Not so friendly reminder that musk specifically came up with, and pushed, for hyperloop knowing that it would never be made, as an effort to stop the development of highspeed rail in America and shift all political discussions of it because “something better is around the corner”:
As I’ve written in my book, Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it. Several years ago, Musk said that public transit was “a pain in the ass” where you were surrounded by strangers, including possible serial killers, to justify his opposition.
Also: 2024 update, the total length of China’s high-speed rail tracks has now reached well over 45,000 km, or 28,000 miles, by the end of 2023.
They are additionally five years ahead of schedule and expect to double the total number within ten years. And, before someone inevitably complains about “how expensive it is”, they are turning over a net-profit of over $600M USD a year.
Cost estimates of the full California high speed rail is somewhere in the
$500$300 billion range. Where are we gonna get that money?We’re building what we can as funding is available.
Edit: dear downvoting cowards: if you have a solution, let’s hear it. Where is the funding?
Billionaires shouldn’t be billionaires. That outta pay for it.
If we took all money from all billionaires nationwide, that might just pay for California HSR, to say nothing of other states.
If you liquidated the assets of the top 3 billionaires, that would just about cover the cost of California HSR if it really is in the 500B range as you said.
Actually, maybe make it the top 6 billionaires. I doubt Tesla would be as overpriced as it is right now if all of Musk’s stock was sold off. Ditto for meta and Zuck, etc.
Like I said. Ok, in this insane hypothetical that no one has any idea how to practically make happen, you’ve mined the reserves of US billionaires to finish constructing HSR in one to five states. Neat. 45 more to go.
Most states are going to be a bit cheaper because you won’t have to buy up land in California for the rest of them.
Also make the entire thing federal and profitable. The profits from Cali HSR will pay for the next few states.
“Make it federal” is one of the few decent answers to my original question - where will the money come from?
OP already noted that china is turning a profit on their railways. I guess americans will continue to give all their money to billionaires or unnecessary military expenses and leave nothing for things that don’t suck and would never be able to profit on something that works elsewhere.
It’s not a question of choosing whether to spend the money. We literally do not have the money. We’d have to drastically raise taxes or cut expenditures. And no, California doesn’t hand out money to billionaires, I don’t know what kind of absurdity that is.
At least your train will be actual high speed, if it ever gets built.
Here on the east coast we have huge demand for rail, we have the perfect building blocks for rail, we have all the scalability issues that demand a rail solution. We have pretty good rail. We have profitable rail, that could show even more profit if they were able to serve demand. But it would take closer to $1T to make it “high speed” …… one of the “cheap” options is a 20 mile tunnel under Long Island Sound. That’ll happen
I think they’re already doing somewhat higher speed rail on the east coast with the Amtrak Acela? 160 mph from my quick googling.
As they build up the speed across different sections of the network, there will be even more demand than there is now, since faster travel makes it work better for peoples’ needs. Then it’ll be more profitable and they can reinvest it.
Not, not really
The Acela is a pathetic excuse for HSR. If you’re going from Boston to DC, it only really saves a couple hours compared to the normal train, and it’s still like 6 jours more than flying (or something like that). According to Wikipedia, the fastest scheduled time between Boston and NY is 3hr30m, which averages to 66mph. That’s not really high speed. The problem is theres only a few places the track actually allows for high speed
I believe there is a construction project to allow high speed for a few miles in New Jersey, so that may be coming in a few years
One specific issue that is still unanswered is there is no reasonable path forward to high speed where it goes along the coast of Connecticut between Providence and New Haven.
Source on the $500 billion?
And governments don’t need to find money to fund capital projects. The US government can print money. They can effectively borrow money against the future economic growth that the project will provide, which is an easy bet with projects like this.
This is the state of California, not the entire US gov. California can’t print money.
Approximately $130bn for the third of the line currently under construction, which is the least expensive portion.
From the top of the page you linked. I see no reference to $130b.
The federal government can also fund infrastructure projects in states.
The IOS is one portion of the initial 1/3 of the entire HSR.
Look under the table titled “2024 capital cost estimates for full Phase 1” for the $128bn estimate for phase 1
full phase 1 != the IOS. The IOS is predicted to be $28–35 billion. The full phase 1, which is SF and Merced to Anaheim, and also most of the entire network, is predicted to be $128bn (as per your quote).
Yes. That’s what I said. I don’t understand what you’re getting at here.
So where does the $500 billion come from?
There are 3 phases to the project. The least expensive phase is estimated at $130bn ish. $500bn for the whole thing is a fair guesstimate.
The “solution” is that high speed rail would pay for itself in the long term and is an obvious worthwhile investment for the government, businesses, and citizens. As long as there’s political will the funding is not a problem.
That’s just mathematically not true. This is an insanely expensive project. The money must come from somewhere. You have to either raise taxes or cut expenses.
Edit: or take on debt
Yes exactly you borrow money and pay it back later. That’s what government bonds are…
Possible but very expensive.
Taxes?
California’s ENTIRE ANNUAL REVENUES are something like $150-150 billion. You’d have to dramatically increase taxes, and if you’re going to do that, why not spend it on education, or homelessness?
Because we can dramatically increase taxes for those too. Land value taxes don’t distort prices and we’ve barely scratched the surface.
I don’t know if I agree with raising taxes that substantially, but at least it’s a reasonable argument.
Why not substantially? The surplus from land ownership is “unearned income” - we’re basically giving a goverment handout to landlords right now. Land value is different from acreage, so your house would see very little increase in taxes.
Look, I’m not gonna bother with your evangelist tax pitch. Increasing the tax revenues of California by at least 30% is A LOT of new taxes, regardless of the source.
Ok but who cares? We should increase them even more than 30%.
…a lot of people care. An extra 30% lost would be financially ruinous for a lot of people.
Why not just spend less on killing Muslims?
California isn’t killing any Muslims.
The federal government pays Californian companies to make bombs. They also enlist and pay Californian residents to use those bombs, or otherwise get them in the hands of someone that will.
Instead, the federal government should pay Californian residents to do peaceful things. Like build trains.
Ok, whatever, but it’s not.
So, as I said in my initial comment, we’re building what we can, as we can afford it.
Well, we’re about to commit trillions of dollars for war against Iran to help out our apartheid client state. So if we can avoid that, we can use the savings to build rail! :)
I dunno who this “we” is but it doesn’t include the state of California.
https://californialocal.com/localnews/statewide/ca/article/show/4002-california-defense-contracting-military-industrial-complex-silicon-valley/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_installations_in_California
That’s money that California is GETTING from the feds, not spending lol. Refusing to do any defense contracting would actually lower California’s budget. Not that you really care about the budget - you’re obviously only in this discussion in an attempt to find an excuse to say “Merica bad”
source on the $500B? I’ve only seen as high as $130B
$130bn is just phase 1. Phase 2 is more expensive. But I was misremembering that there was a phase 3, so the total would be more like $250-300bn
Lemmy doesn’t want reality, it wants to pretend everything bad is caused by a handful of rich people they can fantasise about killing.
Teenager logic.