High Speed Hijinx
Why California’s High Speed Rail project is a high-and-dry proposition for the U.S. and how private citizens may already have a better solution.
If the current high speed rail project becomes a reality, it would send the world a message that California and America, the world’s leading nation, is no longer capable or caring enough to plan, design and operate leading edge large-scale industrial public works systems.
“The California High-Speed Rail Authority is responsible for planning, designing, building and operation of the first high-speed rail system in the nation. California high-speed rail will connect the mega-regions of the state, contribute to economic development and a cleaner environment, create jobs and preserve agricultural and protected lands. By 2029, the system will run from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in under three hours at speeds capable of over 200 miles per hour. The system will eventually extend to Sacramento and San Diego, totaling eight-hundred (800) miles with up to twenty-four (24) stations.” (State of California)
While some of our nation’s representatives, such as State Senator Mark DeSaulnier (CA-11), support the high speed rail project in theory “people haven’t put enough effort into the details…” he says. (The Week 02/27/15)
Many others on Capitol Hill are beginning to see things similarly. Land use and route planning as well as huge fluxuations in costs are dividing citizens and elected officials alike.
What you will not find on the high speed rail (HSR) web page is a complete fact sheet .
One afternoon at the library netted this:
California HSR has become the most expensive and arguably most important public-works project in U.S. history. Somehow California voters were convinced this was a good idea. Perhaps we are simply misinformed? Or even yet, not informed at all? The question remains about voters’ level of interest and education when it comes to matters of public domain. The current drought problem is one example of continued inaction in action. (Shout out to Lucid Energy and Naked Filter for the recent work)
Rail in general has become a more hazardous and outdated system of transport in general. The technology has essentially been in use since about 600 B.C. Yes, before you can even fathom human society, we have been escorting materials by a similar system on which the HSR project is founded.
The trains and rails we have come to know now have been around since about 1780. Roughly one-hundred years before Frans Lizt even wrote his Hungarian Rhapsodies and more than a thousand years after the initial technology was introduced.
It seems like trains and rail cars were never really meant to move people at all anyway. Soon, transporting humans via rail became a sort of pleasant side-effect, hedging operating costs by generating additional profits and improving marketability. While shipping hard and soft goods the rail companies could rig a few more cars in a line in order to transport visitors and opportunists to the frontier, and more typically to usher in new prospective contract workers to blow themselves up alongside the rock and ore exchanged in their place. Either way, you had to buy a ticket.
This story continues even now. With industrial rail oil tanker car use increasingly sharing commuter rail lines, both people and hazardous freight fly through neighborhoods on trains and tracks that have been in service since about the 1930's. In addition these rapidly aging lines are controlled using machines that were patented as far back as 1912. (NPR, cute blog)
The number of Amtrak commuter train delays have increased by by seventy-five percent (75%) nationwide in recent years. Between 2011 and 2014 the number of oil tanker cars being transported by rail has nearly doubled, from just under two-hundred thousand tanker cars to just under four-hundred thousand cars annually. (Streets Blog Chicago)
With the addition of more and more oil being moved by train and the increase in shared line use with passenger trains, comes an exponential shift in number of rail related accidents. In 2013 alone, we saw the number of rail-related oil spills totaling 141 accidents. This is up from a national average of 25 rail related oil spills per year, from 2012 all the way back to 1975. (McClathy DC)
Various transportation research experts report that our national rail transit system will be obsolete somewhere around 2030. The current high speed rail project in California is not expected to be completed until 2029. The first phase of the project, a 29 mile stretch in California’s Central Valley, began a full two years behind schedule. (AAR, Reuters, your local Public Library, The NY Times)
“In 2008 a referendum was passed authorizing a $10 Billion bond package to help finance the new trains construction.” -The Week 02/27/15
This is a significant number on its own. The original projected budget cost has ballooned from an already staggering $33 billion USD to a whopping $68 billion USD. And now,
Back to the $10 Billion.
You might agree that, according to the SpaceX webpage,
“If we are to make a massive investment in a new transportation system, then the return should by rights be equally massive. Compared to the alternatives, it should ideally be:
• Safer
• Faster
• Lower cost
• More convenient
• Immune to weather
• Sustainably self-powering
• Resistant to Earthquakes
• Not disruptive to those along the route
Is there truly a new mode of transport — a fifth mode after planes, trains, cars and boats — that meets those criteria and is practical to implement?”
Enter one alternative, the Hyperloop. The Hyperloop has the cutting-edge thought behind it to move passengers at stunning speeds of up to 760 Mph. This would take a rider from Los Angeles (LA) to San Francisco (SF) in just half an hour. Elon Musk (CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and chief product architect of Tesla Motors, and chairman of SolarCity), says that a Hyperloop system between LA and SF could cost between $6 billion to $10 billion. Repeat: around $10 billion.
Less than or equal to the original bond package for the current befuddled high speed rail project’s train construction.
“You could have about seventy pods [travelling] between Los Angeles and San Francisco that leave every thirty seconds.” Says Musk. “it’s like getting on… Space Mountain at Disneyland.”
With the Hyperloop (or something like it) Musk and his team have begun implementing solutions to a very uncertain public-works project. They have reportedly begun construction on a test track in Texas with a still-active campaign to raise money for continued research.
“When the California “high speed” rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too.”
“How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL — doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars — would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world? Note, I am hedging my statement slightly by saying “one of”. The head of the California high speed rail project called me to complain that it wasn't the very slowest bullet train nor the very most expensive per mile.” — SpaceX
If America can’t vote its way into innovation and cutting edge civic or industrial projects that rise above the status-quo, then perhaps the private sector, using funds from crowd-funding and other sources can, and will.
This will send the message to the world that California, and the US as a nation is leading the way to planning, designing, building and operating the worlds most important projects now, for generations to come.
