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.
I hope people realize that the issue isn’t musk but California’s reliance on the private sector to do public good.
California HSR is an entirely state funded project.
To nitpick, does that imply that it’s being both funded and constructed by government employees? Or is the funding public, but the companies that are supposed to be performing the work private? Because that’s how the telco industry works, and well… we all know how that went.
There really doesn’t exist a government workforce large enough to do the construction. But it’s bid out to construction firms directly overseen by the government, so there’s no big potential for just diverting funds like in the case of telecoms. Construction is all these companies do. There’s nowhere else to shift the money to. They have deliberables and metrics to meet.
Of course the potential for fraud exists but it’s no bigger risk than a project with solely government employees.
This is accurate. On the private sector side it’s the same. One of the things driving up costs is that the private sector doesn’t have a company big enough to do this job, so Cali HSR is sub-contractors all the way down. Every private company contacted by the government has to be vetted and then there’s the paper work on contacts and those contacts need to be enforced by yet more people who need yet more contracts.
How China built so much so fast was that the PRC national government founded a handful of big companies (read: state-backed monopolies) to sort everything out and build it. Lots less overhead when one entity basically runs the whole show. China HSR is corporate vertical integration combined with centralized state planning on a scale that is only rivaled by other things the Chinese government has done before or that other nations have done however over longer periods of time (like the US’s Eisenhower Interstate Highway System… asperational national project on an immense scale and it took half a century because it was delegated to fifty states to plan and flesh out).
Sure but they had secured funding. California has to do it piecemeal as funding is available.
Yep. So too did the Interstate system. There needs to be a federal backed program, with dollar matching at the state and local level just like the interstate highway system.
Agreed. This is such a huge project for a single state to do alone.
Just watch, Brightline West will complete on time and people will bitch about how CAHSR is moving so slowly… as if CAHSR isn’t tied up with other vital projects like the CalTrain modernization/electrification, hundreds upon hundreds of grade separations, almost a dosen stations being built from scratch, infrastructure improvements all throughout the Central Valley, etc, etc, the list goes on for miles. Meanwhile, BWHSR has the task of eating up a mostly flat ROW that’s already cleared and build like three stations max. There’s no comparing them to one another and yet idiots will… same with Texas Central.
Army Corps of Engineers would be big enough I presume.
Maybe some joint projects with the Navy SeaBees.
That’s federal.
The more you know …
It gets worse, for the national HSR they’ve doubled down with a privatized high-end train line (think first class, private lobbies for premium etc) with a horrible “track” record in Florida.
So a deadly company that refuses safety precautions (forced the government to fund further safety regulations), and is managed and owned by huge financial companies that own the real estate making their own government funded mini-monopoly rail line and estates! Oh yeah, they’re way over budget and losing money fast, but if they can just get that sweet “build back America” funding they can squeeze the company for a few more years before the high priced investors can cut ties and run with their profits.
I could go on for days probably talking about Brightline, might have to do a complete write up one of these days to show how nasty and deep all the crap goes with our politics and influences. Just make it a national service, this “private” sector for public utilities has got to be moved on from.
Unfortunately, that “real estate play” that you’re complaining about is the oldest and perhaps the only way to build a public transportation network that isn’t a net loss financially for the owner/operator. In many Asian nations with great public transportation systems, such as Singapore, the majority of housing is public and so the government is effectively using the same play. Part of the reason good systems are so difficult to get past the conceptual stages here in the US is that transportation and land use planning functions are separated administratively with responsibilities housed in totality different agecies at different levels of government, so the parties involved are forces to at best “coordinate” and at worst basically guess what the other will actually do or build, which makes it almost impossible to put together the kind of land use pattern that supports public transport with good ridership potential.
The problem with your premise is that it’s a private company who’s goal is profit structure not community support and is also being funded with public funds from the government to remain “Private”. Brightline from orlando to boca raton costs 100$ for the basic fare, or 309$ for the premium ride. That’s the same cost for a train between Paris and London. The same trip on bus is 30$ or 36$ taking amtrak (another train service that’s a public service). Can’t wait for the new pricing for the california-vegas run.
I’m not saying that a private approach to this is better–I specifically noted that governments could potentially do the same thing, but in the public interest, and I’d prefer that.
Please do. I’d love to read it. I’m a South Floridian who uses public transit and hates the fucking Brightline.
Both. It’s both.
It’s both IMO.
They’re the same thing.
That’s Capitalism for you…
I was told that we can’t have a public rail infrastructure without doing a Tiananmen Square, and a Tibet colonialism, and killing all the Uighurs. You need a robust private sector to protect the people from tyrannical authoritarian socialist government. Elon Musk is the bollard between Tank Man and the tank, saving us from far-left extremism and blood dictatorship by soaking up a few billion dollars in state and federal subsidies to deliver kickbacks to neighboring politicians and finance his takeover of Twitter.
Y’all should be grateful we’re not living in the hellscape that is HSR China right now.
The funny thing about this post is no one except tech bros ever gave a shit about the hyperloop. The government of California summarily ignored the muskrat.