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High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

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Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#101

Post by pzone »

helthanatos wrote: post #59
sand500 wrote: post #38

As I see it, the price of rail tickets will be pretty high.whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too?

High speed trains are much better than flights for small commutes, after the expenses are payed, it will be cheaper, it's easier to get on a train than wait hours for flights to take off. High speed rails are the future; flights are the past. Why would you not want to see this work out? Flying is quite annoying because it has constant delays, TSA, and hours of waiting in between.

It's not that I don't want to see it work out, or that I don't expect people would enjoy the ride more than flying. It sounds perfectly pleasant and nice.

But it has a pricetag of $64 billion. How much more exactly are they going to enjoy it, in dollar terms? How much is it worth sticking taxpayers so that wealthy SFLA commuters can have a slightly more pleasant experience?

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#102

Post by pzone »

erentz wrote: post #4
valuearb wrote: post #3

$64B just in startup costs, for a slower trip than flying. Why this infatuation with a technology that hasn't been leading edge since the 1800s?

Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.

Yes but $64 billion more comfortable?

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#103

Post by jorblumesea »

Forget high speed rail, where's the commuter trains? It seems ridiculous that in most US cities public transit is mostly non-existent. Traffic is bad in most major US cities you'd think people would be jumping for this as urbanization increases.

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#104

Post by ghaff »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #95
jzwinck wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can sometimes put an airport in the middle of a metro area as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_City_Airport London presently needs more runways and one of the serious proposals (now declined) was to build them in the Thames like the above.

Is there any reason Heathrow couldn't be moved out to the suburbs where expansion could take place to allow London to continue to be a worldwide travel hub, but then use high speed rail to connect with London proper?

Not sure what you're saying. Heathrow is sorta in the suburbs already--about an hour tube ride--but you can get from Heathrow to Paddington in about 15 minutes by Heathrow Express (which may or may not be a good value) with another rail project underway. Certainly Heathrow isn't going to be picked up and moved.

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#105

Post by twoodfin »

setpatchaddress wrote: post #76
fennecfoxen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the government ... will subsidize operating costs By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice.

Taxpayers subsidize all successful transit. True of cars, true of rail.

The subsidies are qualitatively different: If roads had to be paid for entirely from user fees in the form of gas or mileage taxes, they could be for effective rates not much higher than fuel prices of a few years ago. Capital and maintenance.

If you tried to charge passengers adequately to fund rail, the system would go into a death spiral, absent radical changes in consumer preferences.

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#106

Post by datahack »

If I had known that they were going to run this through the Central Valley instead of down the coast where it belongs I never would have voted for it. It should have gone straight from la to Oakland or emeryville, turned and gone straight to Sacramento. Instead we have a convoluted mess of rail connections that take people places they don't even want to go (no offense to Bakersfield buts it's hardly a holiday destination).

It's a farse because of how it's getting implemented, and nobody is under any illusions this isn't going to turn into another bay bridge budget monster in California.

Still a rail proponent, but bitterly disappointed in the implementation choices of this project.

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#107

Post by ghaff »

twblalock wrote: post #74
WildUtah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option. That's because Boston and NYC are both navigable without a car. Only one side of the SF-LA link can claim to be close to that ideal. But the time and hassle of airport parking and security and delays might be able to keep a 3.5 hour train ride viable even in CA. That would require a train system that allowed passenge…

> That's because Boston and NYC are both navigable without a car. Only one side of the SF-LA link can claim to be close to that ideal. Just put some car rental places near the station in LA, just like is done for airports.

I think the point is that one of the things making train travel to, say, Manhattan attractive vs. air is that I can just walk, subway, or take a shortish cab trip to my destination from Penn Station. That's a big advantage over getting into Manhattan from any of the NYC airports.

If the answer to arriving in LA is "you need to rent a car in any case" (which it often will be), then you lose one area of train potential advantage.

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#108

Post by ghaff »

acchow wrote: post #56
joshuaheard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the figures released before the project, it will cost the same, but take twice as long to go from LA to SF compared to flying. No one is going to take the train instead of flying, except maybe John Madden.

But wouldn't train connect city centers? Airports aren't really near anything.

It depends a lot too on how airports are connected to cities. While it admittedly probably takes a good hour from gate to hotel, the fact that I can hop on BART from SFO (or several train options from Heathrow to London) negates some of the airport vs. center city difference. Especially because it's not like you can just walk from a given downtown station to your final destination in all cases anyway.

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#109

Post by toomanybeersies »

DrScump wrote: post #66
_red wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumption is: plane with current on-time arrival percentage vs train with mythical 100% on-time arrival. There are a whole host of additional problems that affect rail travel that you never have to think about with air-travel. Currently, Amtrak OTA is 80% - so that means 1/5 of your trips will experience a delay of some sort.

Where right-of-way is shared with freight, freight has priority.

That seems rather backwards. Passengers are the more time-sensitive cargo than freight.

Re: High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

#110

Post by hkmurakami »

jimrandomh wrote: post #5
erentz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.

They are also much, much cheaper per mile. Something is wrong with construction in the US that makes rail lines dramatically more expensive here.

Not really. Tokyo-Osaka is going to be a bit under $200 whichever way you might choose. Maybe rail is $30 cheaper but it's a 15% difference rather than say 50%+.
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