Saturday Open Thread
Hope everyone is enjoying the long holiday weekend. I’ll have a more in-depth post up tomorrow, but for today use this as an open thread to continue whatever discussions are on everyone’s mind. Including how better passenger rail, including HSR, would have made your holiday travel plans easier and/or more convenient.
Coast Starlight headed south leaving Eugene Or. Comfortable Parlor car with wireless. Dinner at 6:00. A great way to travel, even on Amtrak. Looking forward to HSR.
A repeat of an item I’ve had up before–a nostalgic aural Christmas card courtesy of the late O. Winston Link, recorded at Rural Retreat on (supposedly) December 24, 1957, during the last week of steam operation on the Norfolk & Western’s line to Bristol, Va., with the microphones picking not only a passenger train making the stop there, but the carillon of a church on a hill nearby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbzAJoW34DM
Nothing great or important or earth-shattering here (unless your speakers are turned up too high!)–just a bit of fun and an early holiday greeting. . .
Open thread day: A perfect occasion for some NYT articles on…
The death of the exurb:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/the-death-of-the-fringe-suburb.html
Rethinking suburban office sprawl:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/opinion/to-rethink-sprawl-start-with-offices.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
and last but not least, “California Bullet Train Project Advances Amid Cries of Boondoggle”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/california-rail-project-advances-amid-cries-of-boondoggle.html?pagewanted=all
joe Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 7:05 pm
“Cries of Boondoggle” vs Tom Umberg
http://www.theunion.com/article/20111125/OPINION/111129890/1026&parentprofile=1056
David Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 9:56 am
I just finished reading the Nagourney NYT article. As dailyhowler.com’s Bob Somerby says, “Nagourney loves narrative.” He also does a lot of “he said, she said.”
Good news.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
So BART is needlessly increasing their costs yet again?
joe Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 8:54 pm
Yes, The entire purpose is two fold, 1) increase costs, 2) mess with libertarians.
Drunk Engineer Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 9:37 pm
3) Squander billions in funds that could have been used to extend rail service.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 8:19 pm
If the language is “create jobs in the USA,” can a manufacturer argue that by producing in its usual factories and charging half the unit price as the competitor who abide by Buy American it’s helping avoid a tax hike or spending cut and this is creating jobs in the US? I mean, at the extra amount of money it costs to abide per job created, the opportunity cost is so high that the net effect on jobs is negative.
joe Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 9:03 pm
I dunno Alon, if the Nobel Laureate Economist at the NYT tells me we need stimulus spending and there are stimulus multipliers for spending (salary to workers), and if the cost for Fed borrowing is 1.7% for ten year bonds, this seems to be a net positive for the US.
But let’s refer to the free market. Think of this consideration as a typical Ivy league University. These gateway schools provide preferential entry for the children of alumni that generously donate to the University.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 10:26 pm
You mean the Nobel Laureate who, when pressed for a straight yes or no answer, opposes protectionism?
Anyway, the problem with these Buy American projects is that close to 100% of the extra costs is passed to consultants and foreign company profits. Buy American is great for Alstom and Bombardier like that. The issue here is that there are no unemployed US resources for making trains specifically, so Buy American just serves to drive up the costs, and maybe retrofit factories at enormous cost per job created (which shows up as consultant profit, not as worker wages).
I’m not sure why you’re bringing up Ivy legacies here…
joe Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Yes, the one who opposes Tariffs.
“Anyway, the problem with these Buy American projects is that close to 100% of the extra costs is passed to consultants and foreign company profits.”
1 . This isn’t a Buy America project. It’s a consideration, not a requirement.
2. Huh?
“The issue here is that there are no unemployed US resources for making trains specifically, so Buy American just serves to drive up the costs, and maybe retrofit factories at enormous cost per job created (which shows up as consultant profit, not as worker wages).”
Sorry, this isn’t really a factual or economic argument I recognize.
Foreign auto makers are moving manufacturing to the US.
These jobs and facilities are not in places with unemployed auto workers but in less unionized states.
Profit.
BART will seek bids and prefer US product. BART favors companies that have a US presence, also, maybe some corporations seeking US business will consider following the auto industry and moving facilities here.
Joey Reply:
November 26th, 2011 at 11:45 pm
Historically (though we’re not talking about a lot of history here), measures taken to meet the Buy American requirements have lead to the purchase of overpriced and underperforming equipment. Is that simpler?
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 1:13 am
The difference between autos and trains is the size of the market. The US has an enormous market for cars, which means that it’s worthwhile for a foreign company to set up shop.
In contrast, the market for rolling stock is small, both because rolling stock is inherently cheaper than cars and because the transit market in the US is small. Only very large buyers, i.e. New York, can afford to impose local content requirements and still obtain high-quality, affordable product.
Elsewhere, this is devastating, because the few vendors that are not weeded out can extort the cities outright. Ansaldo pledged to open a small factory in LA, employing a few hundred workers, in exchange for getting a contract for rolling stock that, if past experience is any indication, will be defective and require costly maintenance. Even when there’s no outright extortion, prices are much higher than in Europe, where there’s real competition among vendors.
The price difference is not really seen in employment. The Amtrak Cities Sprinter costs on the order of half a million dollars more per US job created than an off-the-shelf EuroSprinter, Prima, or TRAXX. I doubt that the jobs created are really in the local 1% (and if they are, they don’t need stimulus). Probably the workers are making more like $70,000 a year, and Siemens pockets the rest in profit so that Germany can claim that its economy is strong and austerity works.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 1:36 am
The US has an enormous market for cars, which means that it’s worthwhile for a foreign company to set up shop.
Like Kawasaki in Yonkers, Alstom in Hornell, Bombardier in Hornell and Plattsburgh, Kawasaki in Lincokln Nebraska. ( Makes me wonder whose dilapidated heavy>/b> maintenance facility they took over in Lincoln ) Rotem in Philadelphia – Budd’s dilapidated assmebly plant if I remember correctly. Rotem didn’t build and staff that plant just for Silverliners, they haver their eye on the next generation of Arrows, Comets and M9/M10s. They all have experience building HSR sets, they can wedge it between PA6s and R184s or whatever the next batch of subway cars is or MARC’s MUs. or… I know this might be a bit frightening… MBTA MUs. Metra is going to be in the market for something sooner or later too. Not to mention the CTA and WMATA.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 1:44 am
I doubt any of them gives a crap about adapting anything to BART’s gauge.
Also, once in a while I dream about MBTA EMUs, usually right after the dream in which I’m a full professor at MIT.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
An order of extra special cars in going to be interesting if they aren’t busy. If they are busy popping out a batch of new cars for DC’s Metro, they probably won’t be.
In 1971 building railroad equipment was a cottage industry with dominant makers in each national market. Things have changed since then. I can’t find numbers for Kolkata or Delhi. Both have broad gauge subways. Supplied by the usual multinational suspects.
…both apparently are aiming for standard gauge subways too… at least the IRT and BMT were both standard gauge…. All they have to do is whip out the bogie designs they used in India and slap a BMT/IND body shell on them…
But then BART is special, as in riding the short bus is special, and will probably pay twice as much as anyone else… It’s going to be interesting seeing how much DC’s Metro pays for new cars versus how much BART pays for new cars. IIRC both of them more or less run BMT/IND cars…. the CTA is buying new cars for 1.28 million a pop. CTA cars are IRT cars that can go faster….
synonymouse Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
BART’s buy American policy reflects just how politicized its management has become. It doesn’t really care how much its new cars cost or even how well they perform. They are fixated on the politix of getting that tax package to finance the purchase of new equipment passed in the District.
BART provides the likely example of what CHSRA governance will look like once the stilts actualkly have trains running on them.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
There’s not a chance in hell that a “foreign” operation in New York will be allowed to “compete” anyway. Too bad for the Adriondack tax base.
Potemkin BART vehicle “manufacturing” plants will be set up, at great local cost, in Northern California, with the stupidest imaginable astroturfing Union Dudes trucked in to front for The Man at every press and lobbying op, chanting “local jobs!”.
That’s exactly how every past Californian public transportation vehicle procurement fiasco has gone down. BART, Amtrak/Caltrans, Muni (several times over), LAMTA, etc. Failure is guaranteed!
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:42 pm
Yonkers isn’t in the Adirondacks. Neither is Plattsburgh or Hornell. Last time I was through Philadelphia it was very very flat. Lincoln Nebraska is even flatter.
Building factories in the Adirondacks is nearly impossible, those pesky Adirondack Park regulations make it very difficult. Illinois doesn’t seem to have any problems with building stuff in Plattsburgh.
From Chicago-L.org on the 5000 series of cars:
The 5000-series cars are being assembled and track tested at Bombardier’s plant in Plattsburgh, NY. With car shells assembled in La Pocatiere, Quebec, near Montreal, from parts fabricated there and in Sahagun, Mexico, the shells are trucked to Plattsburgh, the site of Bombardier’s assembly and testing facility. Once assembled and placed on trucks, the cars are moved by the Canadian Pacific railroad approximately two miles to a test facility and test track.
http://www.chicago-l.org/trains/roster/5000mkII.html
jim Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:52 pm
…right after the dream in which I’m a full professor at MIT.
Choose Caltech instead. The weather’s better. In my cohort Dinakar ended up there, so there’s even precedent.
That way (assuming by then you can still get from Pasadena to downtown) you can dream of eventually riding Cal HSR.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Jim, any situation in which I get to choose between two job offers, let alone one in which they are from MIT and Caltech, is basically best-case scenario for me.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 7:11 am
How big would an American (and Mexican/Canadian) market be if we were to go whole-hog on a decent national passenger rail system, including long-distance, regional, HSR, and rapid transit lines–in other words, rebuilding to the passenger capacity levels we had, say, in 1950, or even in 1940?
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Much bigger. The rolling stock market could also develop differently. If the federal government drops an order for 10,000 EMU cars, this is so far beyond the capacity of any single manufacturer that the market would have to adapt anyway. Buy American would still do perverse things in this situation, but it would not raise costs.
The quote-unquote correct way to help a domestic rolling stock industry grow is to import freely, but fund local research and development of trains. It can’t really be done until modern trains are already running; no point in designing your own high-speed train until after you have some experience running existing trains. In addition, there will naturally be people who are experienced with dealing with rolling stock at maintenance shops. This R&D and maintenance expertise will eventually lead to either a domestic startup making trains, on the model of Stadler, or a large industrial conglomerate like GE using the technology discovered to make modern passenger trains, on the model of Hyundai Rotem or Hitachi.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Maintenance has to be done locally, even if the equipment was built elsewhere.
That’s where you get your ongoing training and increasingly skilled local workforce.
Total lifecycle maintenance, cleaning and energy are comparable to the initial vehicle purchase anyway. Vehicle cost is a small part of systems cost anyway; it’s far more rational to seek an affordable and attractive system that will be built soon, built with concrete and steel and earth vicil engineering works that require real local employment.
So sabotaging the economics and delivery of entire rail systems in order to pad the bank accounts of some rent-seeking defense contractor types who set up fifth-rate “domestic” manufacturing companies is about the best way to make sure there never is a local transit industry. The plan is certainly working perfectly so far.
Stealing money from the pockets of taxpayers — including union members, construction workers, bus drivers, and in general “the 99%” — in order to “create” a handful of temporary assembly line jobs while, far more significantly but far more clandestinely, sending hundreds of millions directly into the pockets of political fixers, lobbyists and domestic procurement consultants is about as good a way to screw the working man as any Republican boogeyman could dream up.
Doubling the purchase price in order to deliver crappy non-performing equipment to obsolete designs years late is about the best possible way to sabotage passenger rail in the US. You see the outcome all around us: treat transit as a welfare operation and you the worst possible result, one that only people on welfare are expected to use.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Or like Bombardier? A North American company….
Nobody builds River Rouge that takes raw minerals in one end and spits out Model As at the other. FOr that matter no automobile maker goes out and engineers things like transmissions in most cases. THey buy them from vendors. And no one is going to go out and try to build up a vertically integrated automobile company these days. There’s no good reason to go out and develop another Bombardier. Even Bombardier didn’t do that.
There’s a sudden demand for 2000 cars a year in North America the usual suspects will figure out a way to resell the stuff they are using in the rest of the world in North America. Just like they do with the market along the NEC…. for instance they’ll take a Vectron and slap ACS64 on the side…
joe Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 10:17 am
Market size: we are a mature market for cars; but we are a growing market for rail. Our infrastructure needs modernization. Mexico, US & Canada. How is this a niche or tiny market for setting up rail manufacturing?
US costs: It’s YOUR dogma that building in the US is horribly expensive. There are relevant counter examples. VW thinks it’s a way to increase auto market share and build autos that are tuned to US tastes.
Uniqueness: Favoring US content does not mean requiring unique design. In the case of BART upgrades, it requires no added design expense to include US content.
Affordability: Fed funds transportation. The US can block grant funding to the States and favor local content as a condition of accepting funds.
Your LA example:The problem isn’t the use of facilities or content, it’s the company.
http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/print-edition/2011/09/02/ansaldo-defends-its-record-on-rail.html?page=all
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 11:58 am
First, leave Mexico out of it. Also Canada – most cities just give Bombardier no-bid contracts, and the costs are exactly what you’d expect in such a situation. Ant6n’s blog has a nice takedown of the crap Montreal has to deal with out of the Bombardier/Alstom duopoly.
Second, it’s not my dogma that 6.7 > 4.5; it’s fact. All the counterexamples for rolling stock costs come from New York or orders that piggyback on it – as I said, that’s a mature market.
Third, the extra expense is setting up the factory, not just adapting to special designs.
And fourth, as an exercise, compute a) the total cost to replace all of New York’s subway cars and buses, b) the total cost to buy new cars for New Yorkers until the city’s car ownership matches the national level, and c) the depreciation cycle on both. The numbers you should get are in the vicinity of $10 billion for subway cars depreciating over 50 years, $1.5 billion for buses depreciating over 18 years, and $100 billion for cars depreciating over about 15 years. Rolling stock is not a major cost of rapid transit.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 8:30 pm
NJTransit press release for the initial order of multilevels says they cost 1.82 million a piece. I seem to remember 2.06 for the last option exercised. I’m sure AMT didn’t pay exactly what NJTransit paid but they probably paid around the same. 2 million for a new railroad car isn’t great but it isn’t bad either.
I’m sure they are paying approximately the same for ALP45s. Breathtakingly expensive but… nobody lese builds AC/diesel electric locomotives. and not all that breathtakingly expensive. About twice as expensive as the prices I can find in news reports for European diesel locomotives.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 9:02 pm
I’m not talking about unpowered commuter coaches, but about subway cars. Bombardier got a no-bid contract for C$3.3 million per car. After Alstom sued and got to be part of the deal, again without a bid, the price was lowered to $2.6 million. But CAF is offering to do it for $1.4 million.
joe Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 9:26 pm
No, NAFTA matters. A USA based facility is covered under NAFTA. None of the BART or HSR is no bid, this is a bait and switch.
BMW is now building auto in a new US factory with NAFTA suppliers – auto market is mature. They do this without a requirement for US content. It is voluntary.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 10:04 pm
So Montreal set up a cozy little deal with the hometown company. The hometown company’s competitor sued. The hometown company and the competitor decided to collude instead of compete. And one of their competitors sued. How does that affect the TTC? or Calgary? or Vancouver. Or AMT?
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
No, NAFTA doesn’t matter for public procurement. Bombardier can’t build cars in Thunder Bay and claim that it satisfies Buy American. It matters for private stuff like auto plants, but even then it’s just symbolic – the US and Canada had free trade from before and low reciprocal tariffs beforehand, and the US tariff on Mexican goods before NAFTA was 3%.
The BART and HSR procurement won’t be no-bid, but it’ll be few-bids. More bids = lower unit cost. Right now California is at risk of finding itself in the same situation as Taiwan, with the corruption fest that was the Eurotrain vs. 700T bid.
Jonathan Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 7:02 pm
@Alon: rolling stock is inherently cheaper than cars? No! Per unit, rolling stock is inherently MORE expensive than cars. Are you perhaps implicitly thinking per-seat costs or something?
On a related note: when talking about Amtrak Cities Sprinters versus ES64U2 EuroSprinters (or a better comparison, Vectrons) : you’re ignoring the non-recurring engineering (NRE) costs of designing extra useless mass to meet NRA “crashworthiness” standards, and the NRE costs of setting up tooling to build them. Or perhaps, conflating that cost with the marginal costs of constructing at a wholly-owned US subsiary.
A valid comparison would be to compare the price of a US-built Amtrak Cities Sprinter, to the price of a Cities Sprinter constructed in regular Siemens plants. There are no public figures for those prices. Siemens might not even have them internally (though I’d be mildly surprised if they didn’t.)
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 8:58 pm
No, not per unit, obviously. But not per-seat, either: because a train goes back and forth throughout the day, each seat is used by multiple people. The calculation I’m doing is total cost to replace a fleet versus the cost of the “missing cars,” i.e. the cars that would have to be bought if car ownership were as high as in places without rapid transit. In New York, it’s $10 billion depreciating over 50 years vs. $100 billion for cars depreciating over 15.
You’re right that my numbers bundle both Buy American and FRA regs. It’s hard to disentangle them, because every order that’s subject to FRA regs is subject to Buy American (or maybe Buy Canadian, which is even worse), whereas the orders that are subject to Buy American but not FRA regs are rapid transit orders that use established US factories serving the enormous market of New York. If your city drops an order of 1,662 subway cars, it can make whatever local content demands it likes and still get a decent price.
For what it’s worth, Houston is facing a lot of heat right now from buying a lower-price imported order from CAF instead of a locally-produced but more expensive order from one of the bigger companies; it had initially asked the FTA and the FTA informally said it was okay, but subsequently the FTA raised a stink.
jimsf Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 6:04 pm
That is good new. If more american consumers and more american companies had more economic loyalty we would have a quarter of the country sitting around with no jobs.
Dunno if anyone noticed: the CHSRA has already scheduled the certification of the Merced – Fresno EIR for March 1st and Fresno – Bakersfield for October or November 2012. All no doubt to secure the ARRA funds before the deadlines.
For my employee, Caltrain has been a lifeline. He had been unemployed for nearly a year, his truck barely ran, and his wife’s pay by itself wasn’t enough for a family of four. When I signed up a remodel job in Campbell I was able to convince him that he could work with me if he took Caltrain—He lives a mile and a half from the Redwood City Caltrain station— I live across the street from Diridon.
For the last five months, he has been able to get to the Redwood City station, take the Baby
Bullet, ( A 25 minute trip), and ride with me to work. The job will finish in January and I don’t know how he will manage after that, but due in large part to Caltrain his family has gotten a reprieve of 6 or 7 months.
I am still coming to terms with that revised $98.5 billion cost estimate—And my guess is that the initial 130 or so miles of track in the San Joaquin Valley will be finished long before anything else is started. The Valley has been particularly hard hit economically over the past few years and many thousands of Valley residents must be in the same situation as my employee.
In the interim—If the San Joaquins could be run over the new tracks frequently enough, and if tickets were cheap enough then I wonder how much help they might be to residents of Merced, Fresno, Visalia, or Bakersfield—Residents who, like my employee, may have fallen on hard times.
John;
Thomas J. Umberg is the chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
He has an editorial worth reading.
http://www.theunion.com/article/20111125/OPINION/111129890/1026&parentprofile=1056
StevieB Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Bob Balgenorth, a senate appointee to the authority, is doing his part informing Bakersfield of the benefits of high speed rail in the column:California can’t afford not to build high-speed rail system.
same old stuff
His hsr is just a BART on steroids. Where is Umberg going to find the money for the TWU’s or Amalgamated gold-plated compensation packages? 8 weeks of annual leave to match the prison guards ad nauseum.
This plan makes about as much sense as extending BART to LA.
A solution like California Networked Transit should be implemented so that the project does not collapse.
With various politicians and newspapers turning against CAHSR in wake of the new price tag, it is a very good idea to explore streamlining HSR with conventional rail. A good start is to build the passenger-only ROW along the Tehachapi Pass once the Central Valley segment is complete. What this will do is to provide joint San Joaquins-CAHSR service (I disagree with the Networked Transit proposal to use the Grapevine alignment).
Also, the viaducts in the South Bay need to be ditched. The structures should only be used in areas that don’t use any existing tracks. The French model of sharing tracks in urban areas with new ROWs out in the country is a better way to go.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 1:27 pm
You mean the I-5 mirage? Sure, that’ll work.
Palo Alto is set to chose a high speed rail lobbyist for a year.
Capital Advocates, who had the previous contract, may be a bit low because they were investigated for ethics violations this year.
Lobbyist is certainly a well paying job. Lobbyists will be profiting from Palo Alto for an indeterminable time. Council Member Nancy Shepherd says, “Until high-speed rail is officially unfunded or disbanded, it’s going to be a major issue on the Peninsula.” What exactly does $120,000 buy and are the Palo Alto taxpayers getting their moneys worth?
Did you hear the news on Stuttgart 21? Well there was a lot of fuzz about the construction of a completely new rail station for Stuttgart that would easily connect the city to Paris, Vienna and Budapest.
Well, as you might remember I told you that you have to face NIMBYism in all countries. In Suttgart they went so far that they put the whole thing on the ballot. The result?
http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2011-11/stuttgart-21-volksabstimmung-3
Whooping 58.8% voted for the measure and only 41.2% were opposed. Now there is nothing that would stop construction.
The lesson of this is no matter how loud the NIMBYs are, and no matter how much media coverage they get, they will always be in the minority.
About Stuttgart 21. This is the official website of the project: http://www.bahnprojekt-stuttgart-ulm.de
The beautiful thing about this project is that it would finally provide an option to create a good HSR connection between Paris, Strasbourg Munich, Vienna, and Budapest instead of taking the ICE all the way up to Aachen. One of the main points of criticism was the price tag of 4.1 billion euros which is covered by the federal, state and local government as well as Stuttgart Airport. But then again: The whole station is underground.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
That was a statewide vote, right? Because in the city proper, the project is so unpopular the people voted for the Greens in the last election, who ran on a platform of canceling the project.
Also, Paris-Munich is at the outer end of HSR competitiveness range (and well beyond it given German HSR speeds), and the other markets going through Stuttgart are beyond it. The Paris-Budapest axis is a fantasy line on a map, dreamed up by Eurocrats who think everyone should run a current account surplus and engage in austerity.
Max Wyss Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 11:13 pm
The vote was Baden-Württemberg-wide. However, even in Stuttgart it got through with 53% approval.
Of course, this now gets the Greens a little bit in a dilemma, but the Ministerpräsident has been quoted to give the project now full support, and to accept the voter’s verdict, and to implement it. (note, having to implement something being against your personal opinion is quite normal for executive politicians in a direct democracy environment).
Max Wyss Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
A bit more about the Stuttgart21 ballot. The official results, split down to voting districts is here: http://www.statistik-bw.de/Wahlen/Volksabstimmung_2011/Kreise.PDF . Note that the vote was about the law to cancel the project. That means if you were for the project, you had to vote “No”.
Interesting about the results is that two thirds of the registered voters in Stuttgart actually voted (this is a pretty high percentage).
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 1:27 am
Serious question about direct democracy: in Switzerland, when people demonstrate in favor of leftist causes, do the cops automatically respond with riot gear and pepper spray and tear gas as in the US, or do they keep a safe distance and engage the community of protesters?
Spokker Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 1:51 am
When the people in Switzerland demonstrate in favor of leftist causes do the protesters basically set up what eventually become homeless encampments with piss and shit everywhere?
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 3:18 am
I have no idea how it is in Switzerland. All I know is that in Providence and New York they don’t. Gingrich and assorted assholes merely say they do; I’ll file that in the same category as the FRA’s claim that American trucks are heavier than European trucks, and Amtrak’s claim that all passenger railroads in the world are subsidized.
Spokker Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 8:05 am
They are clearly doing God’s work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdaCk1-375w
Max Wyss Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
I am not sure, what you understand as “leftist causes”.
When there is a demonstration, the police is around. For one, demonstrations need a permission (which can not be denied just for “political reasons”. Police will then handle traffic around the demonstration etc. This is done by “normal” officers. If there is a risk for rioters (people misusing the demonstration for rioting, “better equipped” police will be on standby. With “illegal” demonstrations, it depends a lot on whether rioting is to be expected or actually takes place. However, most rioters are not (no longer) politically motivated.
About the “occupy” movement. There has actually been a “occupy Paradeplatz” event. The Paradeplatz in Zürich counts as the quintessential square for “big money”, because it is on the Bahnhofstrasse, and the two big banks have major branches there (CS has the “customer headquarter”, and UBS branch is also important). Besides that, 7 streetcar lines meet at the Paradeplatz, but (fortunately), there is only very limited automobile traffic, and only at the periphery. For a few days, a little camp was apparently on the Paradeplatz, but then, the city “suggested” another square which is not in the middle of the traffic, but in the middle of the old town; kind of the main square of the old town. And they moved there ans stayed for a few more days. When the request for permission got refused by the city, the police eventually cleared that square, but there were no reports of violence (neither by the protesters nor by the police).
Nathanael Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Switzerland actually forced its major banks to clean up their behavior (as opposed to the “keep falsifying your accounting” approach taken in the rest of Europe and the US). I would not expect the level of protest against the banks to be as high in a country which *actually bothers to regulate them*.
Nathanael Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
What I would *expect* would be a modification of the Stuttgart 21 project to knock down fewer historic buildings. The demolitions were the main source of the complaints, and I really don’t see why the original plans involved so much demolition.
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 5:05 pm
I suppose the demonstrations in Stuttgart gave wrong indications about the feelings of the local population. The Greens’ demonstrations attract militants from all over Europe.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 10:11 pm
The demonstrations, and the Green victory in the election.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
The problem with CAHSR isn’t NIMBYs. It’s the incompetence and waste of CAHSRA which causes a rightful backlash by a large number of people.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 2:58 pm
The S21 opposition wasn’t about “NIMBY’s anyway. Emma is, like Cruikshank and co, profoundly misrepresenting the issues and and actors and the stakes.
Moreover, Stuttgart 21 wasn’t, unlike PBQD-CHSRA’s disaster, conceived and designed by people without a single fucking clue in their heads about operating a rail system. And for all its faults, it was subject to detailed operational scrutiny by the best people on the planet — utterly unlike anything in any way connected to PBQD-CHSRA.
Nathanael Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Luckily, the CHSRA designs which are actually getting built, in the Central Valley, were designed by people who know perfectly well how to operate a rail system — I’m not saying they’re doing a great job, but the system will be fit for purpose.
“People without a single fucking clue in their heads about operating a rail system?” That would be the fokls behind the Central Subway in San Francisco you’re thinking of, perhaps? Or maybe the people involved with the new Transbay Terminal design (which was very much NOT the CHSRA, as you know)? Perhaps the folks at Caltrain paying for CBOSS? Or perhaps the people who decided to make BART Indian Broad Gauge, or perhaps the ones who decided to extend it to Milbrae? Oh, there are so many options… in San Francisco alone!
Or perhaps you’re thinking of the national freight hauler CSX, which got itself Congressionally investigated for derailing trains in New York thanks to not bothering to maintain the tracks at all.
Fundamentally, there are many far less competent organizations than the CHSRA in the world of rail. (I am glad to see Kopp out, mind you.)
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Or perhaps the people who decided to make BART Indian Broad Gauge
The managers who decided to make BART broad guage are dead. The underlings they managed retired a long time ago.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
You’re going to try much harder with the sycophancy if you want an internship, you know.
Sure. Those turnback tracks in Fresno — located outside the running tracks — sure show a hell of a lot of knowledge of not having a single functioning neuron.
Those stations with the single platform access point and the mezzanines with the single entry points and the spiralling stairs level sure show a hell of a lot of knowledge.
And the “airside” and “landside” BS cast into hundreds of millions of bonus dollars of concrete (along with gauaranteed profits for Cubic, Inc) despite official proclamations of ticketing policy neutrality? Masterful.
Clowns.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 5:43 pm
That makes the sterile cor… pedestrian overpass that much longer doesn’t it? Gives the passengers more time to appreciate the wonder of the track layout…
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Not if their name is Robert Johnson, it doesn’t.
I just checked the Business plan. o0 I have been gone for less than a month. I come back and the business plan is at $98 billion and construction of Phase 1 won’t be finished until 2033??
Let’s face it. We need to redesign this plan by any means. It can’t be that expensive and take that long. At $100 billion making $1 billion in profit every year, that still means it will take 100 years to pay off the system. But the rails might already need an upgrade after 50 years in use. It just doesn’t pay off. So here are my easy-fix proposals:
-The Chinese need to build this.
-Outsource as much of the construction and planning as possible to private companies with experience (Deutsche Bahn, Siemens, Veolia, etc.)
-Far more private funding than before (sponsored stations)
-Create one main HSR line with 220mph speeds. Run the branches at lower speeds.
-Re-focus on building the SoCal extension FIRST. 2/3 of all Californians live in SoCal. Building the LA-SD extension will provide far more revenue than the LA-SF extension. If we are running out of money for the SF-LA section, we would still have a shorter but more populous corridor.
OR
-Turn the LA-SD extension into a independent subsidiary of the project. It would ask for funding separately. The result would be more revenue for the project.
It just can’t be:
1. That the project costs 2x as much as the plan approved as Prop 1A.
2. That the project takes 2x as long as the voter-approved plan.
People will definitely vote down a plan like this if it manages to get back to the ballot and I could perfectly understand why.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
China is not a low-construction cost country. HSR gets built there for higher cost than in Europe, because of all the viaducts. Chinese wages are low, but so is Chinese worker efficiency; when a country pays lower wages but all costs are scaled down proportionately, all this means is that its living costs are low and its currency is weak.
The design is already outsourced; the problem is that it’s outsourced to just one company, which will also be able to bid on construction. The HSRA can cut costs dramatically by either tendering a competitive design-build contract, or keeping design and construction strictly separate to ensure maximum competition.
Finally, private funding won’t do all that much. Station sponsoring deals can net a little money – probably enough to cover station construction but not much more. The bulk of the construction costs is civil infrastructure: viaducts, tunnels, earthworks, ROW formation.
synonymouse Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 9:30 am
@ Emma
PB-CHSRA, Jerry Brown and the entire patronage machine, MTC-Wunderman, all the worthies, clearly have resolved to plunge ahead at $100bil with no plan changes of import save one:
Caltrain is dead train rolling, with BART-MTC poised as its executioners. Thanx to the likes of Kopp-Diridon the hsr will terminate at the iconic galactic capital of Siicon Valley and Ring the Bay will fulfill its manifest destiny.
The just about useless Republican talking heads show no interest whatsoever in bankrolling a voter initiative to put a revote on the ballot. One has to assume they have been quietly baksheeshed by corporate California to lay off.
Nathanael Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
$98 billion is in so-called “year of expenditure dollars”, which are what I call “bullshit dollars” because they’re based entirely on bullshit predictions of the rate of inflation.
Look up the number in constant 2008 (or whenever) dollars. What was it, about $50 billion? Complain about that if you like. Don’t complain about the bullshit number.
The Republican Congress recently required reporting of prices in bullshit dollars in order to try to frighten people away from spending money on any useful projects at all.
Joey Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Are you claiming that inflation is being overestimated or underestimated?
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 4:12 pm
No, Emma was exactly right. In real dollars, costs inflated from $33 billion to $65 billion.
Peter Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Wait. Wasn’t the $33 billion number in 2008 dollars, whereas the $43 billion number was simply the $33 billion number in 2017 (or something around there) dollars? That would mean that the increase was from $43 billion to $65 billion (which was in 2017 dollars), not from $33 to $65.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
$65 billion is in 2010 dollars.
VBobier Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 5:33 pm
The Chinese? No way Jose, as the saying goes…
China doesn’t own the right to sell what HSR technology they do have, only a license to build in China, nothing more, outside China It would be Piracy…
Oh there’s a thought, Chinese Piracy and by a country too, aiding and abetting is not something CA will ever do, so China is OUT. ;p
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 29th, 2011 at 2:28 am
The Chinese are more astute than you think. They have licensed GE to use so-called “Chinese” HSR technology in the US.
Laundering their pirated technology through a US giant is very clever. Firms ready to sue the Chinese for patents violation will think twice before taking on GE.
wait — last I read BMW was going to build the bart cars…
swing hanger Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Interior design only. Kind of like selecting Yves St. Laurent or Paul Smith to design your interior digs. With Bart, it’s putting lipstick on a pig- but BMW has a cachet in the Bay Area. If the train was to run in Texas, the interiors would be by Ford (F150 crew cab like…)
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 8:02 pm
Real Texans (Tm) don’t ride trains, so what the interior is like is unimportant to Texans. Real ones anyway.
Alon Levy Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 11:55 pm
They don’t ride trains – they just build high-speed trains in 400-meter freeway corridors that don’t go into any city but instead ring the main cities in beltways.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 1:03 am
They ain’t never gonna build the NAFTA Superhighway through Texas.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul349.html
http://www.eagleforum.org/topics/NAU/
Google it some time when you need a laugh. I like the parts about how the wild eyed Mexican truck drivers will ferrying containers from Mexican ports to the railhead in Kansas City…. in the express lanes on either side of the railroad that goes between the port and Kansas City….
… after Kelo it’s going to rain destruction down on schools, churches, senior citizen housing along with the ranches of stalwart yeoman farmers….
…. and it’s going to have – a sure sign of a Communist plot – tolls! ! ! ….
Alon Levy Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 1:23 am
I know, I know. It’s very hard to find any information on even just I-69 without encountering this sort of wild-eyed opposition. But Perry did seriously propose the Trans-Texas madness, and to be frank he’s still more likely to get the nomination than Paul. (And that’s not a bad thing – Perry is one of the few non-nativists in the GOP, and could stand a reasonable chance to enact comprehensive immigration reform. Gingrich, in contrast, has views on immigration that are taken straight from the Swiss People’s Party platform.)
Andre Peretti Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
What a pity if it isn’t built! I read it would be so wide that it would be the only human contruction visible from the moon.
VBobier Reply:
November 28th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Careful there part of My family is/was from Texas from way before It was even a Republic or even a Mexican territory…
joe Reply:
November 27th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
BMW does manufacture in the US of A.
http://www.bmwusfactory.com/
and they have NAFTA suppliers http://www.bmwusfactory.com/manufacturing/building-a-better-bmw/supplier-network/