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Automotive News & Views How does gas at $4 and higher impact you?
2183 messages, Last post on Nov 21, 2009 at 5:13 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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And if things in CA weren't bad enough, isn't the Governator proposing a 1.5% increase to the sales tax rate (taking the rate in LA County to over 10%) to cover a budget shortfall predicted for the next few years? 100 million passengers? There are 36 million people living in the state of California; are we to expect that every person in the state (from Blythe to Humboldt) will ride this new train 3 times a year? It's not like it will be a commuter train (which does exist in SoCal by the way - and would run fine except for the engineers texting civilians when they should be looking at the signals), where someone would travel from SF to LA for the day, then return in the evening. |
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I'm going to call you two doom and gloom!  OK, not sure where you got this 100 million figure, but the first two sources I pulled up had 70 million and 65-95 million passenger trips per year: http://www.voterguide.sos.ca.gov/argu-rebut/argu-rebutt1a.htm http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/sunletters/la-oew-tempelis-moore21-2008- oct21,0,96665.story I think each leg of your trip counts as a trip, that would be standard parlance for environmental impact reviews of this type. So if you go to LA in the morning and come back in the evening, you have made two trips. I can believe that 35 million people per year would make that trip (or its reverse, LA to SF and back) once, or much more likely 7 million people make that trip 5 times per year (just Christmas and Thanksgiving would be four). Heck, I make it four to six times a year or more, so I ALONE am good for a dozen trips towards the count! Anyway, we can go on despising everything done by government, everything done by anyone but ourselves, anything and everything EVERYWHERE, or we can just accept that it might be nice to have a really good alternative to the airlines and I-5. And you never know, if gas is at $8 in 2020 when this thing is supposed to be up and running in its initial phases, an electric train that will take you from LA to SF in half the time of driving for the same price the gas would cost might seem like a good thing. 
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Replying to: nippononly (Nov 06, 2008 10:30 pm) Do the math, 35,000,000 per year is on average 95,000 a day, or on average just under 4,000 people an hour. If you average 1,000 people a train thats a train leaving every 15 minutes or about 20 trains running at one time. Somehow I don't think so. |
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Replying to: gagrice (Nov 06, 2008 4:21 pm) Unless you are an accountant on the inside of this project, your imaginary numbers mean nothing. The people in this to make money would know the REAL numbers. They are not going to invest in something that's going to lose money. How stupid do you think they are? People don't generally get rich by being idiots. There are exceptions though.
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According to the State website the hoped for figure is: The most recent ridership forecasts for the California High-Speed Train Project estimate between 88 – 117 million passengers annually by 2030 for the entire 800-mile high-speed train network connecting Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, Central Valley, Los Angeles, Orange County, the Inland Empire, and San Diego. How many people can be carried on a high-speed train? Operating “trainsets” will have multiple cars and will be up to 1,300 feet long, depending on the type of train and the market demand. At peak travel times, trains can be lengthened, or trainsets can be connected, to operate as a single train. The high-speed train could be configured in many different ways either to maximize seating, which would provide seating for up to 1,300 passengers or to provide more space per passenger than a conventional airline seat and provide a café area and other amenities, in which case trains could carry around 950 passengers. http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/faqs/ridership.htm Those numbers mean this train will carry at least 3 times as many as the high speed train on the East Coast. Amtrak claims 3 million per year for Acela Express. My concerns are as follows. The state currently has 304,000 employees. This system claims it will add 450,000 permanent jobs. Was that just a gimmick to get votes. I would say it was. And why should those not benefiting in most of the state be burdened with this tremendous debt? If the cities that want the train and will benefit from the train vote for it. They should pay the bill. Not all the counties that are not in any way going to benefit. The best we can hope for is no one will loan that money to the state with their current financial condition. peer reviews: The FRA and U.C Berkeley studies also produced lower high-speed train ridership
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Replying to: gagrice (Nov 07, 2008 6:33 am) The people in charge of this project know the score. They are not the village idiots. They are not going to get into this thing with the intent to lose money.
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Replying to: larsb (Nov 07, 2008 6:29 am) Who might THEY be? This bill was to authorize purchasing bonds for $9.95 Billion. The best hope is no one with half a brain will loan them the money. If you had read the proposal as I have you would see just how lame the calculations are in favor of this boondoggle. They calculated how much gas would be wasted with people sitting for hours in gridlock. Adding that to the revenue of the system. How do we know they were not waiting in gridlock to get into the parking lot of this proposed HST? All that aside. The state cannot afford to add another $45 billion to their debt load. They are HOPING the Feds and big investors will get caught up in the boondoggle. Several Peer Reviews including the one from UC Berkeley are less than encouraging. Then add the lawsuits by environmentalists wanting to protect lands proposed for the train to travel. This is not AZ where you go out in the desert and put up a Coal fired generator or a Nuclear Power Plant. This is CA where the wind, geothermal and solar systems proposed on public lands have been blocked by environmental groups. |
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Replying to: larsb (Nov 07, 2008 6:39 am) I think they are. And they will not lose money. They will get the bond and spend it on studies. They will spread the wealth to the agencies involved and NOTHING will be done when the money has run out. You are blind to reality my friend. When you sit and watch billions wasted on projects that never get off the ground you become a skeptic. This HST project has been draining our coffers since at least 1995. Look at THE State website and the extensive studies and reviews. You think that was all volunteer labor? Almost half the voters know the facts and voted against the proposition. It was voted down before. This time the added just enough lies to convince those that are too lazy to dig deep. "The current high-speed rail plan is a fairy tale," said Adrian Moore, vice president of research at Reason Foundation and the study's project director. "The proposal suggests these high-speed trains will be the fastest ever; the most-ridden ever; the cheapest ever; and will convince millions of Californians they no longer need to drive or fly. "Offering up a best-case scenario is one thing, but actually depending on all of these miracles to happen simultaneously is irresponsible public policy." http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/09/28/perspective/z8f5487dadc486544882574c9- 000134a9.txt |
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You guys want to give it a rest and let others comment on how $4... $3 ... er, $2 a gallon gas affects them? Thanks. |
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Replying to: steve_ (Nov 07, 2008 7:02 am) The rail is designed to save drivers from spending $2 or $3 or $5 a gallon on gas. |
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