California High Speed Rail Thread

[jamesinclair]

Originally Posted by all of the trash

Pretty convinced at this point CHSR is never going to happen. The people don't want it and no one is enthusiastic about it outside transport hobbyists. Outside the bay area, California is a very 'stupid' state with no long term ambitions. We have a 31 page thread about this but its realyl just a bunch of nerds playing with their train sets. The real people don't care about this and are going to kill it at every corner.

The hilarious irony is that the "enlightened" bay area is the one trying to sue the train away.

If you read closely, youll notice Palmdale is suing...TO GET THE TRAIN!

And Fresno is planning their entire downtown revitalization around the train arriving.


Also, if only the train nerds give a damn...how exactly did the bond proposition pass then?

Some seem to quickly forget that HSR was put to a popular vote...and won.

And then again in 2010, Governor brown ran on a pro-HSR platform. The GOp ran against it. Guess who won with an overwhelming victory?

[electricron]

Originally Posted by jamesinclair

Also, if only the train nerds give a damn...how exactly did the bond proposition pass then?

Some seem to quickly forget that HSR was put to a popular vote...and won.

And then again in 2010, Governor brown ran on a pro-HSR platform. The GOp ran against it. Guess who won with an overwhelming victory?

All true. But what you forgot to mention was that voters only approved $9 Billion for HSR bonds. They did NOT approve $40 Billion for HSR bonds....

Additionally, they didn't vote exclusively for or against HSR, they voted for a Governor with a personality and many more issues, and they voted for selling only so much bonds for HSR.

[202_Cyclist]

The California High Speed Rail Authority is probably greatly overestimating the cost of procuring renewable energy. The price for solar has been decreasing pretty significantly in recent years and I think there is little doubt that it will continue to do so in the years until the high speed rail system is built. There is also plenty of built real estate in the Bay Area and Southern California on which to put solar panels.


High-speed rail would test power grid

By Tim Sheehan
The Fresno Bee
Sep. 25, 2011

"Trains rolling through the San Joaquin Valley chug along on diesel power, hauling freight and passengers at speeds that range from a seeming crawl -- especially if you're stuck at a crossing -- to upward of 75 mph.

But the 220-mph passenger trains proposed by the California High-Speed Rail Authority would run on electricity, with overhead power lines providing juice along the 800-mile route connecting San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego.

If the system is ever built, it's going to take massive amounts of electricity to make those trains fly, raising questions about the power grid's ability to meet the demand. If you think your electric bill is high -- just be thankful you're not the Rail Authority..."

http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/09/25/...est-power.html

[Jebby]

Originally Posted by fflint

If you cannot or will not make your point without insulting millions of people, then this is not the forum for you.

Except, of course, if that insult is directed towards conservatives or people who don't agree with progressive social policy, right?

[fflint]

Originally Posted by galeforcewinds

Except, of course, if that insult is directed towards conservatives or people who don't agree with progressive social policy, right?

Except you have it backwards; you just quoted me literally addressing an ad hominem directed at people from conservative areas and at those who don't share my support for CAHSR. Read more closely.

[202_Cyclist]

Except, of course, if that insult is directed towards conservatives or people who don't agree with progressive social policy, right?

When conservatives want to gut all funding for high speed rail, Amtrak, New Starts transit funding, bike paths, and cut the US Department of Transportation's budget by twenty percent, all while maintaining tax loopholes for billionaires and oil companies, there is plenty of reason to criticize them.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by 202_Cyclist

When conservatives want to gut all funding for high speed rail, Amtrak, New Starts transit funding, bike paths, and cut the US Department of Transportation's budget by twenty percent, all while maintaining tax loopholes for billionaires and oil companies, there is plenty of reason to criticize them.

Buy stocks in those oil companies, and you too can take advantage of the same tax loopholes. Additionally, the poor qualify for more tax loopholes than the rich.

Gutting funding for HSR isn't a cut, since zero funds were allocated for HSR before Obama became President. The Democrats had two years to pass a new Transportation funding bill when they had majorities in both houses of Congress, but decided to pass on that to concentrate on passing something else. Now they can't get what they want because the Republicans have control of one house.
As for cuts in other programs, what cuts? Increasing budgets from year to year shouldn't qualify as a cut, but it is in D.C. if budgets don't increase as much as some think it should.

[202_Cyclist]

Electricron:

Buy stocks in those oil companies, and you too can take advantage of the same tax loopholes. Additionally, the poor qualify for more tax loopholes than the rich.

Are you one of those people like Dick Perry who think we should raise the payroll taxes on those lucky working families that earn $30,000 a year, while we continue with the Bush tax cuts?

Gutting funding for HSR isn't a cut, since zero funds were allocated for HSR before Obama became President.

This is just nonsensical. The Recovery Act provided $8B for high speed rail. In FY2010, there was $2.4B for high speed rail. FY2011 had $1.5B for high speed rail. Despite what Paul Ryan or Rush Limbaugh says, going from $8B to $1.5B to zero (as proposed by the RepuB(P)licans is most definitely a cut in funding.

As for cuts in other programs, what cuts? Increasing budgets from year to year shouldn't qualify as a cut, but it is in D.C. if budgets don't increase as much as some think it should.

Again, this is laughable and nonsensical. Both Paul Ryan's proposed budget and the House Appropriations budget have dramatic cuts to transportation, at a time when China is investing 8% of its GDP and European countries are investing 5-6% of their GDP in transportation and at a time when we haven't raised the 18.4 cent per gallon gas tax in nearly twenty years.

"Under spending caps the House Republicans previously announced, transportation and housing programs would receive cuts of 17 percent, while health and education programs would be reduced by 4 percent."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...ding-cuts.html

"Ryan’s budget calls for $704 billion to be spent on transportation over the next decade. That’s $318 billion less than if current spending levels were simply extended forward, according to House Transportation Committee Ranking Member Nick Rahall’s office, and $633 billion less than what Obama requested."

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/06...il-dependence/

So, yes, I stand by my claim that the GO(B)P wants to gut funding for transportation.

[electricron]

What was the HSR budget before Obama came President?
Zero?

All stimulus funds, including HSR, was added onto of an earlier budget, an increase of what was being allocated before. Restoring what was before isn't cutting.

Increasing taxes so they can increase spending was the way liberals once worked. Today, they're just the opposite, they spend money they don't have then demand more taxes to pay for it. What ever happen to spending what money you have?

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by electricron

What was the HSR budget before Obama came President?
Zero?

All stimulus funds, including HSR, was added onto of an earlier budget, an increase of what was being allocated before. Restoring what was before isn't cutting.

This is nonsensical logic. It's like saying that changing the top tax rate to 90% isn't "raising taxes," it's "restoring what was there before."

When something is passed into law, it's passed into law. Changes from that are changes, it doesn't really matter what you call them. An increase from the current law is an increase, a cut from the current law is a cut.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by jamesinclair

And then again in 2010, Governor brown ran on a pro-HSR platform. The GOp ran against it. Guess who won with an overwhelming victory?

But now Governor Brown is not anywhere near as supportive of the HSR in its current state as he was in 2010.

Since then, light has been shed on the financials of this project that are quite troubling to many who initially supported the project as well as to people such as myself, who only tepidly supported it in the beginning.

I might still support it, but only if the HSR leadership was replaced by more moderate, less arrogant voices that actually listen to community concerns and change the route accordingly and wont lie about the projected costs, projected ridership estimates, estimated time to build, estimated ticket fares and basically everything else.

[202_Cyclist]

electricron:

Increasing taxes so they can increase spending was the way liberals once worked. Today, they're just the opposite, they spend money they don't have then demand more taxes to pay for it. What ever happen to spending what money you have?

It's very interesting this principal is only applied to keeping roads and bridges from crumbling, funding schools, and providing assistance to veterans. The George W. Bush $700B prescription drug bill certainly wasn't paid for, nor was the completely unnecessary $2 trillion Iraq war. On the other hand, if we want to spend $100M to build streetcars or $2B to improve intercity passenger rail, this is required to be paid for-- just not by raising taxes on the wealthiest two percent who have 23 percent of the nation's income.

[Wizened Variations]

Originally Posted by 202_Cyclist

electricron:


It's very interesting this principal is only applied to keeping roads and bridges from crumbling, funding schools, and providing assistance to veterans. The George W. Bush $700B prescription drug bill certainly wasn't paid for, nor was the completely unnecessary $2 trillion Iraq war. On the other hand, if we want to spend $100M to build streetcars or $2B to improve intercity passenger rail, this is required to be paid for-- just not by raising taxes on the wealthiest two percent who have 23 percent of the nation's income.

I am still am still an idealist- but, maintaining that faith is getting harder by the month.

We, the worker bees and those who are on some kind of government dole, are being manipulated by the smartest minds that money can buy. We live in an age where the content of mass media entertainment, and mass media news is simply sold to advertisers and/or stockholder interests. Our age, too, has the most effective propoganda in the history of humanity- when viewed in conjuction with the 1.7 million people in prison- that is successfully managing to keep people passive while our great nation changes from a rich middle class society to a poor facist society.

Very bright people, who understand Jungian imagery, visual technique, timing, voice, etc., are the hired goons of the 21st Century. Physical controls, while lurking in the shadows, are no longer the center piece of how those in power make people obey their will. Today, control does not have to be in the form of police squads, and, hidden prisons. Instead, the tremendous pool of skills learned by Madison Avenue in selling lifestyle, etc., is being applied by agents of those with the money upon the masses with great success.

The fundamental desire of the rich, is, as it always has been, to preserve their capital and then pass that capital to their descendents.

Now, for whatever matrix of reasons, the US essentially has lost it's ability to finance itself, based upon the taxed earnings of the middle class. This reality means that the government has to become smaller while the middle class has to become richer in terms of better paying jobs. In addition, this means that the rich- those whose net worth is over, say $50,000,000- will have to loose some of their freedom to take profits at current, real, tax rates. The historic alternatives- while different due to the technology of their times- is to either have a form of communism, or to have a fascist oligarchy with no middle class.

The uber rich will not give up their money without using every tool that money can buy first. The former middle class, when the pleasures of widescreen TV, pocket PCs, and, processed foods no longer satisfy them, will eventually have courage in the face of an extremely powerful propoganda machine.

The chance of compromise is rapidly disappearing, and only compromise by all parties could help put the country on the right track.

Don't hold your breath.

[electricron]

Getting back on topic, CHSR, how much are the projected costs up to now?

[202_Cyclist]

Getting back on topic, CHSR, how much are the projected costs up to now?

I'm still interested why streetcars, bike paths, and intercity passenger rail has to be paid for but endless Middle East wars and prescription drug entitlements signed into law by a Republican president doesn't.

California's high speed rail system is estimated to cost between $40B - $60B (the cost of capital and labor, with 12.3 unemployment in CA is relatively less now). The cost of not building high speed rail isn't zero. It's estimated that the alternative to building high speed rail is spending $90B - $100B in highway and airport improvements and capacity expansions.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/bay-...authority-says

Bringing Highway 99 to interstate standards in the Central Valley is estimated to cost $25B. Widening I-5 in San Diego County, alone, is expected to cost between $3.3B - $4.5B.

Spending tens of billions of dollars on more highway/airport projects also doesn't do one thing about the $300B each year we spend on foreign oil, a huge transfer of US wealth to other countries-- many of which are hostile to the US.

[Wizened Variations]

Originally Posted by electricron

Getting back on topic, CHSR, how much are the projected costs up to now?

The price is not relevant, because the electorate is not in panic mode as of yet. In Sack of Tomatoes, other issues such as medicaid and the very high tax rate are center stage.

That, sir, is why HSR in California is still being fought: most have not seen the "handwriting on the wall" yet, and, IMO, still believe that the auto age will not diminish, that the California economy will recover in the near term, etc.

As I have said before, IMO if the masses of voters thought that this project could be built and bring in tens of thousands of jobs right now, the HSR could be built out at half of the estimated price (say $40 billion) and people could be building it by hand to get a pay check.

Until that point, real estate interests, conservative idealists, etc., will prevent anything concrete from being built (unless they make money out of the deal- and that is what it all about...)

Read "The Octopus" sometime. It talks about railroad corruption in 1900 towards farmers and pricing.

Building HSR today is no different, other than there are more corrupt players who are preominantly in the realestate business and, there appears to be no single ironed willed samaritan.

Hence my point about what is happening in the economy.

[mfastx]

The longer the project is postponed, the higher the price will be. I don't understand why people complain about projects going above budget, especially when they are postponed.

[JDRCRASH]

^ The fact that people are still arguing whether HSR makes sense in the current environment just shows how clueless Americans are, and how Obama has been a pathetic weenie in defending his mass transit policies.

For once, I wish a certain LA troll (who shall go unnamed, of course) was here to put us out of our misery by telling us how dumb we are.

[waltlantz]

I still say that if you want to get people to buy into HSR, you should show them that existing regional inter-city rail can work FIRST.

Amtrak needs to be overhauled and reinvigorated. Have that run efficently then you can probably sell the nation on the idea. Afterall, senators in the breadbasket are NOT going to sign off on a fancy train that only services the coasts.

I don't see how complaining on how "clueless" americans are is gonna make any headway. Especially in an era of balooning debts and existing infrastructure that is already crumbling.

[202_Cyclist]

waltlantz:

I still say that if you want to get people to buy into HSR, you should show them that existing regional inter-city rail can work FIRST.

Yes, like how Amtrak's ridership is up 6% in 2011 compared with 2010 and every month Amtrak sets new ridership records. All of this at a time when the vehicle miles traveled by private automobiles decreased 1.5% last year. This doesn't stop RepuB(P)licans from calling Amtrak a "Soviet-style rail system" and wanting to privatize the most valuable routes. Facts don't matter to these people when they have their Ayn Rand-ideology.

Amtrak reports record ridership
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...101107149.html

Amtrak rolls toward record ridership
http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_ne...cord-ridership