Why the United States will never have high-speed rail

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74. Funny how something that makes sense in China doesn't make sense in California.

1) The issue of high speed rail boils down to a single factor: population density. It only works when there are tens of millions of riders going from distant commuting cities and movement from high density cities that already have established high volume traffic. Yes China is much more densely populated than the US

In putting Proposition 1A onto the ballot the proponents and the legislature stated that the system had to be self supporting, but it was clear from the beginning that it would never get close to that. Instead of $ 9 billion in state funds it will cost more than $ 100 billion.

Now which is more progressive: spending $ 100 billion on mass transit for inner cities and municipal hubs or $ 100 billion on connecting two cities that are far apart and can be reached with a 45 minute plane ride?

Proposition 1a required that at each stage independent peer review assess the projections that the budget is based on and each independent peer review concluded that the ridership figures were grossly inflated, somewhere around 300% of what can be expected.

In May 2015, the Los Angeles Times published an article by critics on the estimated operational revenue of the system in "Doing the math on California's bullet train fares".[74] The article raised a number of doubts that the system could be self-supporting, as required by Prop 1A, and ended by quoting Louis Thompson (chairman of an unnamed state-created review panel) who said "We will not know until late in the game how everything will turn out."[75]

The Due Diligence Report (2008) projected fewer riders by 2030 than officially estimated: 23.4 to 31.1 million intercity riders a year instead of the 65.5 to 96.5 million forecast by the Authority and later confirmed by an independent peer review.[76]

To put those numbers in perspective: California projects about 31 million riders a year while China achieved 1.5 billion riders a year.

http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/1110/c90000-9291147.html

2) China

Yes bullet trains make sense in SOME parts of China.

Take two provinces next to each other: Shanghai and Guangdong. These two provinces have a combined population of about 150 million or about half of the United States.

Population density:

Shanghai 9,900 people per square mile
Guangdung 1,600 people per square mile
California 240 people per square mile

Do you see a trend?

3) Central Planning in China

The great fear of even those that supported 1a when it was passed was that it would end up diverting limited California state revenue from doing something concrete for the people in the cities, especially to the working class to a white elephant that would have big contracts but ultimately need subsidies to keep going. They wisely required regular assessments from independent peer review specialists to confirm the data and Newsome, much to his credit, took the appropriate action when the data no longer supported the project.

In China where central planning over rides the market senior officials profit from putting the bullet train and other government development projects where they are not sustainable in order to personally profit from the contracts.

So while some of the bullet train lines are sustainable and worthwhile others are not.

In fact the Chinese government is putting up dozens of ghost cities where in fact no one actually lives.

The issue of mass transit funds in California comes down to a very simple question: Are you going to waste them on a system that clearly doesn't meet the geography/density of California or are you going to invest in projects (like the LA tunnel) that are going to reduce congestion and assist the working poor. You cannot have both.

A network that would link Chicago/midwest and the North/South East Coast corridor would be much more likely to fit the density required to make a high speed viable (linking about 125 million) but the CA project was always just eye candy and never approached the ridership to make it possible.