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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

#191

Post by gydfi »

sethhochberg wrote: post #186
gydfi wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once autonomous driving works well, I see no reason why cars can't scream along I-5 at twice the current speed, too. So five hours could become three and a bit, door to door. They could even autonomously draft behind each other for maximum efficiency. Cars could be designed with high speed drafting aerodynamics in mind. With that, a line of cars might actually be more energy efficient than a high speed train running…

I'd be surprised if a "car train" running on rubber tires, even if as aerodynamically efficient somehow as a high-speed train, could ever match the same efficiency per occupant-mile. Ignoring everything else, steel wheels on steel rails have a massive efficiency advantage from lower rolling resistance alone - and a train carrying 400 people is going to have far fewer wheels per passenger than a "car train" carrying 4…

Yep, rolling resistance is the big factor in favour of the train.

The big factors for the car-train are much smaller cross sectional area and the fact that it's always exactly as long as it needs to be, unlike the train which needs to run even when it's mostly empty.

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

#192

Post by ktRolster »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #47
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?

One advantage of rail is you can put a station in the middle of a metro area, removing travel time to the airport.

The California High Speed Rail will end farther from San Francisco city than the airport currently is.

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

#193

Post by doh »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #187
milesrout wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80% of California's water is used by agriculture.

This is false. I don't blame you because it is often repeated. But agriculture only accounts for about 40% of California's water use. In an average year, about 39% of California's water consumption, or 34.1 million acre-feet, is used for agricultural purposes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Uses_of_wa...

It's actually not false. If you read the article you posted, you will see that half of the water is used for environmental uses. That means is not used by humans, but "let go".

So if you sum the rest, agriculture does use 80% of the water used by humans.

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

#194

Post by joshfraser »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #187
milesrout wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80% of California's water is used by agriculture.

This is false. I don't blame you because it is often repeated. But agriculture only accounts for about 40% of California's water use. In an average year, about 39% of California's water consumption, or 34.1 million acre-feet, is used for agricultural purposes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Uses_of_wa...

Also from that link:

"Solely relying on these statewide volumes is controversial because they don't consider the fact that most of the volume of water used for environmental purposes includes flows down Wild and Scenic Rivers in the North Coast where there is no practical way to recover it for either agricultural or urban use because it lacks many connections to the statewide water supply system."

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

#195

Post by djrogers »

yellowapple wrote: post #68
jimmybobbyjones wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA, I have no trouble imagining that the train can compete with flying between SF and LA. Even if the train has to stop in several backwater towns along the way. The shuttle flights between SFO/SJC and LAX are completely unreliable. When I was doing the SF-LA haul regularly, I'd be delayed (delayed!) by 6+ hours…

"I have no trouble imagining that the train can compete with flying between SF and LA. Even if the train has to stop in several backwater towns along the way." Especially if the train stops in "several backwater towns" (Fresno and Bakersfield ain't particularly glamorous, but I'd hardly call them "backwaters"; I digress...), this will automatically be more useful than just an ordinary flight between SFO and LAX for t…

That ignores the fact that there are already 6 airports in Southern California and 3 (5 if you include Central Valley airports) in Northern California. Do you really think getting to Disneyland or Pasadena will be faster if you take a train to downtown LA than if you flew to SNA or BUR or ONT?

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

#196

Post by Gibbon1 »

jorblumesea wrote: post #103

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.

Lost in the high speed rail bit, the CHSR is actually what you're asking for. Because it serves as commuter rail in the Bay Area and LA Basin. And to a lesser extent elsewhere. That's the actual reason it's expensive.

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

#197

Post by NickNerdy »

milesrout wrote: post #140
shiny wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another potential concern is that it runs through some good farmland, which CA has some of the best of in the world. I would love to have an HSR along the coast however. When I was in Taiwan it was amazing being able to get to the bottom of the island in a couple hours.

>some good farmland, which CA has some of the best of in the world. Is that a joke? California is a terrible place to be farming. Farming in California is only viable because farmers are allowed unfettered access to water, depriving it from residents (who are told they should turn off the water in the shower while farmers are pouring untold millions of gallons on crops that could be grown somewhere actually suited to…

From a nytimes article "the valley is the world’s largest patch of Class 1 soil, the best there is. The 25-degree (or so) temperature swing from day to night is an ideal growing range for plants. The sun shines nearly 300 days a year. The eastern half of the valley (and the western, to some extent) uses ice melt from the Sierra as its water source, which means it doesn’t have the same drought and flood problems as the Midwest. The winters are cool, which offers a whole different growing season for plants that cannot take the summer heat. There’s no snow."

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

#198

Post by djrogers »

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.

In Southern California this is utterly untrue. Burbank, Ontario, Santa Monica, Long Beach, and Orange County/Santa Ana are all airports with multiple daily flights to/from Northern California, and between them you're close to 75-80% of the Los Angeles area. A train that stop at union station downtown will be close to one place - downtown. LA doesnt really work that way though - it's ridiculously spread out.

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

#199

Post by txdv »

datahack wrote: post #106

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 destina…

In germany they have a similar problem, if you want to build a train rail through some unimportant backwaters, these backwaters will want you to make a stop in their little cities.

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

#200

Post by djrogers »

stuckagain wrote: post #13
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?

It will be much faster than flying for door-to-door downtown-to-downtown trips.

The Bay Area and Southern California are incredibly huge areas - The vast majority of travelers between the two are not going 'downtown-to-downtown'.
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