In addition to right away for high-speed rail only getting more expensive over time, what about the necessary I-5 expansions that will probably be needed sometime this century? I've only driven on I-5 up that way a few times since I'm not from the PNW, but I'm not even sure I-5 could be widened in some areas. It seems that increasing car-traffic flow in the future might be just as expensive as putting in rail.
I hear people complain about light rail and high-speed rail being boondoggles because of their expense, but if the same right of ways needed to be purchase for new road construction, wouldn't road construction cost be pretty close to the cost of the rail line? This doesn't even include the amount of underfunding across the country for road maintenance and the fact that property tax and gas tax don't come close to funding the maintenance needs.
>> "I'm not even sure I-5 could be widened in some areas"
The fundamental law of road congestion [0] states that you can't build your way out of a traffic jam.
This is because adding a new mile of road creates new supply X while simultaneously inducing demand Y, where Y > X in almost all transit markets where anyone wants to live. In e.g. the Seattle area, Y >> X.
As the name suggests, this is the most salient fact about highway construction. Yet it is widely ignored in urban planning circles.
From the abstract of the paper cited, "vehicle-kilometers traveled increases proportionately to roadway lane kilometers for interstate highways and probably slightly less rapidly for other types of roads." Congestion may not decrease but building more roadway lets more people get to travel where and when they want.
Cities are powerful because of ease and variety of people and businesses you can interact with. A fast point-to-point transportation system where one can travel with up to 40 tons stuff seems to me to be a great system. Cars and trucks have large external costs that we should vigorously try to reduce (physical pollution, noise pollution, land use for roads and parking, energy use, time wasted driving, etc.) but forcing people to use less desirable modes of transport by having the desired mode suck more due to traffic seems quite regressive. If we had instant teleportation from point to point, but the machine took up a city block and belched sulfur dioxide, I would hope the impulse for society would be to research decreasing the size and pollution of the machine and not to just restrict by law that there is to be only one machine per city.
I hear people complain about light rail and high-speed rail being boondoggles because of their expense, but if the same right of ways needed to be purchase for new road construction, wouldn't road construction cost be pretty close to the cost of the rail line? This doesn't even include the amount of underfunding across the country for road maintenance and the fact that property tax and gas tax don't come close to funding the maintenance needs.