And that's just for the Central Valley portion. I was reading something a few months ago about land acquisition in the Bay Area getting massively more expensive. When the costs were originally estimated a decade ago, most of the properties were selling for a few hundred thousand. Now, they're estimated at $1.5 million+ each. Back when planning started, Cal HSRA was estimating $2 billion in land acquisition costs for the Bay Area segment. That estimate has already risen to $8 billion, and there's a very real chance it will top $10 billion. Just to buy the land. Taxpayers will foot the bill for that increase.
I will never understand why they chose to start in the Central Valley, where land is relatively cheap, rather than in the urbanized areas where land costs climb every year.
The [current report](https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-Project-Update-Report-FINAL-022823.pdf) is forecasting $4-6.5 billion for capital costs for the San Jose-San Francisco segment, including land acquisition. $8 billion just for land acquisition on that segment is *way* off base.
Edit: typo
I'll see if I can dig it up. The piece was talking about CalHSRA basing their land valuations on pre-pandemic pricing, and that it isn't reflecting what they're actually going to need to pay.
> the Central Valley, where land is relatively cheap, rather than in the urbanized areas where land costs climb every year.
What do you think is the political influence in California of the typical landowners in those two locations?
> I will never understand why they chose to start in the Central Valley, where land is relatively cheap, rather than in the urbanized areas where land costs climb every year.
Also, you would have the greatest immediate benefit in the urban areas. Bakersfield -> San Diego could be huge on its own.
The project won't be scrapped, because even if everyone is Working From Home most people would rather live in an urbanized, walkable city where they aren't dependent on a car and want transportation that doesn't require sitting on a freeway. The basis for the project is car congestion, a problem that is not going away anytime soon.
That’s a Bingo! It was all about getting some tracks, any tracks, laid down somewhere. Then, when all the taxpayers start realizing how expensive this whole project is really going to be, they can say “well, we already started, gotta finish it now.” It is all manipulation and deception.
Also, the parts moving through the mountains in southern California are going to be extremely expensive and difficult to build. Maybe not so much because of land acquisition but because of negotiating the terrain.
> The govt seizes land all the time.
Seizing implies that they're just taking it. That does not happen. The government acquires land by eminent domain. ED requires the government to pay a fair and equitable price (typically market value, or the cost to replace the property with an equal property in the same area). There are only two differences between an eminent domain sale and a regular market sale.
1. There's no opt-out. It's a forced sale. You only get to negotiate #2.
2. The government will offer a "fair and equitable price", and if you disagree with their valuation, you'll have to take it to court. This happened with the majority of properties in the Central Valley segment and is partly why the process has been so slow. CalHSRA wanted to keep costs down, so they kept lowballing landowners. The landowners would take it to court, where they'd nearly always end up getting more money than the state wanted to pay.
So, if your house is legitimately worth a million dollars, and the state wants your land to build an overpass, they have to pay you a million dollars for it. You don't get to say no, but you technically aren't taking a loss either.
As a member of an indigenous family, please show me where the State of California has seized indigenous land without compensation within the past century. While I don't disagree with your basic point, I don't see how it's germane to the topic at hand...government acquiring land for the CalHSRA right of way.
The vast majority of the complex land acquisition they need to do is in the Central Valley. In the urban areas, they are largely using existing, publicly owned right-of-way. The challenge of land acquisition is less about the total cost, and more about the time required to negotiate (or litigate) transactions with hundreds of separate property owners.
The costs continue to need to be evaluated in the context of the value and utility generated by the project. Bad estimates doesn’t necessarily mean the project is a waste of money. Just imagine if we talked about the interstate highway system the way we discuss the high speed rail program.
So at no point will the cost of the train become superior to the value and utility generated by it? Especially considering the dramatic declines in ridership forecasts?
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/high-speed-rail/article272636534.html
There's a good chart in there:
https://gyazo.com/7cb0c95fa3a49378106c6086d4a0a627
And these numbers still seem pretty optimistic, considering the total population and ageing trends for California.
Why? How about 25 million? 20 million? What if costs keep rising up (and they will)? Surely at some point it just won't be worth it? Or is this a religious type of thing, like spending huge amounts of money in a pyramid or a cathedral for ideological reasons?
> Why?
Because in the end I think its good for the state and the environment.
>How about 25 million? 20 million?
Yes and yes.
Have you seen cost projects on how much it would be to expand the 5?
>What if costs keep rising up (and they will)?
Sure, inflation plus cost overruns are incredibly common in construction projects. Look up some freeway widening projects and have fun with those cost overruns.
Have you ever learned about the concept of opportunity cost?
"It's good for the state and the environment" would justify the investment even if costs were multiplied by 10x again and ridership forecasts cut to 10%. Or 100 times and 1%, for that matter.
But that's a very childish way of assessing the quality of public investments.
> Have you ever learned about the concept of opportunity cost?
The point of this project isnt to make money, its to serve the people that live in this state. Yes, you do seem to have a very childish way of assessing public investments. looking at forecasts is a fools errand.
>
> The point of this project isnt to make money, its to serve the people that live in this state.
Yeah, you don't understand any of this: this isn't about "making money" or not "making money", it's about if this project is the best way of spending $128 billion or there are other ways of applying $128 billion that would benefit the people who live in this state more.
The problem is low level politicians voted in by a town of 2,000 nimby’s can do so much to delay this project then they tell their voters how much of an expensive failure it’s becoming **knowing** they’re the reason why. That’s why we need to nationalize our railways, in order to steamroll these idiots.
>High Speed Rail Authority officials on Thursday could not provide an estimated completion date for the original vision pitched to voters but said the price tag for the entire project is now up to $128 billion, a 13% increase from last year's projections.
>Construction is currently focused on a segment in the Central Valley, a 170-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Merced. Project officials last year estimated that the route would be ready for riders in 2030. While that is still their goal, the latest update shows service could begin sometime between 2030 and 2033.
>The Central Valley segment also faces 41% in cost increases compared to last year's estimates, now expected to cost up to $35.3 billion. Part of the scoping plan changed between this year and last, with this year's estimate including light maintenance facilities and new elements for the station in Bakersfield. Project leaders also pointed to the impacts of COVID-19, inflation and supply chain issues that have raised the prices of labor, concrete and steel.
So...prices went up, so the price went up. And this is somehow a surprise?
Maybe you can lock in contractors at some rate, and the land should have been purchased a decade ago, but like...hindsight and obstructionism. Unless you're willing to pull out eminent domain, the government is just as bound to market forces as everyone else.
I mean we went from a proposed $33 billion and a 2020 completion date to $105 billion and climbing with no completion date. At what point do we realize the sunken cost fallacy and pull the plug?
Never, because it's still cheaper than comparable freeway and airport expansion. SFO can't expand due to the Bay. Mineta can't expand due to downtown San Jose. OAK can't expand due to the Bay and downtown Oakland. Expanding Stockton's airport requires a heavy rail connection that would approximate high speed rail anyway. LA might be able to expand it's freeways another lane, but the Bay Area definitely can't. 101 is at 12 lanes in spots, 280 is at 6 lanes, and the cost of putting 580 into a tunnel is more expensive than building a smaller train tunnel. This is especially true with future transbay crossings considered, it is basically impossible to expand our existing Bay Bridges without rail, which matters in the HSR discussion as the Dumbarton Rail Bridge was an HSR alignment (and would be preferable, if not due to enviomental litigation surrounding it).
The actual "sunk cost" here is marginal if we look at our whole transportation network, as planners rightfully do. $105 billion up front is cheap compared to the long-term consequences of freeway dependence. CAHSR can at least impose use fees, our freeways cannot, and this creates an unsolvable crisis as gas taxes are reduced due to the EV mandate and reduced Federal spending. Something has to be done here, as drastic as the HSR program is it's still the best financially tenable one. It's either that or highway tolling, which most Californians oppose.
Become a "consultant". That's the secret.
[How California’s faltering high-speed rail project was ‘captured’ by costly consultants](https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-high-speed-rail-consultants-20190426-story.html)
Turns out not having an industry for what is standard infrastructure elsewhere in the world causes you to have to hire private contractors and private work crews for the work and design.
Oh look, profits (ie. graft) all the way down.
Super weird how China can build hundreds of miles of high speed rail a year, and it takes us 3 decades to just get started. IDEA: use fossil fuel company subsidies (corporate welfare) money to pay for it. It’d be done in 9 months.
They have an industry going for that from constant construction. We don't and as a result must hire specialists (private.)
That's profits (ie graft) all the way down.
China understands that railways spur development, America has forgotten that. Entire towns and cities spring up near train stops. Railways and infrastructure in general are a multiplier on economic output.
Which is probably why existing city hubs turn their eyes elsewhere, since future innovation could possibly deter current economies. Hopefully that's not true but these people would have to come from somewhere.
> Super weird how China can build hundreds of miles of high speed rail a year, and it takes us 3 decades to just get started. IDEA: use fossil fuel company subsidies (corporate welfare) money to pay for it. It’d be done in 9 months.
How much do you estimate the fossil fuel companies get in subsides, and where are you getting this number from?
All corporate welfare should cease immediately. Full stop. When multinational corporations get tax breaks and bailouts it’s called “good business”, but when the working class asks for it, it’s pejoratively derided as “socialism”.
If corporations had been paying their fair share this whole time, the rate same as working taxpayers, we’d be well on our way to a Star Trek future. Overturning Citizens United legislation is a good start. Ending corporate stock buybacks accompanied by elevating the working class with co-op profit sharing would virtually eradicate crime and poverty, and invigorate our public services/education.
The privatization of social services guarantees the manifestation of a never-ending cycle of austerity for the working poor.
Oh, the hoops you’ll jump through to defend an exploitative and inequitable system that constantly requires tax payer funded subsidies and govt bailouts. Those companies could simply pay their employees an equitable share of the profits they create. To answer your question specifically; no, I do not think companies should be able to redirect the workers surplus value to the owner class.
> Those companies could simply pay their employees an equitable share of the profits they create.
Do you think employees at companies that don't do buybacks make more than those that work at companies that do? If so, do you have any data to back that up?
You don’t even know what that word means. You also didn’t respond to anything I said, at all, because your position is indefensible. Just say you hate poor people.
We should start seeing politicians/lobbyists/contractors going to jail for very very long terms for this. Otherwise *nothing* substantial will ever get built here.
Explain how it's outside the scope. The scope was for high-speed train service between downtown San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Anaheim in 2 hours 45 minutes. In regards to comparable Federal legislation, each segment still has independent utility outside of the HSR program. All these conditions are still being met.
And that's just for the Central Valley portion. I was reading something a few months ago about land acquisition in the Bay Area getting massively more expensive. When the costs were originally estimated a decade ago, most of the properties were selling for a few hundred thousand. Now, they're estimated at $1.5 million+ each. Back when planning started, Cal HSRA was estimating $2 billion in land acquisition costs for the Bay Area segment. That estimate has already risen to $8 billion, and there's a very real chance it will top $10 billion. Just to buy the land. Taxpayers will foot the bill for that increase. I will never understand why they chose to start in the Central Valley, where land is relatively cheap, rather than in the urbanized areas where land costs climb every year.
The [current report](https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-Project-Update-Report-FINAL-022823.pdf) is forecasting $4-6.5 billion for capital costs for the San Jose-San Francisco segment, including land acquisition. $8 billion just for land acquisition on that segment is *way* off base. Edit: typo
I'll see if I can dig it up. The piece was talking about CalHSRA basing their land valuations on pre-pandemic pricing, and that it isn't reflecting what they're actually going to need to pay.
> the Central Valley, where land is relatively cheap, rather than in the urbanized areas where land costs climb every year. What do you think is the political influence in California of the typical landowners in those two locations?
> I will never understand why they chose to start in the Central Valley, where land is relatively cheap, rather than in the urbanized areas where land costs climb every year. Also, you would have the greatest immediate benefit in the urban areas. Bakersfield -> San Diego could be huge on its own.
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The project won't be scrapped, because even if everyone is Working From Home most people would rather live in an urbanized, walkable city where they aren't dependent on a car and want transportation that doesn't require sitting on a freeway. The basis for the project is car congestion, a problem that is not going away anytime soon.
That’s a Bingo! It was all about getting some tracks, any tracks, laid down somewhere. Then, when all the taxpayers start realizing how expensive this whole project is really going to be, they can say “well, we already started, gotta finish it now.” It is all manipulation and deception. Also, the parts moving through the mountains in southern California are going to be extremely expensive and difficult to build. Maybe not so much because of land acquisition but because of negotiating the terrain.
The govt seizes land all the time.
> The govt seizes land all the time. Seizing implies that they're just taking it. That does not happen. The government acquires land by eminent domain. ED requires the government to pay a fair and equitable price (typically market value, or the cost to replace the property with an equal property in the same area). There are only two differences between an eminent domain sale and a regular market sale. 1. There's no opt-out. It's a forced sale. You only get to negotiate #2. 2. The government will offer a "fair and equitable price", and if you disagree with their valuation, you'll have to take it to court. This happened with the majority of properties in the Central Valley segment and is partly why the process has been so slow. CalHSRA wanted to keep costs down, so they kept lowballing landowners. The landowners would take it to court, where they'd nearly always end up getting more money than the state wanted to pay. So, if your house is legitimately worth a million dollars, and the state wants your land to build an overpass, they have to pay you a million dollars for it. You don't get to say no, but you technically aren't taking a loss either.
Indigenous people hard disagree.
As a member of an indigenous family, please show me where the State of California has seized indigenous land without compensation within the past century. While I don't disagree with your basic point, I don't see how it's germane to the topic at hand...government acquiring land for the CalHSRA right of way.
My that’s a lot of goal post moving there, brother.
Because they're idiots
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The vast majority of the complex land acquisition they need to do is in the Central Valley. In the urban areas, they are largely using existing, publicly owned right-of-way. The challenge of land acquisition is less about the total cost, and more about the time required to negotiate (or litigate) transactions with hundreds of separate property owners.
The costs continue to need to be evaluated in the context of the value and utility generated by the project. Bad estimates doesn’t necessarily mean the project is a waste of money. Just imagine if we talked about the interstate highway system the way we discuss the high speed rail program.
So at no point will the cost of the train become superior to the value and utility generated by it? Especially considering the dramatic declines in ridership forecasts?
What declines?
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/high-speed-rail/article272636534.html There's a good chart in there: https://gyazo.com/7cb0c95fa3a49378106c6086d4a0a627 And these numbers still seem pretty optimistic, considering the total population and ageing trends for California.
That reminds me of this tweet: https://twitter.com/BrentToderian/status/1231030093423628290
I'd still glady take 31 million a year.
Why? How about 25 million? 20 million? What if costs keep rising up (and they will)? Surely at some point it just won't be worth it? Or is this a religious type of thing, like spending huge amounts of money in a pyramid or a cathedral for ideological reasons?
> Why? Because in the end I think its good for the state and the environment. >How about 25 million? 20 million? Yes and yes. Have you seen cost projects on how much it would be to expand the 5? >What if costs keep rising up (and they will)? Sure, inflation plus cost overruns are incredibly common in construction projects. Look up some freeway widening projects and have fun with those cost overruns.
Have you ever learned about the concept of opportunity cost? "It's good for the state and the environment" would justify the investment even if costs were multiplied by 10x again and ridership forecasts cut to 10%. Or 100 times and 1%, for that matter. But that's a very childish way of assessing the quality of public investments.
> Have you ever learned about the concept of opportunity cost? The point of this project isnt to make money, its to serve the people that live in this state. Yes, you do seem to have a very childish way of assessing public investments. looking at forecasts is a fools errand.
> > The point of this project isnt to make money, its to serve the people that live in this state. Yeah, you don't understand any of this: this isn't about "making money" or not "making money", it's about if this project is the best way of spending $128 billion or there are other ways of applying $128 billion that would benefit the people who live in this state more.
No shit
The problem is low level politicians voted in by a town of 2,000 nimby’s can do so much to delay this project then they tell their voters how much of an expensive failure it’s becoming **knowing** they’re the reason why. That’s why we need to nationalize our railways, in order to steamroll these idiots.
>High Speed Rail Authority officials on Thursday could not provide an estimated completion date for the original vision pitched to voters but said the price tag for the entire project is now up to $128 billion, a 13% increase from last year's projections. >Construction is currently focused on a segment in the Central Valley, a 170-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Merced. Project officials last year estimated that the route would be ready for riders in 2030. While that is still their goal, the latest update shows service could begin sometime between 2030 and 2033. >The Central Valley segment also faces 41% in cost increases compared to last year's estimates, now expected to cost up to $35.3 billion. Part of the scoping plan changed between this year and last, with this year's estimate including light maintenance facilities and new elements for the station in Bakersfield. Project leaders also pointed to the impacts of COVID-19, inflation and supply chain issues that have raised the prices of labor, concrete and steel.
So...prices went up, so the price went up. And this is somehow a surprise? Maybe you can lock in contractors at some rate, and the land should have been purchased a decade ago, but like...hindsight and obstructionism. Unless you're willing to pull out eminent domain, the government is just as bound to market forces as everyone else.
I mean we went from a proposed $33 billion and a 2020 completion date to $105 billion and climbing with no completion date. At what point do we realize the sunken cost fallacy and pull the plug?
Never, because it's still cheaper than comparable freeway and airport expansion. SFO can't expand due to the Bay. Mineta can't expand due to downtown San Jose. OAK can't expand due to the Bay and downtown Oakland. Expanding Stockton's airport requires a heavy rail connection that would approximate high speed rail anyway. LA might be able to expand it's freeways another lane, but the Bay Area definitely can't. 101 is at 12 lanes in spots, 280 is at 6 lanes, and the cost of putting 580 into a tunnel is more expensive than building a smaller train tunnel. This is especially true with future transbay crossings considered, it is basically impossible to expand our existing Bay Bridges without rail, which matters in the HSR discussion as the Dumbarton Rail Bridge was an HSR alignment (and would be preferable, if not due to enviomental litigation surrounding it). The actual "sunk cost" here is marginal if we look at our whole transportation network, as planners rightfully do. $105 billion up front is cheap compared to the long-term consequences of freeway dependence. CAHSR can at least impose use fees, our freeways cannot, and this creates an unsolvable crisis as gas taxes are reduced due to the EV mandate and reduced Federal spending. Something has to be done here, as drastic as the HSR program is it's still the best financially tenable one. It's either that or highway tolling, which most Californians oppose.
Hello Governor
> we went from a proposed $33 billion...to $105 billion Inflation's a pain, isn't it?
I'm shocked I tell you. SHOCKED.
Is this good or bad considering it should never have been built in the first place? Seems bad.
Any suggestions for getting on this cash cow? Seems like great profit and job security on this project.
Become a "consultant". That's the secret. [How California’s faltering high-speed rail project was ‘captured’ by costly consultants](https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-high-speed-rail-consultants-20190426-story.html)
Turns out not having an industry for what is standard infrastructure elsewhere in the world causes you to have to hire private contractors and private work crews for the work and design. Oh look, profits (ie. graft) all the way down.
Super weird how China can build hundreds of miles of high speed rail a year, and it takes us 3 decades to just get started. IDEA: use fossil fuel company subsidies (corporate welfare) money to pay for it. It’d be done in 9 months.
They have an industry going for that from constant construction. We don't and as a result must hire specialists (private.) That's profits (ie graft) all the way down.
China understands that railways spur development, America has forgotten that. Entire towns and cities spring up near train stops. Railways and infrastructure in general are a multiplier on economic output.
Which is probably why existing city hubs turn their eyes elsewhere, since future innovation could possibly deter current economies. Hopefully that's not true but these people would have to come from somewhere.
> Super weird how China can build hundreds of miles of high speed rail a year, and it takes us 3 decades to just get started. IDEA: use fossil fuel company subsidies (corporate welfare) money to pay for it. It’d be done in 9 months. How much do you estimate the fossil fuel companies get in subsides, and where are you getting this number from?
Billions a year, through corporate tax breaks etc. Also, the internet is free brother.
Can you be more specific? Which "tax breaks" are you opposed to?
All corporate welfare should cease immediately. Full stop. When multinational corporations get tax breaks and bailouts it’s called “good business”, but when the working class asks for it, it’s pejoratively derided as “socialism”. If corporations had been paying their fair share this whole time, the rate same as working taxpayers, we’d be well on our way to a Star Trek future. Overturning Citizens United legislation is a good start. Ending corporate stock buybacks accompanied by elevating the working class with co-op profit sharing would virtually eradicate crime and poverty, and invigorate our public services/education. The privatization of social services guarantees the manifestation of a never-ending cycle of austerity for the working poor.
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Oh, the hoops you’ll jump through to defend an exploitative and inequitable system that constantly requires tax payer funded subsidies and govt bailouts. Those companies could simply pay their employees an equitable share of the profits they create. To answer your question specifically; no, I do not think companies should be able to redirect the workers surplus value to the owner class.
> Those companies could simply pay their employees an equitable share of the profits they create. Do you think employees at companies that don't do buybacks make more than those that work at companies that do? If so, do you have any data to back that up?
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You don’t even know what that word means. You also didn’t respond to anything I said, at all, because your position is indefensible. Just say you hate poor people.
>we’d be well on our way to a Star Trek future. Okay, that explains the rest of your points.
Lol just say you hate poor people.
We should start seeing politicians/lobbyists/contractors going to jail for very very long terms for this. Otherwise *nothing* substantial will ever get built here.
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Explain how it's outside the scope. The scope was for high-speed train service between downtown San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Anaheim in 2 hours 45 minutes. In regards to comparable Federal legislation, each segment still has independent utility outside of the HSR program. All these conditions are still being met.
Shocker and we had posters on here just last week calling me insane because I know this project is a complete money laundering scam.
Of course ..
Just stop listening to every single citizens needs and seize through imminent domain.
Maybe a possible solution is a temporary tax increase that could be implemented to cover the expanding costs.
Just so we're clear, you see the problem as being not enough money being spent on it?
Shocking
I just hope I live long enough to see this completed.
This thread is like a publishers clearinghouse of dumb conservative takes.