The lights at night tell us where to build the high speed passenger train tracks.
Just build the trains on the interstate highway rights of way.
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Yep draw a line from just west of Houston to somewhere just west of Chicago and you will find 80% of Americans live to the east of that line.
One thing to note, that bright area in South Dakota is not a hidden major population center. It is natural gas flares from the oil drilling there.
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I have no idea what you’re saying here.
At any rate, you wrote “The country keeps finding people who do not want to spend on trains.” That would include me, but clearly there are those (such as noted upthread in California and Minneapolis) who are willing to spend billions.
DB2
Bob, I am looking at the bigger picture. I will reiterate so you can comprehend it. You are talking high speed rail which means not using jets to go city hopping. The savings in $10 b in track per whatever many miles is worth it if the tracks last 40 plus years.
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The $2 billion cost for 10 miles was for Minneapolis light rail. The current estimate for the California high-speed project is over $100 billion and nobody knows when it will be finished. Do you want to make a wager on whether it will or not?
Of course, the high speed part won’t actually connect SF and LA. The costs of actually building, say, in San Francisco are astronomical (reference the cost estimates in Minneapolis – for light rail). IIRC, the current plan is to switch to urban rail there instead.
The proposed high-speed line to Las Vegas makes more sense, but note that it would not actually go to Los Angeles but rather end 60km east.
DB2
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Bob,
If you are going to get in the costs weight them out.
Your knee jerk reactions to figures would be worse adding up the costs of roads, bridges, maintenance, autos, gasoline, jets, and whatever else goes in the mix.
Include the cost of trucking v rail. While I have no expertise in this the word is rail for cargo is much less expensive than trucking.
You are expecting low costs as if you spent $35k on your car and that was the only bill. When there are possibly over 300 million cars in the country times the average new car cost…perhaps $25k x 300 m is $7.5 tr before we build the roads and pump the gasoline. In a 40 year period that $7.5 tr needs a multiplier.
Now the kicker…the mind bender that is truly economics…your taxes will come down if we spend the money. The US would be more productive and the tax burden is a distributed function. The other costs associated with autos on the road ie insurance and road repair would drop in relative terms.
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The California High-Speed Rail Authority is missing out after the Biden administration announced funding for nine transportation projects and California’s bullet train wasn’t on the list…
The two grant applications totaled over $1 billion in federal funding. So does that hurt the so-called train to nowhere?
Some of that money would have been allocated toward new stations, and trains linking Merced to Bakersfield. Currently, 119 miles of track are under construction. The grant money could’ve accelerated the extension to 171.
DB2
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High Speed Rail Authority officials on Thursday could not provide an estimated completion date for the original vision pitched to voters but said the price tag for the entire project is now up to $128 billion, a 13% increase from last year’s projections.
Construction is currently focused on a segment in the Central Valley…The Central Valley segment also faces 41% in cost increases compared to last year’s estimates, now expected to cost up to $35.3 billion.
DB2
Ridership estimates have dropped 25%.
How many people will use California’s bullet train? Planners lower ridership…
The agency’s CEO attributed the lower forecast to a trio of factors confronting not only high speed rail but other public transit systems in California.
Changing commuter patterns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and sluggish expectations for population growth in California are driving down forecasts for ridership on the state’s future high-speed rail project.
In a report due to the state Legislature on Wednesday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority unveiled the latest incarnation of its ridership projections for its Merced-Bakersfield section, anticipated to be the first interim operating segment for electric bullet trains. The new numbers represent a significant drop in the anticipated number of passengers for the first year of service when — or if — operations become reality sometime between 2030 and 2033.
…the Merced-Bakersfield segment — which includes construction now under way in the central San Joaquin Valley — the expectation for overall train ridership in the Valley dipped from almost 8.8 million passengers per year forecast in a 2019-2020 financial plan to about 6.6 million in the 2023 project update.
DB2
Interesting. “Dysfunctional.”
The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex. SNCF, the French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system.
The company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF. The company pulled out in 2011.
“There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”
Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018.
DB2
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There are people sabotaging our infrastructure through underfunding.
Save a penny lose a dollar. Make claims like too complex for the lame press not to question. Then see it is a failure. So is our country when the crowd of ejits saves that penny.
Even Morocco can do a lot better than the save a penny crowd.
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The information seems to point to an “everybody wants to spend more pennies” kind of problem.
For those who like videos, the first half of this Vox piece gives some of the political dysfunction background.
DB2
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Minneapolis: +$2 billion for 10 miles, and the current system is not working well.
The Transit Service Intervention Project, according to a bill introduced at the Legislature, would call for social workers and others to provide “coordinated, high-visibility interventions” over three months to Green and Blue Line passengers experiencing homelessness or mental health and substance abuse issues…
The suburban lawmaker [Tabke] said he has acquired “first-hand knowledge” of the issues aboard light rail after his truck was totaled in a crash on the first day of the legislative session, forcing him to take the train to the Capitol. What he’s experienced in the weeks since then, he said, points to “a massive, massive problem.”
Crime reports on Metro Transit trains and buses increased by 54% in 2022 as drug complaints surged 182%, weapons complaints soared 145% and liquor violations jumped 92%.
DB2
There seems to be a problem in getting riders back:
The ejit penny pinchers are forcing the law suits. The ejit penny pinchers are denying funding. The ejit penny pinchers refused this project endlessly. Now it costs more. The ejits won and say it costs too much. Now it does. Fantastic.
How to hold America and Americans back thanks to ejits.
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That’ll leave a mark.
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Last year we read about a privately funded high-speed rail project from the LA basin to Las Vegas.
Now more money is wanted.
DB2
The Metropolitan Council continued to spend millions on the $2.7 billion Southwest light-rail line even though there wasn’t enough money to finish a project that had already become rife with delays and cost overruns, according to a report released Wednesday by the Office of the Legislative Auditor…
Southwest — at more than $1 billion over budget, the state’s most expensive public works project ever — is more than 70% complete, but its budget is still short $272 million. Service on the line between downtown Minneapolis and Eden Prairie is expected to begin in 2027, nearly a decade behind schedule.
DB2