Let’s see… California’s carbon tax folly give the state 250 million a year to funnel to this other folly.
If we accept the 68 billion price tag that everyone agrees is lower than the actual cost, the carbon tax can fund the construction. It’ll take only 272 years. They could speed things up a bit by selling long bonds; very low interest with a 250 year maturity date. I’m sure that’ll attract just as many private investors as the rail scheme has so far….
I’ve got to hand it to California, they’ve hit a real home run with this one. A high speed train that won’t actually be high speed, that’ll go from downtown LA to downtown SF except it won’t, and they’re going to build the first segment in the middle of nowhere, but that’s okay, because they won’t be putting trains on it. It’s financials are some of the most preposterous fiction in existence (each train will be about 130% full, and the number of trains per day will be about 130% of max capacity, and the entire populations of LA and SF (4.7 million people) are expected to take 25 trips each, every year.
It really does take stupid to a whole new level.
And wow…. looking at the article this one is in response to, just wow… the guy is supposed to be an expert on California, and he’s citing data showing that the cities in the US with the worst air quality are in the California central valley, and claims that this is one of the reasons why the train is important. He has to be lying, because no one can be that stupid.
What lost me about the California train was the “California taking the lead on carbon” thang on PBS Nova or some such place that used to be about science, not politics, where a promotional video shows the train zipping along with all of these windmills along the right-of-way spinning, I suppose powering this train the way the wind powered the clipper ships between California and East Asia.
Some long while ago I was reading Modern Railroads I think it was called, a trade mag about the railroad industry in the U.S., which since forever is mainly about freight operations. My poppa got it at work at a division of a company with a big tank car fleet, and he brought the old issues home after everyone in the office got to see them because I was interested in trains.
The subject was railroad electrification, and this was in the early ’70’s after the first oil crisis in 1973, where everyone, including the relatively energy efficient railroads were feeling the pain. Mind you, the railroad industry in the U.S. was getting much of the traditional benefits of electric railways in the form of the Diesel-electric locomotive, a kind of power station on wheels whose speed-tractive effort curve was a good match for low-speed freight trains, and oil had been cheap in the U.S.
Stringing the electric overhead wire over the railroad lines was not cheap, but the suggestion was that the electric power companies were willing to do that part and then charge the railroads the cost as part of the fee for electricity, just as they string wires to connect homes to the grid. The part that the railroad companies had trouble with was “demand metering”, that large commercial users of electricity get charged on a sliding scale depending on the level of demand on the power grid. The railroads wanted to operate trains when they wanted to in order to get traffic “over the road” without having to put trains in sidings during peak power times or pay high “demand” charges.
France has those high-speed TGV trains, and France (until the Socialists manage to wreck it) have this 80% nuclear power grid. Voila (as they say), carbon-free transportation. But California is this notoriously power-unfriendly place, and they are going to power a high-speed electric train, something that need large amounts of a steady supply of electric power to keep the train moving, right now and not an hour or two later when the wind picks up?
Or are the trains going to operate like a clipper ship, that you wait at the train station until the wind picks up to allow your departure?
Carbon-free power is indeed generated (in France), and high-speed electric trains work and are popular (in France), but California doesn’t seem to have the Ecole system of educated elites making these technocratic decisions without the crunchies running interference, and I get the vibe that in California, the plans for both the train and the electric power are based on magical thinking.
Rand, are you suffering under “retail demand metering”, that your electric rates rise to insane levels when you want power the most? The train is not an electric car that you can charge overnight — when the train accelerates to that magic 220 MPH (which is magic unicorn thinking because it is at the upper end of what operators of high-speed trains with decades of experience maintaining tracks to that level achieve), that train needs the power . . . now.
“are you suffering under “retail demand metering”, that your electric rates rise to insane levels when you want power the most? ”
Isn’t that actually called the Free-Market? Something about Supply and Demand?
It’s also this same effect that’s driving people to install Solar PV, because it produces power
during the demand curve. It just makes right wingers crazy because it’s Hippie tech. Good old
silicon.
dn guy, you’re right, retail demand metering is free market, when in free market conditions.
The problem is what you mentioned, supply and demand. unsurprisingly to most, supply is an important part of supply and demand. And, when you artificially choke off supply, it’s rather obviously not free market. And that’s what California has done; by choking off, via loony environmental extremism, new base load capacity, the result is a massive, downright punitive, demand-metered rate scale. For proof, look at the difference in rate structure (the percentage of increase in demand periods) between areas of the country where they haven’t choked off base load to those that, like California, have.
So, if you want to talk free market, let’s talk free market, but what’s going on in California isn’t it, because when you have the government choking off supply, that’s not free market.
Solar PV? This right winger loves it (I also use it, and I don’t live in CA nor am I on demand metering). What I vehemently object to is being forced at gunpoint to subsidize it. See the difference?
Let’s see… California’s carbon tax folly give the state 250 million a year to funnel to this other folly.
If we accept the 68 billion price tag that everyone agrees is lower than the actual cost, the carbon tax can fund the construction. It’ll take only 272 years. They could speed things up a bit by selling long bonds; very low interest with a 250 year maturity date. I’m sure that’ll attract just as many private investors as the rail scheme has so far….
I’ve got to hand it to California, they’ve hit a real home run with this one. A high speed train that won’t actually be high speed, that’ll go from downtown LA to downtown SF except it won’t, and they’re going to build the first segment in the middle of nowhere, but that’s okay, because they won’t be putting trains on it. It’s financials are some of the most preposterous fiction in existence (each train will be about 130% full, and the number of trains per day will be about 130% of max capacity, and the entire populations of LA and SF (4.7 million people) are expected to take 25 trips each, every year.
It really does take stupid to a whole new level.
And wow…. looking at the article this one is in response to, just wow… the guy is supposed to be an expert on California, and he’s citing data showing that the cities in the US with the worst air quality are in the California central valley, and claims that this is one of the reasons why the train is important. He has to be lying, because no one can be that stupid.
What lost me about the California train was the “California taking the lead on carbon” thang on PBS Nova or some such place that used to be about science, not politics, where a promotional video shows the train zipping along with all of these windmills along the right-of-way spinning, I suppose powering this train the way the wind powered the clipper ships between California and East Asia.
Some long while ago I was reading Modern Railroads I think it was called, a trade mag about the railroad industry in the U.S., which since forever is mainly about freight operations. My poppa got it at work at a division of a company with a big tank car fleet, and he brought the old issues home after everyone in the office got to see them because I was interested in trains.
The subject was railroad electrification, and this was in the early ’70’s after the first oil crisis in 1973, where everyone, including the relatively energy efficient railroads were feeling the pain. Mind you, the railroad industry in the U.S. was getting much of the traditional benefits of electric railways in the form of the Diesel-electric locomotive, a kind of power station on wheels whose speed-tractive effort curve was a good match for low-speed freight trains, and oil had been cheap in the U.S.
Stringing the electric overhead wire over the railroad lines was not cheap, but the suggestion was that the electric power companies were willing to do that part and then charge the railroads the cost as part of the fee for electricity, just as they string wires to connect homes to the grid. The part that the railroad companies had trouble with was “demand metering”, that large commercial users of electricity get charged on a sliding scale depending on the level of demand on the power grid. The railroads wanted to operate trains when they wanted to in order to get traffic “over the road” without having to put trains in sidings during peak power times or pay high “demand” charges.
France has those high-speed TGV trains, and France (until the Socialists manage to wreck it) have this 80% nuclear power grid. Voila (as they say), carbon-free transportation. But California is this notoriously power-unfriendly place, and they are going to power a high-speed electric train, something that need large amounts of a steady supply of electric power to keep the train moving, right now and not an hour or two later when the wind picks up?
Or are the trains going to operate like a clipper ship, that you wait at the train station until the wind picks up to allow your departure?
Carbon-free power is indeed generated (in France), and high-speed electric trains work and are popular (in France), but California doesn’t seem to have the Ecole system of educated elites making these technocratic decisions without the crunchies running interference, and I get the vibe that in California, the plans for both the train and the electric power are based on magical thinking.
Rand, are you suffering under “retail demand metering”, that your electric rates rise to insane levels when you want power the most? The train is not an electric car that you can charge overnight — when the train accelerates to that magic 220 MPH (which is magic unicorn thinking because it is at the upper end of what operators of high-speed trains with decades of experience maintaining tracks to that level achieve), that train needs the power . . . now.
“are you suffering under “retail demand metering”, that your electric rates rise to insane levels when you want power the most? ”
Isn’t that actually called the Free-Market? Something about Supply and Demand?
It’s also this same effect that’s driving people to install Solar PV, because it produces power
during the demand curve. It just makes right wingers crazy because it’s Hippie tech. Good old
silicon.
dn guy, you’re right, retail demand metering is free market, when in free market conditions.
The problem is what you mentioned, supply and demand. unsurprisingly to most, supply is an important part of supply and demand. And, when you artificially choke off supply, it’s rather obviously not free market. And that’s what California has done; by choking off, via loony environmental extremism, new base load capacity, the result is a massive, downright punitive, demand-metered rate scale. For proof, look at the difference in rate structure (the percentage of increase in demand periods) between areas of the country where they haven’t choked off base load to those that, like California, have.
So, if you want to talk free market, let’s talk free market, but what’s going on in California isn’t it, because when you have the government choking off supply, that’s not free market.
Solar PV? This right winger loves it (I also use it, and I don’t live in CA nor am I on demand metering). What I vehemently object to is being forced at gunpoint to subsidize it. See the difference?