI analysis, though, that’s fair.
These numbers are probably because Amtrak is like the Post Office. It’s a government-owned entity. It’s only going to report the bottom line, I imagine. All the ticket sales and whatnot don’t get reported as revenue, all that gets put into the rollup is the net.
Amtrak’s annual report here.
That shows a total revenue in 2010 of $2,513 in sales for $3,721 in costs.
So there we’d say: “”I look at those numbers and say that spending two dollars on air travel returns one dollar to the government, but spending 3.7 dollars on train travel returns 2.5 to the government, which is an improvement”.
Oh: “I’m going by your quoted figures because I can’t find the equivalent table in the source you linked.”
Chapter 3, Section D, if I remember correctly. I did it on the other computer, but I can look it up if you want to check out the tables directly.
You’re not considering the time and hassle of airport security, DD, but the point is still well-taken.
I’m guessing DD would say, ‘remove most of the pointless security’ and I’d probably agree with him.
But that goes into my possibly silly belief that even if TSA were full of highly skilled former police officers, it wouldn’t do much better than the current TSA. With this many airports flying this many planes this many times a day, another attempted hijacking will happen and the only real reason it won’t is because the terrorists think it’s a dead strategy.
However, I still think we should have high speed rail. Not so much for the replacing airplane trips, but to replace car trips. But I’m a socialist hippy who takes the bus every day and doesn’t own a car. 😛
“I’m guessing DD would say, ‘remove most of the pointless security’ and I’d probably agree with him. ”
Yes–and, up until people started blowing up airliners, it was easy to get on them, too. Heck, before September 11 2001 you didn’t even need a ticket to get into an airport concourse. It’s not like airport security is something that’s inherent to the fact of an airport.
“I still think we should have high speed rail. Not so much for the replacing airplane trips, but to replace car trips.”
So that’s more like commuter rail; and I’m in favor of that. (Indeed, what I thought was that the money earmarked for HSR would have been better spent on finally, finally getting BART extended to San Jose–which I did, in fact, vote for.)
Heh; San Jose turned down BART in favor of their own light rail system back when I lived there.
San Jose was a great place to grow up, but they have really crazy inferiority complexes about things that have anything to do with San Francisco.
HSR was supposed to create bedroom communities in the Valley. Naturally, only the proposed bedroom communities were for it.
Yeah; the issue was that San Francisco could see themselves becoming a business hub, with all the people (and all their property taxes) living down in the hills where it was cheap.
It didn’t help that Milpitas got snorky about having a BART line go through their town but no planned station.
Don’t get me started on Milpitas.
Oy! We’ve got another one! (I use zipcar. my “car payment” is less than $100 a month. And it gets me oodles of Costco chow — and a good 20 mile hike)
On what basis should we assume that rail will not become similarly hassletastic? If people start using it, it becomes a “target.”
Trumwill,
TSA’s way ahead of you.
Experience. Places that have not only seen rail sites targetted but actually attacked — London, Madrid, Tokyo — it’s still not particularly a hassle to get on board. Whatever behind-the-scenes security is going on does not substantially interfere with the liquid flow of passengers.
That’s not to say that the TSA couldn’t or wouldn’t accomplish what its European and Japanese have failed to do, which is to make accessing rail transit points burdensome and awkward solely for the sake of providing security theater.
The TSA has a decade of working on this as a core competency.