211–220 of 476 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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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…
California, and every other of the dozen plus states where this rolled out should've barely even had any say in the matter. Maybe deciding what artwork to put up in the stations and what to name them. At the same time, it should've been completely federally funded.
I remember when BART was first built and San Mateo county opted out of BART. You couldn't take BART to SFO or even South San Francisco. Now they are talking about extending it to San Jose? This may sound very Californian, but I always support trains because once you have it it doesn't go away and eventually you get more that makes the train even more useful.
Plenty of trains have gone away...
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.
When America built, this is exactly what we did. CAHSR should have been exempted from CEQA. Its commission should have been delegated eminent-domain powers vetoable only by the Governor or a majority of the legislature.
But the goal wasn't to build a train. It was to dole out the dough. And the dough be doleth. Just to litigators, union bosses and Central Valley landowners.
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> you're gonna have to rent a car on either end BTW, this is one big reason HSR isn't a great fit for the US. In most countries, you arrive to major city by train, and you then move around the city using the local train network. This is only barely true for a few US cities, so even if HSR lines are built, they won't be as useful here.
I agree with you today, but by the time it's finished self driving car services like Waymo will be ubiqutous. I'm already addicted.
I also expect much of the SDR taxi era!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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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…
Unfortunately there simply isn't enough demand between SF and LA alone to justify the insanely long stretches of a direct rail project. A better way would have been to build it out from the city into the suburbs first as a commuter rail project. There isn't a ton of intercity demand for this rail, but there is tons of traffic in and out of each singular city to justify even medium speed rail.
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…
All those billions of dollars are going to someone's pockets. There's a lot of money to be made from inefficient infrastructure projects.
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"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…
... Eh? You get to the station (generally well-located), you walk through a turnstile or similar, you get on the train. There's no check-in or security on most intercity trains. Or walking for miles in sprawling airports, for that matter. In a big intercity station, you go in the door, there are some shops, there are a row of platforms, you go to your platform, you get on your train. That is it. Also, you probably get there on public transport which goes either into the station itself, outside the door, or to the local station beside the intercity station, depending on local taste (this really does seem to be a very regional thing).
I can't help feeling that a lot of the people who object to this concept have never actually been on an intercity train at all. Or, er, seen a film or TV show where someone goes on a train. It's kind of bizarre, really.