California high speed rail cost soars from $130 billion to $231 billion in less than a year. It’s not dead yet . . .

@lomaine you have hit the nail on the head!!!

@lomaine

They do it for a reason... the politicians get even filthier rich doing it.

@ineedadrink They have my sympathies. I live near seaside resorts!

@ineedadrink if they were casino workers, they'd probably be celebrating

@FreddieUK True but at least they are being built, albeit ours only as far as Birmingham so of even less real use than the full route would have been.

Except that it should reduce congestion on the existing routes, even if the journey times comparisons are not good. (Does it really matter if a load of commuters take fifteen minutes less to reach Canary Wharf from the centre of Brum?)


Given that there are huge physical geography, legal and budgetary differences between Britain and the USA, I wonder if there are problems common to both.

The most obvious of course is simply the ever-rising costs of materials and labour; but other factors can include politicians (or whom I suspect few would know a train from a locomotive) forever changing the specifications, forcing considerable re-designing even if not modifying existing work.


The most infamous example of that on HS2 of course is the costly, so-called "bat tunnel". It's not a tunnel at all, but a long, open-ended shed; supposedly to avoid collisions between the trains and animals. The bats might actually roost in it!


Another point is the actual need for the project.

The British HS2 was to have linked only London, Birmingham and Leeds ( I think originally Sheffield as well). Its main use, as above, would be as a bypass to the existing routes; but this is less than 300 miles.

The Californian one planned, is not merely Los Angeles to Las Vegas. That bit is a glorified branch-line, bizarrely named "Brightline West", even though leading North-East from the main route to its LV terminus.

Instead the whole system, if completed as planned, will link the state's most important cities, including LA to San Franscico, but eventually well beyond both - San Diego and Sacramento.

LA - SF is about 400 miles - roughly equal to London - Edinburgh, whose fasted ECML services take about 4 hours, with much consistent cruising at well over 100mph. Existing fast LA - SF trains take significantly longer than that.

So the Californian railway is more justifiable from the passengers' point of view; but as in the UK, rail travel across the USA suffered badly from decades of road competition and poor investment. Air too, in that huge continent, but that is much less significant for intercity travel only within the British Isles.

Yet if any country can justify proper, very fast intercity, cross-country trains it must be the USA. There are fast services now running, or due to run, between New York and Boston; and comparable to the electrified trunk lines in the UK in not needing specially-built railways.


China is in a different position. It is run by a single-party, ruthless committee who can plan decades ahead without needing worry about the niceties of elections and environments, its government has a high proportion of professional scientists and engineers; its labour charges are relatively low.

(Many Britons think "Engineering" means servicing cars; not a Proper Job for the edumificated folks with those Degree thingies. I don't know the American social attitude.)

It is also a very large country, where again, projects like high-speed railways are justifed by distancec between major cities.

In the USA, joining for example Washington, New York, San Francisco and Chicago would seem obvious "HS2" candidates; but would be hellishly costly Federal, not simply State, projects mired in that nation's domestic politics. Yet the Americans managed to join East to West Coasts by rails in the 19C, with the famous finishing fish-plates bolted together in rural Utah!



Weirdly, the original HS2 proposals even included it having its own, non-standard track gauge; so no HS2 train could use existing lines, and vice-versa! Fortunately that nonsense was discarded before Isambard Kingdom Brunel became too dizzy from his grave-spinning.

My view is that HS2 was a non-starter, a vanity-project, based on optimism more than clear purpose; likely only to spread Canary Wharf's commuters and their house prices even further from the capital.

It makes sense from a purely operational view, to build a new, fast line to relieve congestion on other lines. To have any proper value to the North of England though, freight transport should be seen as more important than business passengers, so the railway should have been intended from the start also to accommodate fast container-trains, even if overnight. And to venture beyond Birmingham.


Whether California's equivalent fulfils its promises remains to be seen, but at least its main routes (not the Las Vegas branch unless that is hoped eventually to extend right across the Mid-West) are more justifiable than England's HS2.

@ArishMell I think there is a distinct difference between attitudes in the UK and the USA over rail transport. Here we see it very much as a public utility, whereas there it's a capitalist investment which must show a return on any investment, public or otherwise. Many people there, as we see in so many postings, only think about themselves and their immediate circumstances when thinking about how tax should be spent. Hence their paranoia about the 'undeserving', whoever that might be this week, getting a cent of their 'hard earned' money. Environmental and social considerations are, for many, anathema.

@Thinkerbell Sadly, you're almost certainly right.