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Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

latimes.com

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that wouldn't fix the issue in such close proximity locations. Flying isn't optimal for that type of distance (less than 400 miles). You could lay track and get more volume on some high speed trains with comparable times (if you take into account the time for arrival / security clearance / etc at airports), the train could even be faster. Land rights are obviously the issue (esp in california), but adding…

how is it not optimal? its 1/3rd the travel time and $75 each way.

Flying is a lot more time spend on overhead.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#22
post #15
post #12

We're like the Yahoo of countries.

Based off our inability to build infrastructure? Boeing still builds a ton of airplanes in America. Tesla is founded and manufactured in America. In 20 years we've created the empires of iPhone, Google and Facebook. Wasn't CRISPR discovered in America as well?

I don't understand this behavior with some people being so defeatist about America. It's by no means perfect, but there is much innovation, growth, and development shown by her people.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#23

I feel like more international airports in SF and LA would be much more useful. More locations to touch-down in, less crowded airports. Getting from LA to SF is already quite easy travel wise - a 1 hr flight. It's getting to and from the airport and how crowded they are that's most annoying. More airports would help solve both of those.

[deleted]

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#24
post #15
post #12

We're like the Yahoo of countries.

Based off our inability to build infrastructure? Boeing still builds a ton of airplanes in America. Tesla is founded and manufactured in America. In 20 years we've created the empires of iPhone, Google and Facebook. Wasn't CRISPR discovered in America as well?

I'm more referring to the dysfunction of our government and institutions. But in a democracy, dysfunctional government is a manifestation of dysfunction in the people.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#25

Just curious..if China could help build it with half cost and half time, would CA accept? If not, why?

IIRC, SNCF, the French consortium, had offered up a plan to build the HSR from SF to LA. They asked for no public funding. http://marketurbanism.com/2012/07/10/what-i-learned-today-ab...

But, vitally, they didn't want to deal with all the politics of the routeing. Large infrastructure projects are always in large part down to politics, potentially to their detriment (in this case, the business case being weakened by higher construction costs and slower end-to-end journeys leading to less keen private investors).

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like that wouldn't fix the issue in such close proximity locations. Flying isn't optimal for that type of distance (less than 400 miles). You could lay track and get more volume on some high speed trains with comparable times (if you take into account the time for arrival / security clearance / etc at airports), the train could even be faster. Land rights are obviously the issue (esp in california), but adding…

how is it not optimal? its 1/3rd the travel time and $75 each way.

The HSR is supposed to go from SF downtown to LA in 2h40m. You want to go from city center to city center including airport security in 53 minutes?

The shortest SFO-LAX flight I see right now is 1h25m. Even if you made smaller, local, more efficient airports, I fail to see how you can hit 53 minutes while including commute time to the airport and clearing security.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#27
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based off our inability to build infrastructure? Boeing still builds a ton of airplanes in America. Tesla is founded and manufactured in America. In 20 years we've created the empires of iPhone, Google and Facebook. Wasn't CRISPR discovered in America as well?

I don't understand this behavior with some people being so defeatist about America. It's by no means perfect, but there is much innovation, growth, and development shown by her people.

Yeah maybe the trick to incredible innovation is just offering the shittiest transportation infrastructure and outrageously expensive healthcare. /s

The US is extremely great at some things and extremely terrible at others.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#28
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it not optimal? its 1/3rd the travel time and $75 each way.

The HSR is supposed to go from SF downtown to LA in 2h40m. You want to go from city center to city center including airport security in 53 minutes? The shortest SFO-LAX flight I see right now is 1h25m. Even if you made smaller, local, more efficient airports, I fail to see how you can hit 53 minutes while including commute time to the airport and clearing security.

> including commute time to the airport and clearing security.

You have to include that for the rail too, obviously.

Yes. You won't need to leave as much time for the train station as you do for the airport. Why? Because the airport services many more flights and is much more crowded. If we had more airports, it could become similar to a rail-station in terms of time needed at the station/airport.

In terms of time though, flying would still be faster, amazingly.

Flying: 45 mins to airport. 1 hr in airport. 1.5 hr flight. 45 mins to destination. Total: 4 hr

Rail: 45 mins to station. .5 hr in station. 2.75 hr travel. 45 mins to destination. Total: 4.75 hr

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#29
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't a lot of good places to put them, at least in the Bay Area.

Concord has an airport that used to have daily nonstops. A plane crash into a mall and assorted NIMBY's have closed it to daily scheduled commercial traffic, but it's still perfectly capable. Watsonville has an airport with plenty of room to better serve south bay and Santa Cruz. Moffett, of course. Even San Carlos has an airport with a fair amount of general aviation traffic. Hayward Executive always looms when I fl…

All of your suggestions are further from San Francisco than SFO is...

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#30
post #7
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda amazing that the Chinese could help build our railroads again...

We'll technology does tend to be cyclical.

I'm pretty sure every long living dynamical system is cyclical.
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