Corruption in infrastructure construction is sort of unavoidable I think. I’m from New Jersey though, so maybe I’m more cynical in that regard than most.
The most damning HSR problem in China (IMO) is the economics. The HSR tickets are priced comparably to a plane ticket, not a “low speed rail” or bus. So the only thing HSR displaces is airline business. In fact during the most recent Chinese New Years migration (and it really is an annual migration) the areas that had HSR lines saw a marked -increase- in road congestion because the high HSR ticket prices forced more people into the busses. Travel times were much worse post-HSR because of this.
I’m shocked too — that the Chinese government is susceptible to the idiotic fantasies of our wooly-headed liberals.
Is this a case of keeping up with the Japanese Joneses (Japan has some gee-whiz trains), or have the unsentimental Chinese technocrats really decided that the way to compete with the West is outdoing us in delusion?
the railways ministry under Mr. Liu’s stewardship has run up debts possibly in excess of 2 trillion yuan, or roughly $303 billion
But… it wasn’t AMBITIOUS enough. That’s the problem.
They needed to do it underground, with argon-filled tubes, or something.
Bing “Overcrowded Chinese holiday trains” Some not-so-safe-for-work.
Ok, someplaces trains might make more sense than cars. But if that’s your demand, you’d better bloody-well be able to run the stupid thing at a profit.
Clearly needs more toddlers…
More speed. The high speed trains clearly aren’t high enough. You’d think they’d have someone watch the defining work on the subject.
Is this a case of keeping up with the Japanese Joneses (Japan has some gee-whiz trains), or have the unsentimental Chinese technocrats really decided that the way to compete with the West is outdoing us in delusion?
Yes. It’s worth noting that they did something similar with bicycles and automobiles. Zillions of Chinese were puttering along quite nicely on bikes until the leadership decided that they needed to dial the economy up to 11 by having people drive cars instead. There still are a ton of people bicycling, but apparently a lot of the bike transportation infrastructure (such as bike lanes) got changed over to cars.
I can’t stay away. Hope E. Changey has a great comment.
Re. corruption, etc. etc. in big-budget projects, a telling story from another industry–Hollywood. When “Easy Rider” became the new all-time boxoffice champion and had only cost about $1 million, beating prior and contemporary films that cost many millions to produce, there was a sort of semi-soul-searching discussion in Hollywood about whether now, spurred by the “small” film’s success, major studios would start making movies for “only” $1 million.
The answer, per the wags of the time? Never. Why not? Because, as they put it then: “You can’t steal a million FROM a million.”
Let’s be clear that the main reason why the Obama/PublicUnion/Democrat coalition wants these major boondoggle highspeed rail projects is not due to misguided ecological desire or even for the “we shall go to the Moon” idealism of it all, let alone any of their nonsense “if we spend it now, it’ll pay off in the long run” economic excuses.
No, the reason they like them is simply that they cost so very, very much and thus have so very, very much in them to steal from, both in the original budgets and in the inevitable cost overruns that such huge projects are expected to have.
Ya nailed it Karl. You can assume all other projects work exactly the same way. They don’t even bother to hide the them. Just watch the same people, shuffling through the same industries, with all the same money going back and forth.
People fifty years from now will laugh at the notion of having to be physically present someplace in order to conduct business.
We already have HSR and it is called the internet.
My dream is not being able to go from Seattle to LA faster, cheaper, or more efficiently than by plane or car but to be able to sit out on the deck overlooking a lake and never need to go to Seattle or LA.
I am kinda surprised people are not talking about Google cars. Google cars > HSR.
I am kinda surprised people are not talking about Google cars. Google cars > HSR.
Google Taxi > financing or leasing. Need a ride? There’s an app for that…
The GDP per capita of China is still only something like a seventh that of the US. Increasing their per capita GDP to say half that of the US should be reasonably easy money. But I think the ease of this initial catch up growth, and just how far they still have to go, is disguising some serious fundamental inefficiencies in the Chinese economy. High speed train spending in China being but one case in point.
An often mentioned possibility is maglev trains in evacuated tunnels. Speeds up to around 5km/s might be possible and efficiency could be very high. With such high speeds a small tunnel could shift a huge amount of freight. However an earthquake or terrorist act could result in a rather big mess – I am not sure I would advise a passenger version.
Trains are faster and as fuel efficient as large ships. It seems a pity that they are not similarly as cost effective. Perhaps with dramatically increased automation (loading and unloading, maintenance, etc.) they could become so. The world is in desperate need of a land transportation system with the cost effectiveness of large ships. Currently wealth seems to be concentrated around the coasts of most every continent largely for this reason – cheap freight.
“Currently wealth seems to be concentrated around the coasts of most every continent”
And with the massive head start in productivity and capital they are likely to remain that way.
When the U.S. entered WWII they needed tanks and lots of them in short order. The only area that had the tooling and industrial capacity to handle the mass production of tanks existed in and around Detroit. Only problem is the train tunnels that lay between Michigan and the end coast were fairly narrow. You couldn’t fit a Tiger tank on a train car and have it fit through the tunnel. Kinda funny the the size of the Sherman was ultimately determined by the width of the train tunnels.
Point being that the only reason the train was needed in the first place is because some inland local had the capacity to produce something that couldn’t be expeditiously procured at the port location itself. Inland locations leverage unique resources or circumstances to benefit their economies. All else will generally relocate to ports of call that compliment their services if global transportation services are a crux of their productive worth.
Someone comes along and builds a bigger tunnel and a faster track and the ship builders are just going to shrug and make a bigger boat with a sleeker hull. Waterways are vast expanses that naturally occur and provide a low friction surface; advantage ship builders.
They needed heavy lift high speed rail, obviously.
“When the U.S. entered WWII they needed tanks and lots of them in short order. The only area that had the tooling and industrial capacity to handle the mass production of tanks existed in and around Detroit. Only problem is the train tunnels that lay between Michigan and the end coast were fairly narrow. You couldn’t fit a Tiger tank on a train car and have it fit through the tunnel. Kinda funny the the size of the Sherman was ultimately determined by the width of the train tunnels.”
That is rather odd. Isn’t Detroit on the Detroit River with connection to the Great Lakes, the St Lawrence Seaway, and the Atlantic Ocean? Why couldn’t they use water transport for the tanks much as they use water transport to get the Saturn S-IC, Shuttle ET from Louisana to the East Coast of Florida?
By the way, I am told rail was the only way to get SRB segments from Utah to Florida, which is definitely limited by railroad clearances. The clearances are known as the “loading gauge” — how tall and how wide and how much overhang on curves are allowed before you sideswipe something.
The loading gauge is not the track gauge but perhaps if they had a wider track gauge, there would be accomodation for a bigger loading gauge (think the spacious “Super Train” on that disco-era TV series about a ficticious wide-gauge jumbo train). The “standard gauge” of track, supposedly, goes back to the width of the wheel ruts on the Roman roads, which supposedly, was to accomodate chariots (the “tanks” of the day), where the wheel stance was for two horses side-by-side drawing the thing.
So it was suggested, especially if the 5-segment superbooster SRB plans are ever followed, that humankind’s path to the stars has been determined by the width of a horses rear end. I also heard this has been debunked, but it was a good story while it lasted.
Isn’t Detroit on the Detroit River with connection to the Great Lakes, the St Lawrence Seaway, and the Atlantic Ocean?
The St. Lawrence Seaway wasn’t completed until almost fifteen years after the war ended.
The St. Lawrence Seaway wasn’t completed until almost fifteen years after the war ended.
There was an alternative that was used for submarines built on Lake Michigan in Manitowac, Wisconsin. The Illinois and Michigan Canal connects Lake Michigan to the Illinois River which flows into the Mississippi.
“Trains are faster and as fuel efficient as large ships. It seems a pity that they are not similarly as cost effective.”
It seems to me that we have a parallel here to trying to maximize ISP on a rocket. It’s technically cool and pure, but not the right thing to do economically.
I suspect that trains are good if they’re going nearly continuously. The subway systems in New York and London and Moscow seem to work pretty well and are pretty good financially — I believe the subway fare in NY is $2.25 with about a 50c subsidy. (Would ridership really suffer so much if it was $3 and they made a profit?)
So is it capital costs that kill railway economics? Those tracks can’t be cheap to either build or maintain — especially for high speed lines.
Aircraft aren’t as fuel efficient but, like ships, the roads are free. And large planes are pretty good on a passenger-mile basis.
Following the recent earthquake in Christchurch, Air NZ has put extra capacity on with extra B777-200 flights on the Christchurch/Wellington route and B777-200 and B747-400 flights on the Christchurch/Auckland route. Those are only 25 minute and 60 minute flights (excluding landing approach) and are normally only served by B737 and A320.
All tickets are NZ$49 (US$36). Normally you can get prices like that if you book far enough in advance, but theses prices are even for same-day sales.
If the planes are reasonably full (and I think they are) then I’m sure they’re making good money off these flights by using much larger planes than normal.
Maybe you could get cheap prices on high speed trains between Los Angeles and San Francisco if there was enough ridership to run a 500 passenger train every hour, but if there was that much demand on that route then the airlines could just as easily put on a 747 or A380 every hour instead of the current 737 class planes.
High speed rail only works if the routes are uninterupted.
I don’t think High speed rail is exactly bad, but I view the governmental planning as being like accelerating to 80 mph and then slamming on the breaks in between every 3 blocks of stop signs. infinintely more inefficient than just driving as you please.
Huh, I wonder where Wikipedia is getting some of its information for that first story. They’re projecting a 12 million increase in population for California in 2030 (I guess from 37 million to roughly 50 million). But there’s been a vast slowing of population growth (due to greatly increased and consistent emmigration, I gather). The state only increased 10% in the 2000-2010 period. If that growth held fixed, then the state would be somewhere around 45 million by 2030.
My take is that California won’t hit even that without some serious reform. For example, from 2006 to 2010, California appears to have added a mere 800,000 people (going from roughly 36,500,000 in 2006 to 37,300,000 in 2010). If Governor Brown fails to deliver as expected, we could see population decline within 5 years. In comparison, Texas is growing at 20% per year. I think it’ll really close to California in population by 2030.
I’m sure it’s just my imagination, but bogus population growth projections in a pro-HSR story seems par for the course.
We already have HSR and it is called the internet.
I used to work remotely. Even when I was in the office, technically I was working remotely. So for me, my location didn’t matter.
The problem is a boss that doesn’t want workers. (S)He wants subjects.
I got more done working in a different state than sitting in my office. But for control freaks that’s not good enough. They want you physically present. Bullies and control freaks are much more common than we usually acknowledge. Humans can be damned disappointing.
One day, my boss (both mom and pop) decided they’d rather pay two guys to sit in the office and get less done than have me continue to work remotely. Then the guy calls my sister to ask why I didn’t make a big deal out of it when he let me go. After seven years of working for him, he never figured out I was a capitalist and respected his right as boss to be stupid.
It’s amusing that Gerard O’Neill became a proponent of maglev in the US in his later years. Space colonization is a close cousin to terrestrial centralized macro/social engineering.
Pete says:
“Trains are faster and as fuel efficient as large ships. It seems a pity that they are not similarly as cost effective. Perhaps with dramatically increased automation (loading and unloading, maintenance, etc.) they could become so.”
Don’t know much about the train industry but with regard to loading/unloading, haven’t they switched to the “container” mechanism that ships have used? And aren’t some of them 18 wheeler draggable? Sounds pretty efficient.
Track technology looks like it hasn’t moved much from the 19th century. As we move a lot of material by train if there was an economical way to improve the tracks, decrease maintenance, I would imagine it would have been done.
I wonder if they still have Ernest Borgnine look-alikes with clubs to brush the hobos off the train. Gonna need them when the depression hits. And it’s the employee costs that matter.
Huh, I wonder where Wikipedia is getting some of its information for that first story. They’re projecting a 12 million increase in population for California in 2030 (I guess from 37 million to roughly 50 million). But there’s been a vast slowing of population growth (due to greatly increased and consistent emmigration, I gather). The state only increased 10% in the 2000-2010 period. If that growth held fixed, then the state would be somewhere around 45 million by 2030.
I hereby propose a constitutional amendment that any one state that exceeds 50 million in population be summarily expelled from the Union.
Oops. I meant Wired not Wikipedia in my first sentence. Don’t know why I made that mistake.
For me, the big problem is simply the high capital cost. If it were say $1 million per mile for track, private businesses probably would do it and make money as a result, even if the trains were lightly used. But at 2 orders of magnitude higher, there’s no business case. I think that most backers of HSR simply are ignorant of the cost issue. Public money is free money and you get a sexy train!
Space colonization is a close cousin to terrestrial centralized macro/social engineering.
It can be, but it’s not intrinsically so. It depends on how you do it.
I hereby propose a constitutional amendment that any one state that exceeds 50 million in population be summarily expelled from the Union.
I wouldn’t expel it, but I would force a breakup into smaller states. And the number shouldn’t be absolute, but as a percentage of the national population (say 15%).
I wouldn’t expel it, but I would force a breakup into smaller states.
Actually, I assume in most cases the state at risk would break itself up voluntarily — but such a move should be made easier, for states that are at risk of expulsion.
And in retrospect I agree a percentage might be better.
…but I’d like to see it closer to 10%…
[Space colonization] can be [centralized macro/social engineering] but it’s not intrinsically so.
It’s definitely a challenge since survival in the early stages will have a lot of pressure to be a commune rather than free enterprise. This may be a good reason for the first business established on mars to be a title company. The first people to land just claim the whole dang thing then sell off plots so cheap that nobody complains since they get a legal title that way.
“Kinda funny the the size of the Sherman was ultimately determined by the width of the train tunnels.”
Practical considerations of this kind drive things in completely unexpected ways. When engineers at the Army Ballistic Missiles Agency took their first crack at designing a missile, they consistently found that their fin design optimized away from the design of the V-2. When they finally asked Von Braun how the Germans came to the V-2 design, he said it was driven by the size of German railroad tunnels.
The advocates of high-speed trains should think a little bit about how their plans would affect little things, then add up all of those small effects to see what the ultimate outcome would be. Somehow, though, I don’t think their thought processes go quite that far.
“Track technology looks like it hasn’t moved much from the 19th century.”
Um, continuously welded rail, concrete crossties, elastomeric rail chairs, spring clip rail-to-tie fasteners allowing precision adjustment of track gauge. Rail surface grinding to maintain rail profile to allow high-speed operation.
Modern earth moving equipment to allow building lines to high engineering standards of shallow curves. Modern material handling equipment (rock crushers, dump cars) to allow the use of high depth of crushed rock ballast to allow for stable track alignment. Mechanized ballast tampers and other equipment for maintaining track.
Non-destructive testing to detect hidden defects that could lead to rail breakage.
I hereby propose a constitutional amendment that any one state that exceeds 50 million in population be summarily expelled from the Union.
At that point they’re big enough to stand on their own two feet and become a nation. Kick the baby bird out of the nest!
It’s worth keeping in mind that there are natural obstacles to high population. Several high population states have crumbled over the years, such as New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, Illinois, and Michigan. My view is that there’s little need to do anything. My view is that if a state is so popular that it experiences massive population growth (without, say, inviting half of India in order to do so), then let it.
I’ve lived now in two states where the population is so concentrated in one compact area as to render it essentially a city-state with a single, politically empowered population imposing its urban notions on a scattered and disenfranchised “outsider” population. A lot of states have this problem, red and blue.
Imagine that happening to the country.
Mfk,
One of the problems with modern rail design is that we are still using a rail gauge of 4′ 8″ that was based on the gauge used by coal mines in England in the 18th Century. It was based on the size of the horse drawn wagons the would best fit into the mines which in turn was based on the strength of the materials they had to work with in the 18th Century.
As with all standards, once adopted its hard to move away from it (look at our computer keyboards skill being based on 19th Century typewriter keyboards…) but IF I was building a high speed railroad I would be looking at the advantage of a wider gauge for greater stability at high speed. How wide would depend on the trade-offs between cost and increased stability.
Carl said “They needed heavy lift high speed rail, obviously.”
For those who recently made arguments against trains (on this blog, not necessarily on this thread), consider a very special sort of train: a space elevator. Do your arguments (against trains, not against federal subsidies) also apply to a train that goes upwards to GEO?
(Admittedly, a space elevator that extends beyond GEO and becomes a sling would not be as train-like as one that terminated at GEO, but many of the arguments for a space elevator don’t depend on slings.)
For those who recently made arguments against trains (on this blog, not necessarily on this thread), consider a very special sort of train: a space elevator. Do your arguments (against trains, not against federal subsidies) also apply to a train that goes upwards to GEO?
Some of them, yes. Space elevators are generally a very bad idea, their payload to dry mass ratio is abysmal – unless the elevator cars travel at a few kilometers a second. The fundamental energy saving is only a few dollars a kilogram to LEO – again not worth the hassle.
Corruption in infrastructure construction is sort of unavoidable I think. I’m from New Jersey though, so maybe I’m more cynical in that regard than most.
The most damning HSR problem in China (IMO) is the economics. The HSR tickets are priced comparably to a plane ticket, not a “low speed rail” or bus. So the only thing HSR displaces is airline business. In fact during the most recent Chinese New Years migration (and it really is an annual migration) the areas that had HSR lines saw a marked -increase- in road congestion because the high HSR ticket prices forced more people into the busses. Travel times were much worse post-HSR because of this.
I’m shocked too — that the Chinese government is susceptible to the idiotic fantasies of our wooly-headed liberals.
Is this a case of keeping up with the Japanese Joneses (Japan has some gee-whiz trains), or have the unsentimental Chinese technocrats really decided that the way to compete with the West is outdoing us in delusion?
the railways ministry under Mr. Liu’s stewardship has run up debts possibly in excess of 2 trillion yuan, or roughly $303 billion
But… it wasn’t AMBITIOUS enough. That’s the problem.
They needed to do it underground, with argon-filled tubes, or something.
Bing “Overcrowded Chinese holiday trains” Some not-so-safe-for-work.
Ok, someplaces trains might make more sense than cars. But if that’s your demand, you’d better bloody-well be able to run the stupid thing at a profit.
Clearly needs more toddlers…
More speed. The high speed trains clearly aren’t high enough. You’d think they’d have someone watch the defining work on the subject.
Is this a case of keeping up with the Japanese Joneses (Japan has some gee-whiz trains), or have the unsentimental Chinese technocrats really decided that the way to compete with the West is outdoing us in delusion?
Yes. It’s worth noting that they did something similar with bicycles and automobiles. Zillions of Chinese were puttering along quite nicely on bikes until the leadership decided that they needed to dial the economy up to 11 by having people drive cars instead. There still are a ton of people bicycling, but apparently a lot of the bike transportation infrastructure (such as bike lanes) got changed over to cars.
I can’t stay away. Hope E. Changey has a great comment.
Ya nailed it Karl. You can assume all other projects work exactly the same way. They don’t even bother to hide the them. Just watch the same people, shuffling through the same industries, with all the same money going back and forth.
People fifty years from now will laugh at the notion of having to be physically present someplace in order to conduct business.
We already have HSR and it is called the internet.
My dream is not being able to go from Seattle to LA faster, cheaper, or more efficiently than by plane or car but to be able to sit out on the deck overlooking a lake and never need to go to Seattle or LA.
I am kinda surprised people are not talking about Google cars. Google cars > HSR.
Google Taxi > financing or leasing. Need a ride? There’s an app for that…
The GDP per capita of China is still only something like a seventh that of the US. Increasing their per capita GDP to say half that of the US should be reasonably easy money. But I think the ease of this initial catch up growth, and just how far they still have to go, is disguising some serious fundamental inefficiencies in the Chinese economy. High speed train spending in China being but one case in point.
An often mentioned possibility is maglev trains in evacuated tunnels. Speeds up to around 5km/s might be possible and efficiency could be very high. With such high speeds a small tunnel could shift a huge amount of freight. However an earthquake or terrorist act could result in a rather big mess – I am not sure I would advise a passenger version.
Trains are faster and as fuel efficient as large ships. It seems a pity that they are not similarly as cost effective. Perhaps with dramatically increased automation (loading and unloading, maintenance, etc.) they could become so. The world is in desperate need of a land transportation system with the cost effectiveness of large ships. Currently wealth seems to be concentrated around the coasts of most every continent largely for this reason – cheap freight.
“Currently wealth seems to be concentrated around the coasts of most every continent”
And with the massive head start in productivity and capital they are likely to remain that way.
When the U.S. entered WWII they needed tanks and lots of them in short order. The only area that had the tooling and industrial capacity to handle the mass production of tanks existed in and around Detroit. Only problem is the train tunnels that lay between Michigan and the end coast were fairly narrow. You couldn’t fit a Tiger tank on a train car and have it fit through the tunnel. Kinda funny the the size of the Sherman was ultimately determined by the width of the train tunnels.
Point being that the only reason the train was needed in the first place is because some inland local had the capacity to produce something that couldn’t be expeditiously procured at the port location itself. Inland locations leverage unique resources or circumstances to benefit their economies. All else will generally relocate to ports of call that compliment their services if global transportation services are a crux of their productive worth.
Someone comes along and builds a bigger tunnel and a faster track and the ship builders are just going to shrug and make a bigger boat with a sleeker hull. Waterways are vast expanses that naturally occur and provide a low friction surface; advantage ship builders.
They needed heavy lift high speed rail, obviously.
“When the U.S. entered WWII they needed tanks and lots of them in short order. The only area that had the tooling and industrial capacity to handle the mass production of tanks existed in and around Detroit. Only problem is the train tunnels that lay between Michigan and the end coast were fairly narrow. You couldn’t fit a Tiger tank on a train car and have it fit through the tunnel. Kinda funny the the size of the Sherman was ultimately determined by the width of the train tunnels.”
That is rather odd. Isn’t Detroit on the Detroit River with connection to the Great Lakes, the St Lawrence Seaway, and the Atlantic Ocean? Why couldn’t they use water transport for the tanks much as they use water transport to get the Saturn S-IC, Shuttle ET from Louisana to the East Coast of Florida?
By the way, I am told rail was the only way to get SRB segments from Utah to Florida, which is definitely limited by railroad clearances. The clearances are known as the “loading gauge” — how tall and how wide and how much overhang on curves are allowed before you sideswipe something.
The loading gauge is not the track gauge but perhaps if they had a wider track gauge, there would be accomodation for a bigger loading gauge (think the spacious “Super Train” on that disco-era TV series about a ficticious wide-gauge jumbo train). The “standard gauge” of track, supposedly, goes back to the width of the wheel ruts on the Roman roads, which supposedly, was to accomodate chariots (the “tanks” of the day), where the wheel stance was for two horses side-by-side drawing the thing.
So it was suggested, especially if the 5-segment superbooster SRB plans are ever followed, that humankind’s path to the stars has been determined by the width of a horses rear end. I also heard this has been debunked, but it was a good story while it lasted.
Isn’t Detroit on the Detroit River with connection to the Great Lakes, the St Lawrence Seaway, and the Atlantic Ocean?
The St. Lawrence Seaway wasn’t completed until almost fifteen years after the war ended.
The St. Lawrence Seaway wasn’t completed until almost fifteen years after the war ended.
There was an alternative that was used for submarines built on Lake Michigan in Manitowac, Wisconsin. The Illinois and Michigan Canal connects Lake Michigan to the Illinois River which flows into the Mississippi.
“Trains are faster and as fuel efficient as large ships. It seems a pity that they are not similarly as cost effective.”
It seems to me that we have a parallel here to trying to maximize ISP on a rocket. It’s technically cool and pure, but not the right thing to do economically.
I suspect that trains are good if they’re going nearly continuously. The subway systems in New York and London and Moscow seem to work pretty well and are pretty good financially — I believe the subway fare in NY is $2.25 with about a 50c subsidy. (Would ridership really suffer so much if it was $3 and they made a profit?)
So is it capital costs that kill railway economics? Those tracks can’t be cheap to either build or maintain — especially for high speed lines.
Aircraft aren’t as fuel efficient but, like ships, the roads are free. And large planes are pretty good on a passenger-mile basis.
Following the recent earthquake in Christchurch, Air NZ has put extra capacity on with extra B777-200 flights on the Christchurch/Wellington route and B777-200 and B747-400 flights on the Christchurch/Auckland route. Those are only 25 minute and 60 minute flights (excluding landing approach) and are normally only served by B737 and A320.
All tickets are NZ$49 (US$36). Normally you can get prices like that if you book far enough in advance, but theses prices are even for same-day sales.
If the planes are reasonably full (and I think they are) then I’m sure they’re making good money off these flights by using much larger planes than normal.
Maybe you could get cheap prices on high speed trains between Los Angeles and San Francisco if there was enough ridership to run a 500 passenger train every hour, but if there was that much demand on that route then the airlines could just as easily put on a 747 or A380 every hour instead of the current 737 class planes.
High speed rail only works if the routes are uninterupted.
I don’t think High speed rail is exactly bad, but I view the governmental planning as being like accelerating to 80 mph and then slamming on the breaks in between every 3 blocks of stop signs. infinintely more inefficient than just driving as you please.
Wired is all over HSR, http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/01/ff_fasttrack/all/1
The comments on this one from a couple weeks ago were pretty good.
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/02/time-to-commit-or-quit-on-high-speed-rail/
Huh, I wonder where Wikipedia is getting some of its information for that first story. They’re projecting a 12 million increase in population for California in 2030 (I guess from 37 million to roughly 50 million). But there’s been a vast slowing of population growth (due to greatly increased and consistent emmigration, I gather). The state only increased 10% in the 2000-2010 period. If that growth held fixed, then the state would be somewhere around 45 million by 2030.
My take is that California won’t hit even that without some serious reform. For example, from 2006 to 2010, California appears to have added a mere 800,000 people (going from roughly 36,500,000 in 2006 to 37,300,000 in 2010). If Governor Brown fails to deliver as expected, we could see population decline within 5 years. In comparison, Texas is growing at 20% per year. I think it’ll really close to California in population by 2030.
I’m sure it’s just my imagination, but bogus population growth projections in a pro-HSR story seems par for the course.
We already have HSR and it is called the internet.
I used to work remotely. Even when I was in the office, technically I was working remotely. So for me, my location didn’t matter.
The problem is a boss that doesn’t want workers. (S)He wants subjects.
I got more done working in a different state than sitting in my office. But for control freaks that’s not good enough. They want you physically present. Bullies and control freaks are much more common than we usually acknowledge. Humans can be damned disappointing.
One day, my boss (both mom and pop) decided they’d rather pay two guys to sit in the office and get less done than have me continue to work remotely. Then the guy calls my sister to ask why I didn’t make a big deal out of it when he let me go. After seven years of working for him, he never figured out I was a capitalist and respected his right as boss to be stupid.
It’s amusing that Gerard O’Neill became a proponent of maglev in the US in his later years. Space colonization is a close cousin to terrestrial centralized macro/social engineering.
Pete says:
“Trains are faster and as fuel efficient as large ships. It seems a pity that they are not similarly as cost effective. Perhaps with dramatically increased automation (loading and unloading, maintenance, etc.) they could become so.”
Don’t know much about the train industry but with regard to loading/unloading, haven’t they switched to the “container” mechanism that ships have used? And aren’t some of them 18 wheeler draggable? Sounds pretty efficient.
Track technology looks like it hasn’t moved much from the 19th century. As we move a lot of material by train if there was an economical way to improve the tracks, decrease maintenance, I would imagine it would have been done.
I wonder if they still have Ernest Borgnine look-alikes with clubs to brush the hobos off the train. Gonna need them when the depression hits. And it’s the employee costs that matter.
I hereby propose a constitutional amendment that any one state that exceeds 50 million in population be summarily expelled from the Union.
Oops. I meant Wired not Wikipedia in my first sentence. Don’t know why I made that mistake.
For me, the big problem is simply the high capital cost. If it were say $1 million per mile for track, private businesses probably would do it and make money as a result, even if the trains were lightly used. But at 2 orders of magnitude higher, there’s no business case. I think that most backers of HSR simply are ignorant of the cost issue. Public money is free money and you get a sexy train!
Space colonization is a close cousin to terrestrial centralized macro/social engineering.
It can be, but it’s not intrinsically so. It depends on how you do it.
I hereby propose a constitutional amendment that any one state that exceeds 50 million in population be summarily expelled from the Union.
I wouldn’t expel it, but I would force a breakup into smaller states. And the number shouldn’t be absolute, but as a percentage of the national population (say 15%).
Actually, I assume in most cases the state at risk would break itself up voluntarily — but such a move should be made easier, for states that are at risk of expulsion.
And in retrospect I agree a percentage might be better.
…but I’d like to see it closer to 10%…
[Space colonization] can be [centralized macro/social engineering] but it’s not intrinsically so.
It’s definitely a challenge since survival in the early stages will have a lot of pressure to be a commune rather than free enterprise. This may be a good reason for the first business established on mars to be a title company. The first people to land just claim the whole dang thing then sell off plots so cheap that nobody complains since they get a legal title that way.
“Kinda funny the the size of the Sherman was ultimately determined by the width of the train tunnels.”
Practical considerations of this kind drive things in completely unexpected ways. When engineers at the Army Ballistic Missiles Agency took their first crack at designing a missile, they consistently found that their fin design optimized away from the design of the V-2. When they finally asked Von Braun how the Germans came to the V-2 design, he said it was driven by the size of German railroad tunnels.
The advocates of high-speed trains should think a little bit about how their plans would affect little things, then add up all of those small effects to see what the ultimate outcome would be. Somehow, though, I don’t think their thought processes go quite that far.
“Track technology looks like it hasn’t moved much from the 19th century.”
Um, continuously welded rail, concrete crossties, elastomeric rail chairs, spring clip rail-to-tie fasteners allowing precision adjustment of track gauge. Rail surface grinding to maintain rail profile to allow high-speed operation.
Modern earth moving equipment to allow building lines to high engineering standards of shallow curves. Modern material handling equipment (rock crushers, dump cars) to allow the use of high depth of crushed rock ballast to allow for stable track alignment. Mechanized ballast tampers and other equipment for maintaining track.
Non-destructive testing to detect hidden defects that could lead to rail breakage.
I hereby propose a constitutional amendment that any one state that exceeds 50 million in population be summarily expelled from the Union.
At that point they’re big enough to stand on their own two feet and become a nation. Kick the baby bird out of the nest!
It’s worth keeping in mind that there are natural obstacles to high population. Several high population states have crumbled over the years, such as New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, Illinois, and Michigan. My view is that there’s little need to do anything. My view is that if a state is so popular that it experiences massive population growth (without, say, inviting half of India in order to do so), then let it.
I’ve lived now in two states where the population is so concentrated in one compact area as to render it essentially a city-state with a single, politically empowered population imposing its urban notions on a scattered and disenfranchised “outsider” population. A lot of states have this problem, red and blue.
Imagine that happening to the country.
Mfk,
One of the problems with modern rail design is that we are still using a rail gauge of 4′ 8″ that was based on the gauge used by coal mines in England in the 18th Century. It was based on the size of the horse drawn wagons the would best fit into the mines which in turn was based on the strength of the materials they had to work with in the 18th Century.
As with all standards, once adopted its hard to move away from it (look at our computer keyboards skill being based on 19th Century typewriter keyboards…) but IF I was building a high speed railroad I would be looking at the advantage of a wider gauge for greater stability at high speed. How wide would depend on the trade-offs between cost and increased stability.
Carl said “They needed heavy lift high speed rail, obviously.”
For those who recently made arguments against trains (on this blog, not necessarily on this thread), consider a very special sort of train: a space elevator. Do your arguments (against trains, not against federal subsidies) also apply to a train that goes upwards to GEO?
(Admittedly, a space elevator that extends beyond GEO and becomes a sling would not be as train-like as one that terminated at GEO, but many of the arguments for a space elevator don’t depend on slings.)
For those who recently made arguments against trains (on this blog, not necessarily on this thread), consider a very special sort of train: a space elevator. Do your arguments (against trains, not against federal subsidies) also apply to a train that goes upwards to GEO?
Some of them, yes. Space elevators are generally a very bad idea, their payload to dry mass ratio is abysmal – unless the elevator cars travel at a few kilometers a second. The fundamental energy saving is only a few dollars a kilogram to LEO – again not worth the hassle.