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Re: Diesels on orphaned HSR? 150 MPH. Really?
Author: BOB2
Date: 01-22-2018 - 21:56
My need for speed is also not based on the need to "compete" with the Chinese on dick size, either. Or with a Chinese rail system, which boards a couple of billion plus passengers annually, where they may be entirely justified in spending that kind of money for that kind of performance.
Right now, back where I have to pay the taxes for these things, about 12 million trips on Amtrak originate and terminate at a CA station every year.
As someone professionally trained in cost benefit, travel demand analysis, and the alternatives analysis process, just maybe, I'd do a real alternatives analysis, that tried to find the "sweet spot" that would give us the best ridership outcome, at a speed, system design requirements, and subsequent investment, consistent with the investment and operating cost per passenger mile, that offers the best cost benefit ratio to the taxpayers and poor beleaguered Californian wasting million of hours per year sitting in gridlock who are paying the bill for this.
Of course that process was never really used in planning any of the CHSRA fiasco....just "built it", no matter what it costs to build or operate, and "they will come".... because the "sky is falling" and we're running out of intrastate air capacity, which we aren't......
So you base your best professional opinion of a 150 mph. speed design requirement on what detailed analysis of those cost, demand, performance trade offs which optimizes public benefit, at the minimum cost point? It is just as arbitrary as a 220 mph "requirement".
Just because China, or Germany, or France have the existing passenger base and supporting network to justify very high or super high speed investments, it doesn't mean that we have either the same pre conditions to justify that level of investment, or a need to spend to the "sky's the limit" with scarce taxpayer supplied money on arbitrary and extremely costly performance requirements that really don't have anything to do with meeting the critical mobility needs or deficiencies we are actually facing in CA.
Right now, back where I have to pay the taxes for these things, about 12 million trips on Amtrak originate and terminate at a CA station every year.
As someone professionally trained in cost benefit, travel demand analysis, and the alternatives analysis process, just maybe, I'd do a real alternatives analysis, that tried to find the "sweet spot" that would give us the best ridership outcome, at a speed, system design requirements, and subsequent investment, consistent with the investment and operating cost per passenger mile, that offers the best cost benefit ratio to the taxpayers and poor beleaguered Californian wasting million of hours per year sitting in gridlock who are paying the bill for this.
Of course that process was never really used in planning any of the CHSRA fiasco....just "built it", no matter what it costs to build or operate, and "they will come".... because the "sky is falling" and we're running out of intrastate air capacity, which we aren't......
So you base your best professional opinion of a 150 mph. speed design requirement on what detailed analysis of those cost, demand, performance trade offs which optimizes public benefit, at the minimum cost point? It is just as arbitrary as a 220 mph "requirement".
Just because China, or Germany, or France have the existing passenger base and supporting network to justify very high or super high speed investments, it doesn't mean that we have either the same pre conditions to justify that level of investment, or a need to spend to the "sky's the limit" with scarce taxpayer supplied money on arbitrary and extremely costly performance requirements that really don't have anything to do with meeting the critical mobility needs or deficiencies we are actually facing in CA.
