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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

#161

Post by TimTheTinker »

queenkjuul wrote: post #142
TimTheTinker wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

That's a misquote - that phrase doesn't appear in the letter. I don't think that idea was present either. Could you clarify which phrase(s) conveyed that to you?

Here's a link to the full text of the letter: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102

If anything, I think he felt compelled to write what he did (not only in this letter) because he felt a sense of imminent danger -- that if the people individually and collectively failed to rise to the high calling of good moral character, the new republic would not last. Remember, the longevity of the United States was by no means a foregone conclusion at the time -- the US Constitution had been ratified a mere 10 years before he wrote this letter, and Adams himself had just been elected as the second president the year before.

(All of which doesn't make his thoughts inapplicable to our time.)

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

#162

Post by nostrademons »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #21

Even if it succeeds on its current trajectory, it will be studied for 100 years as a massive failure.

All civil engineering projects are failures until people forget what it cost to build them and just start taking the infrastructure for granted. Eleven people died constructing the Golden Gate Bridge, 96 for the Hoover dam, thousands for the Panama Canal. Do we remember them, or think that these projects were failures for killing people? No. We just think of how convenient they are.

I grew up contemporaneous with the Big Dig in Boston. People called that a massive failure too, even though it only killed one person instead of thousands. 15 years after completion, it’s a big success.

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

#163

Post by danans »

cuuupid wrote: post #86
jeffbee wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, fre…

> 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...

Please provide a reference for CA making money by building roads. Road building is foundational to other economic activity, but AFAIK, it's not turning a profit (nor should it be expected to). Unfortunately, we have a double standard where we consider public transport to be a failure if it doesn't generate a profit.

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

#164

Post by rsynnott »

xnx wrote: post #156
rsynnott wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Average speed is 68 mph

Oof. Dublin to Cork is 66mph average, and that one's considered kind of embarrassing, and is currently being upgraded to ~85mph average. (There's separately a proposal to build a real high speed line, but it seems unlikely to happen; it'd have to be a whole new line.)

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

#165

Post by pcwalton »

rayiner wrote: post #105
andbberger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do people actually travel between SF and LA? It makes sense in the east coast: traveling from the seat of government in DC to the seat of finance in NYC. But does california have that dynamic?

> Do people actually travel between SF and LA?

Yes. The most obvious example of a company that's built around that corridor is Netflix: tech in the Bay Area, film production in L.A.

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

#166

Post by nostrademons »

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…

Having a high-speed train be less expensive to operate than a bus isn’t unrealistic, as long as the train is packed. You have to pay the bus driver, while the train amortizes operational salaries over many more people.

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

#167

Post by dekhn »

nostrademons wrote: post #159
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 passing tracks at Sunnyvale and Brisbane. There are joint plans with CAHSR to add 4-track segments at Millbrae, San Mateo (between Hayward Park and Hillsdale), Redwood City, and Palo Alto (California Ave). The Millbrae tracks are part of the new station design: they are removing one of the 3 BART tracks (superfluous because BART terminates at Millbrae) and using the space to construct two dedicated HSR t…

Ah, thanks for the reminder there are passing tracks already.

Are passing tracks really practical? Wouldn't they have to be extremely long to accomodate high speed trains mixed with local Caltrains? I have a hard time picturing this all working out even under ideal circumstances.

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

#168

Post by yongjik »

detaro wrote: post #147
yongjik wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the differentiating factor is that a rail station is more likely to be in the city center, where you can get to by other means (bus, BART, whatever), while going to SFO is much less convenient.

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

#169

Post by bardak »

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…

Even if you insist on going through the cities in the valley they chose a construction sequence that takes the longest time to show any process. If they fast tracked LA-Bakersfield they could have extended the Amtrak San Joaquin service to LA by now. Concentrat on the SF-Merced section next and then you can work on the Merced-Bakersfield piece meal.

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

#170

Post by ergsef »

jonahrd wrote: post #145
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 fro…

The fact is that politicians are insanely car-brained and nobody has any enthusiasm for improving rail infrastructure. Via Rail is trapped in this insane spiral of service cuts where it's miserable for staff and riders, and the solution is to cut more to make up for declining ridership.

The new HSR is only happening because with the innovation of P3 deals the government can pay for the project but give all the profits to their private-sector pals. Suddenly investing in public infrastructure is appealing again (as long as the public doesn't actually get to own it!)

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