18 thoughts on “High-Speed Trains And Reservoirs”

  1. I really don’t see the problem.

    California is spending billions to create a high speed train line between Fresno and somewhere outside of Bakersfield. Not much demand for high speed rail between those points, so they quite sensibly plan to have no trains on it.

    As for the train station upkeep, what’s the problem? All they need to do is put in a hot dog stand and charge $3000 per hot dog – assuming, of course, that $3000 hot dogs sell just as well and $5 hot dogs. They can assume they will, because they made the exact same assumption on train ridership being immune to price point.

    Meanwhile, they are neglecting their dams.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    1. What could possibly go wrong?

      Obviously, the solution is to assume nothing will go wrong. Let’s not waste brain power on this trivial exercise.

  2. “Moreover, the report was aired just days after the Trump administration had put an indefinite hold on a $647 million grant for electrifying the Caltrain commuter rail service on the San Francisco Peninsula, a major component of the “blended” bullet train system.”

    So this is how Trump is investing in the “USA’s crumbling infrastructure”. Not doing an upgrade to a commuter line (rail electrification) that the rest of the developed world has done almost a century ago. Redirecting more money to defense from everywhere else and possibly decreasing taxes while increasing debt. Where did I hear this playbook before…

    “The construction money could have built dams for water storage and flood prevention from this winter’s rains. “

    He’s giving them too much credit. Politicians typically can’t plan that much ahead. They’re basically reactive. The high-speed train is a reaction to last decade’s oil crisis and is getting started after the oil price collapsed. We can expect the same trend for the dams.

    “The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the new Transbay Transit Center. It is scheduled to open THIS YEAR. Long before the first 29 miles of high-speed rail is (or was) scheduled to be completed in and near Fresno.”

    This is a multimodal transportation node. There’s more to it than buses and the high-speed train. It’s also supposed to have a link to BART and suburban rail. I doubt the planners expect the high-speed rail to be completed to San Francisco this year. The space is just there for when it’s available.

    “Via J.J. Sefton in the sidebar, there was a tear gas attack on a German train, a few days after an axe attack at a German train station. This could never happen on the future California High Speed Rail system, though. Right?”

    Clutching at straws here. Gas attacks are a lot more viable in subways which are more enclosed spaces. It’s not like there haven’t been terrorist attacks at airports either. But then again he probably thinks those should be torn down as well.

    1. The high-speed train is a reaction to last decade’s oil crisis and is getting started after the oil price collapsed.

      No, it has almost nothing to do with that. It’s largely religious driven (fossil-fuel consuming cars and planes bad, hurt Gaia, electric trains good).

      1. I don’t know. Stopping a commuter railway electrification project in an urban area like looks to me as Luddism as much as closing San Onofre or not fixing the dams.

        1. I have a marvelous idea. Why don’t the wealthy denizens of San Francisco pay for Transbay, since only they will benefit from it?

        2. Why, exactly, should the Federal government be paying for urban commuter rail in California? And where does the Constitution authorize that?

          Particularly when many Californians have said they don’t even want to be part of America any more.

          1. Even after they secede they will still expect federal grants to continue building the People’s Paradise.

        3. I don’t know. Stopping a commuter railway electrification project in an urban area like looks to me as Luddism as much as closing San Onofre or not fixing the dams.

          Who’s stopping this railway project? Federal funding is not the only way (and definitely far from the best way) it can proceed.

          Clutching at straws here. Gas attacks are a lot more viable in subways which are more enclosed spaces. It’s not like there haven’t been terrorist attacks at airports either. But then again he probably thinks those should be torn down as well.

          First, trains are enclosed spaces too. It doesn’t matter if gas attacks are less effective for trains than they are for subways, they would be effective enough.

          Second, the point of this mention is to deflate the common assertion that trains won’t need TSA security screening.

      2. I can understand some people think the HSR in California is uneconomical and want to block it on those grounds but in this case, of the suburban rail, it makes no sense.

        1. Why should San Fransisco’s suburban light rail transit be paid for by the people of Delaware? Or New Hampshire? Is the tenth amendment unclear in some way?

          1. You have to ask that question to Dwight Eisenhower when he pushed building the US Highway System. The fact is the roads are subsidized, so rail needs to be subsidized to compete.

          3. As for the citizens of Delaware, I’m not a US citizen, but if I was I would say they should go f*ck themselves since they live as tax haven parasites of the US Federation.

          4. As for the citizens of Delaware, I’m not a US citizen, but if I was I would say they should go f*ck themselves since they live as tax haven parasites of the US Federation.

            Funny how I have more respect for the “tax haven parasites” than I do for California which is one of the many places that we need tax havens for.

        2. It’s a screwy idea because the last thing California needs right now is another significant daytime load added to its creaky and infirm electrical distribution infrastructure.

          The Tree Lords who now run California have already shut down one of the state’s two nuclear generating plants and have the other in their sights. They’ve also shut down several smaller hydropower dams in the state and there is significant agitation to shut down even the big ones. On top of that, a significant number of fossil-fired baseload generating stations have transitioned in recent years from being power plants to being sets at which to film low-budget creature features for the SyFy network.

          Needless to say, none of the cashiered capacity is being replaced. Importing more power from out-of-state sources is also a non-starter as the existing high-voltage transmission infrastructure for doing so is already at capacity and the Tree Lords aren’t any more fond of power lines than they are of generating capacity. Large-scale experiments in replacing baseload generating capacity with wind and solar have all come a cropper in one way or another – as their critics all predicted.

          I live in South-Central L.A. where the power is subject to frequent brief outages of a second or so up to a minute and outages ranging from 20 minutes to several hours occur a half-dozen or so times per year. If northern California’s heavy-rail commuter trains get electrified, the obvious next step would be to do the same for L.A.’s and San Diego’s. Right now, they all run on diesel which can still be trucked and railcar-ed in from out of state. That should still be true even if California were to somehow secede from the Union.

          Unless the Tree Lords forbid it, of course.

  3. As a general idea, Caltrain electrification makes sense, but what happened to the costs? Electrification should cost around $400 million, but somehow the Caltrain project’s official estimated costs have balloned to over $1.7 billion, which makes the cost/benefit ratio rather poor.

    Also, this federal grant was one of those “last week of Obama’s administration” things so it’s not surprising that the Trump administration wouldn’t want to review it.

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