Biden admin announces 2.8 billion for passenger rail including high speed

[jojoju1998]

Due to bureaucracy and red tape, it's very unlikely we see any fruit from these efforts until the 2030s if it all. I don't think Americans will really use this as car culture is too embedded in our nation. However, there needs to be a focus on urban public transportation like light rail and subways and renovating the systems we already have. Caltrain looks like it was built in the 70s.

Well it's not the car culture per se but rather our air culture. But then again even in Europe, Air travel is more more popular than rail.

Indeed, in Europe, it's even CHEAPER. Cheaper than the US.

If you go from Paris to Rome, you will pay 46 dollars going on Ryanair. Yes, I know, Ryanair is crap, but it's very cheap, and it's worth it for some.


Meanwhile you go from Sacramento to Los Angeles, and you pay like like 200 dollars for a flight. Hmm.........

[jojoju1998]

Infrastructure is an area I do support increased spending such as this. Would like high speed rail between Vancouver BC, Seattle and Portland. Would love it even more if it also went across the mountains to Spokane but that is unlikely. Trainand public transport was so convenient when living abroad, would really like nore of it here. We need denser cities that are more walkable to be coupled with this to eliminate some of the car dependency.

I don't disagree with you per se. The problem is, people forget that a vast majority of American Cities were founded and grew in the 20th century, and there was open land, so they just grew outwards.


European Cities were a byproduct of centuries if not thousand of years of City States, and wars, so it grew on that basis. Hence the density, because it's ancient ! Just compare the history, and demographics of Madrid Spain to Houston Texas.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

The problem is government, NIMBYs and all the environmental regulations make it hard to actually build. On the other hand, Brightline West (LA to Las Vegas) is mostly across the desert where there are no landowners to block the project, meaning that it already has the land, so it should start construction soon.

The main idea is that once the first line is built and people get to experience it, building the rest should be easy because there is far more political demand (giving NIMBYs less power, and allowing environmental regulations/funding to be expediated).

That said, construction will likely finish under Trump's watch, so Trump will take the credit for it.

Despite chugging along, California's high speed rail seems to finally be making progress. Construction package 4 is finished, and the latest infusion of money should allow it to at least finish Fresno to Bakersfield. Hopefully, the demand to build the rest of the line should skyrocket once the initial segment is complete. One proposal is to hire Palestines to build the tunnels at $2.50 per hour to make the costs reasonable; not only does it get them out of a warzone, but it also reduces the tunnel cost massively (probably from $20 billion+ to less than $2 billion).

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

China built a national high-speed rail system for less than how much our bipartisan infrastructure bill cost. This means that we could have all lines connecting basically any pair of cities <500 miles apart if we were as efficient as China, for less than $1.2 trillion. This includes earthquake zones and mountains in central China (ie Kunming to Shanghai 190 mph is mostly tunneled and actually was cheaper than most of the other lines).

[jojoju1998]

China built a national high-speed rail system for less than how much our bipartisan infrastructure bill cost. This means that we could have all lines connecting basically any pair of cities <500 miles apart if we were as efficient as China, for less than $1.2 trillion. This includes earthquake zones and mountains in central China (ie Kunming to Shanghai 190 mph is mostly tunneled and actually was cheaper than most of the other lines).

It's not just China though. Most other countries with high speed rail, have built it for cheaper.

And this Vox article I found here explains why. https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs-america

There's a lot of government slowdown, inefficiencies, in how we plan and build infrastructure, differing, and conflicting laws on the local, state, and federal levels. China for instance, is more Unitary and so it's easier to implement something top down. The US is a Federalistic System.

Vox also points out that a lack of practice, drives up costs as well.

" There are also myriad ways the US needs to streamline the process for developing transit projects. Lewis explained to me that European regulators were often shocked that American transit agencies have to go through their own process to get authorization to shut down a street or prepare an area for construction.

“A lot of the [processes] that we use here in the United States are too slow or too cumbersome and outdated. We need to make it easier to build more and better transit projects,” Lewis explained.

But cutting down on bureaucracy doesn’t mean slashing government budgets — while simplifying the rules and regulations that go into developing projects, American transit agencies need to be staffed up in-house to reduce reliance on expensive contractors and build up institutional knowledge."

[Aurelius2]

China built a national high-speed rail system for less than how much our bipartisan infrastructure bill cost. This means that we could have all lines connecting basically any pair of cities <500 miles apart if we were as efficient as China, for less than $1.2 trillion. This includes earthquake zones and mountains in central China (ie Kunming to Shanghai 190 mph is mostly tunneled and actually was cheaper than most of the other lines).

This entails a Chinese approach to private property, which I have no interest in. Surely we can cut costs without adopting quasi-communist despotism.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

China built a national high-speed rail system for less than how much our bipartisan infrastructure bill cost. This means that we could have all lines connecting basically any pair of cities <500 miles apart if we were as efficient as China, for less than $1.2 trillion. This includes earthquake zones and mountains in central China (ie Kunming to Shanghai 190 mph is mostly tunneled and actually was cheaper than most of the other lines).

This entails a Chinese approach to private property, which I have no interest in. Surely we can cut costs without adopting quasi-communist despotism.

I would just pay everyone 10x what their land is worth in rural areas (surely this will get almost everyone to move), since their land isn't worth that much anyway (as compared to the suburbs/urban areas), and try to tunnel under the suburbs or build the rest adjacent to highways. In the worst case, I would use existing lines (though the problem is that Amtrak doesn't own them, freight companies do).

I would also use the Chinese approach to cheap labor and environment: hire people from foreign countries where our minimum wage is a good wage for them, and give them temporary visas until the construction is complete. Cut the environmental review process from several years to 6 months at most.

[GALeftist]

The main problem with mass transit in this country is that we afford all these veto powers to wealthy individuals. Sorry, but if you don't want mass transit in your neighborhood then you need to find somewhere to live other than the city or the suburbs.

[jojoju1998]

The main problem with mass transit in this country is that we afford all these veto powers to wealthy individuals. Sorry, but if you don't want mass transit in your neighborhood then you need to find somewhere to live other than the city or the suburbs.

The Suburb that I live in; is actually home of one of the largest rail stations in California.


But for Cargo Rail. The irony is that for Cargo Rail, the US exceeds European Countries. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-is-europe-so-absurdly-backward-compared-to-the-u-s-in-rail-freight-transport In fact, US rail is dedicated mostly to Cargo.

[Pres Mike]

China built a national high-speed rail system for less than how much our bipartisan infrastructure bill cost. This means that we could have all lines connecting basically any pair of cities <500 miles apart if we were as efficient as China, for less than $1.2 trillion. This includes earthquake zones and mountains in central China (ie Kunming to Shanghai 190 mph is mostly tunneled and actually was cheaper than most of the other lines).

It's not just China though. Most other countries with high speed rail, have built it for cheaper.

And this Vox article I found here explains why. https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs-america

There's a lot of government slowdown, inefficiencies, in how we plan and build infrastructure, differing, and conflicting laws on the local, state, and federal levels. China for instance, is more Unitary and so it's easier to implement something top down. The US is a Federalistic System.

Vox also points out that a lack of practice, drives up costs as well.

" There are also myriad ways the US needs to streamline the process for developing transit projects. Lewis explained to me that European regulators were often shocked that American transit agencies have to go through their own process to get authorization to shut down a street or prepare an area for construction.

“A lot of the [processes] that we use here in the United States are too slow or too cumbersome and outdated. We need to make it easier to build more and better transit projects,” Lewis explained.

But cutting down on bureaucracy doesn’t mean slashing government budgets — while simplifying the rules and regulations that go into developing projects, American transit agencies need to be staffed up in-house to reduce reliance on expensive contractors and build up institutional knowledge."

Just about everything in America related to government, from going to the DMV to the trillion dollar nationwide projects need to be simplified.

Building a house in some small town in the middle of no where is too complicated, sincere you need to meet zoning requirments for city, county and state. Nevermind in a large city or suburban area.

The slow bureaucracy might be the worst enemy the United States has after climate change, China and fascism.

[Mr. Smith]

Due to bureaucracy and red tape, it's very unlikely we see any fruit from these efforts until the 2030s if it all. I don't think Americans will really use this as car culture is too embedded in our nation. However, there needs to be a focus on urban public transportation like light rail and subways and renovating the systems we already have. Caltrain looks like it was built in the 70s.

Well it's not the car culture per se but rather our air culture. But then again even in Europe, Air travel is more more popular than rail.

Indeed, in Europe, it's even CHEAPER. Cheaper than the US.

If you go from Paris to Rome, you will pay 46 dollars going on Ryanair. Yes, I know, Ryanair is crap, but it's very cheap, and it's worth it for some.


Meanwhile you go from Sacramento to Los Angeles, and you pay like like 200 dollars for a flight. Hmm.........

Just paid $90 from Austin to San Francisco.


Could've paid another $20 from Houston to Oakland.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Will that actually, finally get us a high-speed rail connection between San Francisco and LA? That would probably require Newsom getting off his ass.

It's been coming, but slowly. I remember there was a whole bunch of negative coverage from the media, and then Newsom came out against HSR. Brown was like WTF? And then a poll came out showing it was still supported, and Newsom flipped back. Newsom is pathetic.

[Crumpets]

Musk is going to be in rare form over this, I'm sure.

[Zedonathin2020]

I am obsessed with the fact that this system seems to be going right through my city

[dead0man]

why are we celebrating wasting more govt money on that money pit in CA that will never be built?  That money ($3B this time) could have been used to teach 20 million brown kids to read or feed 100,000 refugees for a few decades.  But instead a few administrators and a mess of lawyers are going to split that 3 billion between them.  You're on crack if you think any of that 3billion will be turned into track or train.