California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system.
Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of being a politician is that it is all other people’s money, including among those other people generations yet unborn.
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The high-speed rail system proposed for California has been envisioned as a model for similar systems elsewhere in the United States. A recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle used the high-speed rail system in Spain as an analogy for California.
Spain is about the same size as California, and has a similar population density — and population density is the key to the economic viability of mass transportation, from subways to high-speed rail.
It so happens that I have ridden on Spain’s high-speed rail system. It was very nice, especially since I did not have to pay the full costs, as the system was subsidized by the Spanish taxpayers.
While the Spanish government has been subsidizing the passengers on its high-speed rail system, the European Union has been subsidizing the Spanish government. Someone once said that government is the illusion that we can all live off somebody else. Spain’s high-speed rail system is not even covering its operating costs, never mind the enormous costs of setting up the system in the first place. One reason is that half the seats are empty.
That is what happens when you don’t have the population density required for passengers to cover the operating costs. You would need the hordes of Genghis Khan riding the high-speed rail system to cover the additional costs of the rails and the trains.
An economics professor at the University of Barcelona says that Spain “has not recovered one single euro from the infrastructure investment.”
The most famous high-speed-rail system is that in Japan, one of the most densely populated countries in the world. The “bullet train” between Tokyo and Osaka has 130 million riders a year. Tokyo alone has more than three times the population of San Francisco and Los Angeles put together.
"While the Spanish government has been subsidizing the passengers on its high-speed rail system, the European Union has been subsidizing the Spanish government. "
Of course, the members of the European Union who are subsidizing the Spanish government also have their own high speed rail lines. Not sure exactly what your position is though - it's a terrible idea that can't get built right away along the coast because of opposition from the wacko environmentalists??? Is that right?
Funny that I heard Newt Gingrich speaking to folks in Florida the other day complaining about how the Federal government should be creating jobs by rebuilding the Interstate near where he was speaking. Maybe he didn't hear that infrastructure investments are a waste of taxpayer money - the cause of our insanely out of control deficits.
I sure liked the high speed train I rode from Venice to Rome once. I wish our country was so advanced.
@virtualanne
"Advanced?" Don't make me laugh. You think the US is a backwater because we won't commit the same economic suicide as the "advanced" euro dunces by building a rail system we can't afford and that will not really help anyone? And you make a completely phony infrastructure comparison.between highways (which people actually use) and bullet trains (which nobody uses). Clue in Anne, we're broke and we can't ride government run, public works projects back to financial health.
This is the essence of the argument for high-speed rail: it makes California look "advanced," i.e., modish, modern, and environmentally progressive. It's nonsense. By comparison, even Newt's moon colony would be a better bet because it might have some strategic military value--maybe. But California doesn't need high-speed rail. Not enough people make the trip from X to Y to make it affordable without subsidy. They would otherwise cheaply drive or fly. Cost of construction is unaffordably high. No one even talks about cost to maintain, or the cost in annual state and federal subsidies needed to keep the ticket price affordable.
Yet this project is also perfect politics because it's all about flashy perception. It lets the self-involved political class congratulate itself while sticking us with the bill. And California is so hopelessly addicted to the rush of appearing "progressive" that the project even now appeals to millions of halfwit voters here. This is the state that gave us legislation mandating web-site pronouncements by companies about their internal practices regarding human trafficking. (!) The latest fad is what sells here. Always will be, until the whole thing fails.
I actually hope we build this rail project now, so that we can accelerate the inevitable fiscal and reputational bankruptcy of this state. And then maybe rebuild with people whose vanity is not their defining characteristic.
Like Spain, Japan is about the size of California, but with 125 million people.
A trip from Nagoya Station to Tokyo Station is about 230 miles, according to Google Maps, and takes 315 minutes to drive. Or you can relax and ride one of the frequently scheduled (over 70 of them, before noon!) bullet trains which take as little as 103 minutes. That certainly sounds convenient, in a place with inadequate and expensive toll highways.
But the train ride costs $1.25 per minute. That's what the high-speed-rail enthusiasts never mention.
Illinois politicians sold their citizenry on the merits of a state lottery many years ago, overcoming moral objections by promising that the revenue they'd garner from this enterprise would all go to funding schools. At the time, I even heard otherwise seriously religious people extolling the merits involved in a government operated gambling scheme that would magically remove the immorality inherent in the activity.
Naturally, the stewards of public trust used the funds in the more " general " sense of the word and instead chose to bail out failing public transportation rackets such as the Chicago Transit Authority. Turns out the school funding ruse is a very successful method of tugging at the heart strings of otherwise sensible people in order to mine revenue because the pols continue to use it.
Immorality of a state lottery??? LOL. I know a few church ladies who buy lottery tickets.
Unlike high speed rail, lotteries will make money for the state. And they are purely a voluntary activity: Id rather the state raise revenue that way rather than setting speeding ticket or parking ticket quotas.
If Las Vegas paid as poorly as the state lotteries, the state would shut them down. Vegas must pay our 98 cents per dollar wagered while the states pay 45 cents. It truly is an idiot tax. Immorality, indeed!
BrandingIron - I fail to see the similarities between a game that people choose to play and purchase, one that makes a profit at that, to a boondoogle rail system that is going to cost the citizens a billion dollars.
Immorality of playing an entertaining game for a chance to win money? Where do you live, and do your churches not have festivels with these same games. Wow
The point is not the merit of gambling as a hobby, but instead how irresponsible temporary politicians choose to handle the public largesse. Gambling is a personal choice, mostly facilitated by organized crime until politicians decided to supposedly legitimize it by taking it for themselves and thereby legislating morality. One may judge the merit of gambling for himself, but the political class sold otherwise discerning voters an illegitmate bill of goods in the case of the Illinois Lottery.
Like Spain, Japan is also about the size of California, but with a population of 125 million.
The distance from Nagoya Station to Tokyo Station, which according to Google Maps is approximately 230 miles, can be done by car in about 315 minutes using expensive gas and toll roads. Or ride one of the frequent bullet trains (Over 70 departures - before lunch!) and you can cut your transit time down to 103 minutes. Sounds like an attractive option, eh?
What the high-speed-rail supporters never mention is that it costs each rider $1.25 per minute.
This is sick. To waste money on high speed rail at a time when both the Federal and State (California) governments are broke and deeply in debt is unbelievable.
Thomas Sowell's discussion of the high-speed-rail boondoggle in the making and "BrandingIron5"'s description of the Illinois state lottery are both vivid evidence, especially when taken in conjunction with Theodore Dalrymple's current article in City Journal, "The European Crackup", are vivid evidence that politicians, no matter their geographical location, tend to be spherical swine, i.e. swine no matter from what direction one views them. (My apologies to self-respecting pigs everywhere.) If the Republicans cannot manage to send the Obama administration into the wilderness, our future is going to be filled with more versions of high-speed boondoggles and bridges to nowhere until we begin to live like the Europeans, so beloved of Mr. Obama, at the mercy of government by the nomenklatura, as Mr. Dalrymple puts it.
Based on experience from Sweden (and I understand from California as well), the best thing tax payers can do is to spot a rare newt, bird or orchid along the planned route. Then sue/ask for a public inquiry and watch the time pass. Appeal any decision at regular intervals. Rince, and repeat...
It can work; build the rail and import the population by various schemes: Land jobbing, Land development, Men of leisure entertainments, Community farming, Locally grown themes, and Advertised (pedigree, qualities, & other great speculation schemes).
Nothing new. It has been done before; advertise heavily overseas.
All aboard .... babes and toddlers. You'll be paying the freight long after the Debt Express has whistled by. Coming down the track is a collision with China, our Creditor-in-Chief, who won't be shunted aside to easily.
Thanks again Dr. Sowell for illustrating the frothing, rabid insanity of Liberals. One wonders how they ever got so far out of touch with reality. I have long thought that they went for a ride on the Yellow Submarine back in the sixties and have never returned.
We are not Europe. We are also not Japan. High Speed Rail seems like a total expensive boondoggle, targeted to a few urban yuppies who want to work and live "downtown". In my city, all kinds of people have proposed light rail, high speed rail, urban rail, etc. It all goes downtown from somewhere. The fact is that very few people work downtown anymore. They all commute from one suburb to another.
Our rush hour literally lasts 1 hour in the afternoon, and people cope. We are trying to find a problem to solve.
There was a reson for the interstate highway system. It was built so that the military could get around if necessary. I am glad that we never had to use it, but that does not make it unnecessary.
Rail is 150 year old technology, and I cannot believe that people think it is our answer. I dont know what the answer is, but I know it is not rail or Volts.
Another right-on-target article by Dr. Sowell...The Japanese railway system is a marvel. I take a rapid-service train that takes me from Chiba Station into Tokyo and then Musashi-Kosugi in exactly 60 minutes. When there is a delay, there are repeated apologies. But population density is indeed a vital factor. And, unlike Americans, who seem to take cheap transportation for granted, we pay dearly for the convenience.
There are cultural factors as well. The Japanese are a well-disciplined people,and those who live in the urban areas generally practice remarkably good public-transportation manners. Americans are, by and large, anarchists by comparison, and their "wide-open spaces" quite logically make them love their automobiles.
Germany is a land somewhere in-between. Train service is not as good as it is in Japan, but it is certainly tolerable - and cheaper. Besides, there is the marvelous Autobahn system.
Of course, none of this makes any difference to liberals, for whom the *idea* is everything. Mass transportation, run by the state, is for the masses, or, uh, intended for the masses. Well-heeled liberals will still rely on their limousines - or on their "special" trains and carriages - not unlike the late Kim Jong Il.
