I’m really intrigued by your assertion, as I understand it, that the new economic reality has sprawl by the throat. Sounds kind of like the Soviet Union collapsing of its own weight.

As to sprawl, moving the stations to the edge of towns in the Valley would be moronic. Those stations need to be placed in the center of town. But sprawl is not a force of nature. It’s the product of cheap oil, cheap credit, and favorable land use laws. The first is gone forever. The second is gone for likely the next 5-10 years, perhaps longer. And while the Valley may still have favorable land use laws for sprawl, that alone cannot make up for the lack of cheap oil and cheap credit.

This is certainly true–particularly compared with pre-deregulation fares! However, it’s also worth noting that with the current cost of fuel, it’s actually uncompetitive (i.e., below cost). In the 4th quarter of calendar 2007, Southwest Airlines actually lost $200 million, not counting its gain of $300 million from fuel hedges. That’s a story on the good side of the news for domestic airlines for that quarter! This is only to point out that systemwide, Southwest’s fares don’t cover its costs, and it made up the difference elsewhere.

That said, Southwest has a fair amount of pricing power intra-California, and typical intra-California fares are significantly higher on a cost-per-seat-mile basis than fares on the most competitive routes (e.g., San Francisco-New York, SF-Chicago, LA-New York, etc.).

An appropriate comparison price to use might be the intra-California yield per seat-mile (times the number of miles) plus applicable fees, taxes, etc. This wouldn’t give you the lowest possible fare. Referring to time-limited Ding! fares may get close to that. However, it should give a decent sense of the average fare an airline is getting for a filled seat (plus taxes and fees). Of course, I don’t think information is usually available broken out in that way…

You want NEWS? What do you take me for? A newsman?

Yes, I did attend the CHSRA meeting, but you’ll have to wait ’til this weekend to read the story. As was pointed out at the meeting, the media have been all over high-speed rail lately, including people who get their paychecks from the same place I do.

One of the more interesting sideshows brewing was nicely covered by my colleague Dana Yates at the San Mateo Journal:
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=89765
If the link is broken into two lines, you may need to paste it back together in your browser (sorry).

Anyway, they were going on about how there should be all this smart growth in Fresno and Visalia and other places where growth just doesn’t come that way. Apparently, the vibe from those two towns is that they are toying with the idea of moving the stations to virgin, undeveloped soil outside of town. This is anathema to HSR’s environmentalist supporters, but as the board’s Valley member noted, there’s not a lot they can do, post-EIS, to make these places increase density around stations and prevent sprawl from blossoming outside of town.

I’m thinking of Chicago’s exurbs on steroids, of a million Waynes and Garths in the basements of the Central and Antelope Valleys….

On the subject of HSR fares, I have it on good authority (of the high-speed rail kind) that the newest fare projection from Anaheim to San Francisco is between $55 and $60. This summer, however, the authority will do a much more thorough study of likely fares, and those estimates are likely to go up.

That’s not to say it won’t be competitive with airlines, I’m just pointing out that the dirt-cheap fares we hear about from the authority won’t stand up to careful study.

Meanwhile I have taken a full size bike in a bike box – 1x3x4 feet in size on TGV, along with 2 bags.

Martin – we will spend around $150 billion on roads at just the state level during the same period (plus tens of billions more at the local level). So if the debts are repaid more slowly than forecast, we will spend slightly more than that. If the debts are repaid more quickly than forecast, we will spend slightly less than that. The state will benefit over the next 100+ years from a high speed system between its major population centers that is faster, cleaner, and cheaper than driving or flying. If you place positive utility future generations, then it’s a pretty open-and-shut case. If not (i.e., you are the private sector, looking to make a return in the next 10 to 20 years), it’s not so clear.

It is unlikely that, if built today, the Bay Bridge could pay for itself using private financing – you’d literally need to charge a toll in excess of $20. Does that mean that we should not build a new one as the lifespan of the current one expires? (which we are effectively doing on the eastern side) Maybe, but I wouldn’t argue that.