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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

#281

Post by nostrademons »

dekhn wrote: post #167
nostrademons wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Usually they pass when the local train is at the station. This doesn't take all that much space; speed delta is 80mph (125mph once they grade-separate everything). Everything is computer controlled.

It occurs to me that this might be why they've chosen those particular areas. Sunnyvale, Redwood City, Hillsdale, Millbrae, and South San Francisco (just south of Brisbane) are all baby bullet stops, where all of the local, limited, and express trains stop, and so you can reliably count on every Caltrain stopping there and letting a HSR train pass. Cal Ave is the odd one out, but it still has local + limited service.

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

#282

Post by GenerocUsername »

nostrademons wrote: post #162
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…

When a wikipedia page has a whole section dedicated to how massive of a issue construction was then it's result may still be good even if the project was a big failure

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

#283

Post by johnnyanmac »

mullingitover wrote: post #212
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…

The problem is that this should've been a federal project from the start, one of many running concurrently nationwide. Doing it nationwide would give economies of scale that wouldn't be possible with these local half-measures. 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 nam…

>should've been a federal project from the start, one of many running concurrently nationwide.

With Congress Gridlocked over issues that really should he bipartisan, it'd unironically take less time for the States to figure it out instead.

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

#284

Post by johnnyanmac »

slt2021 wrote: post #179
rsync wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... 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_i…

You never been to LAX if you don't immediately act with a sigh of relief over a direct train route. It's an potential 90 minute+ commute and another 90 minute TSA process for a 90 minute flight. Dreadful.

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

Bakersfield has a dozen reasons ever preventing it from becoming another SF/LA/SD.

Besides, China didn't build its rail all at once. A direct route would prove value when making future splinter routes. Instead, we chase 2 rabbits and get none.

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

#285

Post by mmmBacon »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256
mullingitover wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this should've been a federal project from the start, one of many running concurrently nationwide. Doing it nationwide would give economies of scale that wouldn't be possible with these local half-measures. 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 nam…

> The problem is that this should've been a federal project from the start, one of many running concurrently nationwide. Doing it nationwide would give economies of scale that wouldn't be possible with these local half-measures. What economies of scale are even possible here? California in particular is relatively isolated from the rest of the country because the thing directly to the east of it is a major desert, fo…

Partially correct. A private group is building high speed rail to connect Vegas to the Inland Empire. Construction has started and expected to be complete in 2028.

https://www.dot.nv.gov/projects-programs/transportation-proj...

https://www.brightlinewest/

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

#286

Post by nostrademons »

yongjik wrote: post #266
porphyra wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

CA should've just bitten the bullet and built the whole SF-SJ section underground. It's about 50 miles, about the length of one mid-sized subway line in many part of the world, and it would've simplified the issue of acquiring prime suburban land. Besides, I just don't see how HSR and Caltrain can share the same railway and avoid major service capacity issues. I think Caltrain is close to capacity as is, and at least…

The geology of the Bay Area would make that difficult. The Peninsula flats are mostly loosely-consolidated sediment, and in some areas you have less than half a mile between the mountains and the Bay. And it's less than 2 miles from the San Andreas fault. You'd likely have significant problems with flooding [1], and all the difficulties that the Pacheco Pass segment is having tunneling through an active fault would be multiplied by the 4x as long, geologically varied segment from SJ-SF.

[1] This is a significant issue for the NYC subway, even though you don't really think of NYC as being on top of a bay.

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

#287

Post by sampullman »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256
mullingitover wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that this should've been a federal project from the start, one of many running concurrently nationwide. Doing it nationwide would give economies of scale that wouldn't be possible with these local half-measures. 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 nam…

> The problem is that this should've been a federal project from the start, one of many running concurrently nationwide. Doing it nationwide would give economies of scale that wouldn't be possible with these local half-measures. What economies of scale are even possible here? California in particular is relatively isolated from the rest of the country because the thing directly to the east of it is a major desert, fo…

When referring to scale they probably meant resources and planning, not actually connecting all the projects.

It's cheaper to make more of stuff, even if it's not in the same place

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

#288

Post by johnnyanmac »

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.

Yeah, I don't think people in LA or SF are worried about competing with airlines over a few dozen city miles not being 200+ mph. Avoiding the LAX is reward in and of itself.

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

#289

Post by whakim »

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…

As the article points out, the difference in cost between these two routes is pretty small in the grand scheme of things; more than two-thirds of the costs associated with the project are at either end getting in and out of Los Angeles/the SF Bay Area. On the other hand, as the author points out, building the route through the Central Valley population centers has a number of advantages (political support, having a useful rail line before the entire project is complete, etc. etc.)

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

#290

Post by nostrademons »

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.

That's why they went with the blended system with Caltrain. Caltrain already owns a suitable right-of-way; they just needed to electrify it. Which they've already done. The SF-to-SJ part of CAHSR is effectively done; they just need to built acquire the SJ-to-Gilroy right of way and tunnel under the Pacheco Pass to connect with the rest of CAHSR.
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