Amtrak leases all tracks they use with the highest priority. Nobody could afford a ticket of they had to lay their own tracks.

Private companies are the only ones willing to make these investments in infrastructure so they can leverage the data it provides, i.e. BNSF and Buffet.

> Private companies are the only ones willing to make these investments in infrastructure

...because there's an anti-government cult that occupies a disproportionate number of government offices in the country.

"Bad" investments is exactly what government is for: things we'll all benefit from (including but not limited to broad economic contributions) but which market incentives don't align to produce.

Are you referring to the anti-government cult in CA that couldn't build a train from SF to LA for $100 billion, so they decided to instead build a massive train that nobody will ride from Sacramento to Bakersfield? Because that cult really is destroying the government's reputation.

I used to be a general contractor. I kinda know how government building contracts are handed out.

In order to bid on a project, the government needs three bids from three from three different companies.

In my county, we have continual road, sewer, communications work. It's almost like it's never ending work that doesn't get completed?

I live in the lovely liberal enclave of Marin County.

I noticed, in my county, there is one company that gets All the work. (A very old company. If you live here you know it's Italian name.)

A few years back I started looking at the competing three bids. I looked up the heads of the companies that were bidding.

What I found was surprising.

In many cases the three companies that bid on a government job had a family member, related to the company that gets all our county work, on their contractor's licenses.

It looks like the Italian family sent their kids/grandkids to Sacramento to pass a very easy test, and had them set up "separate" companies.

Why--so at bidding time the three companies would be eesntially bidding against themselfs.

The winner of the "rigged" bid gets the contract essentially for the Italian family that gets all the jobs, and keeps the never ending road infrastructure jobs going.

The companies must share equipment, and employees? I guess it's all legal?

So---if you ever wonder why one company seems to get all the contracts, it might now be that it's the best company.

I do understand it takes millions in machines to build projects, and not every company has the equipment.

I just feel like the system is rigged, and not more efficient than many government run projects.

When there no real competition, and politicians who are way out of their expertise, granting the OK for a huge job; the private company can pretty much do whatever it wants, and blame the slowdown on the, "infarculator of the ground water table rod of thelvin, and that's why it's taking so long Chief?"

(Some projects have Performance Bonds. Many do not require them. Those ongoing projects where they seem to did up a road, and repair it, then dig it up again; most likely don't have Performance Bonds.)

I'm paraphrasing Adam Carolla here, but he's not the only one who has made this observation: the average business owner is way smarter than the average politician. They will run rings around any regulations that hurt their profitability, and if they can't, they will leave and take the economic contributions of their business with them.

I don't think it's necessarily smarter. Businesses just have a lot of advantages the government doesn't have. They can be nimble. They are not beholden to voters. They can take existential risks.

No, no, they must be referring to the anti-government cult that couldn't repair a one mile stretch of subway in NYC for 3 billion!

I have worked in the Central Valley. Frankly anything that ties the SF Bay Area and LA Basin to the Central Valley is a good thing.

This does not defend the appalling incompetence in "managing" the HSR project, I'm just defending the choice of running the train up the Central Valley which I had not understood at the time the project was initially approved.

Running the train up the central valley was always part of the plan and is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The problem is that California is currently building a train from one end of the valley to the other that _doesn't_ actually connect to either major metro area.

CAHSR essentially consists of 6 separate pieces: Bay Area-to-Central Valley; the SF Peninsula run; Sacramento-to-Central Valley; LA-to-Central Valley; LA-to-San Diego; and the Central Valley itself. San Diego, San Francisco, and Sacramento were all planned to be later phases anyways, which means the initial operating segment choices are either the Central Valley itself or crossing into it in the Bay Area or LA.

The Central Valley was chosen as the first construction package area because a lot of the initial money CAHSR got from the federal government had to be spent quickly, and flat ground means that the construction would be the cheapest and quickest construction portion. That the result has neither been cheap nor quick is a pretty severe indictment of the epic mismanagement involved.

It's also politically astute to do the first major public spending in the reddest part of the state, and then connect to the endpoints who are less likely to change their minds.

> Are you referring to the anti-government cult in CA that couldn't build a train from SF to LA for $100 billion...

Not sure if I'm misinterpreting your comment, or you're being satirical or what.

I was under the impression that it was the government in CA that massively misspent the tax payer billions they were given. As far as I know, there is still no usable "high speed" rail between LA and SF, which is exactly the type of project the left claims they could build, if we just gave the benevolent government more cash.

But maybe I'm in my own bubble, and have not heard the truth.

I'm more familiar with the "great" government infrastructure we've got in my own area. Let's just say the DC metro is garbage, and should've been seized from the corrupt local politicians who've used it as a crony jobs program for the last few decades. But instead, they'll be gifted with tens of billions of more tax payer dollars as part of the various stimulus bills.

Forgive me if I've absolutely no faith in anything the government touches anymore.

> Forgive me if I've absolutely no faith in anything the government touches anymore.

do you drive on roads

This is always an interesting rebuttal.

Here in the DC area, we have the subjectively WORST traffic in the country now (DC, Boston, etc. might argue otherwise). Regardless, they've built almost 0 new capacity in the last decade EXCEPT for toll roads.

Yep, the main road I use in the DC's "tech corridor" in NOVA is a privately owned (by a foreign company, to boot) toll road whose prices have at least doubled in the last 5-7 years. Before Covid, I was getting alerts for $40 top-ups on my EZPass weekly, it seemed.

They used to have incentives for hybrids and EV cars to use the multi-user lanes (much less traffic during rush hour), but I believe they let those expire and now they use price-by-demand algorithms for the costs to use express lanes. They are almost insulting how high the prices will be at peak times - e.g. $20 to use express lanes for 1.5 miles.

As for residential roads - well those are already paid for with gas and local taxes. Interestingly, my state's sales tax is 30% higher than when I was a kid. Prop taxes go up every year due to exploding house prices, but I see absolutely no new services they're providing with all this extra cash. Do you, in your city?

I mean don’t get me wrong, the infrastructure in this country is awful but it isn’t because it is done by a government. The state is the only institution that can really do infrastructure projects is my point, how and whether it does them is a political decision

Yes, and I have to have a truck because if I drove a normal car it would be int eh shop every week due to all the damage the government roads would cause to the suspension

The "who will build the roads" trope is common statement for people that support government largess, is ironically poor example of "good government" and completely ignores reality that in most area's the government does a VERY VERY VERY poor job at road maintenance while charging the citizens an obscene amount of money for that poor service.

If a private home owner assocation paid the amount of money most governments do per mile of private road they would be in the civil courts suing that contractor.

BTW many communities in the US do have private roads in them, maintained by the owners of the homes in those communities

Oh you’re like one of those libertarians

The thing governments keep building despite their contribution to climate change, air pollution, destroyed neighborhoods, and inefficient land use? The thing funded by the poor at the same rate as the rich? You know... I think I've heard of them. My government is building another 6 lane overpass over a neighborhood (and its a toll!). Hope this one works out!

I am disagreeing with the parent . People don’t think that the government should build trains, but that it should build roads, which have all the problems you mentioned.

What about people that do not believe the government should build trains, nor roads, nor anything else?

Fortunately, such an idea is so ludicrous and self-destructive that it would benefit no one, not even those with wealth and power, so I don't have to worry about it too much. Capitalism (a terrible system which I am against) requires state coordination in order to function. Libertarians (which you seem to be one) are pro-capitalist, but don't support the institution (the state) that allows capitalism to even function, it's an incoherent ideology. Capitalism without a strong state is impossible, if you are really against the state, you'd necessarily have to get rid of capitalism too.

What economic system do you support then? Socialism. it would be laughable if you believe capitalism requires a strong state (it does not) but believes socialism does not when in reality Socialism requires a Totalitarian state as has been proved every time it has been tried

Free market Capitalism (one form of capitalism) is the only economic system that is compatible with individual liberty, since you oppose that I assume then you also oppose individualism, and individual liberty instead support Authoritarianism and collectivism

> Free market Capitalism (one form of capitalism) is the only economic system that is compatible with individual liberty

Have you heard of the call on the left to “abolish the police”? I have never heard this from libertarians. Do you support abolishing police and prisons? Because that seems to me a far more oppressive institution than, say, income tax. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, I cannot imagine anything worse for individual liberty than that. Also, what about people’s freedom to do what they want with their time? Americans work the longest hours in the western world and have some of the worst labor protections. Libertarians are obsessed with freedom to consume but have little interest in protecting people’s freedoms at work. If the government monitored how long you were in the bathroom, that would be insane, but when an Amazon warehouse in a small town in Alabama does, it’s “the free market”. Libertarians hate when the government takes your money, but love when your boss takes your money, libertarians hate lazy people who don’t work, but have no problem with people who in inherit wealth and live off their investments. They love free speech and free association, but hate unions: which is a freely chosen organization of workers representing their interests. I could go on, but I fully support individual liberty and freedom, which is why I’m a socialist.

No. The fact the government can and frequently does make failed investments and wasted capital expenditures is precisely why people don't trust the government. California set out to make a single high speed rail line between San Francisco and LA 12 years ago and it's still not complete and it's run over what, $70B so far? And it's still going to be a slow rail not much faster than a trip by car after it's complete? This is what happens when you let inept bureaucracies spend money for which they never have to feel the effects of cost/benefit trade-offs and for which the opportunity costs are completely dismissed.

Kind of like how U.S. telecom providers were given something like a hundred billion to deliver broadband around the country but didn’t hit the promised performance or coverage? The private sector includes Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, not just Apple or Amazon, and you have about as much choice not to pay for them as you do the local government.

The key thing is not the sector but whether there’s an effective oversight mechanism. It’s a lot more productive to focus on those feedback loops than trying to assume any sector comes in exactly one universal quality level.

Problem with local telecoms is that too often, there is a local monopoly. The problem with the government is its always in a de facto monopoly position. It has little incentive to change except during a voting cycle turnover, and at most voters can focus on a handful of issues at a time.

Funny enough, it seems like SpaceX has the solution for this and it's rolling out as we speak: https://www.starlink.com/ . Space-based internet that actually works and is actually fast is a game-changer.

Let's see how the telecoms respond to competitive pressure. If anyone can get 100Mbps within a year, I'm willing to bet Gigabit fiber/cable will be available nearly everywhere soon.

> effective oversight mechanism

Hard to do when the people who really understand broadband networking are working for ATT, Comcast, and Verizon and not for the government.

The US telecom companies were not given something like a hundred billion dollars. They were never paid those sums and they were also not given tax breaks in that amount either. That's one of the great forever repeating myths on HN (it's useful as a propaganda item, thus the repeating). There is even an HN member that has been repeatedly correcting the myth for years, here you go:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556

I don’t understand anti-government zealots any more than I understand anti-capitalism zealots. Both try to cherry-pick facts in support of an obviously flawed theory: that one is the pinnacle of civilization while the other is an evil to root out.

This kind of purist thinking is dangerous because it prevents you from observing the facts as they are. For example whatever the root cause of California’s high speed rail problems, it’s probably more complex than “public government is bad”. But you will never find out because you have ideological blinders on.

>..because there's an anti-government cult that occupies a disproportionate number of government offices in the country.

Yeah, all those evil libertarians that run the west coast /s

NE corridor has decent passenger rail. CA has laughable passenger rail. Both are as blue and pro-"fix problems with government" as can be. I know sample size is only 2 but this does point to the cause of the discrepancy being elsewhere.

I agree that "picking up the shit nobody else will" is the kind of investment government should be making but clearly just "removing the anti-government cult" isn't enough to make passenger rail succeed.

> Amtrak leases all tracks they use with the highest priority.

Not in any useful way: freight delays passenger trains in the US with impunity.

http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-trains-delayed...

My understanding is that's a somewhat deceptive description, but would appreciate clarification. Amtrak has priority in that when they lease the line, they select the time their train runs, and freight schedules around. But if Amtrak is delayed, the freight train doesn't have to jump off the tracks to clear space.

My experience (Norfolk Southern and CSX operate the tracks in my area) is that I am learning that amtrak is supposed to have priority right here. My personal experience has been almost the opposite. Knock on wood, in my recollection I've never experienced any other significant delay except freight traffic interference. But like, on separate occasions, I've had a 4+ hour delay from Chicago to Buffalo (~8 hour drive), couple hours through NY State, had a 20 minute stop in Syracuse turn into 1.5 hours, all due to freight traffic. I assume the train is going to arrive where I'm going like an hour late at least.

The only significant thing that wasn't freight related, is they split the train in Albany when you are going to NYC or Boston. The second train had some issues, so it took a bit to get a different one, so we were sitting there without power in like, July for an hour or so.

That would seem rather circular, since Amtrak delays are almost always caused by freight trains. (Unless it's horrible snow blizzard weather or something.)

My personal experience is that having taken Amtrak from NYC a huge number of times, it's never been meaningfully delayed leaving Penn Station. But that it will get delayed en route, as the train comes to a halt and the conductor announces we're waiting for a freight train. We wait for 10 or 15 minutes, the freight train takes a couple minutes to whiz by, and then we start moving again.

So I don't know what priority Amtrak has on paper, but in reality Amtrak trains that leave on time are delayed by freight.

So much so that for my return trip where I catch a train that's already been en route for 8+ hours, it's virtually always 30-90 minutes late.

I want to corroborate this. I have ridden between NYC, Boston, and Chicago dozens of times, a very nice trip. Heading west, we generally to Albany-Renssalear on time, make the connection, and proceed on time. Even in winter snow.

The number of times it has not been delayed by freight after that, crossing upstate New York, numbers in the single digits.

For some reason eastbound seems to fare better, but still no guarantees.

100% agree. The Late Shore Limited is in fact not a lazy joke.

The bigger issue is that the freight companies control line maintenance. The upshot is that there’s no incentive to straighten the tracks to run them at higher than freight train speeds.

For example, on the San Jose <-> Oakland commuter line (which has existed for decades!), Amtrak runs trains with top speeds of 120mph (or was it 85?) at something closer to a top speed of 45mph.

Edit: Also, the freight line routes no longer make sense. For instance, they run through a pedestrian plaza in Jack London square to an ecological restoration area in south bay, where most factories have been shut down. (There are still salt ponds, but that salt evaporation plant is slowly being shut down in an ecologically responsible way, as I understand it).

I think they should give the freight company imminent domain rights to run a line due east (to sparsely populated areas), allowing the freight lines to run unimpeded by Bay Area rush hour and pedestrians. In exchange, the freight lines would give their existing right of way to commuter rail systems.

Also, while I’m dreaming, Bart would be converted to standard track width, and they’d restore the Palo Alto to Santa Cruz commuter rail lines. Then, all the systems would be put under a single authority, and all the transfers between the existing systems would be timed transfers.

> imminent domain

Should be "eminent".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eminent_domain

It's amazing to see the trains running at-grade right through a busy downtown street in Oakland; I feel like I've never seen that anywhere else! (Except in Inception as part of a nightmare, maybe.)

> I think they should give the freight company imminent domain rights to run a line due east

Due east from where? San Jose?

Having just driven that way last week over Hwy 130 - it is rugged mountainous terrain that would be quite expensive to develop with rail. Pretty though, and worth the drive in the spring for those who live in the south bay if you have a reason to take the long way out to the valley.

While that is true, there are a few freight companies that don't particularly care about the priority situation, so that they don't care about causing the initial delay that causes the loss of priority.

Delays can have cascading effects. And if a freight train is delayed, or breaks down on a crossing track at 5:00pm, it's not like it can get out of the way just because Amtrak is scheduled to go through at 5:15.

Amtrak owns most of the Northeast Corridor[0] - except the section from New Haven to New Rochelle, which is owned by the State of CT and Metro North. Incidentally, there are the sections where the Acela slows to a crawl. This is also the most viable corridor for Amtrak.

They also own sections of other lines - including the New Haven-Springfield line[1].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_Line

> Nobody could afford a ticket of they had to lay their own tracks.

I'm under the impression that China subsidizes the cost of train tickets because it's viewed as an economic multiplier and sociatal benefit. As an American, it'd be pretty cool if America could do this. It'd also be helpful for tourists to visit smaller train connected cities rather than flying from 1 hub to the next.

We consider roads an economic multiplier and societal benefit. They never pay for themselves with gas taxes.

We should build out more rail with the same logic.

The US highway system did pay for itself out of gas taxes. The highway trust fund was set up for this purpose. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund . In recent years the highway trust fund has not been adequate, for two reasons: one, Congress diverted money from the highway trust fund to fund things that were not highways, and two, the value of the tax didn't keep pace with inflation and it hasn't been increased recently.

That plus the clear difference that funding trains would basically mean subsidizing the operations of a few large companies, while anyone can drive on publicly funded roads

Since Amtrak is fully owned by the federal government, why not let them run the trains. That way there’s no subsidizing of a few large companies.

Amtrak is the brand name for the service provided by National Railroad Passenger Corporation, a weird quasi-public, ostensibly for-profit corporation. Its stock is all owned by the government, but it's not supposed to be dependent on subsidies to operate.

"it's not supposed to be dependent on subsidies to operate."

I don't think this reflects the current thinking in Washington about Amtrak. I wasn't able to find its P/L history, but has it ever made a profit? I can't remember hearing that it did.

This is quite similar to Deutsche Bahn, the main German railway operator. It’s a private company but all shares are owned by the federal government. They get subsidies (mostly infrastructure cost) but any profit they make goes back into the federal budget.

Same with airports

> Nobody could afford a ticket of they had to lay their own tracks.

Only assuming ticket sales needed to cover all operations, which definitely need not be the case.

Most of the transcontinentals[rail lines] were heavily subsidized by all levels of government via sub-market-rate loans, land grants, and special local privileges on the frontier. - Conservative Enterprise Institute

Especially the land grants. The US government gave ten percent of its territory to the railroads to get them built. The experience proves the opposite of "only private industry will invest".

I don’t understand why this piece of the thread isn’t more highly upvoted. The rails weren’t able to do what they did without massive government assistance.

Much like roads are.

> Amtrak leases all tracks they use with the highest priority.

Since when? Source? They were always getting preempted when I used it.

They are supposed to have priority [0] but the system lacks enforcement.

[0] - http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-trains-delayed...

In some if not most countries in Europe tracks are built by government owned companies. So it is possible