How high-speed rail project "went off the rails"

John Pritchett

Ralph Vartabedian keeps reminding us about our ongoing high-speed rail fiasco:

....When the rail authority solicited international firms to help build and finance the system, the Spanish firm Sacyr Concesiones S.L., which has helped build 40 bullet train projects around the world, warned the state in a 2015 report that its speed would push up costs.

“One of the main cost drivers is the requirement of 220 mph operating speed,” the firm wrote. “220 mph is higher than most if not all standard commercial speed for HSR, since it goes beyond the operating speed of similar HSR currently operating anywhere in the world. Due to the high-tech nature of the system infrastructure, operation and maintenance costs also grow exponentially.”

One fundamental problem for the California system is that it’s at the upper end of the distance where bullet trains can compete effectively with airlines, so it has to be as fast as possible.

Top speeds require precise track alignment — straight and level. A curve that allows a train to operate at the max speed of 220 mph would have a circumference of more than 50 miles, were it to make a complete circle. Going over mountains requires deep tunnels to level out the climb so that the grades are half as steep as those on interstate freeways.

Quentin Kopp, then chairman of the rail authority when the speed requirements were created in 2008, said the legislature erred in trying to dictate train speeds.

“It does not make sense to run at these speeds given the cost, but it is too late to change,” said Kopp, a plaintiff in a suit alleging the state is violating the bond act. “You would have to go back to voters and they would turn it down as a way of stopping the project”....

See also Biden, Streetsblog, and high-speed rail and High-speed rail: The shame of the Democratic Party, and I say that as a disappointed Democrat.