Interesting thread and a good read with passion from all sides. I will just make a few points/observations if I may:
- How many airports/ roads will be built be private investors if all the services connecting them had to be paid for as well - such as connecting roads and the like and not supplied by the state? In major infrastructure projects there is always a taxpayer element whether "up front" or implied to mix my English.
- I would say it would be mighty difficult extrapolating current airfares and then comparing them to a notional cost after the building of a High Speed Link now. That to my mind doesn't work. HS1 in the UK cost £9bn which is a fair few quidto say the least. Eurostar has around 80% of the London - Paris market and that in turn has benefit trade-offs for the airlines as they now use the slots for more lucrative long distance traffic. Plus the millions who use the train use a great deal of PT to access the stations unlike driving - as taking the train is the safer bet that in turn yields benefits which should be externalized in terms of congestion bashing, accident reduction and general all round quality of life (a nebulous concept maybe - but anybody who fights their way in Heathrow along the M4 will nod their head here).
- Some of the best studies which show rail/road costs come from New Zealand. Pity the recently elected National govt has shown every intent on ignoring them. Mind you the flogged the system in the 80's to the private sector which showed great opportunity to prove its worth by asset stripping.
- I am sure the HSR will use yield management like the airlines. If the cost is say, $30 more for a return trip; then perhaos that will be acceptable in terms of opportunity cost - you can achieve alot more on the train then the plane I find in terms of work. There is generally more space and I find it easier to concentrate. But that is just me.Plus the CBD - CBD element helps as you dont have to fight your way through 45 minutes of traffic to reach your destination....
Finally. Go French. They have the technology, the same gauge and the trains. Just ask Alstom to set up a manufacturing facility and through a few Euros at a research facility at a University somewhere. You could have the trainsets in 7 years. Just in time for the frst stages to be opened. I look forward to travelling on the line - best of luck.
Many of us agree with you, but there are a few, I won't mention any names, who subscribe to the belief system that anything that cannot be quantified in the ledger does not exist.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Phoebe Vet Many of us agree with you, but there are a few, I won't mention any names, who subscribe to the belief system that anything that cannot be quantified in the ledger does not exist.
You mean the intangible benefits of passenger trains such as strangers chatting with each other in lounge cars?
Or benefits to society beyond the individual railroad passenger, such as savings in oil, which are quantifiable in an accounting ledger, where my calculation that the investment recommended by the Vision Report required 50 times the cost per unit of oil than waging overseas war in protection of overseas supplies went unchallenged?
The problem is that a certain subset of the general population really like trains and really like riding on trains, but for the great unwashed masses out there in the voting populace, a train is just a long bus, as is an airplane or all that matters. One may like trains and ascribe all manners of advantages and intangible benefits to them, but the average person in the U.S. doesn't, so one become embarassed that America doesn't have HSR, only the feeling is not so much as embarassment as resentment that more people don't share that feeling.
One is only going to get more trains if larger numbers of people are persuaded of their benefits, and the minds of the people you need to change are not the people who call themselves Sam1, Paul Milenkovic, or some other names on this forum. The people who need to be persuaded of this are people who don't give trains much a second thought. And these people are not going to respond to scoldings that the "lack the will" to "invest money in trains" in the manner of people in Taiwan, Germany, and South Korea. If that were the case, the Florida and Texas HSR plans would have gotten more traction.
There is one strand of passenger train advocacy that believes there is such inherent goodness in trains and believes in a "if you build it, they will come, so let's spend whatever amount of money it takes" philosophy. Another strand believes that we should look at costs and concentrate advocacy on projects that bring the best return in whatever quantifiable matter -- passenger miles, gallons of oil saved, reduced air pollution -- for the public dollars spent.
That there is such a "let's spend whatever money it takes" with the corollary "if we don't spend whatever money it takes, we are collectively fools or idiots" sentiment is one that makes me much more pessimistic that we will ever get more trains than the penny-counting accountants who advocate that rail money be spent wisely.
If people in the advocacy community are seriously looking over nearly 40 years of Amtrak and willing to discuss what works and what doesn't and what to do next, I see hope for more trains. If people in the advocacy community take the line "just give us more money as you have for every other pressure group", the prospects for anything changing from the course Amtrak has taken (continually shrinking route map) looks dim.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Fighting traffic, or rather, not having to fight traffic, is advanced as an intangible advantage to the train. We are not talking about taking people off the road in enough numbers so there is less strain on the road; perhaps we are saying for the people willing to take the train, there will be a better experience.
Recently I overheard a student at one of the computers chatting on a cell phone with a friend, expressing the belief that HSR lines should be built in highway medians, and this person expressed the view that great satisfaction will be gotten riding the train and zipping past all of the poor souls stuck in traffic in the cars.
The motorist or auto passenger may be stuck in traffic and spend a portion of their journey waiting. But what about having to get to the train station early to catch a scheduled train, say the one for which you have a reduced fare demand managed ticket? And then having to sit around go nowhere waiting for the train? And then having to queue up to board the train? And then having the conductor sit you (say, a college aged man) next to a portly older woman rather than a more attractive and perfumed younger woman?
People talk about "road rage" on the highways, but is there "seat rage" on common carriers? I remember taking a kind of underground train ride on this kind of mining railway used in a tourist cave in Slovenia. When the train pulled into the boarding area, there was this mad dash "for the best seats." Mind you, as a dummer Americanische (people in Slovenia, by the way, seem to understand the dialect of German I speak, which is unintelligble in Germany), I didn't know what the best seats were because they were all hard, wooden benches on an open-sided narrowgauge railway car, and there were more than enough seats that my father and I waited for the rush to settle down before boarding the train, but the fact that there was this seat-rush reflex in people suggested that people had been conditioned this way riding many other kinds of trains.
Judging by the tone, not the content, of the reply, I must have hit a nerve.
I do not disagree with much of what you said, but I believe that you have tried to focus what I said earlier about being embarrassed that the USA is falling behind the rest of the world in most technology, narrowly onto trains.
If you look at the Amtrak corridors that work well they all have one thing in common. The trains are fast, frequent, and run more or less on time.
I have worked for the government. I know politicians always try to do too much with too little and the project winds up being useless. If Amtrak is given money to "expand" they will use it to add more once a day trains to new destinations or just buy some replacement equipment for the existing inadequate system. What they need to do is take one corridor at a time and bring it up to a quality operation...frequent, fast, on time. Then move on to the next corridor and repeat.
Five trains a day on one corridor is better than one train a day on five corridors.
Sam1The Interstate Highway System was a 1950s solution to a transportation problem
What was the problem? Too much rail traffic? Commuter traffic?
In my opinion, all the IHS did was short-circuit the building of state tollways. In 1955, you could already drive from Boston, NY and Phila to Chicago on limited access highways.
There were decent US highways across the unpopulated prarie, and without the IHS, quite a few more toll roads would likely have been built in the near mid-west.
You might be able to say the IHS was a "good idea" but it didn't solve any problem where solutions weren't already at hand.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
The highway system as we knew it in 1950 was a two lane concrete road clogged with trucks, buses, and cars through the middle of towns and other built up areas with a best speed limit of 50mph in open country and a snails pace from traffic light to traffic light in towns, villages, and cities. It was a road and system so different from the Interstate Highway as we know it today that you cannot compare it. It is amazing how different life and times were before 1940, duirng the war years, right immdiately after the war, the intrim 50's to 60's, followed by the jet age and the interstate highways. I am amused at how a thepost 1965 generation have difficulties understandiing really how different things were in the preceeding decades.
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
The highway system as we knew it in 1950 was a two lane concrete road clogged with trucks, buses, and cars through the middle of towns and other built up areas with a best speed limit of 50mph in open country and a snails pace from traffic light to traffic light in towns, villages, and cities. It was a road and system so different from the Interstate Highway as we know it today that you cannot compare it. It is amazing how different life and times were before 1940, duirng the war years, right immdiately after the war, the intrim 50's to 60's, followed by the jet age and the interstate highways. I am amused at how the post 1965 generation has difficulties understandiing really how different things were in the preceeding decades.
Notwithstanding that Interstates can have some fairly sharp curves and may not be the best choice for HSR, nothing will infuriate drivers in stop-n-go urban traffic more than seeing a train that doesn't stop near them going by in the median with 200-300 passengers once an hour and wonder rightly why there couldn't be another lane instead to relieve congestion.
Similarly, why should Metra bend over backward for a 70-75 minute express from Milwaukee with even 350 passengers when 30 minute or less frequencies are needed in both peak and off-peak directions for 7,000 commuters in the peak hour? Ironically, the one full Hiawatha takes almost as long as it would with a longer train making a few additional suburban stops that could pick up another 700 commuters.
Is that because Amtrak only has one or two guys to work on this? Is there some skepticism or jealousy about outsourcing to consultants.
HarveyK400I would disagree with US rail technology being stuck in a rut. We have the test center in Pueblo since the late 1970's that has done a ton of work. Examples are things like wheel-rail dynamics and metallurgy that facilitated raising car load limits to 286,000 pounds, turnout design, and crash-worthiness. This has served as a test platform for both freight and passenger equipment from here and abroad.I don't think some revolutionary development is needed to save railroads. We have the knowledge we need. One problem is implementation with a privatized rail transportation sector operating in a strict direct cost and revenue environment irrespective of public benefits and needs. Another is that, while the number of players has dramatically fallen, each railroad wields significant economic influence over the direction and choice of technologies that must be brought into consensus such as with Positive Train Control.The Turbo Train was a US refinement of the Xplorer after learning from the Talgo and Aerotrain almost forty years ago. The Turbo Train also failed in part because of the small scale of the program being unable to support the maitenance infrastructure.
I would disagree with US rail technology being stuck in a rut. We have the test center in Pueblo since the late 1970's that has done a ton of work. Examples are things like wheel-rail dynamics and metallurgy that facilitated raising car load limits to 286,000 pounds, turnout design, and crash-worthiness. This has served as a test platform for both freight and passenger equipment from here and abroad.
I don't think some revolutionary development is needed to save railroads. We have the knowledge we need. One problem is implementation with a privatized rail transportation sector operating in a strict direct cost and revenue environment irrespective of public benefits and needs. Another is that, while the number of players has dramatically fallen, each railroad wields significant economic influence over the direction and choice of technologies that must be brought into consensus such as with Positive Train Control.
The Turbo Train was a US refinement of the Xplorer after learning from the Talgo and Aerotrain almost forty years ago. The Turbo Train also failed in part because of the small scale of the program being unable to support the maitenance infrastructure.
IIRC, the Pueblo, CO, test center used to be a high speed ground transportation research center. IMHO it is today only a shadow of what it might have been if our nation had had a policy of promoting research and development in ground transportation.
henry6 The highway system as we knew it in 1950 was a two lane concrete road clogged with trucks, buses, and cars through the middle of towns and other built up areas with a best speed limit of 50mph in open country and a snails pace from traffic light to traffic light in towns, villages, and cities. It was a road and system so different from the Interstate Highway as we know it today that you cannot compare it. It is amazing how different life and times were before 1940, duirng the war years, right immdiately after the war, the intrim 50's to 60's, followed by the jet age and the interstate highways. I am amused at how the post 1965 generation has difficulties understandiing really how different things were in the preceeding decades.
Was this everywhere? Or, just mostly east of the Mississippi? I remember driving west in the late 60's and early 70s' while the interstates were being built. Even with the induced traffic from the 1/2 complete interstates, the 2 lane US highway stretches weren't that bad. Certainly not at capacity, anyway.
Of course, I grew up on Long Island and South Jersey were highways were built by the state and paid for primarily with toll money. I've always suspected, that w/o the IHS, we'd have eventually had a pretty good network of highways east of the Miss., except for some or the rural south, perhaps, and some in TX and some in CA. At the very least, the IHS distorted the existing marketplace for transportation.
This is EXACTLY what some suggest that we should do with passenger rail, except I believe that on the whole, the IHS was a good thing. I also believe that Federal investment in regional "American HSR" corridors icould be a good thing, too!
Yes, pretty much so. I also grew up in the NY Metropolitan area...b NYC1943, grew up in North Jersey leaving for college upstate NY in the early 60s. Route 46 from the George Washington Bridge to the Delaware Water Gap was the two lanes from Denville, NJ 42 miles west to the Dleaware River and four lanes from Denville 32 miles east to the Hudson River. In either direction good hour's trek, longer duirng rush hours and weekends. Likewise, Route 611 wound up and over th Poconos, through the Waterr Gap and the town, then downtown Stroudsburg before climbing up and over the Poconos. North from NYC it was Route 9, south to Trenton and Philadelphia it was Route 1. Imagine travelling across NY, before the Thruway, either by traveling north on two lane 9 to to lane 20 across to Hamburg, or further north to 5 and west along the Mowhawk and downtown Amsterdam LIttle Falls, Utica, Syrcuse, Auburn, etc. all the way to Buffalo. Maybe Route 17 west off 9 thorugh NY's Southern Tier could take you through the mountans and villages all the way to Jamestown before petering out and you having to find a two lane country road to Erie. Likewise there were routes like 4 and 22 across PA prior to the Turnpike. Did a charter bus trip south to Lynchburg, VA, Roanoake, Morristown, Athens and Nashville, TN up to eastern KY to Buchannon, WVA,, Carlisle, PA and back to Jersey on the likes of Rt 11 and 19 and so many other two lane concrete highways in 1959 or 60...and yes it was virtually all like that. Robert Moses was only a NYC figure and thus LI and the Metropolitan area was deep in four lane parkways by then, but the Eisenhower Interstate system was just getting off the drawing board. The old 46 to 611 to 11 Denville to Binghamton, a four or five hour drive is now a simple two hour flight up 80 to 380 to 81...but that was not complete until the late 60s. NY Route 17, as a four lane from Suffern to Jamestown was not completed until the 90s.
Phoebe Vet Judging by the tone, not the content, of the reply, I must have hit a nerve. I do not disagree with much of what you said, but I believe that you have tried to focus what I said earlier about being embarrassed that the USA is falling behind the rest of the world in most technology, narrowly onto trains. If you look at the Amtrak corridors that work well they all have one thing in common. The trains are fast, frequent, and run more or less on time. I have worked for the government. I know politicians always try to do too much with too little and the project winds up being useless. If Amtrak is given money to "expand" they will use it to add more once a day trains to new destinations or just buy some replacement equipment for the existing inadequate system. What they need to do is take one corridor at a time and bring it up to a quality operation...frequent, fast, on time. Then move on to the next corridor and repeat. Five trains a day on one corridor is better than one train a day on five corridors.
In the Chicago neighborhood where I come from, if someone had mentioned something about the tone of a reply, one could get the response, "Tone of my reply? Why, I've got the tone of my reply . . . right here!"
Let's see, if someone had taken the (inflation-corrected) half billion/year spent on the LD subsidies from the beginnings of Amtrak, one could have had enough money to do four entire Midwest Regional Rail Initiatives, that is four entire hub networks of corridors of 110 MPH trains with up to 10-daily-in-each-direction frequencies, carrying more than double the current Amtrak passenger-mile volume and without ongoing operating subsidies.
So I guess you and Sam1 are reading from the same page after all and everything is now civil and harmonious in the land of passenger train advocacy.
I can remember when we had to take 99 from Seattle to Vancouver a distance of 120 miles and with the stop and go traffic through the cities and the old two lane roadway it took five hours. This included crossing the border. After several trips this way my dad decided it would be cheaper to take the train and not fight the traffic. We rode the GN Internationals and the schedule was four hours. Today with I-5 one can drive between the two cities with border crossing included in 3 hours or less. This is why the GN went from three daily Internationals to one. At one time there was another option the CPR triangle route using there Coastal Steamships. They offered two services daily overnight was the nicest as you could get a cabin on the ships and go to sleep in the evening and wake up arriving in Vancouver the next AM. The day ships took eight hours including the stop in Victoria. Of course the planes only take 1/2 hour but Vancouvers airport is quite a way from downtown as is Seattles. So the downtown to downtown time flying with customs clearance and all is closer to four hours today. The Amtrak train does the trip with customs clearance and all in 3 hours. THe only point I am trying to make is there is only a certain amount of time that will be saved on a route such as this if they invest in HSR, do to the customs clearance.
Al - in - Stockton
Paul Milenkovic Let's see, if someone had taken the (inflation-corrected) half billion/year spent on the LD subsidies from the beginnings of Amtrak, one could have had enough money to do four entire Midwest Regional Rail Initiatives, that is four entire hub networks of corridors of 110 MPH trains with up to 10-daily-in-each-direction frequencies, carrying more than double the current Amtrak passenger-mile volume and without ongoing operating subsidies.
Or lets take that same money and see how much highway could have been built to what standard for the same length of the LD train operation or comperable 110 MPH trains. I ask just for the sake of arguement because I don't know but it seems pertenent in some way.
Definetly five trains a day is better than one. Five trains a day is service, one is political pay off.
One train a day lets people escape a very long, expensive cab ride.
Seriously, one train a day certainly is a compromise when revenue doesn't come near expenses. With time, short-distance corridors have proven to be not much less a burden than other transport, it encourages travel without the hassle of urban driving and expensive parking, contributes to reducing road use in congested areas, and generally provides a modest reduction in emissions.
Southern California has reached the saturation point where freeways are concerned. The cost to add any additional lanes is with the purchase of the land and all is going to be somewhere around 200 million per mile. So southern California has reached the point where something has to be done and Metrolink has been a major asset to the freeways. Now Californians and there need for speed are talking about the 220 mph HSR system between LA and SF. Cost for the entire system is estimated at 40 billion and the first 10 billion in bonds should go on sale within the next two months. The system as envisioned is very elaborate and probably more costly than as necessary. Recent articles in area newspapers are saying now is the time to aquire the ROW as real estate prices are 50% or less than they were so that means the ROW can probably be purchased for 8 billion rather than 16 billion. That seems like a substantial savings. So why are they not offering the bonds now and purchasing this ROW before it goes up again? I for one am beginning to wonder what is going on with the HSR is there something they haven't told the people. With the number of Californians without jobs approaching 11% I say lets get started.
HarveyK400 One train a day lets people escape a very long, expensive cab ride. Seriously, one train a day certainly is a compromise when revenue doesn't come near expenses. With time, short-distance corridors have proven to be not much less a burden than other transport, it encourages travel without the hassle of urban driving and expensive parking, contributes to reducing road use in congested areas, and generally provides a modest reduction in emissions.
Depends on the train...if a town is served in the middle of the night once a day, then, no. But if it is a commuter train or commuter type service on a daily basis, it might be. If it is like some Canadian services weekly or everyother day or whatever because there are no roads or you walk then it is the only way, it is a service. But to have a train run point to point just to say you are running a train is actually pointless and can be considered a non service.
passengerfanSouthern California has reached the saturation point where freeways are concerned. The cost to add any additional lanes is with the purchase of the land and all is going to be somewhere around 200 million per mile. So southern California has reached the point where something has to be done and Metrolink has been a major asset to the freeways. Now Californians and there need for speed are talking about the 220 mph HSR system between LA and SF. Cost for the entire system is estimated at 40 billion and the first 10 billion in bonds should go on sale within the next two months. The system as envisioned is very elaborate and probably more costly than as necessary. Recent articles in area newspapers are saying now is the time to aquire the ROW as real estate prices are 50% or less than they were so that means the ROW can probably be purchased for 8 billion rather than 16 billion. That seems like a substantial savings. So why are they not offering the bonds now and purchasing this ROW before it goes up again? I for one am beginning to wonder what is going on with the HSR is there something they haven't told the people. With the number of Californians without jobs approaching 11% I say lets get started. Al - in - Stockton
The bonds are being offered! The problem is there are no buyers. California doesn't have very good creditworthiness in the minds of the buying public, it would appear. In fact, hardly anyone other than the U.S. Government is able to sell bonds right now because no one believes that the economy is going to get better any time soon.
That's one reason why large companies such as the automakers and their parts suppliers are so reluctant to declare bankruptcy, which ordinarily is an excellent solution to the problems they are facing. In order to keep the company operating on a going-concern basis the day after bankruptcy is declared, cash is needed to pay the employee's paychecks, the vendors, the electric bill. Cash is obtained by selling bonds which become senior to all other debt of the company. But if there are no buyers for the bonds, then no working capital, then no operations, and liquidation is the only remaining possible outcome. That's a terrible outcome because it drags down all the vendors who no longer have a customer. They cease operations too. The employees of the automakers no longer have a paycheck, and default on their mortgages. The banks that loaned their mortgages go down. And so forth.
RWM
Phoebe VetMany of us agree with you, but there are a few, I won't mention any names, who subscribe to the belief system that anything that cannot be quantified in the ledger does not exist.
Hold on for this, sir -- you're wrong, but right. The belief system problem is not that all of the values of passenger rail cannot be quantified on a ledger -- because they can. The belief system problem is that people disagree that some of these values should be quantified.
For example, Bus Rapid Transit is cheaper to construct and operate than Light Rail for the same number of riders moved at the same speed. However, people, as a rule, greatly prefer Light Rail over BRT. One response to that conflict is "lower taxes are more important than people's rapid-transit preferences, so build BRT." Another response is "people's rapid-transit preferences are more important than lower taxes, so build light rail." The first group will argue that if we don't have lower taxes, in the long run we'll ruin the economy and everyone will be worse off. The second group will argue that if we don't build light rail, but instead BRT, we will lower the quality of life which will make people less likely to live and invest in the city, generate less economic activity, and in the long run we will ruin the economy and everyone will be worse off.
I can quantify and monetize either preference and put it into a cost-benefit analysis. But that hardly stops the debate, because whichever side comes out on the losing end of that bottom-line analysis will seek to remove the "bad information" from the ledger, by arguing those values can be reduced to zero by simply forcing people to do something -- pay more taxes, or ride a transit system they do not like.
Neither side to this argument can claim it has exclusive ownership of the "protection of the economy" temple. Both sides are making some very specific claims about the future, one that people will "get used" to BRT and the other that people will "not get used to" BRT. The only guide to which one is correct is historic trends. Cities wondering if they should invest in a transit system, and don't know if they should pick BRT or light-rail, are afraid that if they pick BRT they will lose on the quality-of-life race with other cities and collapse their economy. Or they're afraid if they pick light-rail they'll lose on the tax burden comparison with other cities and collapse their economy. Historically most cities have taken the light-rail bet, because they're thinking that the overall national economy will continue to expand, the quality of life will continue to get better, and they are better to be ahead of that curve than behind. But if you're thinking that the economy will shrink and quality of life will diminish, then maybe BRT looks better.
The high-speed rail or more highways issue is just another flavor of the same stew.
Ideologues use economics for support, not for illumination.
Railway Man Phoebe Vet Many of us agree with you, but there are a few, I won't mention any names, who subscribe to the belief system that anything that cannot be quantified in the ledger does not exist. Hold on for this, sir -- you're wrong, but right. The belief system problem is not that all of the values of passenger rail cannot be quantified on a ledger -- because they can. The belief system problem is that people disagree that some of these values should be quantified. For example, Bus Rapid Transit is cheaper to construct and operate than Light Rail for the same number of riders moved at the same speed. However, people, as a rule, greatly prefer Light Rail over BRT. One response to that conflict is "lower taxes are more important than people's rapid-transit preferences, so build BRT." Another response is "people's rapid-transit preferences are more important than lower taxes, so build light rail." The first group will argue that if we don't have lower taxes, in the long run we'll ruin the economy and everyone will be worse off. The second group will argue that if we don't build light rail, but instead BRT, we will lower the quality of life which will make people less likely to live and invest in the city, generate less economic activity, and in the long run we will ruin the economy and everyone will be worse off. I can quantify and monetize either preference and put it into a cost-benefit analysis. But that hardly stops the debate, because whichever side comes out on the losing end of that bottom-line analysis will seek to remove the "bad information" from the ledger, by arguing those values can be reduced to zero by simply forcing people to do something -- pay more taxes, or ride a transit system they do not like. Neither side to this argument can claim it has exclusive ownership of the "protection of the economy" temple. Both sides are making some very specific claims about the future, one that people will "get used" to BRT and the other that people will "not get used to" BRT. The only guide to which one is correct is historic trends. Cities wondering if they should invest in a transit system, and don't know if they should pick BRT or light-rail, are afraid that if they pick BRT they will lose on the quality-of-life race with other cities and collapse their economy. Or they're afraid if they pick light-rail they'll lose on the tax burden comparison with other cities and collapse their economy. Historically most cities have taken the light-rail bet, because they're thinking that the overall national economy will continue to expand, the quality of life will continue to get better, and they are better to be ahead of that curve than behind. But if you're thinking that the economy will shrink and quality of life will diminish, then maybe BRT looks better. The high-speed rail or more highways issue is just another flavor of the same stew. Ideologues use economics for support, not for illumination. RWM
Nicely said! Choosing A or B or vice versa for a commercial option (passenger rail) generates economic and financial consequences within a value context. Supporters of A will not agree with supporters of B and vice versa. It is part of the human condition. Thus, wherever possible, the market place, or as much of the market place as feasible, should be the final arbiter. It is the best place to let the people decide what they want and what they are willing to pay for.
I am not a free market ideology. It does not fit every situation, i.e. the poles and wires business of electric utilities or local transit system. But I have worked both sides of the fence. I have seen the waste that occurs in a regulated monopoly, much like I perceive occurs in Amtrak, and I have seen how the forces of competition can clean it out.
Every time someone mentions HSR for California, I mentally discount any progress toward actually beginning to move dirt for 2 reasons:
1) California is broke. There simply isn't any market for California debt at anything resembling a reasonable interest rate. I believe both Fitch and S&P rate Cal General Obligations at "A" right now. For some types of projects, this might be overcome by pledging the revenue from the project, but as Sam would point out, that would not work here due to insufficient farebox recovery to even meet operating costs, never mind servicing the debt.
2) No one addresses where the electricity to operate is going to come from. We hear a lot about wind and solar, but those don't seem to match very well with a 24/7 industry. Is California about to allow some dirty old coal plants or (horror) some new nukes?
Dakguy201 Every time someone mentions HSR for California, I mentally discount any progress toward actually beginning to move dirt for 2 reasons: 1) California is broke. There simply isn't any market for California debt at anything resembling a reasonable interest rate. I believe both Fitch and S&P rate Cal General Obligations at "A" right now. For some types of projects, this might be overcome by pledging the revenue from the project, but as Sam would point out, that would not work here due to insufficient farebox recovery to even meet operating costs, never mind servicing the debt. 2) No one addresses where the electricity to operate is going to come from. We hear a lot about wind and solar, but those don't seem to match very well with a 24/7 industry. Is California about to allow some dirty old coal plants or (horror) some new nukes?
We already have one of the eyesore solar fields in the high Mojave Desert and it covers thousands of acres located to the NW of the junctions of HWYs 58 and 395. I have never seen the figures on what this monstrosity cost and whether it will pay for itself or not. But if the President is proposing building dozens of them then he needs to come and see this operating one and I think it might changes his mind. If they build additional solar fields then we are going to lose thousands of acres of farmland that will be needed in the not to distant future.
Having seen most of the Nuclear Power plants that were built in the west even the incomplete plants that were put into mothballs before completion. I can only look at them and shake my head at the tremendous waste of money. And it is my understanding that solar and wind are two of the more expensive means of generating electricity and if the court action regarding the migrating birds in California is lost by the electric companies wind is about to get much more expensive. Maybe Sam 1 has some comparison figures on electric production from hydroelectric, Nuclear, Coal, Gas, solar and wind that could be shared with us. And we have other groups who are trying to get dams removed so the fish can return to there original spawning grounds.
This address will take you to a good comparison of the cost of electric energy in California:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Comparative_electrical_generation_costs
As you will see, determining the comparative cost of electric energy is not simple. It depends on where you live as well as a vareity of industry assumptions.
Sam1 This address will take you to a good comparison of the cost of electric energy in California: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Comparative_electrical_generation_costs As you will see, determining the comparative cost of electric energy is not simple. It depends on where you live as well as a vareity of industry assumptions.
I really appreciate the information you put me onto. But like you say it leaves many questions unanswered and as I mentioned earlier the wind generator promoters may be hitting a very hard wall when there case comes to court versus the bird lovers. If one type of Californias power generation is going to be off line for three months yearly than that means all other types of electrical generation will have to carry the load and that is going to increase electrical costs dramatically.
I have spent the day between tax clients compiling population statistics on the different areas of California. California's estimated overall population is 36,756,666 Southern California's population that will be served by the proposed HSR is 23 million. The Bay area has a population of 4,201,947 and the San Joaquin Valley from Sacramento to Bakersfield has a population of 3,544,895. so nearly 31 million people will be within the area served by the proposed HSR. And by the time it is completed what will the population figures be by then. I have no idea how much electrical power will be necessary for the proposed HSR and I don't think that tose in the know have any idea either. My guess is we have nowhere enough electrical generating capacity at the present time and I think this matter needs to be addressed very carefully before we just jump in with both feet thinking other states will be able to supply the necessary power.
The more I look at California's HSR proposal the more I have second thoughts and I voted for it. I am afraid that like so many other things in California the final costs will be two or three times what original estimates were.
I do think this is the time to be purchasing the ROW as real estate costs are probably never going to be this low again.
Are these costs on account of how things are done in California, or are they nationwide?
I went to a public lecture at the Wisconsin State Historical Society by John Rowe, CEO of Exelon and reputed Friend-of-Barry (i.e. the President of the United States). His talk was favoring nuclear over the other options, and he admitted up front that nuclear is what he and Exelon does.
When he tossed out the line "Oh, a new nuclear plant can put out electricity at 10 cents/kWHr at the bus bar" I groaned from the audience but no one else reacted. Do people not read their electric bill or is the electric bill for most people just something that comes in the mail and they just pay, unless they are in extreme financial distress?
10 cents/kWHr "at the bus bar", yes, I know what that means, I am an electrical engineer, and I visited the Commonwealth Edison central dispatch as an IEEE Student Member back in the day and learned the power company lingo. If you look at your power bill, you see that there is a substantial retail markup. In it is not simply that the electric utility investors are getting rich; to get the power to your house there has to be transmission lines, peaking generators, VAR (reactive power) capacitors, meter readers, repair people, the whole retail end of the power business. My guess is that 10 cents/kWHr at the bus bar is 20 cents/kWHr by the time it reaches my power meter out back.
I am a pretty resourceful person, and I run a Wisconsin house on about 3000 kWHr/year -- the whole shebang, electric range, fridge, TV, hot air gas furnace blower, computer, lights, electric clothes dryer, dishwasher, central air, basement dehumidifier. So what is it to me if electricity goes up to 20 cents and I pay another 200 bucks a year?
What it is to me is that if oil goes back up around $140/barrel, affordable electricity can substitute for oil. My dad heats with oil out in the country, and maybe he could substitute electric heat, if not resistance heating space hearing, perhapst an air-source heat pump for the milder days to use less oil. Someday we will get plug-in hybrid or all-electric cars. Someday we will get electric passenger trains.
It seems that the environmental movement has made a priority of making electricity expensive. Drives conservation, and it indeed it does, and I can tell you all the tricks I use to do what I do on 3000 kWHr/year. But by driving conservation with expensive electricity, we are driving out a whole lot of uses for electricity that could substitute for expensive imported oil, around which we are "wrapped around the axle" as it were supporting an expensive military to defend.
One of the crown jewels of the New Deal was the TVA. Now that was real electric power infrastructure, hydro dams and later coal and nuclear plants. The original idea was cheap power to build of the economy of one of the most economically depressed part of the country. Now we are talking about a New, New Deal. Only this New Deal is not about he-man power, it is not the Socialism of resolute women and men putting their shoulder to getting things done, it is wimpy quiche-eating sissy Socialism of solar and wind power plants, of which no one knows if they can be built on anywhere the required scale and if they can, if they will come anywhere near meeting the requirement of electricity when it is needed.
Back in the day the right wing was all huffy about the TVA, complaining the the gub'mint had not the right to supplant the work of investor-owned power companies and that those companies would eventually get around to doing what the government was doing. That is tapping the great rivers of the Heartland to secretly refine enough uranium to beat the Axis Powers into submission. OK, the TVA was Socialism, but it was a Socialism that was not afraid to drop an atom bomb to save the lives of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines.
It is kind of like the arguments of trains and HSR going on around here. Yes, HSR is a kind of Socialism, but the question is whether it is a kind of proper Socialism invoking the power of government to get what needs done, or is it a kind of namby-pamby cumbayah Peter Paul and Mary Socialism of linking hands to block a highway project or a nuclear power plant?
Yeah, I know people around here believe in the inherent Goodness of Trains and that HSR is the right kind of Socialism, but somewhere in the background I hear Peter Yarrow, Noel Stuckey, and Mary Travers tuning their guitars . . .
I believe that the future of transportation lies in electrical power. That includes railroads, both freight and passenger. I believe that we will use electrical power to make non-polluting liquid fuels where we absolutely must have a liquid (i.e., batteries or wires are not appropriate, as in airplanes). And in electrical power, I believe that the the future lies in renewable sources in the long run and nuclear in the short run. My belief comes from the realization that the long-run costs of fossil fuels, counting taking care of all the effects of their use, will greatly exceed the costs of renewable and nuclear sources of power.
The various cost estimates for nuclear and renewable sources of electricity are so divergent that I can't believe any of them. When people come to so widely different conclusions about the same topic, they lose credibility with me. To forge ahead, we need to get past that situation and work hard on getting some convergence.
Here is one web page on the costs of nuclear power. A search on Google will turn up dozens more; you really need to see for yourself how little consensus there is.
Paul Milenkovic Now we are talking about a New, New Deal. Only this New Deal is not about he-man power, it is not the Socialism of resolute women and men putting their shoulder to getting things done, it is wimpy quiche-eating sissy Socialism of solar and wind power plants, of which no one knows if they can be built on anywhere the required scale and if they can, if they will come anywhere near meeting the requirement of electricity when it is needed.
Now we are talking about a New, New Deal. Only this New Deal is not about he-man power, it is not the Socialism of resolute women and men putting their shoulder to getting things done, it is wimpy quiche-eating sissy Socialism of solar and wind power plants, of which no one knows if they can be built on anywhere the required scale and if they can, if they will come anywhere near meeting the requirement of electricity when it is needed.
I just about fell out of my chair laughing at that one!
I have heard that electric utilities generate roughly twice as much power as they bill, the difference disappearing in line losses of one kind or another. Is that true? If so, is any significant effort being made to reduce these losses?
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