{"id":46322,"date":"2019-01-05T03:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-05T08:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46322"},"modified":"2019-01-04T12:38:32","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T17:38:32","slug":"we-may-already-have-passed-the-peak-of-high-speed-railways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/01\/05\/we-may-already-have-passed-the-peak-of-high-speed-railways\/","title":{"rendered":"We may already have passed the peak of High Speed Railways"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hans Bader<\/a> looks at the mass transit mess, including a brief glance at the state of high speed passenger rail:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So-called bullet trains generally turn out to be white elephants. South Korea is abolishing its celebrated high-speed rail line<\/a> from its capital, Seoul, to a nearby major city because it can\u2019t cover even the marginal costs of keeping the trains running. Most people who ride trains don\u2019t need maximum possible speed, and most of those who do will still take the plane to reach distant destinations.<\/p>\n

Despite Japan\u2019s much-vaunted bullet trains, most Japanese don\u2019t take the bullet train either; they take buses because the bullet train is too expensive. Bullet trains do interfere with freight lines, so Japanese freight lines carry much less cargo than in the United States, where railroads\u2014rather than trucks\u2014carry most freight, thereby reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

California\u2019s so-called bullet train is vastly behind schedule and over budget, and will likely never come close to covering its operating costs once it is built. As Reason<\/em> magazine noted, transportation officials have warned<\/a> that California\u2019s misnamed \u201cbullet train\u201d is a disaster in the making. California is drastically understating the costs of its high-speed rail project<\/a>. Just the first leg of this $77 billion<\/a> project will cost billions more than budgeted. And the project is already at least 11 years behind schedule<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hans Bader looks at the mass transit mess, including a brief glance at the state of high speed passenger rail: So-called bullet trains generally turn out to be white elephants. South Korea is abolishing its celebrated high-speed rail line from its capital, Seoul, to a nearby major city because it can\u2019t cover even the marginal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,24,237,13],"tags":[697,35,185,279,793],"class_list":["post-46322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-japan","category-railways","category-usa","tag-budget","tag-california","tag-highspeedrail","tag-korea","tag-subsidies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c38","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46323,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46322\/revisions\/46323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}