High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by gozur88 » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 12:31 AM UTC

shiny wrote: post #127

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…

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.

We have more good potential farmland in CA than we have water. I don't see the impact to agriculture as being very large if the water allotment can be transferred.

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

#282

Post by gozur88 » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 12:39 AM UTC

erentz wrote: post #92

rst wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other successful high-speed rail systems (France's TGV, for example) also have dedicated rights-of-way, not shared with older equipment, and rail physically built to different standards (specially welded). You really don't want genuinely high-speed trains (300 km/h) running on the same tracks as anything slower, in normal operation. And if you try to build a high-speed system on earlier rights-of-way, you get somethi…

Correct. A difference is they start by thinking of (and running) the rail network as a whole system of supporting lines. Then add high speed railway segments to the network like expressways along key routes. This is what I think CA should do/have done. It's not too late actually, they could set up a "Caltrak". Develop a state wide rail plan that covered everything but urban metros, and begin buying assets/access and…

This. I know HSR is sexy, but for the money California should put in a conventional rail network first. People would take the train between San Francisco and LA, say, if speeds were comparable to driving.

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

#283

Post by redwood » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 2:01 AM UTC

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…

If you look carefully at a map, LA is actually as far East as Lake Tahoe. It's confusing but what this means is essentially going through the Central Valley is not really particularly out of the way. In fact that's why the fastest way to drive to La is on I5. It was also important to incorporate all major metropolitan areas in the state for political reasons.

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

#284

Post by jmalicki » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 3:09 AM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #190

pm24601 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously - trains should go where the people are. The people are in the central valley. Between Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz the population is very light and the terrain is very difficult. It wasn't until the 20th century that access to the Big Sur area was possible. And even today for over a hundred miles highway 1 is the only access. Fresno - 509,000 people Bakersfield - 363,000 people The first segment connects 1…

trains should go where the people are That's why the money would be better spent on local transit improvements inside the Los Angeles area and the Bay Area, not connecting them.

It's not an either-or proposition - the local subway systems in both LA and the Bay Area are undergoing very large expansions at the same time.

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

#285

Post by jmalicki » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 3:11 AM UTC

pm24601 wrote: post #174

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…

Seriously - trains should go where the people are. The people are in the central valley. Between Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz the population is very light and the terrain is very difficult. It wasn't until the 20th century that access to the Big Sur area was possible. And even today for over a hundred miles highway 1 is the only access. Fresno - 509,000 people Bakersfield - 363,000 people The first segment connects 1…

BART is already being extended to Livermore (just west of the Altamont pass), and already goes to Dublin, so that area is at least already well-served by regional transit.

Going over the Pacheco Pass allows the train to hit San Jose and the Silicon Valley without going through huge windy detours, which has a lot more people in it than the Altamont Pass area.

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

#286

Post by Gibbon1 » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 4:30 AM UTC

pm24601 wrote: post #267

Gibbon1 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding and part of why I support the high speed rail project is this. Airports in California coastal cities are near max capacity. And expansion is either very expensive[1] or near impossible. And would face even more community objections than the high speed rail project. So the airlines likely wouldn't try to compete with high speed rail. Instead they would try to attract more national and international tr…

SFO back in early 2000 was trying for a runway repositioning that was priced at $3.5 billion ( http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=00-P13-0002... ) . Mind you this was just for repositioning runways. Not increasing fair weather capacity.

I was trying to be conservative. But yeah. Take the six or so coastal airports times a couple of billion each for expansion. And add that Bakersfield and Fresno are undeserved. That adds up to a big chunk of the money needed to build the Bay Area to LA Basin part of the project.

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

#287

Post by prostoalex » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 5:38 AM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #271

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…

> no offense to Bakersfield buts it's hardly a holiday destination No, it's not. I was born in and grew up there, and I'm glad I left (though as a kid, I thought it was a nice place to live). But it (and Fresno, and the CV in general) does have something that the coast and SF/LA doesn't have: Low-cost housing/property. Imagine being able to live in Bako, Fresno, etc - and commute quickly to SF or LA. By high-speed ra…

> Provided that it didn't cost a lot

Seems to be the kicker with using these trains for commuter purposes. Everywhere you look - Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Eurostar - the prices seem to be at either high double digits or low triple digits one way.

The way it was sold to voters in California is that it would become a revenue generator, so some additional padding is needed for profit margins.

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

#288

Post by jimmybobbyjones » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 5:47 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #46

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…

"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 at least once per month." I'm curious how that happened to you - I used to fly SFO-LAX from time to time, and was surprised that they didn't even really worry about me missing my flight - they just told me to catch the next one in line. United runs 27 flights daily f…

> I'm curious how that happened to you

Mostly a combination of needing to travel at particular times to particular airports.

The last two flights from SJC to LAX each evening seemed to be the most often delayed. You can't exactly hop on the next flight if it doesn't leave until the following morning.

Morning flights to SFO are often delayed due to weather, and fighting peninsula traffic to get to work sucks. BUR-SJC on Southwest would have been optimal from a flying perspective, but LAX was a shorter drive.

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

#289

Post by solstice » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 7:27 AM UTC

capkutay wrote: post #163

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…

It is really disappointing that it doesn't at least go near the coast. I doubt they'd be able to eminent domain coastal lands now that california homeowners are so politically powerful now, but they at least could have tried to build it along the 101 so it was driving/bus distance to the coast. If you want to take a beautiful coastal train ride, nothing beats the Amtrak from LA to San Diego.

With climate change and rising sea levels those coastal areas arent going to be long-term habitable anyway

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

#290

Post by doh » Tue, Feb 14, 2017, 7:45 AM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #279

doh wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Directing water to a tree to grow almonds, and directing it to a stream to support the delta smelt are both human directed usages. You can't just count the usages you don't like to make the number look big.

If you're looking at it this way, that every single stream is managed, then yes, you're right. I rather think that we develop only the water sources that make the most sense and leave the rest be.

This way we could talk about the incredible amounts of gold that is diluted in oceans that we could harvest "anytime" [0]. It's around 21x more than humans mined in the whole history.

[0] http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html