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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

#81

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

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…

That's 90 minutes in the air, not total trip time.

The HSR is 160 minutes from downtown to downtown. There's no check-in, no security check, no arriving 1-2 hours early, no travel to and from the airport. When you count all of that, HSR will be faster than flying. It's also far, far more comfortable - there's no comparison there.

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

#82

Post by digianarchist »

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…

Brightline West will probably have more success primarily because the private property issues will be largely avoided.

> The project aims to transform transportation in the region with fully electric trains capable of reaching speeds up to 186 miles per hour, enabling the 218-mile trip between Rancho Cucamonga, California and the Las Vegas, Nevada to be completed in approximately two hours. Brightline has secured all key rights-of-way necessary to construct the railroad under long-term agreements, including leases, licenses and easements, with the states of Nevada and California and the federal government for passenger rail access to the existing I-15 corridor.

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

#83

Post by andbberger »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #75
rsync wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... 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.

the opportunity cost isn't a 7% increase in length, it's the tens of billions in extra infrastructure to build 350km/h right of way straight through the middle of every town all the way down the central valley, and the massive hit to SF-LA run time that will come with that. beyond the stop penalty, HSR just doesn't run at full speed through city centers anywhere in the world. doesn't happen.

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

#84

Post by andbberger »

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.

there absolutely is, SF-LA is an ideal city pair

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

#85

Post by rsynnott »

nimish wrote: post #30

I think the biggest issue with CAHSR is that Florida just did it anyway.

> Brightline's maximum operating speed is 125 mph (200 km/h)

I mean, you could call it high speed rail, I suppose, but it's not really the same sort of thing.

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

#86

Post by cuuupid »

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.

It is so, so, so much easier to build freeways, roads, and highways than rail systems.

It is also absolutely necessary to have roads to move people and goods as not everyone and everything can be transported on rail or even is near rail (even post-HSR).

It is also an income center. California _makes_ money from spending on roads because of job creation (=tax revenue), taxes on vehicle sales, taxes on fuel, tolls, freight fees, and more: https://www.calbike.org/there-is-no-deficit-in-californias-t...

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

#87

Post by fraserharris »

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…

Fresno / Central Valley is not the circuitous route, which is quite close to the I-5 near Bakersfield. The true circuitous detour is between Bakersfield and LA, where the route is planned to go East through the Antelope Valley with a station at Palmdale.

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

#88

Post by ActorNightly »

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.

More young people need to actually start voting to get all the NIMBYism out of the government, and then change can happen.

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

#89

Post by andbberger »

CAHSR was killed decades ago by politics and corruption. whether or not choosing the valley route over I5 doomed the project is debatable, but choosing pacheco and tehachapi over altamont and tejon certainly did.

your guess is as good as mine as to why things like water infrastructure and telecoms are quietly built to requirements in the background while rail infrastructure is opened to the public forum, but the inability or unwillingness of the state government to go full climate stalin on this project and design it without compromise killed it.

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

#90

Post by queenkjuul »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #19
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.

I’ve heard so many business guys running startups say the same thing about their brilliant idea. Once the plan is in place you just do daily standups and your engineers poop out perfect features at the rate of 1 ticket/day.

The whole point of building the grade separated guideway is to make the track maintenance (and installation) as predictable and reliable as possible. Once the guideway is there, laying the track really is the easy part.

Hundreds of tons of concrete is no longer a "brilliant idea," it's physical infrastructure designed for the purpose of installing rails.

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