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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

#181

Post by woodruffw »

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…

"Nowhere near done" seems like a bit of an exaggeration, given that the link at the top of your linked page suggests that it's over 3/4ths done[1].

It's also, to my understanding, not grade-separated in various important places. I was in College Park two weeks ago and saw lots of at-grade development on the line, which presumably gets bogged down by Route 1 and the other high-traffic roads nearby.

(This isn't to imply that the construction isn't slow or inefficient; it's almost certainly both of those things.)

[1]: https://purplelinemd.com/media/jdwhz3kj/purple-line-press-re...

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

#182

Post by slt2021 »

andbberger wrote: post #93
slt2021 wrote: post #31

Reading the article I think CAHSR is using agile method of delivering value. Electrification of caltrain in sfbay, removing rr crossings in LA, finishing overall plan and acquisitions, laying relatively low cost and easy central valley track, while putting the most costly activities to the end: boring an actual tunnels in mountain ranges

this statement has little bearing on how this project is actually playing out, but if it were true - why would we want to manage massive infrastructure projects in the same way bad software projects are managed? via a method regarded by everyone except middle managers with a massive eye roll and a sigh

imagine the opposite situation: boring tunnels costs like 60 blns+.

and taxpayer won't see a penny of the benefit from some tunnel somewhere in mountain ranges that nothing else connects to

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

#183

Post by xienze »

jeffbee wrote: post #18
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…

The CAHSR "peer group" which issued that quote is a political commission full of axe-grinding losers, specifically created by state politicians who want to kill the project. Nobody with a clue thinks that the 2h40m target is unattainable.

LOL I bet in 2010 if someone said that by 2025 the project would be grossly over budget and only have a short segment between nowhere and nowhere to show for 17 years of work you’d have called that propaganda by axe-grinding losers (paid off by big oil, naturally).

Just admit it, it’s a boondoggle just like everyone said it would be.

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

#184

Post by slt2021 »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #124
slt2021 wrote: post #31

Reading the article I think CAHSR is using agile method of delivering value. Electrification of caltrain in sfbay, removing rr crossings in LA, finishing overall plan and acquisitions, laying relatively low cost and easy central valley track, while putting the most costly activities to the end: boring an actual tunnels in mountain ranges

If by agile you mean "exploiting sunk cost fallacy", sure

the real sunk cost would be the opposite approach: spending 60 blns on boring tunnels through mountains that nothing else connect to.

what would be the benefit of tunnel from LA across the mountain range? or a tunnel from SF across the diablo range???

keep in mind these ar elike half of the project cost

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

#185

Post by levocardia »

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.

But, importantly, it actually exists and you can buy a ticket and ride on it. That's the bar we're talking about here. Not "did they make the best train line ever" -- just did they make a train line.

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

#186

Post by makotech221 »

vondur wrote: post #180
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.

[flagged]

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

#187

Post by rayiner »

danans wrote: post #160
rayiner wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t make sense. California is bigger and richer than all but the largest European countries. It has some of the top universities in the world. Why shouldn’t it have a higher caliber of public official than say Denmark?

> It has some of the top universities in the world. Why shouldn’t it have a higher caliber of public official than say Denmark? Many officials in the current administration who are wreaking havoc on the US economy went to the top universities, like Harvard, Columbia, etc. Attending those universities doesn't imply responsibility or sense of duty to public service at all. CA does have "high caliber" public officials,…

Why are the politicians in California different than the ones in Denmark? And are those reasons related to it being a sub-national entity, which seems to have been the argument being made above.

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

#188

Post by slt2021 »

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.

the state can manage that expense over time, for example by refusing to enforce laws, spiking crime rates, turning into dystopia and chaos, thus lowering property values.

after land is acquired, the property and law enforcement will bring up values

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

#189

Post by rayiner »

woodruffw wrote: post #181
rayiner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Nowhere near done" seems like a bit of an exaggeration, given that the link at the top of your linked page suggests that it's over 3/4ths done[1]. It's also, to my understanding, not grade-separated in various important places. I was in College Park two weeks ago and saw lots of at-grade development on the line, which presumably gets bogged down by Route 1 and the other high-traffic roads nearby. (This isn't to impl…

The last 10-20% of these projects always takes surprisingly long. The 2027 opening date is already looking questionable: https://wjla.com/news/local/purple-line-construction-project.... And it was supposed to open in 2022.

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

#190

Post by frinxor »

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…

SNCF was one of the early bidders for this project, proposing the I5 route. They later pulled out from the politics of the Central Valley line in 2011, and went on to successfully implement high speed rail in Morocco instead - which went live in 2018.

Here we are 8 years after they finished a different project with nothing. American infrastructure at its finest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF#Modern_era

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