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Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

asteriskmag.com

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Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#41

Post by jeffbee »

jandrese wrote: post #27
jeffbee wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the piece points out, the lack of rail is pretty much irrelevant. Once all the guideways are in place, there is a machine that you just drive along that poops out perfect rails at ~1km/hr. It is the most trivial part of the project.

That's kinda like saying a car is easy to build because they have automated painting robots. Fundamentally the problem is that most of the land they want to use is owned by someone else, and that means every single parcel is a potential, and often actual, legal fight. In theory this is what eminent domain is supposed to accomplish, but people dislike eminent domain more than they like high speed rail. Well meaning bu…

The point is that people who talk about the lack of literal rails are doing that because they have no idea how a railroad is built, or they are intentionally misleading you.

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#42

Post by Lammy »

> Only if the Central Valley alignment had been selected would CAHSR actually the “train to nowhere” that critics deride it as.

Can't wait to pay $400 per trip to visit all of these lovely places: https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20220427-Agend...

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#43

Post by mlyle »

cuuupid wrote: post #25
ryandrake wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What options are even left at this point? Look at countries that do have high speed rail, which are of similar size to US states, and study what they are doing differently?

This would work if we could run state governments like mini "countries" but there is not enough interest from the electorate and thus very little oversight so they end up in a bad way. I would like very much for California's state legislature to be on par with, say, South Korea (similar population size & dispersion with great bullet train infrastructure). Unfortunately it operates much more like Thailand or El Salvad…

> This would work if we could run state governments like mini "countries" but there is not enough interest from the electorate and thus very little oversight so they end up in a bad way.

Which is circular; there's less attention because we don't.

> I would like very much for California's state legislature to be on par with, say, South Korea (similar population size & dispersion with great bullet train infrastructure).

About 1/4th the land area of California and much more .. "square". The long line in South Korea is 275 miles long; versus roughly 800 miles for the California HSR system. And California's system is facing a public that's much less accustomed to and receptive to rail, and endpoints that basically require you to have a car anyways.

We should have spent all this money on making local rail awesome. It'd make a much bigger difference in day to day life, would pay off quicker, and would prepare the ground for doing HSR.

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#44

Post by jmyeet »

The California HSR reveals pretty much every problem with building anything in the US: private property, local interests and grift.

It also shows that mandating the speed in the amendment was probably a bad idea as it's greatly increased the cost projections.

China has a command economy so simply doesn't have to deal with eminent domain (and challenges thereto), environmental challenges (as much as environmental protection is a nobel goal, laws in California like CEQA have really been weaponized and the sole purpose is to stop any development whatsoever by local property interests), etc.

The route is being changed so include towns of 30,000 in the Central Valley. It's running down the I-5 corridor last I heard because that's where these small towns are vs the faster route to the west.

Just build connecting lines if connections to small communities are important. The primary purpose should be LA to SF&SJ.

If the HSR runs a train from LA to SF before 2050 I'll be shocked.

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#45

Post by Rebelgecko »

Lammy wrote: post #42

> Only if the Central Valley alignment had been selected would CAHSR actually the “train to nowhere” that critics deride it as. Can't wait to pay $400 per trip to visit all of these lovely places: https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20220427-Agend...

Where are you getting $400 from?

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#46

Post by mistrial9 »

jeffbee wrote: post #20
KerrAvon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they have more efficient central planning, less red tape, and they don't let people like Elon Musk come in and derail the project with dubious and irrelevant alternatives

It really all comes down to civil vs. common law. In America, anyone can hold you over a barrel in court, indefinitely, for any or no reason, until you agree to their extortion.

unfortunately it is worse than that.. a basic and non-trivial State of California project was being done in an office near me, and I knew some of the people. So I saw a bit about how it progressed.. lots of requirements, lots of people from multiple unrelated and slightly competitive groups. The work was mostly intellectual assesment and evaluations with a lot of reports. The thing was funded at professional values.

About six months of work with lots of progress meetings with State of California bureaucrats to "keep them informed" .. and lo-and-behold.. as the required deadlines started getting closer, the State reps changed requirements, made amendments to deliverables.. the last three weeks, even MORE change orders "non-negotiable" .. I have never in my life seen major requirements changed on a multi-party project in the last weeks of a deadline like that. It was like the bureaucrats drank a lot of something, felt the "excitement" and HAD to change things to be "involved and hands on" .. it was STUPID and caused DAMAGE. There was no choice -- the State was paying.

That is how they do things in "infinite income" Sacramento ?

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#47

Post by cuuupid »

prpl wrote: post #29
cuuupid wrote: post #7

The problem with local infrastructure projects is their responsibility and execution fall to local community leaders (in this case local = state of California). These leaders are far less efficient and impactful than the federal government, a bar which is already way too low. Nearly every city in the US has had recent collisions with corruption, blatant mismanagement, ideological forces co-opting process, etc. and so…

We could actually just pay more money to public governmental employees, allow them to build careers (and raise families), and stop contracting out everything. This would also increase competition for such roles. How we got here is ultimately, especially for CA, land and legal cost, cost of living, and public employee salary relative to private salaries. That’s endemic to major metro areas in the US, with some small e…

You're right and everyone -- including government contractors -- has been quietly shouting this for ages, but existing efforts have already been ideologically co-opted and new efforts are too brash and can't wrap their head around spending more to save more.

Also 18F was not truly shut down and still lives on at GSA, albeit only the worst parts. They're hard at work adding as much red tape as they can imagine to procurement of software and recently boasted about their collective organization answering a whopping 1200 emails in a month.

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#48

Post by pkaye »

divbzero wrote: post #5

Does anyone know how Florida’s Miami–Orlando Brightline is doing? I believe that’s the only higher-speed rail route opened since Acela.

The Florida Brightline is limited to 125 mph. Also no grade separation which is needed for higher speeds. Generally countries use grade separation when speeds exceed 110-120 mph. California really needs the 200-220 mph to make the trip worthwhile so it needs to be grade separated. A lot of the work done so far in California is the overpasses over freeways and roads its crossing.

Brightline has had a lot of fatalities due to lack of grade separation.

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/death-train-a-timeline-of...

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#49

Post by alpb »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #17

It's absolutely critical that a country with California's GDP learns how to rearchitect itself to build again -- literally critical for America's progression. Nothing in this article makes me feel any better about the prospects of that happening.

Unfortunately our country has no motion any longer and the crumbling infrastructure is a good sign of prolonged decay that has started.

I think this whole article/title is ragebait at best.

Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

#50

Post by bombcar »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #28
kaonwarb wrote: post #4

There are some really good details in the article. But, to quote: > Despite more than a decade of predictions of its failure, the project has persevered — even if its completion is in limbo. I'm not sure that's much of an endorsement.

Yeah. Reports of its death may have been exaggerated, but reports of its life are a bit flimsy.

Once a project is measured in papal reigns instead of years … yeah.
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