Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of your suggestions are further from San Francisco than SFO is...
It would still make SFO less crowded.
Do you know how long it'd take to drive from Watsonville to Market Street?
Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
51–60 of 81 posts
Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#52I 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.
Airports take a lot more space than train stations.
Living near an airport is horrible due to noise. Trains are a lot quieter than planes.
You can fit more people on a train than on a plane.
You can load that train with more people a lot more quickly than a plane.
Train stations can be underground if necessary.
You'll have less pollution from the train.
One downside pointed out below, it seems there is a problem with building the rail line. You need to train up high speed rail engineers, create the manufacturing base to make the thing and maintain it, and probably won't have another in the whole country. Or maybe one other in the north east.
Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#53So Elon Musk is running a 4th, 5th organization now?
Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#54I 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.
Airports take a lot more space than train stations. Living near an airport is horrible due to noise. Trains are a lot quieter than planes. You can fit more people on a train than on a plane. You can load that train with more people a lot more quickly than a plane. Train stations can be underground if necessary. You'll have less pollution from the train. One downside pointed out below, it seems there is a problem with…
There's effort to build high speed rail in Texas as well:
Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#55I 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.
HSR and "more airports" are not substitutes.
Airports don't address the need for capacity on trips shorter than the SF-LA route (e.g. Fresno-SJ or Bakersfield-LA). Rail lines do address this kind of infill transportation.
More airports by themselves don't make it easier to get "to and from the airport" -- for this, you need more highway capacity. Most calls to build more airports tend to ignore this fact and its associated costs. (Rail stations, on the other hand, are distributed along a line and don't induce the kind of traffic congestion at a single point that you'd see with an airport node.)
The real alternative to HSR is a massive expansion of the highway system, including I-5, and more airports. I would like to see critics of HSR propose a plan that addresses both needs.
Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#56I really don't get this project. The math just doesn't add up. It's going to cost ~$67 billion dollars and there are ~39 million people in California.
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Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#57I really don't get this project. The math just doesn't add up. It's going to cost ~$67 billion dollars and there are ~39 million people in California.
What's the proper per capita cost of public transportation infrastructure?
Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 th…
Wow, this is wholly unrealistic. When I take commuter rail, its a 10 minute trip to the train station, and I need to be there 5 minutes before. When I get off I'm also right in downtown, instead of out in the brambles like SeaTac, JFK or Denver.
A rail line can easily move 20k people an hour, can't say the same about a similarly priced or staffed airport.
Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#59Just curious..if China could help build it with half cost and half time, would CA accept? If not, why?
It's the country your building it in, not the people who are doing it.
Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flying is a lot more time spend on overhead.
Security overhead should be the same for high speed trains.
God, I hope not. It makes zero sense to have TSA theater for high speed intercity trains but not local public transportation, because the latter has far greater passenger volumes. If terrorists wanted to cause mass chaos using a public transit system, they would go for local subway and commuter train lines.