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littleferrhis t1_j9ygmpw wrote

Reply to comment by kynthrus in High-Speed Rail Project Will Create Over 10,000 Jobs in California by gammapsi05

It makes no economic sense to do so. Say you have buttfuck nowhere station, and you want to bring it to buttfuck somewhere station. Buttfuck Nowhere has a population of 3000. To get to buttfuck somewhere station it is 50 miles.

For this project in California its some 200 million per mile. That’s a low estimate, but it is in Cali. So we’ll be extra gracious and call it 100 mil per mile. 100 mil per mile for 50 miles is now a 5 billion dollar project not counting upkeep. Now how are they, either the government or a business going to make a return on their investment for 3000 farmers who maybe say 50 will use it on any given day for a fee of 20 bucks(which low fees are why someone would take it over car), and that’s being gracious as well because farmers don’t really need to leave their farm every day to go to the bigger city.

Thats 1000 bucks a day for a 5 billion dollar project. 365k a year. Now how much is the for the planet excuse going to work when there’s a .000073% return on investment in the first year?

Now if we’re talking a small town with a population of 3 mil to a population of 50 mil like in China it totally makes sense to have HSR. Not in the U.S..

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ray12370 t1_j9yk6m7 wrote

I don't think trains or hsr have to make any economic sense. They're a public service. The less cars they have out on the road the better.

We spend so damn much on highway maintenance here in California and no one bats an eye because it's a public service.

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priznut t1_j9zjqdu wrote

I think you are way to short sighted on this.

Itd been proven that local access to transit systems pushes populations to other areas.

Like in California (where its too many people in the main bay area and LA). The incentive is to have other larger towns and cities across the I-5 absorb more of the population.

Which is happening, when Caltrain was established people started to move further south of San Jose. When bart finished their line further into the suburbs the home values for Brentwood went up as people bought homes knowing they have transit systems.

If the high speed rail completes people will move further out for cheaper homes.

Folks keep thinking trains don’t alter populations are not seeing the bigger picture.

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ligerzero942 t1_ja0epc4 wrote

Failing to recognize how transit induces demand is pretty common, just look at any highway expansion "to reduce congestion" always leads to congestion occurring again in a few years due to inducement.

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kynthrus t1_ja6cdmn wrote

Like I said the point is to be able to spread the population so we aren't living like roaches behind a fridge. It's not about economic growth, it's an investment in society, not economy.

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littleferrhis t1_ja7qjg1 wrote

Alright then it would be a serious misallocation of funds. I’m not saying that connecting people from small towns to big cities is a silly thing for the government to do, but going with the most expensive option of doing so definitely is. The government right now operates the essential air service which does basically what you said, connects people in small towns to big cities, and it does it for over 150 small towns across the U.S.. every day as a public service. However, the EAS only spends about 350 million a year total in subsidies to these routes.

Like I said before for a 50 mile stretch of track its 5 billion with a lot of benefits of the doubt, which is over 14x that, for one single small route. Spending that for say all EAS routes, which again I’ll round out to 50 miles for each even though most are going to be significantly longer is 795 billion dollars. So sure if you want that high speed rail for the small towns to the big cities go for it, but just throw away pretty much all of the defense budget for the year on a single public service very few people are going to use hedging your bets that people will come, and that jobs won’t dry up in those cities super quickly.

You act like government aren’t economic entities. No amount of nationalization or socialism breaks you from being an economic entity. From North Korea to the U.S., money is still king. We can’t go wasting millions on expensive projects that can be done cheaper and pretty much just as conveniently.

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