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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

#131

Post by fwip »

GeekyBear wrote: post #107
gruez wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and extremely unpopular Who's shedding a tear for some farmer getting paid above market rates (presumably) for their land? California is probably the last place I'd expect people to think using eminent domain in this case is a slipper slope to communism or whatever.

Eventually you will have to build out the rail line in densely populated areas (especially near San Francisco and LA). High speed rail requires that you to avoid unnecessary curves. At that point, you're going to have to start using imminent domain. Putting it off until after you have billions of dollars in sunk costs in the Central Valley doesn't change that.

*eminent domain, from a Latin-ish phrase "dominium eminens."

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

#132

Post by yongjik »

detaro wrote: post #125
nineplay wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced. The train is not competing with driving to SF, the train is competing with flying to SF. LAX -> SFO is 1.25 hours. There's time to the airport, time to check in, time through security of course, but there's going to be similar issues at the train station so the customer has to be convinced that the train is a time savings. Plus, of course, SWA has 4 direct flights to SFO, 6 to Oakland, 4 to San Jos…

Station location of course plays a role (i.e. if it gets stuffed somewhere out of town with crappy transport links its no good, and rail links into the middle of an existing city are expensive), but I don't know a major airport where people would routinely trust less than 45 mins for checkin and passing security. Whereas for a train station its 10 mins. > If you miss your flight you get on the next one. It is going t…

Forget security; I used SFO last week and just going from long term parking to where security is took 20 min, and the reverse (around midnight) took 30+ min. A train starting in downtown SF could as well be past San Jose at that point.

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

#133

Post by kccqzy »

nineplay wrote: post #118
rsync wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 abili…

I'm not convinced. The train is not competing with driving to SF, the train is competing with flying to SF. LAX -> SFO is 1.25 hours. There's time to the airport, time to check in, time through security of course, but there's going to be similar issues at the train station so the customer has to be convinced that the train is a time savings. Plus, of course, SWA has 4 direct flights to SFO, 6 to Oakland, 4 to San Jos…

Sounds like you've never taken a train. Time through security? There's basically no security in American train stations (or French TGV stations). I've only experienced Chinese train stations with security but with wait times far less than American airports. Time to the airport? Well yes because the airports are inconveniently located. Train stations are right there in the downtown.

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

#134

Post by ClumsyPilot »

cuuupid wrote: post #47
prpl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proc…

> has been quietly shouting

That’s one hell of a contradiction

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

#135

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

California will need to hit Rock Bottom hard more than once before replacing CEQA with something sane becomes possible. And that's just one of several wet moldy blankets blocking progress.

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

#136

Post by ricw »

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.

That’s entirely unfounded. There are more than 100 daily flights between the Bay Area and LA metro.

That’s ridiculously high demand.

https://simpleflying.com/san-francisco-los-angeles-flight-ma...

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

#137

Post by nostrademons »

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…

Once you count airport time, 2:40 is about on par with what it’d take to fly from SF to LA. It’s about half what it takes to drive between them, even without traffic.

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

#138

Post by kccqzy »

dekhn wrote: post #91

I simply cannot see HSR sharing track with Caltrain between San Jose and SF working at all. There are only two tracks (North and South) and there is no room to build more. So it would seem that no high speed rail could go faster than caltrain on that segment and could not achieve the target travel time. What I wish- although it may not be feasible- was a straight shot from Burbank to San Jose- as a single tunnel.

Caltrain has sections with four tracks. At these sections express trains overtake local trains. They did this improvement long time ago and called the service "baby bullet" back then.

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

#139

Post by unstatusthequo »

xnx wrote: post #61
nimish wrote: post #30

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

Be careful citing the Brightline as a success. It is expensive, doesn't go to many places, has low ridership, regularly kills pedestrians and drivers, and is hemorrhaging money.

"Regularly kills pedestrians and drivers" doesn't seem like the train's fault. Railroad crossings aren't hard to understand. If you're a driver or pedestrian, best to make sure you heed the lights, gate, loud sounds.

Sounds like you haven't ridden it. It's the best train in the country. Sure makes you realize what train travel could be.

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