[justfor1comment]

Even I was surprised by the timeline. A high speed train by 2033, really? China has them now, Japan has them now. India is building a bullet train with roughly the same length as SF to LA in 3 years. The US shouldn't be so slow compared to these other countries.

[jaredklewis]

Japan has them now and has had them for more than 60 years. If we meet the 2033 deadline (seems doubtful, given our track record), Japan will have had HSR 80 years before CA got its first. Further, Japan continuously expands and improves the bullet train lines. Despite earthquakes, Japan's largely mountainous terrain, a shrinking population, and other challenges, every year work continues on making the bullet train network larger and faster.

Meanwhile in the US we spend nearly 700 billion annually on the military (roughly 75% of the Japanese government's entire budget). Get what you pay for (in our case, missiles).

[rayiner]

> Meanwhile in the US we spend nearly 700 billion annually on the military (roughly 75% of the Japanese government's entire budget). Get what you pay for (in our case, missiles).

That’s an ironic comparison. Japan is not allowed to have a military, just a small self defense force. Japan is okay with that state of affairs because the United States has tacitly committed to defend Japan from its belligerent neighbors. Your example illustrates in the same breath why US military spending is so high while it is so low in other countries.

Also, the new bullet train lines mostly are built with private money so there is that too.

[jaredklewis]

> That’s an ironic comparison. Japan is not allowed to have a military, just a small self defense force.

That's kind of my point. Japan just has a small self defense force and has instead focused its energies on education and infrastructure. Whether that is by choice or not is irrelevant.

On the other hand, it was definitely a choice by the US to spend our money on military involvement in places like Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria instead of using it on schools and trains.

> Japan is okay with that state of affairs because the United States has tacitly committed to defend Japan from its belligerent neighbors. Your example illustrates in the same breath why US military spending is so high while it is so low in other countries.

Yes, I understand the reason the US has such a big military budget is because we insist on stationing submarines, aircraft carriers, and ground troops in every corner of the world to "keep the peace."

My argument is that doing so is a catastrophic misallocation of resources.

> Also, the new bullet train lines mostly are built with private money so there is that too.

The Shinkansen was mostly built by private companies, mainly JNR, but public money played a huge role. JNR racked up nearly $300 billion in today's USD of debt, and that debt was taken on by the government when JNR was disbanded and reorganized (again by the government). I don't think the railways in Japan can be thought of as being completely privatized or completely nationalized. Even when officially managed by private companies, the government continues to play a role in planning and funding.

[rayiner]

Many new lines and extensions are being built without subsidies. Also, the private JR companies had to acquire JR’s initial capital expense debt: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2011/06/06/high-speed-rai...

[kitsunesoba]

What I’m curious of is why we haven’t yet tried contracting the companies responsible for Japan’s train system and just letting them run the show, with our only responsibility being acquiring the required land and clearing associated political hurdles. I’m sure Japan would be willing to lend a hand and they may even be able to do it for less time and money than domestic companies could.

[tdhoot]

Chinese and Japanese companies were filling to partially fund HSR in the US since it would open markets for their trainsets, but they all backed out because the US imposed "buy American" requirements that would make it impossible for them to use their trains.

[fooblitzky]

Aren't those "buy American" requirements illegal under the WTO?

[samlevine]

My understanding is that the French offered to build out HSR along I-5 between SF and LA during the Great Recession and California said they could do a better job for less money.

[1024core]

Yes, I believe it was Thalys with a proposal to build the train for $55B, and no further government subsidies! But that would not have helped the Californian politicians line their pockets, so that proposal was rejected.

[masonic]

But that wouldn't have rewarded public sector unions, which was the whole point of the project.

[ip26]

Infrastructure is the textbook example of pork barrel spending. i.e. each voting representative says, "I will only approve this project if <widget> is sourced from my district".

[SomeOldThrow]

I understand the issue to be dealing with three or four layers of government in each municipality as well as sourcing labor—not engineering competence.

[0xffff2]

It seems like the overwhelming majority of delays stem from legal issues. We would need to borrow Japan or China's legal system, not their rail companies.

[sv123]

It's going to take Seattle until 2035 to extend a light rail line four miles across the city.

[BurningFrog]

To be fair, those countries have the ideal population density for bullet trains.

[ehsankia]

What does that have to do with the cost and timeline of the project? Why should the population density make the project take 10x as long and cost 10x as much?

[BurningFrog]

You're right that it should really make it cheaper if the tracks mostly go through empty land.

Then again the fact that there isn't much need for this train due to the low potential ridership makes it so the heart of the state was never in the project, and no one was really committed to it.

[ilikehurdles]

Bullet trains travel vast distances and make few stops. CA is ideal for them.

[BurningFrog]

They also require huge populations to travel on them to justify the huge costs. That's where California falls short.

If we doubled the population, it would be pretty OK, and we have the job market for it, but that would require constructing housing, and California doesn't do that.