[lbo-talk] California rail project

[Gar Lipow]

On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 7:16 AM, Max Sawicky <sawicky at verizon.net> wrote:
> There's some confusion about the causes of the cost increases.  Some of it
> is just counting in more inflated dollars, due to the assumed delay in
> construction. In my book that is not a cost increase.  There are also
> changes to the plan to accommodate local and commercial interests, like
> building elevated tracks rather than tracks at ground level.  A project
> like this inspires all sorts of ancillary efforts to grab a piece of the
> pie, a pie that has yet to be made real.  That goes with the territory of
> mega-projects.

I've been told, though I don't have documentation, that schedule was
stretched over a longer period than needed to reduce annual costs, but
this increases total costs both of materials (less at a time means
more per amount of material) and labor costs (lose  some economies of
scale in labor).
>
> At this point in the development of CA, you have to break a lot of eggs to
> build something huge like this. I think its worth doing, though if each
> segment is supposed to pay for itself with fares, that will never happen.
>  No passenger rail system anywhere pays for operating costs (forget capital
> costs) with fare revenues.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 1:28 AM, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com>wrote:
>
>> michael perelman writes:
>>
>>  I love the idea of high speed rail, but the timing of the
>>> project makes no sense.
>>>
>>
>> I agree: it should have stated 25 years ago.
>>
>>
>>  Because funding for the project is not yet available, the idea
>>> is to build part in an area with relatively little need for high
>>> speed rail.
>>>
>>
>> I think this is a cunning move.  If you build the easy part, it will
>> probably force concensus on the hard parts.  To wit:
>>
>>
>>  Part of the reason is that the train is supposed to go through some
>>> expensive real estate in silicon valley.  I don't expect that to
>>> happen.
>>>
>>
>> Exactly.  There's a faction that says: it *has* to go to downtown San
>> Francisco.  But in order to do that, they will have to face off against
>> Atherton and Palo Alto.  Which will never happen.  But: there are already
>> trains that go to downtown San Francisco, so the trick here will be to just
>> run to San Jose, Livermore, and Richmond, and let the existing trains carry
>> the load to the downtown area[*].  Fix up CalTrain, fortify BART ... forget
>> the idea of sending the new train all the way to the core.
>>
>> Once this project gets going, all kinds of compromises will be made to
>> complete it.
>>
>> /jordan
>>
>> [*] The projection for the "last mile" of San Jose to San Francisco is
>> something like 25 minutes; Caltrain does it presently in 36 minutes, and
>> could easily do a skip-stop service in 29.  $8B for a 4 minute decrease in
>> running time?
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