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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

#141

Post by pj_mukh »

This is the most California article ever written. The author admits that if the line was run along the I-5 it probably wouldn't need all the costly grade-separation and state property issues it's now facing. It may have even finished with its original funding! But instead of immediately being able to serve the upwards of 18M people of Greater Los Angeles and 7.5M people of the Bay Area, the 1M people of the Central Valley would have to wait for branches to be built.

SO INSTEAD we took the more circuitous route through Central Valley so that the 1M people feel immediately included and NO ONE is getting a high speed rail.

Sir! ChatGPT couldn't come up with a more California scented boondoggle.

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

#142

Post by queenkjuul »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #115
queenkjuul wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, Adams in particular maybe not, but for him to warn about this hypothetical scenario while it was ostensibly unfolding in front of his eyes is still something i can find a bit ridiculous.

> for him to warn about this hypothetical scenario while it was ostensibly unfolding in front of his eyes Well why wouldn't he? See something, say something. I'm sure he saw direct reasons to be worried about people becoming ungovernably immoral, and I bet slavery was one of those reasons -- after all, he did believe it to be a colossal evil. So I'm not sure I understand your point.

Because he's talking about it as if it weren't happening. "Should the day ever come..." Well, sure seems like it already had

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

#143

Post by nostrademons »

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.

It’s also less than that in travel time, since CAHSR goes at its full 350 km/h on the Central Valley vs just 130 km/h on the Caltrain corridor from SF to Gilroy. It adds about 10 minutes to non-stop travel time.

The real benefit is opening the Central Valley to commuter development. San Jose to Madeira on CAHSR is around 45 minutes, not much more than commuting from Palo Alto with current traffic on 101, and so it’d open vast tracts of land in the Central Valley to housing. It might actually be practical to work in the Bay Area on something non-tech, live in a SFH, and commute less than an hour again.

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

#144

Post by janalsncm »

> claim that the relative failure of the California High-Speed Rail “boondoggle” represents the political dysfunction of either California

> This criticism also misunderstands one of the main challenges that CAHSR has faced. Al Boraq had full funding lined up before the project began. CAHSR did not. This led to delays that reduced support and encouraged critics, which starved it of funding commitments and thus led to further delays. California undermined CAHSR from the start.

That just sounds like describing dysfunctional government using more words. Either the government can get it done or they can’t. Allowing endless vetos and delays to gum up the process is a political decision.

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

#145

Post by jonahrd »

pj_mukh wrote: post #141

This is the most California article ever written. The author admits that if the line was run along the I-5 it probably wouldn't need all the costly grade-separation and state property issues it's now facing. It may have even finished with its original funding! But instead of immediately being able to serve the upwards of 18M people of Greater Los Angeles and 7.5M people of the Bay Area, the 1M people of the Central V…

this is actually exactly what has been happening over the past few decades, and with the current proposal, for HSR from Toronto to Montreal, two of the largest cities in terms of both population and economy in Canada.

Ottawa felt excluded, and is where the federal govt is based, so instead of going along the 401, a straight highway that follows a river valley and lake and has existing rail corridors, it has to go from Montreal to Ottawa (a short stretch also along a river) and then cut from Ottawa to Toronto via Peterborough, which requires new track, fixing old windy track to allow HSR, some sections have to be speed limited, and has to build through hills and dense forest.

Also, Quebec feels that they don't get "enough" out of the project connecting their largest city to another economic powerhub, so it of course also has to be extended the extra 250km to Quebec city (luckily along a river)

The logical method would be to build Toronto to Montreal 30 years ago, then build a branch to Ottawa one day, and an extension to Quebec another day. The Canadian economy would probably be much stronger if that was the case.

Or we can just wait 30 more years and have this project not be implemented.

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

#146

Post by legitster »

kccqzy wrote: post #133
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…

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.

> Train stations are right there in the downtown.

A train station in downtown LA or SF would be inconveniently located for most people in these cities.

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

#147

Post by detaro »

yongjik wrote: post #132
detaro wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair long-term parking at a train station would also be inconvenient (although at least in this case you'd not share facilities with all the international travelers), and honestly didn't even register as an option to me, so I was assuming local train/shuttle bus/cab/uber dropping off in a convenient central location.

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

#148

Post by janalsncm »

rayiner wrote: post #95
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.

It’s structurally impossible. The half of the political coalition that contains virtually all the people who want to build any sort of urban infrastructure is too fractured into groups that each have their own distinct priorities unrelated to infrastructure or good governance. And of course the other half of the polity hates the government. If you’re a democrat in california, where does infrastructure fall on your li…

> If you’re a democrat in california, where does infrastructure fall on your list of priorities? What big voting bloc does it get you?

As of now, nothing because everything takes forever to build. The authors of Abundance talk about how rural broadband is gummed up in bureaucratic processes. Same with CHIPS. Biden couldn’t point to it as an accomplishment because…it wasn’t accomplished yet.

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

#149

Post by s1artibartfast »

bombcar wrote: post #59
epicureanideal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could actually just pay more money to public governmental employees When their pensions are taken into account, government employees are ridiculously overcompensated already. They’re basically minor nobility at this point.

To be fair, we should all work to normalize retiring at 55 - it’s eminently doable but the earlier you decide to the easier it is.

but nobody likes working even longer to pay for others to retire earlier.

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

#150

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

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…

If you miss your high speed train in Tokyo, you get on the next one five minutes later. Sometimes just 3.5 minutes later.
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