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

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

#71

Post by bombcar »

queenkjuul wrote: post #38
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…

I get so tired of hearing that HSR doesn't make sense federally. The entire country east of the Mississippi has comparable population and density to western Europe. Plus the sheer size and lack of people sure doesn't stop the federal government from maintaining thousands of miles of interstate through vast swaths of nowhere.

Those interstates move millions of pounds of goods - probably way more important than the people.

And the US freight rail system is the envy of the world.

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

#72

Post by rsync »

legitster wrote: post #65
rsync wrote: post #13

One issue with "CA HSR" is that it isn't even "high speed". We may have happily referred to is as "high speed rail" 30 or 40 years ago but, given a possible completion date of 2035 (or whatever) the 2:40 travel time from SF LA is unimpressive ... and even that will not be achieved: "California legislative overseers do not expect the 2 hr 40 min target will be achieved."[1] The simple fact is that the I-5 corridor is…

Unfortunately there simply isn't enough demand between SF and LA alone to justify the insanely long stretches of a direct rail project. A better way would have been to build it out from the city into the suburbs first as a commuter rail project. There isn't a ton of intercity demand for this rail, but there is tons of traffic in and out of each singular city to justify even medium speed rail.

"Unfortunately there simply isn't enough demand between SF and LA alone to justify the insanely long stretches of a direct rail project."

I will stipulate that that is correct at this very moment.

However, it is my contention that a truly high speed rail link (sub two hour) between SF and LA would have manufactured demand as an entirely new set of trips, activities and lifestyles would have been enabled by the ability to step on a train in LA and step off at the salesforce tower 1:55 later ...

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

#73

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

rsync wrote: post #13

One issue with "CA HSR" is that it isn't even "high speed". We may have happily referred to is as "high speed rail" 30 or 40 years ago but, given a possible completion date of 2035 (or whatever) the 2:40 travel time from SF LA is unimpressive ... and even that will not be achieved: "California legislative overseers do not expect the 2 hr 40 min target will be achieved."[1] The simple fact is that the I-5 corridor is…

CA HSR actually is "high speed."

The distance from LA to SF is about 665 km (following the planned HSR route). A travel time of 2:40 means the train has an average (not top) speed of 250 km/h, which is very competitive internationally. Even if we use the shorter I-5 route as the baseline, the average speed is still 230 km/h.

That's competitive with the fastest French TGV lines, and much faster than most European HSR lines. For reference, the fastest lines in the world run at an average speed of about 290 km/h (e.g., Beijing - Shanghai).

Calling this a "slow, circuitous route" is really not accurate at all. If CA HSR gets built as originally planned, it will be one of the faster systems in the world, and nearly as good as the best systems in Europe.

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

#74

Post by bombcar »

jeffbee wrote: post #12
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…

Your theory does not explain why the state of California is capable of discharging $25 billion into freeway construction annually . It obviously cannot be the case that US states are incapable of executing public works projects.

CA has built tens of miles, probably hundreds, maybe even into the thousands of miles of tracked transit in the time HSR has been building. CA can certainly do what it wants - or maybe do what it needs.

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

#75

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

rsync wrote: post #67
slt2021 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article states that I-5 corridor skips all major towns in central valley which kinda kills the purpose of HSR connecting SF to central valley towns to LA

"... which kinda kills the purpose of HSR connecting SF to central valley towns to LA ..." Yes, that's exactly right. The original - and highest value - purpose was a high speed rail route between SF and LA. The meandering route through Fresno (and the new, ex post facto "purpose" the article refers to) is the result of political machinations that happened after the fact and traded utility for brief, local (and trivi…

The route through Fresno is only 50 km longer than the I-5 route. It's a difference of 7% in total length.

Going through the two biggest cities in the Central Valley is worth a 7% increase in track length.

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

#76

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

slt2021 wrote: post #31

Reading the article I think CAHSR is using agile method of delivering value. Electrification of caltrain in sfbay, removing rr crossings in LA, finishing overall plan and acquisitions, laying relatively low cost and easy central valley track, while putting the most costly activities to the end: boring an actual tunnels in mountain ranges

The problem is that it takes a long time to bore tunnels. If anything they should have started that early.

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

#77

Post by queenkjuul »

jmyeet wrote: post #44

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 prot…

I don't really have a huge problem with the route. Branch lines to individual towns don't really make sense - you lay even more track, need more trains, complicate operations, and the value proposition for potential customers in those towns drops substantially vs a one seat ride to any destination.

Honestly given the once in a lifetime scale of the project, too, if they run a train from LA to SF by 2050 it even 2060 I'll actually be quite happy. There's no reason it couldn't keep operating for a hundred years after that. I mean I'm skeptical of that happening as well lol I'm just saying, projects like these will serve many generations and will only get more expensive in the future, so i support biting the bullet on doing them now despite our inefficient, backwards way of doing them.

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

#78

Post by fvrghl »

legitster wrote: post #58

The reality is for every government constraint, there are even more difficult economic constraints that it has to work against. A 90-minute flight between these SF and LA can be had for ~$80 or less. A 7-hour bus ticket between these two cities is ~$50. To put it another way, the train would have to be only half-again more expensive per passenger to operate than a bus to beat a flight on price. I get it that there ar…

The flight doesn’t include the time to get to and from the airport plus TSA screening.

I greatly prefer taking a train because I can just show up and go.

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

#79

Post by rsynnott »

legitster wrote: post #58

The reality is for every government constraint, there are even more difficult economic constraints that it has to work against. A 90-minute flight between these SF and LA can be had for ~$80 or less. A 7-hour bus ticket between these two cities is ~$50. To put it another way, the train would have to be only half-again more expensive per passenger to operate than a bus to beat a flight on price. I get it that there ar…

It's a similar distance to Paris to Marseille, a 3 hour journey. Price for that seems to vary between 29 and 80 EUR depending on time of day.

That's "get on the train, get off the train three hours later", so in practice is much faster than a 90 minute flight, which is "get to airport, go through security, walk seemingly endlessly to gate, fly, walk seemingly endlessly through baggage claim etc etc, get out of airport". The train is, of course, also _far_ more comfortable than a plane. Personally, I'd opt for the train...

I suspect if the damn thing ever gets built, flying between SF and LA will more or less become a thing of the past. Like, why would you?

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

#80

Post by cuuupid »

queenkjuul wrote: post #38
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…

I get so tired of hearing that HSR doesn't make sense federally. The entire country east of the Mississippi has comparable population and density to western Europe. Plus the sheer size and lack of people sure doesn't stop the federal government from maintaining thousands of miles of interstate through vast swaths of nowhere.

If you look at it by map there's not much more interstate highway than railway.

Interstate highway is also far cheaper to build and maintain than you would imagine. It took around $114 billion to build interstate across the entire country, while the high speed rail project in just California is already upwards of $128 billion.

On Europe that is kind of exactly my point, high speed rail in Europe is built and maintained by federal governments with high levels of participation, interest and oversight from their population. This can never happen in the US because our federal government has to oversee a very wide amount of area and states are not so autonomous and self-governed that their populations primarily interest themselves with their state governments.

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