As part of the economic stimulus plan of 2009, Obama pushed through more than $8 billion in initial funding to extend high-speed intercity rail service to 10 major U.S. rail corridors by 2034. The idea is to create superfast rail service — like Japan’s futuristic bullet trains — that would be available to 80 percent of the U.S. population.
A quarter of that money — a little more than $2 billion — went to California, where voters in 2008 approved a plan to build a 220-mph line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The California High Speed Rail Authority promised voters that the line would open in 2020, at an overall price of about $33 billion.
Since then, not a single segment of track has been laid and not a single station has opened.
That 2020 ribbon-cutting? It’s now projected to be no earlier than 2033 — at least 13 years late. That $33 billion price tag? It’s been recalculated at $98.5 billion — nearly three times the original estimate.
The world has gone high speed train crazy. And of course, blame the governments. Aircrafts can do the job cheaper and quicker (sans the usual hours lost in transit to comply with ridiculous “security” measures, of course) but, of course, all they need are airports, not miles and miles of carefully laid rails and powerlines requiring constant maintenance, tunnels to be drilled etc. It’s the ultimate Hoover Dam.
France has been trying to impose her own model all over the Europe, with devastating effects. Ryanair, Easy Jet, German Wings and other low-cost airlines can fly people around cheaper and faster and don’t cost the taxpayer a fortune, nor do they destroy whole areas in the name of “progress” (Indians must be having a hard laugh at white men’s expenses, and rightly so). But, of course, they don’t provide pork in spades to “strategic companies”, not do they appeal to the average politician, obsessed with ribbon cutting and magniloquent speeches. Also the greenish champagne Socialist crowd has this thing about trains: for whatever reason they think they are “green”, so the masses should be forced to use them (they drive their big cars around or take a first class flight, well separated from the peasants). I advise them to make a detour while on holydays in Tuscany and go see what their beloved high speed lines did to the Mugello area.
Around here we’ve had a rail up to be an alternative to the buses. It just goes around Norfolk and to Virginia Beach and made Norfolk a total hell hole to drive in (The rail suppose to go from the business district of Norfolk to the Ocean Front of VB, and Norfolk and VB are next to each other. It’s really not that long of a trip only you’re on bus I suppose). I really don’t see the point that the government made an alternative to something they also have (an alternative to something lousy?). I think a majority of tax payers were against it, but it was finally completed this summer and I haven’t heard anything positive about it. I’m a bit hesistant to actually see how much the final costs were.
I take the government subway and buses and government-protected taxis all the time. I find it more convenient, safer and cheaper than driving myself in a car. I just wish it was all private; that way, I could have a meal or snacks or a drink on designated areas while on a one hour ride to San Francisco. Also, because there would be signs at every station that would let passengers know at what station they were. And because the station would look nice, instead of being decorated with slabs of concrete and tiles from the 1970s.
That’s indeed what people are asking all over the world. The Chinese still prefer their slow but dirt cheap conventional trains. Europeans prefer Ryanair. Even when tickets are heavily subsidized low cost airlines can still beat them. You can fly to Paris from most of Europe at less than half the price of an high speed train, and often you don’t even have to change station.
High speed train are very expensive toys. To subsidize them something has to give: usually conventional train users (90% of the crowd) fork the bill through higher ticket prices and lower maintenance. Freight, the main cash cow of rail companies, has been neglected, leading to more lorries on the road.
But it doesn’t matter, as long as the pork keeps rolling.
Whilst it is true that rail is uber expensive we mustn’t forget that roads are massively subsidised by the state. In fact that probably has more distortionary effects than railroads, particularly sociological effects since roads have pretty much determined how towns and cities are ordered.
Does anyone know of any decent studies which attempts to show which transportation industry is the most subsidised?
It’s an interesting area but since incentives fly in opposite directions frequently it’s nigh on impossible to predict what the freed market would look like.
We cannot know; perhaps there are laws against railroads starting up, or the airline regulations are so heavy that this is actually a good thing. Probably not, but there’s no way to know for sure.
As a general principle, we can never know what effect a single regulation will have, because it could undo some of the damage of a different regulation. In the same way, cutting out a major artery feeding a tumor isn’t always a net gain for the patient, even though curing the cancer always is. Although any new regulation is still far more likely to have a net negative effect, the point is if we take such arguments to a hostile audience we leave holes for them to poke at. They might be able to find an indisputable benefit to what looks like “additional” regulation, or a detriment to what looks like a de-regulation. Then we’ve lost an opportunity.
Why the nitpick? Because if the anti-state argument can be made quite well without leaving any holes exposed, one may as well do so. We have overwhelming arguments against statism, ones that show the other side no quarter. That’s not to say we cannot revel in the lameness of the state’s attempts to help people, but I wanted to caution against taking this kind of thing as a good tool for debate. But perhaps this is just down to my style; I don’t want to wet-blanket this kind of posting. I just like to argue from the fundamentals because the fundamental anti-statist arguments are so exceedingly strong, simple, and irrefutable.
I take the government subway and buses and government-protected taxis all the time. I find it more convenient, safer and cheaper than driving myself in a car. I just wish it was all private; that way, I could have a meal or snacks or a drink on designated areas while on a one hour ride to San Francisco. Also, because there would be signs at every station that would let passengers know at what station they were. And because the station would look nice, instead of being decorated with slabs of concrete and tiles from the 1970s
I take BART too, and I was thinking about this very fact some days ago. The horrible inefficiency, the concrete dungeon feel to the stations, poor seating areas, frequently broken escalators/elevators, arrival times being randomly flashed on the display between the neverending “messages” and PSA’s… private enterprise could do such a better job.
It’s like the Internet. Compare advances from 1971-1995 with 1996-present. If the governmet ran it, we’d be chugging along at 1200 baud to this day.