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The HSR myths continue to perpetuate...
...and new ones are created. Sorry Chris, you've totally lost it.
"Thats faster than driving or even flying, once you take into account the travel time to SFO or LAX, arriving there at least an hour before your flight time in order to get through security, sitting on the tarmac waiting for a gate or a runway slot, and all the rest of the actual time commitments not included in the nominal hour-and-a-half flight time."
Of course, that's built upon the fantasy that the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration, not Airline Transportation) will not eventually intervene, as it has already announced its intention to do so. Don't worry; I have complete faith that if and when HSR is implemented here that the TSA will make getting on a train just as miserable as getting on a plane.
And with all of the pointless (but politically required) stops that this train will be making as it plods through the central valley every 20 miles or so, those speeds are also a fantasy.
Airport capacity is also a non-issue. Most of the aircraft running the LA-SF routes are of the 150-200 seat variety. As demand increases, those planes would be swapped out for larger aircraft. No additional runways would be required, and cost-per-seat-mile (the real metric of travel efficiency) would actually go down. Can't say the same for HSR.
"Under the systems targeted fare structure, the SF-LA trip would also be about half the price of airfare, or about the same price as buying $4 gasoline for a car that gets 20 mpg and driving those 500 miles. But it would be a whole lot safer, more comfortable, and more productive."
The last study I read to justify this project predicted a ridership of over 32-million people per year. That's roughly the entire population of the state! (I haven't gone to the absurdity of doing the complete math on this, but is it even possible to run enough trains on this to transport roughly 90,000 passengers per day?) This is only arrived at if you use the same kind of absurd math that NASA used to convince Congress that the Space Shuttle would be profitable as a launch system at 50 launches per year.
Most other studies put unsubsidized ticket prices at around $400 one-way, or more than a first-class LA-SF air ticket.
450,000 permanent jobs? What? It's going to almost take half-a-million people just to run this thing? The carbon spewed by half-a-million people commuting to work each day (Most using carbon-spewing automobiles to do os) will more than negate any carbon efficiencies of HSR. (Which there are none, BTW)
Clearly, this must mean ancillary jobs. But since the point of HSR is to replace the airlines, most of those jobs if they happen will just be replacing those. Net wash, at best. In fact, if HSR is as efficient as you like to think, it would actually be a net loss of jobs, at least in the short term.
And you are using Spain as an example? Um, unless you've been missing out on international news lately, Spain is bankrupt, largely driven there by their false "green" economy. The trains in Spain are great, and highly subsidized. I always appreciate when taxpayers with a much lower standard of living than I have pay to subsidize my luxurious travel that they usually can't afford themselves. Doesn't mean I want to do the same thing here.
"HSR could cut state oil demand by 12.7 million barrels per year through displaced air and car travel...Its about more than the jobs, or the 3 million tons of CO2 emissions it would cut annually, or the 146 million hours a year that residents would stop wasting unproductively in traffic. It could mean the very difference between life and death in a fuel-constrained future."
Another myth. HSR trains are no where near as energy efficient as traditional rail. It takes a phenomenal amount of energy to accelerate a trail over 100, and then to keep it there. On a carbon level, inter-city diesel buses are actually more efficient than HSR.
A fundamentally bankrupt California is proceeding with this project only because they hope that the rest of American taxpayers will be paying for it. They'd never proceed if they had to pay for this themselves. In fact, they've blatantly violated the conditions of the original bond issue. Lesson for citizens: The politicians are going to go ahead and do what they want to, even if they put it in writing otherwise.
"Thats faster than driving or even flying, once you take into account the travel time to SFO or LAX, arriving there at least an hour before your flight time in order to get through security, sitting on the tarmac waiting for a gate or a runway slot, and all the rest of the actual time commitments not included in the nominal hour-and-a-half flight time."
Of course, that's built upon the fantasy that the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration, not Airline Transportation) will not eventually intervene, as it has already announced its intention to do so. Don't worry; I have complete faith that if and when HSR is implemented here that the TSA will make getting on a train just as miserable as getting on a plane.
And with all of the pointless (but politically required) stops that this train will be making as it plods through the central valley every 20 miles or so, those speeds are also a fantasy.
Airport capacity is also a non-issue. Most of the aircraft running the LA-SF routes are of the 150-200 seat variety. As demand increases, those planes would be swapped out for larger aircraft. No additional runways would be required, and cost-per-seat-mile (the real metric of travel efficiency) would actually go down. Can't say the same for HSR.
"Under the systems targeted fare structure, the SF-LA trip would also be about half the price of airfare, or about the same price as buying $4 gasoline for a car that gets 20 mpg and driving those 500 miles. But it would be a whole lot safer, more comfortable, and more productive."
The last study I read to justify this project predicted a ridership of over 32-million people per year. That's roughly the entire population of the state! (I haven't gone to the absurdity of doing the complete math on this, but is it even possible to run enough trains on this to transport roughly 90,000 passengers per day?) This is only arrived at if you use the same kind of absurd math that NASA used to convince Congress that the Space Shuttle would be profitable as a launch system at 50 launches per year.
Most other studies put unsubsidized ticket prices at around $400 one-way, or more than a first-class LA-SF air ticket.
450,000 permanent jobs? What? It's going to almost take half-a-million people just to run this thing? The carbon spewed by half-a-million people commuting to work each day (Most using carbon-spewing automobiles to do os) will more than negate any carbon efficiencies of HSR. (Which there are none, BTW)
Clearly, this must mean ancillary jobs. But since the point of HSR is to replace the airlines, most of those jobs if they happen will just be replacing those. Net wash, at best. In fact, if HSR is as efficient as you like to think, it would actually be a net loss of jobs, at least in the short term.
And you are using Spain as an example? Um, unless you've been missing out on international news lately, Spain is bankrupt, largely driven there by their false "green" economy. The trains in Spain are great, and highly subsidized. I always appreciate when taxpayers with a much lower standard of living than I have pay to subsidize my luxurious travel that they usually can't afford themselves. Doesn't mean I want to do the same thing here.
"HSR could cut state oil demand by 12.7 million barrels per year through displaced air and car travel...Its about more than the jobs, or the 3 million tons of CO2 emissions it would cut annually, or the 146 million hours a year that residents would stop wasting unproductively in traffic. It could mean the very difference between life and death in a fuel-constrained future."
Another myth. HSR trains are no where near as energy efficient as traditional rail. It takes a phenomenal amount of energy to accelerate a trail over 100, and then to keep it there. On a carbon level, inter-city diesel buses are actually more efficient than HSR.
A fundamentally bankrupt California is proceeding with this project only because they hope that the rest of American taxpayers will be paying for it. They'd never proceed if they had to pay for this themselves. In fact, they've blatantly violated the conditions of the original bond issue. Lesson for citizens: The politicians are going to go ahead and do what they want to, even if they put it in writing otherwise.
Edited by JohnMcGrew@...
Updated - 13th Jul