California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) System

David Benton wrote:Considering its a first in the USA,I thought they had actually achieved quite alot. But I think the decision to get one section operating is correct , i think.

Built in the Valley maybe, but not fully operational.
They have not bought any HSR train sets yet. All California has bought are Siemens built Charger diesel locomotives and Siemens built coaches, capable of running on the existing BNSF and UP freight tracks in the Valley.
I do not consider that n any way operational HSR.
Caltrain have bought Stadler built KISS EMUs, with lower maximum speeds than the Siemens built Charger diesel locomotives, and they will not be running on any of the new HSR tracks. Whoopie!

Presumably,the siemens trains will be able to hit 125 mph on the new section. Either they run them through,or buy HSR trains ,and change at Merced.

Feel like there are a bunch of misconceptions being made here, perhaps by folks who are not in the area…

• federal money was committed to the valley because it had an expiration date and had to be used quickly. attempting to use it to connect either SF or LA would result in the project getting mired in property acquisition lawsuits and spending most of the federal money on buying ROW rather than actually building anything.
• the central valley is, generally speaking, flat. getting into and out of it is a costly undertaking which would again burn tuns of money with very little trackage laid down.
• what "untried" technologies were used in this project?
• what federal money did it use first? the state bond was issued and used long before any federal money was spent. it seems that the article misinterprets the auditor's report: the issue is not one of matching funds, but rather that construction is still behind schedule, and the funds would have to be repaid if the construction is not finished on time (current deadline is 12/2022).
• i find the comments about contractors interesting. on the one hand, people always say that government is incompetent and private sector knows best. on the other hand, tons of screw-ups here are due to contractors screwing the government, and they have even hired a contractor to do the oversight. apparently that contractor (according to the auditor's report) isn't doing a great job either. so what's the alternative?
• one of the big cost drivers is land value. it's been discussed earlier in this thread. i think the people who don't live in this state don't realize how insane it is. crappy houses that need serious work (like a completely redone kitchen, only a carport with no garage, etc) down the street from me — a nondescript suburban neighborhood with just ok schools — sell for $1k/sq ft. the central valley is obviously not as bad as this, but it's still insane. Fresno, a "city" of half a million that's 200 miles from both SF and LA, still manages to command $160/sq ft despite having less than 30% of the days of the year with "Good" air quality as measured by the EPA. and these prices are nearly double what they were just 6 years ago — so you can imagine how a 2006 cost estimate would be so much lower.

we'll see where this lands. if they can finish the central valley system on time, combined with caltrain electrification which is supposed to be finished in the same timeframe, then perhaps they can get another federal grant (or finally explore the private funding opportunities) to connect SF to the valley. that should be a good boost, as property values in this area are insane and people would probably be willing to commute from the valley if the trip was sufficiently quick.

With the high cost of getting to San Francisco, Is there a chance they will finnish to Sacramento first ?

" people always say that government is incompetent and private sector knows best. on the other hand, tons of screw-ups here are due to contractors screwing the government, "

Public vs private is not really the outline of the issue, but a severe simplification. Here, it's a public agency project which needs to hire private contractors, as they don't have nearly the staff or management to do it themselves. If they were to staff up and buy equipment enough to do HSR construction, they'd have a huge hangover of employees and large, expensive equipment sitting idle when it's done. It's not simple for a government to lay off people or sell stuff, so there would be more expenses/losses incurred on the back end. The boss here is a public agency, one which is not in practice accountable to anyone in particular. So you can get a worst of both combo; see also, Boston Big Dig. Of course if you are a pol or party of the crony network, it's ideal.

I believe the bigger issue is the amount of corruption and disunity in the society supporting the project. In a unified society people can build for the future, because everyone sees it is in some way their project. In a Balkanized society that moves to 'make it a take it going to my tribe', and the few people attempting to do honest work are seen as either fools, or targets.
I met an inspector working on roads in Boston who thought his job was to honestly report on the work. He narrowly escaped being killed at work, fortunately a patrol car drove by the scene of the "accident" as it was about to happen. He also got fired.

David Benton wrote:With the high cost of getting to San Francisco, Is there a chance they will finnish to Sacramento first ?

not a chance, no one wants to go to Sacramento apart from politicians, and even of them, the city's population is only 500k (SF, which is tiny, is 800k alone). even the metropolitan area is just 2.4 million vs. Bay Area's 7.7 million.

lensovet wrote:

David Benton wrote:With the high cost of getting to San Francisco, Is there a chance they will finnish to Sacramento first ?

not a chance, no one wants to go to Sacramento apart from politicians, and even of them, the city's population is only 500k (SF, which is tiny, is 800k alone). even the metropolitan area is just 2.4 million vs. Bay Area's 7.7 million.

Never-the-less, they can reach Sacramento without building $10 Billion tunnels through mountain passes. Sacramento's 2.4 million souls by itself is over 60% as large as the entire San Joaquin Valley's 3.9 million souls, including Kern County. It would be 38% of the total 6.3 million souls.
Merced to Sacramento is just another 114 miles, to be added to the 163 miles between Merced and Bakersfield. It would run at least one of the existing Amtrak California train's routes.

So does anyone actually know what's going to happen with this severely mismanaged project?

Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration has canceled $929M appropriated for CAHSR. Additionally, they will seek to claw back funds previously spent.

There is speculation that this action could be retribution for CA being one of several states seeking to enjoin the Administration from spending unappropriated funds for the present "National Emergency".

Can't help thinking that was part of the decision to scale back ,no prospect of more federal money till Trump is gone.

No, it's fair treatment. The same happened with Wisconsin's grant in 2010.

Once you're not building what the grant was issued for, you lose the money. I'm sure Wisconsin would have gladly spent some of that $810 million upgrading the CHI-MKE corridor instead of building MKE-MSN.

Going to the press with this I'd likely he political play but the clawback itself (often known as "recoupment") is required by statute. I doubt given the highly specific nature of this funding that there would be any potential alternative uses.

Interesting that the one true potential competitor to Amtrak in high speed rail never made it off the ground.

Says a lot about the durability of Amtrak's corporate structure.

Please, this is all about Trump punishing his "enemies," i.e those people who disagree with him and the states that didn't vote for him. DOT's action took place after California's new governor removed National Guard troops from "Wall" duty.

CHTT1 wrote:Please, this is all about Trump punishing his "enemies," i.e those people who disagree with him and the states that didn't vote for him. DOT's action took place after California's new governor removed National Guard troops from "Wall" duty.

Unfortunately I have no ability to read minds, so I do not know the President's motivations on this matter. But they are irrelevant.
What does matter is the Newsome's new proposal, for an isolated segment in the easiest to build terrain, serves little purpose other than consuming and distributing resources, consumption enabled by burning many Federal and a few State dollars. It will have few riders, and what ridership it will have won't pay for the cost of rolling stock and operation (even giving the massive construction costs to the service for $0). Without the big-city endpoints it will probably not break even on operations even if the trains themselves are gifted to the service for free. Subsidizing the land acquisition and initial heavy construction of such projects is necessary, subsidizing every minute of operation means the project is a mistake.

Whatever his motivations, Trump's attempt to claw back Federal dollars which CA wants to take for the sole net result of taking is wholly correct. If legitimate rail operation are to be funded, klepocrat projects like what CA-HSR has become must not be.

I wasn't ignoring or highlighting "union featherbedding" because my point was to show what it costs, per mile, in a European country that's known for having VERY strong unions - far stronger than the ones we have here.

Now, the political aspect? That's a different story. From speaking to people when I've been in France, the opinion on taxation is "we want our money's worth" versus "we should pay as little as possible". Mind you those are just MY observations - purely anecdotal.