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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

#171

Post by scythe »

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…

It would be one thing if they were just going to Fresno. There are three major cities in the Central Valley: Bakersfield, Fresno and Sacramento. You get Bakersfield for free; Sacramento is north of SF and has existing commuter rail. Fresno is big enough to justify a stop; it has room to grow, too. You could put a stop that's ten miles outside of Fresno, and you don't have to cut through the city too much. That's what they do with airports. Throw in a LRT while you're at it.

But the plan also calls for Tulare and Madera to have stops. Now you're doing three times the work for a 20-40% increase in the population served. Then they want a line to Sacramento that goes through Merced and Visalia At this point it looks silly. Fresno is larger than Tulare, Madera, Merced and Visalia combined. Stockton already has the Altamont Commuter Express line to San Jose.

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

#172

Post by tidbits »

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…

Take a look at the voting data for Prop 1A. It is very likely HSR would not have been approved in the first place if the central valley had been excluded. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_...

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

#173

Post by colonCapitalDee »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #55
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.

I have done the numbers for myself, and even taking pension and treating an extra week of vacation as a 1/52 pay raise, doing a software job for the government would be a huge step down for me financially. Basically gives me 0% chance of ever buying a home where I currently live

For every underpaid government software engineer there's an overpaid paper pusher, and they're both paid the same amount.

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

#175

Post by bobthepanda »

GeekyBear wrote: post #129
gruez wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. why can't you have it run slowly in built up areas? As another commenter mentioned that's how it works in France.

Because competing with the airlines requires some semblance of "high speed"? California is fairly densely packed once you get away from the Central Valley and nearer to the coast where the people are.

The current plan actually accounts for this; the 2:40 includes the amount of time it takes to run on the current Caltrain tracks from San Jose to SF which will not be running at the highest speeds.

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

#177

Post by bombcar »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #149
bombcar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can do it entirely “yourself” if you adopt FIRE concepts early in your working career.

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

#178

Post by com »

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.

International HSTs with passport required border crossings (ie Schengen-UK) have passport control and security - I think the security checks are to minimise the risk of terror attacks in the channel tunnel though.

But yeah, for intra-Schengen you just go to the platform a few minutes before departure, find where your carriage will be, and step in once the train comes to a stop.

So much less faff than air travel, and I’ve noticed better pubs at major stations meaning waiting for your train isn’t as boring as it used to be…

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

#179

Post by slt2021 »

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…

there is no need to connect SF to LA only, there are many airports in each town that connect these large metro areas.

the purpose of HSR is to transform large swatchs of land into a large megalopolis, like in China.

China's HSR connects large metro areas into one giant megalopolis with up to 250+ mln population that totally changes the ballgame in terms of economic output

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolises_in_China

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

#180

Post by vondur »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #174

In the exact same amount of time, China has gone from 0 to 25,000 miles in high speed rail. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_lin...

It probably helps when you can simply take the land you need. One major issue with the California project has been the difficulty in securing land rights. Additionally, California’s strict environmental laws have made construction even more challenging. In contrast, China can largely ignore these obstacles.
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