High-Speed Fail, v. 2.0
Ninety-eight point five billions dollars. That’s the new cost of California’s high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, according to a business plan released yesterday by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. At least, that’s the cost reported (a half day in advance of the plan’s release) by the Los Angeles Times. The reason […]
Then Why Did They Vote for It in the First Place?
A new poll finds that, if high-speed rail were on the ballot today, 62 percent of California voters would vote against it. The complete poll report also indicates that 63 percent of Californians say they would never ride it if it were built. The poll asked people about their state funding priorities. The top priorities […]
High-Speed Rail Is Still Dead (and Let’s Keep It That Way)
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to spend a token $100 million on high-speed rail after its own transportation subcommittee had zeroed out funding for the program. The purpose, said a rail advocate with US PIRG, is “to keep things on life support until Congress comes to its senses.” The only way Congress will “come to […]
U.K. HSR Questioned
The venerable Economist has come out in opposition to a $52 billion plan to build high-speed rail from London to Manchester and Leeds. As the magazine-that-calls-itself-a-newspaper explains in an accompanying article, the new line would take two decades to build and produce questionable benefits for the nation. While rail proponents claim that new train lines […]
China Suspends New HSR
Railway Age reports that China’s Premier Wen Jiabao has suspended “approval of new railway projects” while it investigates the recent accident that killed at least 40 people. Jiabao also said that the country would “reduce the average speed of new high speed trains at their early stage of operation.” Another report indicates that the government […]
California HSR Already Over Projected Costs
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has finally admitted that its insanely expensive rail project will be even more insanely expensive than its official projections. The most recent cost estimates for the “train to nowhere”–the first link of the project from north of Bakersfield to south of Merced–are 40 to 96 percent higher (depending on the […]
The China Mystique Breaks Down
At least 35 people killed in a Chinese high-speed rail crash–caused by lightning? This doesn’t make any sense at all. Electric rail technology is more than a hundred years old; how could China’s trains not be safeguarded against this common phenomenon? Plus, the second train ran into the first train simply because the first train […]
House Votes to Take Back High-Speed Rail Funds
One more nail in the high-speed rail coffin: The House of Representatives voted to redirect $833 million from high-speed rail to Midwest flood relief. This is money that the Department of Transportation had awarded to Amtrak and Northeast Corridor states in May, but since Secretary Ray LaHood hasn’t actually signed the checks yet, Congress can […]
Why Some People Support High-Speed Rail
One reason some people support high-speed rail is that it provides an opportunity for all sorts of fact-finding missions, such as this trip to Europe. “High-speed rail is becoming a reality in the U.S.,” says the Transportation Research Board (a part of the National Acadamies, a supposedly private but actually government-funded and government-created group of […]
Spain’s High-Speed White Elephants
How did I miss this story? A European publication describes Spain’s high-speed rail system as “a bona fide policy error typical of a nouveau riche nation.” Spain’s Talgo high-speed trains look a little like Donald Duck. Wikipedia commons photo by Peter Christener. Spain has spent or is spending 6 billion euros on a high-speed network […]
NC Says No More High-Speed Rail
The North Carolina legislature has forbidden the state’s transportation department from applying for more high-speed rail funds from the federal government. Before the department can apply for any grants that would obligate the state to pay $5 million or more in operating costs–which any high-speed rail project would do–it must receive approval from the state […]
Bullets in a Railway Heart
This “news” is a couple of months old, but Caixin Weekly, a Chinese business magazine, has published an extremely critical article about that country’s high-speed rail program. This report probably inspired similar but shorter articles in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and other publications.
