This line will last for 100+ years - I really don't think it's that much for a state with a GDP of $3trillion+ to connect many of the major cities.

The other thing to think about is what is the alternative - road or airport construction in california is not cheap. Replacing 2 bridges on I-5 in stockton is going to cost nearly $1b alone.

And I think a lot of the benefit won't just come from the main SF LA route, it'll be intermediate stations to SF or LA too. It'll only take 19 minutes to go from Palmdale to LA for example - compared with 1hr+ now. In a way it would have been better to have the IOS be one of those routes, but they are also the most difficult geography.

> it'll be intermediate stations to SF or LA too. It'll only take 19 minutes to go from Palmdale to LA

Is there evidence that people will want to pay the high price of such a train ticket... And then what, once you're in LA? The last mile problem in LA and San Francisco (mind you HSR is not currently planned to enter the city, and BART is insanely expensive) is real.

BART is insanely expensive? I went from Oakland to San Francisco last night for $4.70, which is cheaper than the bridge toll. I don’t know if that’s expensive compared to other systems, but it’s totally fine by my standards. It might be a lot for a poor person though, hopefully they have some discount programs for those who need it.

The bridge toll is also one way, and if you're poor, you likely won't have such easy access to those programs (which is a lot of paperwork anyways) on the other side of rail (LA resident accessing SF e.g.). And if Amtrak is any indicator, the HSR will be more expensive than planes anyways.

I don’t know where the HSR is expected to stop, in or near SF (although last I heard was the Caltrain corridor to 4th and King), but Bart is neither especially expensive if only travelling on the peninsula, nor is it the primary transit for SF (Muni).

Eventually new stations at 4th and king and transbay transit center.

Ok well that's certainly better I was under the impression the terminus was in Oakland

Feel like by the time this rail is done, last mile will be fully covered by robotaxis

No. By the time this rail is done, the last mile will be done by teleporters.

I mean every other country in the world? You can get pretty high takeup at fairly high prices - people will pay a lot not to sit in traffic for 2-3hours a day.

Not exactly expensive, but public transit in LA/SF are nowhere near European levels, let alone Japanese levels. Like, to/from the train, you’ve got a slog of Caltrain, Bart/subway, and bus connections…on both sides well, maybe driving is competitive time wise. The same can be said for Chinese HSR stations that aren’t very centrally located, except they have more metros and cheap taxis to make that pretty viable.

But why is it exponentially more expensive to build infrastructure in the US than in other countries? Germany just built a tunnel under the sea to Denmark for a lot less $ per mile. Surely it's not just the wages and cost of living--it has to be all the consultants and cronies who take their cut.

Most of the studies I have read chalk it up to two factors. First is changing project scope. The regulatory and political environment in the US means that projects often go through several planning changes, introduced in the middle of development, leading to wasted resources not just to overcome red tape, but executing on the plans that become obsolete.

The second that I have seen is codified labor specialization. This leads to many more workers on a site, where each has a niche role, but low workload.

Don't forget the abusive use of "expert consultants".

HS2 in the UK is about double per mile.

The US does have some real problems though, the built in america stuff kills projects like this where there isn't a US supply chain in place. And the US tends to have very high standards for "safety" for rail especially.

Keep in mind that you can't compare all projects like this. CAHSR total price includes trains, stations and (probably?) operational costs for x years. You often can't compare two projects on a like for like basis.

Yeah under the sea where nobody owns the land and the only residents don't have lungs to scream at you for ruining your beautiful view.

Building rail is a nightmare here as well because nimbys reign supreme.

Denmark has just started building the tunnel, though Danish salaries are higher anyway.

(Germany isn't much interested in the project.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link

> Germany just built a tunnel under the sea to Denmark for a lot less $ per mile.

How did you come up with that? It seems that the tunnel is $450m euros per km, while SF to LA will be $80m per km.

Notably, Palmdale, CA is the city where residents have the longest average commute of anywhere in the US, largely because people are commuting from there into the city of LA to work. Palmdale is probably one of the only places where you can afford to live / own a home / etc. if you work in LA and don't have a very high income. If you live in Palmdale and work in LA your one-way commute is probably somewhere between 1.5 - 2.5 hours. Just the Palmdale -> LA stretch of this project would massively improve those poor folks' lives, if the ticket prices are reasonable and the boarding process efficient enough for a daily commute. Unfortunately as a CA taxpayer I don't have high hopes for either of those things.

I’m surprised that you are surprised that there is a difference in both property and labor costs between a japan 19 years post allied strategic bombing and present day california.

Im surprised you think the issue is labor and land costs.

What would you peg it on then? Profiteering subcontractors? I’d file that under labor.

Are profiteering government employees and environmental NGOs considered "labor"?

Please explain specifically what you’re suggesting here? Links welcome.

You know exactly what I'm suggesting, but here you go. California is as corrupt as NY.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-los-angeles-depu...

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-14/a-guide-...

https://www.sfexaminer.com/forum/san-francisco-government-sy...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/city-hall-corruption-...

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/san-francisco-deve...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_scandals_in...

Bribes like these are absolute peanuts. It would be hard for them to add up to $100m, let alone a significant part of $100b.

Ah yes. First the problem isn't there. Then the problem is there, but it's too small to be an issue. If you have heard of the "narcissist's prayer," that is the defense that the ruling parties of CA and NY always run when you call them out.

These are just the ones who were both obvious and politically disfavored enough to get punished. Read about building in SF if you want to hear about the big boys.

Why don't we have foreign workers temporarily come and do this cheaply then?

Pay what it costs for people to live good lives

Labor for public projects is so messed up that we basically can’t build anything without paying 10-100x what China would pay to do it. Eventually we simply get economically outcompeted, or maybe we invent robots to make the projects feasible again.

> or maybe we invent robots to make the projects feasible again.

In the introductory, "disruption" phase it will come in at about half the current cost. Then, once the current market and expertise has been destroyed, they can rack-in maximum profit by jacking up their prices, with added, predatory inconveniences, such as "cleaning costs".

That’s because China is an authoritarian dictatorship that uses forced labor. That’s who you’re pining to be.

It really isn’t. I’m as big a critic of China as anyone, but assuming its workers are all slaves who aren’t advancing up the tech chain is really dangerous, very stupid.

I didn’t say all labor was forced, I said they use forced labor. Which they do. Your middle of the road ultra-orthodoxy is the dangerous attitude here.

China doesn’t use forced labor for anything important. It’s mostly just a more extreme version of work in American prisons, although they focus more on the re-education than work aspect (it sounds like a good thing, but it isn’t). The people building bridges, viaducts, and tunnels, are not forced, are actually getting really skilled at it. China could stop all liaojiao and laogai tomorrow and virtually nothing would change about this.

What if you have to make the actual choice of paying them what can be afforded ir not paying at all?

Your dreams of having slaves are so revealing

There may have been a typo but your reading comprehension seems pretty horrible. Let me rephrase.

The choice is never between "Pay what it costs for people to live good lives" and paying less than that. The choice is between paying what the company can afford or having no job at all.

I'd prefer everyone be making enough money to buy a 2000 sqft house and groceries with enough left over for leisure but that option isn't on the table.

It’s not on the table because you don’t want it. That’s it.

Company A makes Widget for $20. It takes 1 Employee B hour to make a Widget. Widgets cost Company A $8 to manufacture. After accounting for management overhead, logistics and the cost of storage, Company A clears $10 per widget. Company A can only afford to pay Employee B $10 to break even, this is not a living wage.

In this scenario, you'd prefer Widgets not exist and Employee B not have a job.

Since you're going to say, "Raise the price of Widgets!". $20 is the ideal price point for product, any more or less and the volume sold * profit falls and the possible wage for Employee B will drop.

The money isn't going to the workers.

Complying with environmental regulation, permits, planning, etc

As if those are all detrimental to the society at large.

When they're obstructing the transition from road/air to rail, then yeah, I'd say those are indeed detrimental to the society at large. They shouldn't have to be detrimental, of course, but their routine abuse is something that needs acknowledged and mitigated.

Dragging projects out years dealing with bureaucracy, avoiding the actual efficient routes to minimize eminent domain, etc. It’s lots of legal, engineering, and planning work that just wouldn’t exist at all in a country serious about public works projects.

So the costs manifest both as labor that shouldn’t exist, costs just because the project is extended so long (administrative salaries and interest on loans), and costs to buy land from entitled owners.

If it was down to cost of labor and everything else was the same, we’d just pay double and be done in the same amount of time.

Labor + corruption

Most of the land for the Shinkansen route was actually acquired in the 1930s, before any strategic bombing.

Ok well Brightline, a private company, built 170 miles of high speed rail in Florida for $5 billion 6 years ago.

Not only is 100 billion a bad deal, given CA’s track record they could easily spend $200 billion and never complete it

The travel speed is only about 125 mph, so not as complex as the high speed lines built in some European countries, but at about $18 million/km they are in the same ballpark kilometer/mile cost. A job well done.

New York has the most famous mafia, but it does seem like Americans have just accepted that all our urban infrastructure construction is rife with corruption. See also the Central Subway in SF, the Big Dig in Boston, and the general perception that anything infrastructure related will cost infinity dollars and approximately never be completed.

It’s largely a factor of all this being ‘nice to have’, no one having a reason to cut through the BS, combined with an outrage driven media/culture.

Because let’s be serious - California doesn’t actually need high speed rail.

No one sane wants, or needs, to rock the boat - especially since doing so just gets a giant eye of Sauron pointed at them. Extra bonus? Turning the crank endlessly on this while everyone complains gets them rich.

Do we really need airports? Or paved roads for that matter? Hell, Vermont gets by just fine with dirt roads, and they're better to drive on than many roads in CA.

Also HSR is something that a large contingent of people in CA have been kvetching about for decades, not sure your "everyone is afraid to say anything" holds water here.

> have been kvetching about

Yeah but they don't want this bullshit route. They want to go from LA to SF and MAYBE go through Santa Barbara, or go to Las Vegas or San Diego.

Plus, Even with inflation, it's super cheap to fly from SF to LA. Who is going to pay more than airfare to go between those two cities in a longer amount of time?

SF to LA through 101 corridor would have been a smart move for commuters and new housing areas

Yes, that is the case, but the extra stops also screw with the ‘longer high speed rail’ case. It’s tricky. Having one stop which transfer people to a slower parallel line might work better for that. (Also the Japanese approach)

Stopping burns a lot of energy and time.

When did I say ‘everyone is afraid to say anything’? Everyone kvetches about everything in California.

I said folks are afraid to cut through the BS - by telling people with less important kvetching to sit down and shut up. Because if they do, the how dare they outrage will follow them around forever and make their life hell.

You know, so it can be built now, and actually solve a problem, instead of it costing 50x times more than is reasonable and be done decades from now.

Because let’s get real - people have been kvetching while driving their cars on I5 and flying for decades, and even with this approval will continue to do so for at least a decade more. And will likely kvetch about how it sucks and that is why they don’t use it later.

> When did I say ‘everyone is afraid to say anything’?

> No one sane wants, or needs, to rock the boat

That's generally what this idiom means. What did you mean?

My first sentence. Are you serious?

There’s no single answer to why infrastructure is ludicrously expensive in the United States. It’s too easy to delay, so the costs go up. (Especially in California with its multiple rounds of public feedback.) Laws requiring American contractors, mean no one has experience building large complex projects, so things get delayed. Add in contractors along every link in the chain charging a government job premium, and the fact that government agencies have been gutted so whose left is easily bamboozled by the private grifters, or forced to hire expensive consultants to do jobs that used be done more cheaply in house, it’s no wonder everything is expensive.

It’s simultaneously too much regulation, and too little government oversight.

https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs...

>In 1964, Japan was able to build its 320 mile long Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka in just 5 years for less than $12B, inflation adjusted.

Another important factor here is the cost of construction: the California project will all be above-ground, AFAIK. However, a significant portion of the Tokaido line between Tokyo and Osaka is through tunnels, so the difficulty of construction was far greater.

For a more apples-to-apples comparison, Japan is currently building the [Chuo Shinkansen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen) line between Tokyo and Nagoya (286km/178mi), which will be a 505km/h maglev train that's 90% underground, as they have to tunnel through various mountains. It's projected to be finished in about a decade I think. Current costs have risen from the initial projection, and are at about 7 trillion yen for the first leg (Shinagawa to Nagoya), which at the current exchange rate is about USD$44B. But remember, that's about 160 miles of tunnels through mountains, plus all the rolling stock (which doesn't actually roll LOL), including the deepest tunnel in the country, and a line which isn't even conventional rail, it's a maglev track. By comparison, California is spending all that money on an above-ground train, in a place with excellent weather, using the same rail technology Japan was using 50+ years ago.

Or more recently, Brightline built a private high speed rail in Florida for $5 billion, spanning 170 miles. It’s hard to imagine a plausible reason this should cost 100 billion, especially given the fact they already have Amtrak rail running through California

“High speed” ended up being about 70mph. Max of 77mph in Florida.

> Max of 77mph in Florida.

Not exactly what can be found on Wikipedia. [0]

The article reads: Orlando-Cocoa: 125 mph (200 km/h)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline

They have made some changes to combat the negative press but still wrong.

Orlando to Miami 236 miles. Time listed on Wikipedia 210min or 3.5hrs. 236/3.5=67mph.

Many previous articles complained of slow speeds but they are listing unloaded speeds or something.

Speeds to Miami:

West palm beach 54-60mph

Boca Raton: 60mph

Fort Lauderdale: 60mph

Aventura: 67mph

> Orlando to Miami 236 miles. Time listed on Wikipedia 210min or 3.5hrs. 236/3.5=67mph.

As an average speed, that is of course correct. But that includes 6 stops along the way, as well as the time needed to enter and exit the stations before being back on high-speed tracks, and the time needed to decelerate/accelerate.

So that doesn't preclude a top speed of 125 mph on some portions of the track.

Ideally you would want a high-speed train on dedicated track, with dedicated stations, and few stops, as done in France, for example. You can choose to have train connections from stations inside city centers, as done in Germany, but than you will loose a lot of time actually getting to these stations, and consequently have a substantial lower average traveling speed.

Current tracks are still being built for roughly the same cost.

Your Japanese example comes in at about $23 million/km built.

I was recently looking at the costs of the Paris-Strasbourg line (opened in 2016), which cost €5.15B for 406 km of track, so about €13 million/km.