The Return of Rail

[dpeilow]

To any Brits on the forum (or those who just read it):

There is one day left to sign the petition for High Speed Rail and respond to the government's consultation on the high-speed line. The deadline is end of Friday 29th July.


State-of-the-art electric trains could eventually travel between London and Edinburgh in under 2 hours. This is the perfect complementary electric transportation technology to EVs.

600,000 people a month currently fly from London to Scotland because they value the two hour travel time. That market share needs to be turned on its head to make a further dent in transport emissions and oil usage.

It will take less than 2 minutes to sign up at Join our campaign | YES to High Speed Rail and please pass the link on.

 

[dpeilow]

250 mph / 400 km/h coming in Russia: Railway Gazette: PPP model to fund Moscow - St Petersburg high speed line

 

[TEG]

I have been watching in the local press the seemingly slow-as-molasses progress on getting the high speed rail built between Northern California and Southern California.
Latest estimates are now saying it will cost around $100 billion to build it... Just for one line.
Trying to get everyone to agree on everything is slow and costly. Sometimes it seems like "Out of the way! Train coming through!" would be more expedient than reaching consensus.

 

[Mycroft]

There's no such thing as consensus. It's always "what's in it for me".

 

[dpeilow]

$100bn is pure FUD.

 

[TEG]

$100bn is pure FUD.

High-Speed Rail Cost Triples to $100 Billion | NBC Bay Area

 

[vfx]

I remember the dismantling of train track all over So can in the 70's rail sold as scrap and millions of railroad ties sold off for (sometimes toxic) landscaping. In some areas you can still see the road humps and the strips of bare land the houses were built around. Sad we want that back now.

 

[VolkerP]

Even in the early 70's it should have been obvious to the people responsible for transport infrastructure that oil was a finite resource...

 

[Norbert]

While I am totally in favor of a Sacramento-SF-LA-San Diego High Speed Rail, I am wondering whether the groups currently tasked with designing the project are the ones that can do it cost-effectively and otherwise well.

 

[dpeilow]

I understood they'd outsourced the planning to experienced construction companies. IIRC it was the Spanish that got the gig. They've built a huge amount in recent years and have cost control down to a fine art. That's why I'm still skeptical about this $100bn figure.

 

[doug]

The more affluent neighborhoods in the mid-peninsula have been fighting this for a while. They've been trying to force the rail system to use a tunnel rather than an above ground track, which significantly increases the cost.

 

[Mycroft]

In Seattle, it was the less affluent fighting for a tunnel ... in a valley! They claimed discrimination because a tunnel was used through the higher income neighborhood ... on a hill.

 

[TEG]

Sometimes it seems that they plan to spend more on studies and legal fees than actually building infrastructure...
Court rules California High-Speed Rail Authority must redo EIR again - San Francisco Transportation Policy | Examiner.com

 

[TEG]

Restart:
High-speed rail board says plan is 'new beginning' - SFGate

 

[Norbert]

I understood they'd outsourced the planning to experienced construction companies. IIRC it was the Spanish that got the gig. They've built a huge amount in recent years and have cost control down to a fine art. That's why I'm still skeptical about this $100bn figure.

It seems this new business plan includes measures to reduce costs, such as using existing tracks around cities, and still arrives at this high figure. Since you seem to have paid attention to british high speed rail projects, would you have an idea of how much $100 Billion would usually buy?

 

[Robert.Boston]

Ah, massive public works projects...we saw that in Boston. The project cost estimates for the "Big Dig" were originally $1billion. Ended up at about $15billion. So if a project starts at $100billion, .....

 

[TEG]

I have seen it referred to as "the gravy train" now, and seen too many stories of run away spending.
They need cost controls and rational decision making at all levels.

 

[dpeilow]

It seems this new business plan includes measures to reduce costs, such as using existing tracks around cities, and still arrives at this high figure. Since you seem to have paid attention to british high speed rail projects, would you have an idea of how much $100 Billion would usually buy?

The UK is not a good example case as we also seem to have a lot of consultants with their snouts in the trough. However the following is useful:

That is in 2004 Euros. Note the UK line is 30% in tunnel, mainly under London, with that 30% swallowing up 70% of the project cost. Open air sections were reported to cost €32m / km.

Another data point is the recent awarding of contract for the TGV Paris - Bordeaux line which is 340km and €7.8bn (€23m /km).

The section of the CA HSR between north and south ends is much more like the Spanish line in terms of distance and terrain. Only the peninsula need be like the UK. So I would expect the average cost to be at that lower end of the scale too.

 

[TEG]

More articles:

Californias high-speed rail system is going nowhere fast - The Washington Post

High-Speed Rail Showdown Tomorrow - Los Gatos, CA Patch

...Californians for High Speed Rail, for instance, sent an open letter to Peninsula City Councils last year calling for a "Peninsula Reset." The letter urged elected officials "who have so far taken a generally hostile and adversarial tone to 'reset' this approach to be constructive, ensuring
that the HSR project is built in a way that meets the needs of the people of California and is sensitive to the residents of the Peninsula."...

 

[TEG]

... That is in 2004 Euros. Note the UK line is 30% in tunnel, mainly under London, with that 30% swallowing up 70% of the project cost. Open air sections were reported to cost €32m / km.

Another data point is the recent awarding of contract for the TGV Paris - Bordeaux line which is 340km and €7.8bn (€23m /km).

The section of the CA HSR between north and south ends is much more like the Spanish line in terms of distance and terrain. Only the peninsula need be like the UK. So I would expect the average cost to be at that lower end of the scale too.

Looks like they are projecting US constructions cost on the high end of the scale even if you ignore the new $100b total and stick with the older $60b.

For and Against High-Speed Rail, Part VI: California Cost-Overrun Edition | INFRASTRUCTURIST

...Those estimates come out to a range of $56 million per mile to $78 million per mile. If you extrapolated that to the entire first phase of the project, which is 465 miles from San Francisco to Anaheim, you get an overall cost of $26 billion to $36 billion. Of course, building tunnels and building in urban areas will be more expensive than the Central Valley, but there’s as of yet no reason to believe that the figures of $80 billion, $100 billion, or $200 billion that are routinely thrown around by HSR critics have any merit. …