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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

#201

Post by screye »

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

Ah yes, the train that seeks you out and kills. Much like all the free-soloists who are killed by the ground. Come on man. Expecting people to stay behind barriers and rail lines is a basic expectation.

Brightline has killed zero people. If anything, it has reduced ~150 deaths by guiding people to a safer mode of transport. Ridership has tripled in 3 years. Brightline is a private company, so you can be sure that they are charging a decent price for each ticket, and the demand is still there.

Brightline aims to make money by developing properties around this new value add (the train stations). They are making massive profits off their first few developments. The housing developments are owned by Brightline's parent company, so they don't show up on Brightline's balance sheets.

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

#202

Post by seabass-labrax »

legitster wrote: post #154
ricw wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's hard to know for sure, but the majority of these flights are probably going to be transfers. I've never set foot in LA but I've taken that flight several times. Even so, there are only ~20k daily seats between the two cities. The ridership on successful high speed rail lines elsewhere in the world are measured in the hundreds of thousands per day.

Why couldn't one part of the journey be by rail, and the other by air? There is a already a lot of shared planning to allow this to happen, with some railway stations even having IATA codes.

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

#203

Post by femiagbabiaka »

nineplay wrote: post #121
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.

Why?

California has a massive ecosystem advantage in terms of the tech industry, no other state comes close. If California can't build, America can't build.

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

#204

Post by socalgal2 »

legitster wrote: post #122
rayiner wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Outside of work reasons I don't know many people who actually travel between these cities on a regular basis. Maybe once or twice a year for that? I would argue the east coast works much differently. The traffic patterns are not so much between NYC and DC, but most people moving in and out of dense areas. Much of the Acela is M-F commuter traffic.

If it actually worked like Japan (and China?) maybe? In Japan, if I want to go from Tokyo to Osaka, I just take a local train/subway to the station and buy a ticket for the next bullet train. I can get the tickets on my phone as I'm on the subway (or buy them at the machine at the station). There is always a train within 5-10 minutes. There are trains pretty much every 5 minutes, some are express (5 stops to Osaka), some less express (~12 stops), and some go all they way to Kyushu. The only time this isn't true is the 3-4 weeks a year when everyone travels and the trains are full. On those weeks you need to get tickets in advance.

The point being, it's so convienent I can decide to visit my friends for a picnic and come back the same day (yes I have done this) with no pre-planning. I have not pre-purchased a ticket in years.

I don't expect California to have trains every 5 to 10 minutes. I also expect they might fuck it up like Spain and require baggage inspection. I do expect that if they finish building it (I don't think they will) that by the time they do, Waymo and similar services will be ubiquitous and so it might actually be useful.

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

#205

Post by decimalenough »

porphyra wrote: post #101
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 operating speed on the fast stretch is actually one of the fastest in the world at 350 km/h, it's just that it has to waste half an hour on the Caltrain tracks from San Francisco to Gilroy and from Burbank to Anaheim. It's kinda like how the TGV from Paris to Nice goes from Paris to Marseille super fast but then has to spend hours to go from Marseille to Nice even though the latter part is a small fraction of the…

This is actually a very common operating pattern, particularly for new services. It took years after initial service opened for the Korean KTX to run all the way from Seoul to Busan, and both France and Japan have a number of TGV/Shinkansen services where part of the line is regular track running at regular speed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-shinkansen

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

#206

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Cancel the the HSR and put the funding into improving regional rail in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. (Sacramento can come too.)

The model shouldn't be the TGV. It should be the New York metro area's Metro-North and LIRR. I'd also argue for a significant amount of motorail [1] stock, but that offends the train purists.

> While no final track has yet been laid, this constitutes the vast majority of the work to prepare the route

Right, that's the problem. Invisible work gobbles up time and money due to a broken process that prorioritises bullshit over tangible results.

> The project has sufficient California funds only to last through the Trump administration, complete and electrify the existing 120 miles, purchase train sets, and begin construction of the Merced and Bakersfield extensions — but not fully complete them

Don't start shit you can't finish. Electrify and expand the regional rail and pause work in the Central Valley. Because you know who could catch the Trump administration's sympathy? Central Valley farmers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail

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

#207

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

> One issue with "CA HSR" is that it isn't even "high speed"

Not really an issue. The problem is first and foremost it hasn't been built. If it had been built, by now, it would have worked, even if that success were only measured in the Bay Area and greater LA area.

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

#208

Post by opo »

andbberger wrote: post #99
cuuupid wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at it by map there's not much more interstate highway than railway. Interstate highway is also far cheaper to build and maintain than you would imagine. It took around $114 billion to build interstate across the entire country, while the high speed rail project in just California is already upwards of $128 billion. On Europe that is kind of exactly my point, high speed rail in Europe is built and maintain…

the inflation adjusted cost of the interstate system is closer to a trillion

There hasn't been that much inflation.

>The construction of the Interstate Highway System cost approximately $114 billion (equivalent to $618 billion in 2023).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#:~:t...

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

#209

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tidbits wrote: post #172
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_...

> likely HSR would not have been approved in the first place if the central valley had been excluded

Then don't build it. That money would have been far better spent improving urban metro and regional rail. (And airports and roads and charging stations, et cetera.)

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

#210

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

socalgal2 wrote: post #195
bardak wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought they were unclear if LA-Bakerfield is even possible. My understanding comes from a podcast that wasn't about the rail at all, it was about how to make decisions. In the podcast they gave the example that if you decide to have a music box and a dancing monkey at a fair to make money, which do you do first, make the music box or train the monkey. The answer is, train the monkey, because if you can't train the…

Unless, of course, the flat easy part has value anyway.

note: I'm not arguing whether it does or does not.

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