HIgh-speed rail: Dumb in China, dumb in the US

Dumb in China:

Just over a decade ago, in 2009, China’s first long-distance high-speed rail (HSR) service covered the 968 kilometers between Wuhan and Guangzhou at an average speed of around 350 kilometres per hour. 

The feat was recognised as the Communist Party of China’s “debt-fuelled” response to the global financial crisis. It was a sort of a “Railway Keynesianism,” where China re-engineered its railway infrastructure to drive the demand for concrete and steel and create millions of jobs.....

In the past few years, mega borrowings by provincial governments to monetise its HSR lines have created a debt trap, which is now pinching the coffers of the state-owned CRC [China Rail Corporation]. 

CRC’s financial woes started nearly four years ago when more than 60 percent of the HSR operators each lost a minimum of US $100 million in 2018. 

Dumb in the US:

While Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 770 bills passed by the Legislature this year, he couldn’t approve a big one that he wanted badly — a $4.2 billion appropriation to shore up the state’s much-delayed, increasingly expensive and obviously mismanaged bullet train project.

He couldn’t sign it because the Legislature, controlled by his fellow Democrats, won’t send it to him. Legislative leaders, especially Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, are disenchanted with the project and want the money to be spent, instead, on improving local commuter rail service....

Los Angeles Times journalist Ralph Vartabedian, who’s been a one-man truth squad on the project’s managerial and financial woes, reported last week that two of the San Joaquin Valley line’s major contractors want an extra $1 billion-plus for unforeseen costs. 

That would raise it to nearly $23 billion or two thirds of what the entire 800-mile system was originally supposed to cost.

The $4.2 billion that Newsom wants is sorely needed to keep the project shuffling along, but the state is still a long way from having enough money to cover the entire cost of the segment, much less the $80 or so billion more that a full project would need....