Austerity Measures Threaten Lisbon-Madrid HSR Link
Sadly, the United States isn’t the only country that’s seeing an insane rush toward austeirty threatening the kind of investments that are needed to produce long-term economic growth. In Portugal, a long-planned high speed rail link from Lisbon to Madrid will likely be cancelled by the new right-wing government:
In April, when Portugal sought the emergency aid to stabilise its strained public finances, the rail plan was already frozen.
But while the outgoing socialist prime minister Jose Socrates planned to relaunch it later, the PSD did not.
Although the loan granted to Portugal did not include a promise to suspend the Lisbon-Madrid rail link, Passos Coelho said last month he supported such a move, adding that the high-speed line “was not a priority.”
That’s an absurd position for Portugal’s new prime minister to take. High speed rail is absolutely essential for the country’s recovery. In recent years it had launched a strong effort to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. That’s essential because the country cannot afford to spend more of its money on oil. If anything is going to be subject to austerity it should be spending on fossil fuels.
And a high speed rail link to Spain would help Lisbon be linked to other economic centers and make it easier for tourists visiting Madrid to hop on over to Lisbon for a visit.
In any case, I’m not sure how long I would expect the new Portuguese government to last. It got elected largely because young Portuguese voters stayed home, angry that the incumbent Socialist Party had been embracing austerity too. More than 200,000 people protested against austerity in Lisbon shortly before the election, but since both major parties were backing austerity, those people saw no real point to going to the polls.
A similar situation may unfold in Spain next year, when national elections are due to be held. Spain’s Socialist government has also been imposing deeply unpopular austerity, and has also faced public protests as a result. In recent local elections, many young people stayed home, and the right did very well. I don’t know if Spain’s right wing party, the Popular Party, has turned against the country’s HSR plans. The PP had previously been strongly supportive of those plans.
Overall this just shows the stunning stupidity of austerity in general, and especially when that austerity is used to gut important projects that will help build a better future. Those who argue for such austerity are really arguing for social collapse, arguing that all of us should suffer in poverty so that the rich can pay less taxes. Let’s hope that these ideas are quickly rejected, not just in Portugal but in our own House of Representatives.
You have to understand that Spain is facing a possible national bankruptcy. It is an extraordinary time requiring extraordinary budget cut measures in Spain.
Useless Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Sorry, I thought it was Spain.
But it doesn’t change the fact that Portugal is even in a worse financial shape than Spain is and is looking to be the next Greece, so actually going ahead with the HSR project would be totally irresponsible.
Elchu Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Agreed. Portugal has no money to spend on anything right now, regardless of what’s best for its citizens.
Miles Bader Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Maybe this was the right decision, maybe it wasn’t, but one suspects that ideology (and, er, lobbying) played as big role in it as “fiscal responsibility” (heh).
[Big infrastructure projects that will result in spending now, but are funded by bonds payable in the future, can help to boost an ailing economy out of a hole, and of course provide better infrastructure to help support the future of the country.]
Useless Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
@ Miles Bader
> funded by bonds payable in the future
The bond interest rate would be very high considering Portugal’s current financial condition, if not an impossibility to begin with.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
The 10-year rate for Portugal government bonds is ~11%. Nobody (other than clueless bloggers) would propose doing a megaproject at those rates.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
This is the serious issue at hand ~ since Portugal is in the public finance position of a US state, with fiscal policy habits carried over from the time when it had a sovereign economy, lenders place a default risk premium on their debt.
And while Portugal very much needs to make investments that will reduce their exposure to oil price shocks ~ it is no coincidence that the ‘PIIGS’, Portugals, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, are the oil-importing EU countries with above average oil consumption ~ there are likely to be more capital efficient means of doing so.
So while in general, the government of Portugal ought to try to maintain as much investment in reduction of their oil import bill as they can, in their current financial position, there are likely to be policies that are even more critical to try to keep going.
How many people actually travel between Madrid and Lisbon in the first place? Not every HSR line is a good idea after all and Madrid/Lisbon doesn’t appear to be a very busy air route. HSR is a rather expensive luxury item in this case and a good program to cut.
Mad Park Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 6:05 pm
Once it is constructed, it will get lots of use. There is little risk of empty trains shuttling back and forth between Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon. Look what happened between Madrid and Barcelona, just as one example, when HSR opened.
Andy M. Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:17 am
Except that Madrid – Barcelona was one of the busiest short-haul flight corrdors in the world prior to HSR changing the game.
Peter Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 6:10 pm
If you type in “lisbon madrid flight” and “madrid lisbon flight” in google, it tells you there are 13-17 flights a day each way, so up to 34 flights per day. Assuming a conservative 100 passengers per flight, that’s a total of 3400 passengers by air each day.
While not all those passengers would switch to trains, there will be some switching from cars, especially given that a train to Madrid would open up many other destinations in Spain, and the same would be true for Portugal. I don’t know what their ridership studies have indicated, but this would likely not be as successful as the AVE or TGV have been, or as promising CAHSR looks (someone else can look up Lisbon-Madrid’s ridership studies and tell me how wrong I am).
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
3400 passengers round trip per day? Congratulations, you’ve now managed to to fill a whopping six trains per day. Not worth the expense.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:38 am
Given that Madrid – Barcelona has 1/4-1/3 of its passengers from air travel mode shift, air passengers to fill up six trains per day is likely passengers to fill up 18 to 24 trains per day.
I can’t understand why the IMF isn’t looking to Monterey (California, USA) for its new leadership. Or why the Portuguese electorate didn’t, for that matter.
While austerity in these times is indefensible, the HSR cancellation may be defensible. International links underperform; although there may be enough Madrid-Lisbon passengers to justify an HSR line, there is no hope of attracting the same patronage as Madrid-Barcelona or other domestic AVE lines except perhaps those connecting much smaller cities than Lisbon.
There are about 16 Madrid-Lisbon daily flights. That wouldn’t fill many trains. The millions of people visiting Portugal come from France, Germany and Northern Europe. Not all of them are tourists. More than 1 million Portuguese live in France, for instance. All these people take direct flights and won’t stop in Madrid to board a train.
The decision to create an HSR link between Spain and Portugal was more politically than economically motivated. Historically, Portugal has always turned its back on Spain. HSR was thought to be a decisive step towards breaking that barrier. That’s why the EU had decided to partly fund it.
Ok, so, according to Eurostat, Lisboa/Madrid-Barajas is about one million passengers per year. Or, in relative terms, it’s the same distance as Los Angeles-Sacramento with half the passenger volume. Granted, there’s more people in the LA area than there is in either Madrid or Lisbon, but that isn’t a reinforcing point for this line. Estimated ridership at a typical modal share is about 70%, or 700,000 passengers per year. That means only 1,200 passengers per day and four trains each direction per day if they operate at only 50% capacity (in realty, the poor potential ridership meaning low numbers of trains means a lower number of travelers due to inconvenient travel times [unless the intermediate towns bring in a large number of passengers, but this is quite doubtful]). This simply is not a justifiable market, especially in a time of severe financial stress. There are far better projects to spend that money on.
synonymouse Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 9:59 pm
And Borden to Corcoran makes more sense than Madrid-Lisboa?
One obvious way to practice intelligent austerity is to utilize existing express ROW’s that we already own.
What about we send infallible PB to the Iberian rescue. On a one-way ticket.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Neither of them have HSR stations planned.
Brian Stanke Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 10:13 pm
It has not been “Borden to Corcoran” since December of last year:
http://www.cahsrblog.com/2010/12/california-to-receive-wisconsinohio-hsr-money/
It became “Borden to Bakersfield, via Fresno and Hanford” then and “Chowchilla to Bakersfield, via Fresno and Hanford” since last month:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/bay-area/2011/05/thank-florida-california-high-speed-rail-secures-300-million-federal-money
Keep up with the old news.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 10:20 pm
Updating information would skew the results of the Turing test
synonymouse Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 10:41 pm
That would be if the funding holds up, a very sketchy prospect. HSR funding will go before medicare is cut. The case for austerity has already been won for the GOP by the piigs’ example. Boehner won’t blink – California will have to rethink and go bare-bones, ie. Bako to LA uber alles.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:55 am
Is there a wiki where your past predictions have been stored and compared to what come to pass?
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
There are scores of documents where past predictions of your Best Friends 4-Eva at Parsons Brinkerhoff — the proven criminals who are directly responsible for the “ridership estimates”, “cost estimates”, “alternatives analysis” and “engineering” of CHSRA — are compared to what came to pass.
Just to pick one example:
The odd thing is the PB’s “predictions” always have the effect of reaming the public raw while funnelling tens of billions of dollars into the pockets of PB and allied contractors.
Dear old “synonymouse” doesn’t stand a chance of touching this, even if he personally dedicated the rest of his life to a program of systematic fraud of everybody he meets.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 1:47 pm
“your Best Friends 4-Eva at Parsons Brinkerhoff”
An ability to make stuff up out of whole cloth may be a form of creativity, but publishing the result is not the path to credibility.
VBobier Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:17 am
The Central Valley is not nowhere, except to stuck up people, who think people not in their area are all hicks, You’ve never been to the middle of nowhere I’d wager, try the Mojave Desert in the monument, thats nowhere, as no one outside of sparse wildlife lives there, The BNSF was thinking about relocating a rail yard from Barstow CA to somewhere in the Central Valley, so quit with the biased FUD and outright lies. Ok Elmer?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 19th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
unless the intermediate towns bring in a large number of passengers, but this is quite doubtful
If one wants to believe everything one reads or sees on Wikipedia they will be building HSR from the border of Portugal and Spain to Lisbon. Spain is busy building the rest of the line now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HighSpeedSpain-February2008.png
Rar Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 1:36 am
Spain is constructing the route through Extremadura to connect its three main cities to Madrid. So the route isn’t being completely given up, it just might stop at Badajoz (basically right at the Portuguese border). When considering the possible success of this AVE line, consider that perhaps the majority of riders will be Spaniards going back and forth to Extremadura.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:58 am
(As misplaced below) That map shows them building the eastern part of the line with the western part in planning. It may well be that speeding up only part of that trip is good enough if it only goes as far as Badajoz in Extremadura.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:46 am
The majority of the patronage on the Madrid – Barcelona corridor comes from former driving and induced demand. Former air passengers make up only 1/4 to 1/3 of the total.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:54 am
That map shows them building the eastern part of the line with the western part in planning. It may well be that speeding up only part of that trip is good enough if it only goes as far as Badajoz in Extremadura.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:57 am
I have no idea how the shonky comment boxes at this site and Firefox collaborated to put this comment here. Copied to where it belongs.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:11 am
You have a source on that?
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Its Madrid – Seville. Source of Demand, 1st year results, Plane 26%, Car 24%, Bus 3%, Train 13%, Induced demand 34%.
Gonzalez-Savignat, Mar. (2004) Will the High-speed Train Compete against the Private
Vehicle? Transport Reviews, Vol. 24, No. 3, 293–316, May 2004
Based on: Vickerman, R. (1997) High-speed rail in Europe: experience and issues for future development, Annals of Regional Science, 31, pp. 21–38.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Note however it’s hard to separate this induced demand from explosive economic and social change at the time. Spain was effectively (yes, not literally, I can read a calendar also) just emerging from the Franco dictatorship years. Sevilla pre-Expo was pretty much nowhere, and inter-city travel in general was slow and hardly a mass market affair.
Much as I like (REALLY like) the Madrid-Sevilla LAV, it’s impossible to credit it with all or most of the changing travel demand that has accompanied the changing Spanish society of the last 25 years. (Those impressive highways and airports and metros and bus stations and shiny commuter rail lines in Spain? Most of them didn’t exist 20 years ago, either. It’s not just the high speed trains. It’s a different country.)
Alon Levy Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:11 pm
Sure, but we can still use the size of the air market as a proxy for the size of the future rail market. Madrid-Lisbon air traffic is about one sixth as much as Madrid-Barcelona air traffic was before HSR opened; it’s hardly a harbinger of high ridership.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 1:00 pm
OTOH, its under 120km line of sight from the border to Lisbon, so how much additional HSR corridor is required to add Lisbon to the Madrid / Extremadura line?
Alon Levy Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 1:39 pm
I have no idea what Portuguese construction costs are.
But don’t forget, part of the line on the Spanish side exists only to connect to Lisbon. On the other hand, that’s Spanish construction costs.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Let me Google that for you.
Come on, man! You already even knew the key word, “Extremadura”. How hard can it be?
PS the various Spanish language infrastructure pr0n (urbanity.es, skyscrapercity.com, tranvia.org etc) sites are just smoking hot.
Austerity is always relative, and, although I agree 100% with you on the fact that it is extremely dangerous to put investments in infrastructure to a halt right now, priority must be given to the most profitable investments (note that I’m a socialist by the way, and proud, too) ; and, in effect, it seems that, contrarily to what common sense would tell us, a high speed rail line between the capitals of Spain and Portugal would prove relatively not worthy of the expense.
Now they are plenty of very worthy investments in high speed rail to come, including international links (I’m thinking Barcelona-Montpellier-Lyon or Marseille, for instance, Lyon-Torino (indispensable!), and links between Paris and German towns thanks to Est line phase II, although I really don’t like the way the germans design their high speed lines because they divert them to stop in every 100k+ town along the way, which adds so much to the time between two true regional centers, hence reduces the interest in high speed travel).
That said the principle stays the same : it’s not because we all love high speed rail that we must start to build white elephants ; even in my own country France, amongst plenty of very useful,necessary projected lines : Poitiers-Limoges..What? Poitiers-Limoges!! Who had to have sex with the Minister of transportation to impose a Poitiers-Limoges line! For f… sake! and Paris-Calais direct, perfectly redundant with the nord high speed line, which will shave off a royal total of 15mn out of the terrible, terrible 2h15mn eternity to go to London, in fact simply to serve on the way that huge, huge megapolis Amiens (140k inhabitants!)(well on second thought I’m sure they want to transform it in a distant Parisian suburb, like they did to Vendôme and relatively for Reims, what they probably want also to do to Orléans and Caen, so waybe is it “worth” the investment).
The bottom line is : high speed rail is one the best possible investments, but money has to be spent wisely, the wiser the better ; and by the way I don’t doubt one second that California High Speed Rail would be a huge success after a few years of defiant accustomization by the American public.
Just a reminder. The last Labour government in the Uk spent its last year in power trying to shore up its crumbling support by promising to spend left right and center. It promised many things that it could not possibly have delivered, but would have bankrupted the treasury many times over. But they knew they were going to lose the election but needed support nevertheless not to lose too badly.
Understandably, the first thing the Conservative / Liberal coalition government did was to put all those promises on ice and then re-assess them individually. Among them, the high speed rail project was revived, as were several suburban and light rail projects including some that the cynics believed were completely dead.
Portugal and Spain are both in a similar situation. They are (or were) ruled by left wing governments who have/had lost any hope of surving the next election but know they can still honey-brush their core supporters by promising to do all the things they conveniently forgot about earlier on in their reign.
And just because the new governments coming in are right wing, this doesn’t make them anti-rail. These projects are not dead, just being looked at a litle more realistically.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:51 am
Unlike Spain and Portugal, the UK is the sovereign issuer of its own currency. Its as silly to suggest that the UK can go bankrupt as it is to suggest that the US can go bankrupt. It reveals rather more regarding the gullibility of the commentator to the conventional wisdom than it does about the economic situation of the UK.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:01 am
Inflating the currency may avoid the term bankruptcy, but much of the effects would remain and such a policy would result in foreign loans being denominated in other currencies, which the government could not inflate in order to escape.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:31 am
‘Inflating the Currency’ causes no problems if it doesn’t cause price inflation, and with as much excess capacity and unemployed labor as either the UK or the US have at the moment, there’s no substantial risk of price inflation from doing that right now.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:52 am
I would dearly love to hear how massively inflating the currency such as to make negligible trillions of dollars in debt, simultaneously wiping out the savings of households and businesses alike, will somehow not result in price inflation. Or perhaps you propose that lenders shall be blind and interest rates will remain low despite heavy inflation? Much as I’m displeased by the conduct of the financial industry, I can’t imagine that wiping out the value of their assets will be beneficial to the economy either.
Andy M. Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Inflation is a great equaliser. It destroys wealth and once things settle down again, the playing field is more level or ast least re-arranged and with the re-distribution of wealth comes a re-distribution of opportunities. It’s nature’s way of resetting a system that’s hit a dead end. War has much the same effect but inflation is less bloody.
Andre Peretti Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
The SNCF had borrowed billions on the international market, a debt denominated in dollars. With the dollar weakening against the euro this debt has been easier and easier to repay. Earnings in euros, debt in dollars: an ideal situation. In a way, it’s as if the US had subsidized the TGV.
On the other hand, if the euro had taken the plunge the company would now be in dire straits.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 12:43 pm
“simultaneously wiping out savings of households and businesses alike” ~ aside from price impacts it would not have any impact on savings of households or of business ~ so you are assuming price inflation to prove that price inflation will happen. That is begging the question.
“Or perhaps you propose that lenders shall be blind and interest rates will remain low despite heavy inflation?” Since the ‘heavy inflation’ will not occur, there is no reason for the interest rate premium over the cash rate to rise. And of course the Fed sets the cash rate.
And neither the US nor the UK would require trillions of dollars to cover the deficits spending on the types of projects in question.
Andy M. Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 11:57 am
Seeing that both the UK and the US are going to have to import big chunks of their HSR technology, ie, pay part of the bill in a currency that isn’t their own, a devaluaing of their own currency would cause a huge cost escalation on the delivery of the project without there being any inflation at home to relativise that escalation. That would seriously hurt the viability of the project.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Rhetorical arithmetic is easier than the kind with numbers, because you can just toss in an unwarranted adjective with no substantial basis to arrive at the desired conclusion, like “huge” above.
OK, suppose 25% goes to pay for technology, and 80% of that is imported. That is 20% of the total project cost. Now suppose that the currency depreciates by 20%. That is a 4% increase in project cost ~ certainly nothing that would “seriously hurt the viability of the project”.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 4:53 pm
And if the inflation is confined to the US, US labor becomes much cheaper. So it may then make sense to assemble the trains in the US.
BruceMcF Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 1:02 pm
Yes, and if a European or Japanese consortium is looking at private investment, investing at a discount on all US$ costs in a venture that is likely to lead to reduced exposure to oil price shocks, the discounted US$ may make it look more attractive, rather than less.
Alon Levy Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:15 pm
The serious people who propose more expansionary economic policy (i.e. not modern monetary theorists) do not really talk about massive inflation. They propose commitment to 4-5% annual inflation over the next decade, in order to make real interest rates negative enough to stimulate investment.
Off topic–I’m not a fan of maglev, nor of the website Inhatitat, but this may be of interest here; can any readers from Japan comment upon this?
http://inhabitat.com/japan-gives-green-light-to-blazing-310mph-maglev-train-line/
Donk Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
According to my math, this comes out to $112B US. Don’t they have anywhere else better to spend their money? Don’t they already have fast enough lines from Tokyo-Nagoya-Osaka?
political_incorrectness Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 3:38 pm
They do not have enough capacity on the current Tokaido line. Expanding that line would be a giant nightmare waiting to happen.
quashlo Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 3:58 pm
It’s not all about speed… That’s only half of the equation.
The other half is the age of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen (approaching 50 years). They need to do substantial upgrades to the line, and the maglev, once complete, will allow them to do this major work while preserving a critical high-speed connection in the Tōkyō‒Nagoya‒Ōsaka corridor. It’s also a valuable redundancy in case there are service disruptions on (or damage to) the existing line.
Miles Bader Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Yup… the alternative term one often sees for the project is “Tokaido Bypass.”
JR seems to put a lot of emphasis on the redundant route factor.
But I guess passengers will mostly like the speed… (Tokaido can’t get significantly faster due to track geometry and noise problems)
One thing is I imagine the new line will be less scenic due to being mostly underground!
I’ll be like riding the subway to osaka … :]
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
Or being on the sleeper to San Francisco. There’s not much to see out of the train window at night.
Johnathan Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
There is also a “commuter shinkansen” proposal that would double the number of stations along the old Tokaido shinkansen line and terminate the Nozomi (express) service.
Rural residents would have direct shinkansen access and cut their travel times.
And another proposal extends the line to Haneda Airport to cover the entire nation.
High speed rail would fit into the new rapid transit network that connects more than just cities.
quashlo Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Also, I should say that the maglev is financed entirely by JR Central (the government is not involved, at least yet). However, JR Central cannot survive without the intercity passenger demand on the Tōkaidō corridor, which is 90% of the revenue in its railway business. Shutting down the Tōkaidō Shinkansen for extended periods of time is out of the question for them, so I suppose the answer to your question is, “No, JR Central doesn’t have anywhere else better to spend its money.”
Miles Bader Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:46 pm
And regarding intermediate stops:
http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/projects-infrastructure/single-view/view/chuo-maglev-station-sites-named.html
Poitiers – Limoges may be a case of tonneau de porc, but the direct Calais line is intended to provide extra capacity for Paris – London. Likewise, a line to Orléans is intended to provide extra capacity for Paris – Lyon.
As to German HSR development, it seems very patchy, and it seems like what US HSR development will likely end up looking like.
egk Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
The USA *should* look like Germany: For the most part the USA is multi-polar where demands of accessibility compete with those of speed. The German model is a good one – even if there are very few very high speed lines. Nearly 200 cities are serviced with frequent 125 mph+ service that competes successfully with the automobile in time and convenience.
If the USA can end up looking like Germany in regards passenger rail, we will be very lucky – even if the speed fetishists will be unhappy.
synonymouse Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Ask yourself the question: would the Germans – exercising true objectivity and absent any influence from PB, machine politicos, establishment lobbyists and the like – build Stilt-A-Rail as conceived by the CHSRA with special help from Palmdale and San Jose? I suggest not.
Further suggestion – the CHSRA should order up a cost analysis of the Bako-Tejon-LA and Tejon-Tracy-Livermore trunk scheme. If it can be made to come in as low as I think and hope, hsr can be doable within California’s present means and even some of the conservatives can be brought around to support a very cheap and very fast starter that can prove the concept.
Peter Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
“would the Germans – exercising true objectivity and absent any influence from PB, machine politicos, establishment lobbyists and the like – build Stilt-A-Rail as conceived by the CHSRA with special help from Palmdale and San Jose?”
No, but Taiwan, China and Japan did.
Germany had the advantage of a large-scale established conventional passenger rail network, with at-grade access to its downtowns. They only needed to build very few greenfield high speed lines.
Miles Bader Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
“No, but Taiwan, China and Japan did.”
Indeed, and I’m a bit mystified by synomooiuwers’s apparent belief that there’s something horrible about elevated track (judging from his use of the childishly pejorative term “Stilt-a-Rail”). There’s not.
synonymouse Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Hang around some BART elevateds. Bring along your ear plugs.
And maybe when you do you should probably “come heavy”, to quote Junior Soprano.
Miles Bader Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Er, I live very near the Tokaido Shinkansen, in an area where it (and many other lines) runs on elevated track (on “stilts”).
It’s fine. There’s no noise problem. It fits right into the (“semi-urban”) landscape.
Maybe BART did a really crappy job of it, and that’s skewed your opinion, I dunno.
synonymouse Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
But the problem is that BART is how PB does it. It is just a California thing. Here elevateds are noisy and ugly and attract low lifes.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 4:51 pm
The Vogons wouldn’t build stilt-a-rail either. But then they aren’t interested in building anything in California except for the bypass.
Alon Levy Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:19 pm
Maybe it’s true in other regions of the US, but the Northeast’s population distribution is Japanese (one linear megaregion, with a few linear tentacles coming out of it), and the Midwest’s is French (one metro area of about 10 million people surrounded on all sides by smaller cities). The Northeast’s economy is also increasingly Japanese, with New York dominating all other regions and drawing some, such as Philadelphia, into its orbit.
Ericmarseille Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Very interesting and observant
comparison.
Ericmarseille Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 4:58 pm
Hmmmm…I’m still not sold on doubling Paris-London, but if you say so, you may be right after all…
Paris-Lyon is asphyxiating and seriously needs a doubling line in the coming years, and I sure prefer the Paris-Orleans-Clermont-Lyon route to the bizarre Rhin-Rhône Ouest and Sud formerly projected branches, now abandoned.
By the way, just for our American friends info, I hadn’t been taking the TGV for a few years, and I had to “climb up” to Paris for a few days from Marseille : a breeze, a joy… €125 for both legs of the trip, time : 3h17 bypassing Lyon (super), and I could have booked a 1st class trip for respectively €6 and €3(!) more ; don’t accuse me of being stingy, I had personal reasons to stay in 2nd class, and it was still very comfortable.
In comparison the crowded TER that took me back from Marseille to Bandol was a pain : no leg room in face to face seat arrangements (my knees still remember), exasperated commuters (the train was late), uncomfortable seats (my back also remembers), no room for the luggage of the long-distance travelers on their last leg home (and we were a few)…What a difference between conventional and high speed rail, one will never insist enough on that point.
OT – Taiwan’s HSR is in trouble – Apparently the tracks are sinking caused by land subsidence related to irrigation wells. They are expecting the tracks will last no more than 10 years….
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/MF21Cb01.html
Anyone know whether this would be an issue in the Central Valley and if so, how it can be avoided or mitigated?
Peter Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
I’ll admit to being an agricultural neophyte, but as far as i know, the irrigation in the CV is piped in from elsewhere, not from wells…
Miles Bader Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Not to mention that surely this is not a new and unexplored issue, given the amount of experience mankind has with building gigantic superhighways pretty much everywhere…
Elizabeth Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 5:54 pm
CV is both wells (generally very deep) and canals. Subsidence has been a serious issue and apparently is a concern again http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2300
There are a couple of technical memos referring to the issue, but I have not read through them.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Awww.calhsr.com+subsidence
Peter Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Ok, so my question on the issue is: How much of a problem is this going to be for HSR in California? My guess is that it’s a big problem in Taiwan because so much of the system is elevated, and there is a lot more weight on the land, leading to more ‘sinking’. We’re not planning on building a nearly-entirely elevated system like in Taiwan. While there will be some elevated sections through the CV, they will be quite short, or through areas that aren’t being sucked dry (Bakersfield). This could of course be one of the technical reasons why they’re restudying Tejon…
Nadia Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 7:13 pm
The plan for East Gilroy is a completely elevated structure and an elevated station. Anyone from that area familiar with whether there are issues there with the water and soil.
It would be located in the 100 year flood plain area (hence the preference for an aerial structure).
Peter Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 4:47 am
Aren’t they also studying an at-grade alignment for East Gilroy, though?
Alon Levy Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 9:20 pm
To be honest, I would’ve guessed the opposite – elevated structures should have deeper foundations and thus be more immune to subsidence.
But clearly, I don’t know.
Andy M. Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 2:30 am
Earthworks are flexible so if there is some subsidence then it can be repaired quickyl and cheaply by dumping some extra ballast and correcting the track alignment. Tunnel, trenched and elevated alignments are much more exposed to earth movements – and the soil is moving all the time.
Andy M. Reply:
June 21st, 2011 at 2:32 am
I’m not saying that these things shouldn’t be done, but rather that this is factored in during the design stage. When something goes out of alignment journalsits can pick it up and claim the project is a total failure, but quite often the design actually allowed for it and everything is under control.
Risenmessiah Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Subsidence isn’t a dealbreaker for HSR, but could be a factor in design.
Nadia and Elizabeth are whistling past the graveyard that subsidence is a bigger problem for water supplies and agriculture in the state.
Risenmessiah Reply:
June 20th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Funny you should ask…stop pumping the water out faster than it recharges from rainfall.
Subsidence is an issue for HSR, but it’s actually already a big problem for the Delta and the State Water Project. That’s because as the water table falls there the Upper Bay essentially can breach levees and put saline water into crops or aqueducts from the north. It’s horribly horribly complicated (that is if you like simple solutions politically) but the article points out that the land in question was known to have been subsiding already. In urban parts of the CV…people know when the land subsides so its only going to be a problem (if at all) where there is a lot of pumping and no people.