Heavy Rail, Commuter Rail, & Intercity Transportation

[Trainguy]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Was on the Bullet Train the other day, took a couple pics at the station.

Would be great to see one of these in Vancouver...

Kokura Station Bullet Train by Ian, on Flickr

Bullet Train 新幹線 by Ian, on Flickr

HSR on the west coast will be a challenge numbers-wise. Not enough people will take the train to make it pay. People here are married to their vehicles because the road network fuels that need. The other deterrent will be the cost of tickets to travel on a HSR train. Not happening in our lifetimes.

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Trainguy

HSR on the west coast will be a challenge numbers-wise. Not enough people will take the train to make it pay. People here are married to their vehicles because the road network fuels that need. The other deterrent will be the cost of tickets to travel on a HSR train. Not happening in our lifetimes.

The cost of tickets today is not a deterrent to those flying from YVR-SEA.

And despite it taking longer, the Amtrak Cascades has few issues with running 2 trains daily and would add a third if it could... and this despite competition from both Bolt Bus ( which is faster ) and QuickCoach ( which also serves Seatac ). There are 2 trains and 4 Amtrak Buses, along with two competing bus companies that run another 9 trips down to Seattle. All this despite taking 4 hours to make the trip.

EDIT: For a solo traveller, a trip down to Seattle is 500 km return. If you're consuming 9L/100km it's $70 in fuel alone @ 1.50/L ( yes, I'm ignoring the benefits of filling up in the USA while you're down there ). Add in the cost of maintenance and depreciation, you're definitely up closer to $100 round trip. Currently, the Amtrak costs $64 USD round trip.

The road network is good but traffic and border waits are unpredictable.

Vancouver-Seattle corridor has MORE going for it than many other corridors. Business connections are increasing between the two cities and I don't think it's as far-fetched as people imagine it to be... especially if you get an outside company that has something to prove wanting to build the corridor. Companies in Japan, China, and maybe even Korea are all vying for a piece of the North Americas HSR market... not to mention French and German companies.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

The cost of tickets today is not a deterrent to those flying from YVR-SEA.

And despite it taking longer, the Amtrak Cascades has few issues with running 2 trains daily and would add a third if it could... and this despite competition from both Bolt Bus ( which is faster ) and QuickCoach ( which also serves Seatac ). There are 2 trains and 4 Amtrak Buses, along with two competing bus companies that run another 9 trips down to Seattle. All this despite taking 4 hours to make the trip.

EDIT: For a solo traveller, a trip down to Seattle is 500 km return. If you're consuming 9L/100km it's $70 in fuel alone @ 1.50/L ( yes, I'm ignoring the benefits of filling up in the USA while you're down there ). Add in the cost of maintenance and depreciation, you're definitely up closer to $100 round trip. Currently, the Amtrak costs $64 USD round trip.

The road network is good but traffic and border waits are unpredictable.

Vancouver-Seattle corridor has MORE going for it than many other corridors. Business connections are increasing between the two cities and I don't think it's as far-fetched as people imagine it to be... especially if you get an outside company that has something to prove wanting to build the corridor. Companies in Japan, China, and maybe even Korea are all vying for a piece of the North Americas HSR market... not to mention French and German companies.

And yet according to the study, the line's set to cost $24B USD or more.

Assuming people will pay $100 for a round trip, the trains are 100% full every time (500/train seems to be the average capacity), AND that there's one every ten minutes like in Japan, that's a minimum of 19 years - not including operating costs - before the line pays for itself. BC, WA and OR would each have to spend $8B+ and waive the bill in order to get any company even remotely interested.

[moosejaw]

Not to go off topic but here in South Florida we just introduced "higher" speed rail to connect Miami and Orlando. Its the second fastest train in the country. Unfortunately a few individuals have contemplated suicide or misjudged the speed of these trains which in the city can up to 80mph/130 kmh. We've had five deaths since opening in January of this year.

https://www.wptv.com/news/region-s-palm-...htline-train?utm_source=SilverpopMailing

[Bdawe]

Originally Posted by moosejaw

Not to go off topic but here in South Florida we just introduced "higher" speed rail to connect Miami and Orlando. Its the second fastest train in the country. Unfortunately a few individuals have contemplated suicide or misjudged the speed of these trains which in the city can up to 80mph/130 kmh. We've had five deaths since opening in January of this year.

https://www.wptv.com/news/region-s-palm-...htline-train?utm_source=SilverpopMailing

Benefiting enormously from a railroad that is mostly straight and owns a lot of develop-able land in the station areas, and had never ceded it's intercity service rights to Amtrak.

Sadly, none of these qualities are possessed by any of the railroads ever built between Vancouver & Seattle

[Metro-One]

Most of the HSR in Japan is grade separated (elevated / tunneled).

I don’t think that there is a single road or pedestrian crossing over the bullet train’s tracks nation wide.

Now such style HSR I am not anticipating between Vancouver and Seattle, but it boggles my mind we can’t build 150 / 200 Kmh rail. We have such trains where I live and this area has nowhere near the population of the PNW (the corridor my line serves has about a population of 1.5 million spread out over 200+ km of rail. The two largest centers are on either end each with a population of around 500 000.)

Hell, a 150 kmh rail line should exist between Vancouver and Chilliwack (or even out to hope).

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

And yet according to the study, the line's set to cost $24B USD or more.

Assuming people will pay $100 for a round trip, the trains are 100% full every time (500/train seems to be the average capacity), AND that there's one every ten minutes like in Japan, that's a minimum of 19 years - not including operating costs - before the line pays for itself. BC, WA and OR would each have to spend $8B+ and waive the bill in order to get any company even remotely interested.

I think you’d easily get people to pay $100 RT. In fact I’d price it higher. Quick Shuttle runs 4 daily runs with stops along the way from Vancouver to SeaTac. $99 USD.

And as for capital costs... how’s that Port Mann bridge getting paid off? Infrastructure is usually not built to turn a profit. Highways, subways, etc all don’t turn a profit unless it’s subsidized but they’re built because they add value. It’s how it works. It’s also how we build dams and other large projects. YVRs new expansion is a 6Billion$ project. Of 24Billion, maybe a ¼ would be BCs responsibility. About the same as an airport expansion.

You have to amortize the cost over the life of the infrastructure and you have to account for the benefits around stations and along the line. In Japan positive economic activity always follows a new bullet train line.

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Most of the HSR in Japan is grade separated (elevated / tunneled).

I don’t think that there is a single road or pedestrian crossing over the bullet train’s tracks nation wide.

Now such style HSR I am not anticipating between Vancouver and Seattle, but it boggles my mind we can’t build 150 / 200 Kmh rail. We have such trains where I live and this area has nowhere near the population of the PNW (the corridor my line serves has about a population of 1.5 million spread out over 200+ km of rail. The two largest centers are on either end each with a population of around 500 000.)

Hell, a 150 kmh rail line should exist between Vancouver and Chilliwack (or even out to hope).

Yep, it’s all separated apart from the two mini-Shinkansen lines Akita and Yamagata which are limited in speed to 130km/h and only go through to rural areas.

I agree totally. People forget that the PNW is a pretty dense corridor with limited opportunities for people to live in. It’s a really good candidate for HSR. Unfortunately the things that make it a great corridor for HSR also make it an expensive one to build in.

[Trainguy]

Vancouver Sun

3 April 2018
Vancouver-Portland High-Speed Train Would be a Costly Extravagance

Vancouver British Columbia - The proposal to build a High-Speed Rail (HSR) line linking Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland deserves intense scrutiny given the burden that such systems have placed on taxpayers around the world.

The preliminary report forecasts that it will take $30 billion to $55 billion to complete.

Experience suggests costs would likely be much higher.

There are two principal problems.

The first is that HSR routinely costs much more than planned.

The second is that HSR routinely falls short of ridership projections, which means that taxpayers, who would pay for construction and planning (or later financial bailouts), must provide operating subsidies.

In some of the most extensive infrastructure research ever completed, a team led by Prof. Bengt Flyvbjerg of Oxford University, with experts from the University of Stockholm and the University of Karlsruhe (Germany), found that the costs of building large passenger rail projects typically rose at least 45 percent from project approval to completion.

Cost overruns of more than 80 percent were not uncommon.

Further, ridership averaged approximately 40 percent less than projected levels, leaving taxpayers to, in effect, pay the fares for the many people planners thought would ride, but do not.

The researchers found that cost overruns and revenue shortfall in rail were worse than in other types of infrastructure.

And the European research was performed well before the unprecedented and continuing disaster of the California HSR system had developed.

In 1999, the state of California unveiled plans for a 1,300 kilometre HSR system to link San Diego, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area (including Silicon Valley), and Sacramento.

The first segment, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, was projected to cost the equivalent of $32 billion in today's dollars.

Immediately the planned costs began rising.

After state voters approved a bond issue in 2008, costs doubled in less than four years.

Even the predictions for cost overruns made by Joseph Vranich and I in a policy report commissioned by the Reason Foundation proved far too conservative.

This is despite the fact that our analysis was based on the findings of Flyvbjerg et al and further analysis of other projects around the world.

Costs rose so much that planners abandoned plans for HSR infrastructure over sections of the route in the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas to reduce costs.

Even so, after another round of cost increases, and another withdrawal of more than 50 kilometres of HSR infrastructure (from San Jose to Gilroy), projected costs have now risen to more than $85 billion, and potentially to $125 billion.

For that, taxpayers could get (it's not at all certain at this point) a scaled-down, tastefully labeled "blended" system in which HSR trains operated in mixed traffic on the same conventional tracks.

This is not unlike mixing HSR trains with much slower West Coast Express commuter trains in the Lower Mainland.

The new trains will look sleek, but they won't travel any faster than the trains already there.

Voters were promised in the 2008 referendum that trains would be able to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes.

In a 2012 report, we estimated (in another Reason Foundation report) that the fastest operating time would be about 50 percent longer, but that was before the latest addition of another slow-operating section.

The "bottom line" is that Californians can hope to receive, at best, a substantially downgraded initial line that operates much more slowly than promised.

All of this would be provided at a cost perhaps three to four times (or more) than originally planned.

Even as construction has started, there is still not enough money to finish the job, and the highly touted private investors have never appeared.

Another case shows how inaccurate planning can be.

The 1996 ridership projection for the London to Paris and Brussels Eurostar, which operates through the Channel Tunnel, was forecast to carry nearly 25 million passengers 2006.

Yet, more than a decade later, in 2017, ridership barely exceeded 10 million, about 60 percent short.

Current plans confirm that the Vancouver-Portland HSR line would rely substantially on public subsidies.

But why should taxpayers pay at all?

There are more than enough competing needs for tax funding in British Columbia, not to mention Washington and Oregon.

Each dollar spent to provide attractive and comfortable HSR rides to people who have at least three alternatives for the trip (air, car, and bus) is a dollar not available to provide for other more pressing needs.

Why should B.C.'s struggling households, already burdened with some of the world's highest house prices and rents, be asked for more taxes to build and operate such an extravagance?

Wendell Cox - senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg, has written HSR policy reports on four projects in the U.S. He was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission and one term on the congressional Amtrak Reform Commission in the U.S.

Never going to happen because of cost and lack of paying passengers.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Trainguy

Each dollar spent to provide attractive and comfortable HSR rides to people who have at least three alternatives for the trip (air, car, and bus) is a dollar not available to provide for other more pressing needs.

Why should B.C.'s struggling households, already burdened with some of the world's highest house prices and rents, be asked for more taxes to build and operate such an extravagance?

I could not possibly agree more with this point in the article.

[Bdawe]

Wendell Cox

Wendell Cox? Seriously folks?

[Migrant_Coconut]

Originally Posted by twoNeurons

I think you’d easily get people to pay $100 RT. In fact I’d price it higher. Quick Shuttle runs 4 daily runs with stops along the way from Vancouver to SeaTac. $99 USD.

And as for capital costs... how’s that Port Mann bridge getting paid off? Infrastructure is usually not built to turn a profit. Highways, subways, etc all don’t turn a profit unless it’s subsidized but they’re built because they add value. It’s how it works. It’s also how we build dams and other large projects. YVRs new expansion is a 6Billion$ project. Of 24Billion, maybe a ¼ would be BCs responsibility. About the same as an airport expansion.

You have to amortize the cost over the life of the infrastructure and you have to account for the benefits around stations and along the line. In Japan positive economic activity always follows a new bullet train line.

In case you haven't noticed, getting approval and funding for these projects (save YVR) has been like herding cats.

Site C dam, $11B. Approved, halted after giant backlash, approved again.
Massey replacement and 99 upgrades, $3.5B. Approved, then halted, now in limbo.
Pattullo replacement, $1.4B. Waited four years, put to a vote and rejected, waited another four years, approved.
Broadway subway, $3B and can actually pay for itself. Same as the Pattulo.

HSR to Portland, $8B. Yeah, don't hold your breath. And it starts in Vancouver and goes to the border (thus missing most of the swing ridings), so unlike most of the above, it doesn't even help BC's politicians get reelected.

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

In case you haven't noticed, getting approval and funding for these projects (save YVR) has been like herding cats.

Site C dam, $11B. Approved, halted after giant backlash, approved again.
Massey replacement and 99 upgrades, $3.5B. Approved, then halted, now in limbo.
Pattullo replacement, $1.4B. Waited four years, put to a vote and rejected, waited another four years, approved.
Broadway subway, $3B and can actually pay for itself. Same as the Pattulo.

HSR to Portland, $8B. Yeah, don't hold your breath. And it starts in Vancouver and goes to the border (thus missing most of the swing ridings), so unlike most of the above, it doesn't even help BC's politicians get reelected.

Actually, NOT going through swing ridings is better. Remember, a line through your riding doesn't equal a station in your riding. There will likely be ONE station in Canada... and potential for a stop somewhere in Surrey.

And remember that project costs for this would MOSTLY be born by Washington Station/USA.

Oh, and I concur... Wendell Cox? The guy that wouldn't bat an eyelid if a $100 Billion for another coupe of Freeway lanes was proposed between here and Seattle? THAT Wendell Cox?

The thing with road infrastructure is that you can do it piecemeal... which in effect spreads out the TRUE cost of asphalt infrastructure over 50–60 years. $5Billion here, another $5Billion there... it all seems very manageable until you start to add it up.

[Reecemartin]

[Deleted]

[Migrant_Coconut]

Not "never" so much as "not anytime soon." Right now, all we've got is studies; give it a decade or two (population growth, stronger intercity ties, political buck-passing, etc) for BC/WA/OR's legislatures to actually get the ball rolling.

[Jebby]

Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut

Not "never" so much as "not anytime soon." Right now, all we've got is studies; give it a decade or two (population growth, stronger intercity ties, political buck-passing, etc) for BC/WA/OR's legislatures to actually get the ball rolling.

I can't see this being realistically contemplated within the next 50 years. There is just no need for it.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by Jebby

I can't see this being realistically contemplated within the next 50 years. There is just no need for it.

Considering most of the line is in the USA, it will happen sooner. It might be the West Coast equivalent of the Acella Express

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by Jebby

I can't see this being realistically contemplated within the next 50 years. There is just no need for it.

But there’s no NEED for planes to make the same trip either.

[twoNeurons]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

Considering most of the line is in the USA, it will happen sooner. It might be the West Coast equivalent of the Acella Express

I THINK it depends. If the BC government is willing to cooperate then yeah I see it happening. Otherwise they’ll just focus on Portland. A HSR would allow large Seattle corporations to potentially open up offices in Canada for long term stability and access to Canadian talent. Otherwise Canada is beholden to Canadian corps and they’re all more likely to expand their eastern offerings than their western ones.

Vancouver has more in common with Seattle than Toronto.

[logan5]

If hyper-loop is part of the conversation here, then so should driverless cars...

A high speed expressway for autonomous vehicles would be orders of magnitude cheaper to build than any HSR. It's easily conceivable that driverless cars in their own dedicated lane could travel faster than 200 km/h. Bam! Vancouver to Seattle in an hour. Not as fast as an HSR train, but the door to door time makes up for that loss.