150 years ago, technology meant railroads, not semiconductors. I mean, precisely 150 years ago—today is the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad from Oakland to Omaha, completed with a golden spike.

I had a friend from Omaha, and he said that it is famous for being the exact geographical center of the continental 48 states. So building the railroad from California was almost precisely halfway across the US. There was already an East Coast railroad system, so getting to Omaha meant you could go from Oakland to the East Coast. A lot of that original railroad has been rerouted over the years, but if you drive through the Sierras on I-80, that is the original handmade railbed and the original tunnels you see across the valley, although obviously with new tracks.

The spike, by the way, is in the Cantor Museum at Stanford University. Leland Stanford was Chairman of CPPR, one of the three companies that built the railroad. That's how he made enough money to found a university. CPPR built the line from Sacramento to the point in Utah where the line met with Union Pacific coming the other way. The third company, Western Pacific Railroad, had the easy task from Sacramento to Oakland. It wasn't originally going to be built since they could transfer to boats in Sacramento already.

Freight vs Passenger

I mentioned Omaha, and it's also famous for Warren Buffet and his Berkshire-Hathaway Corporation. Well, he has his own railroad, too. About 10 years ago he bought the part of BNSF that he didn't already own. Railroads in the US are all about freight. That's where the money is.

One thing that is not well understood about railroads is that you can't really mix freight and passengers. The US has the most efficient freight railroads in the world, but freight trains are huge and go slowly, so you can't run a good passenger service on the same tracks. In many ways, the US has the best railroad system in the world. But for freight, not passengers.

Rail is just not a very effective way of moving passengers. There are too many tons of train to be moved, and it's expensive to move them fast. Yes, occasionally if you're not going too far, it's comfortable to travel by train in Europe or Japan. But those nice passenger trains mean that almost all their freight has to go by road. Only 11% in the case of France, for example, goes by rail and the rest by road (a little by water, I guess). Rail is also very expensive. There are only one (maybe two) high-speed trains that cover their costs, and that is Tokyo to Osaka/Kyoto (and maybe Paris to Lyon).

The US has another challenge with high-speed rail: It is a big country and the distances are too long, so it makes more sense to fly most of the time. Rail is inherently expensive since there is so much fixed infrastructure in tracks. In effect, flying just needs the stations. And flying is unbelievably energy efficient over long distances. See my post, Why Don't Planes Obey Moore's Law, for details.

Public Infrastructure

We also have a big challenge with public infrastructure today in the US. The people who use it generally are not interested enough in it to pay what it costs to sustain it.

Here's something amazing:

According to Dan Richard, who used to be the chair of the California High-Speed Rail authority, as of 2008, the year California voters approved selling $9 billion worth of bonds for high-speed rail, China only had one high-speed rail line that was about 250 miles long. Since then, in the time it has taken California to complete 0 miles, China has opened nearly 18,000 miles of lines.

It has also built 84,000 miles of freeways (over a longer time period) and is building another 6,000 a year. In California, the real challenges are not the engineering, but things like purchasing land, environmental impact reports, getting through the lawsuits, and so on.

One example of these challenges is the new Eastern span of the Bay Bridge. It was estimated at $250M, but it cost $6.5B and took 11 years to build (2002 to 2013). By comparison, the entire bridge was originally built in three years from 1933 to 1936. Not just the old Eastern cantilever span, but the Western suspension span, and what is still the largest bore transportation tunnel in the world through Yerba Buena Island.

But building the Bay Bridge in three years was slacking compared to the Empire State Building. It was designed in two weeks, based on an existing design for a building in another city, and the steelwork topped out 23 weeks after the start of construction. It was structurally complete 36 weeks after that. And 30% under budget.

And the original Transcontinental Railroad? It was almost 2,000 miles long, and built in six years from 1863 to May 10, 1869—150 years ago today.

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