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Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
311–320 of 476 posts
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
This could be absolutely true if people adapt to it, but that wouldn't happen overnight. I would also strongly doubt that even after full adoption, Bakersfield to LA in 30 minutes is going to be much more useful and heavily trafficked on a daily basis than SF to LA in 2 hours would. Even in Europe, their marquee city-to-city rail routes contribute a small share of overall rail traffic compared to their daily commuter…
Nothing happens overnight. Except governmental upheaval, I suppose.
And yes, SF to LA would be in much more demand. Not as a commuting option, but it'd make for some great weekend commerce. In a world of increasing work from home, I don't think many people would care for commuting to LA from Bakersfield.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
> LAX -> SFO is 1.25 hours.
After a potential 30 minute commute (even if you live downtown already) and some 2 hours of checking, yes. Only 1.25 hours.
>there's going to be similar issues at the train station I suppose it will vary on popularity, but train parking lots tend to be relatively empty compared to navigating LAX and the lag time of the worst case scenario of "buying a new train pass" was 10 minutes, after maybe a 5 minute walk from parking lot to station.
Airlines are simply too politically charged to ever be more efficient than a potential high speed rail. Even if it takes an extra hour, it's a time save taking the train.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only light rail operating in Washington State is LINK Light Rail, which Sound Transit operates using Siemens Mobility’s S700 model (although some older train sets are still used on the same tracks). Looking at the Wikipedia page for the S700, you can find these trains all over the US, including California, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia. They seem to be popular in Europe,…
No, I am thinking the Sound Transit light rail. I wouldn't be surprised if they canceled the "design for the PNW" cars and bought off the shelf ones. Before it was built is when they said they would be custom cars.
Sound Transit operates LINK (what gp was talking about) and Sounder (not light rail, operates on BNSF tracks, coaches are made by Bombardier and seem to be in use by many commuter rail systems). Not sure what you're referring to.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
This is discussed in the article.
That’s why we are discussing it here.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Said another way, that SF/San Jose stretch accounts for 25-30% of the total time. That’s similarly true for the last stretch of LA meaning a truly engineering driven design could have done it within ~1h50. And note that the 2h40 goal is admitted as a pipe dream by everyone involved, particularly because of the last mile issues and the circuitous route.
IIRC the last stretch in LA is actually planned to be new build with Palmdale to Los Angeles taking about twenty minutes.
Engineering is about optimizing and updating where you can. There aren't really high speed rail lines anywhere that go into the center of their major cities at full speed. In Europe and Japan the city-center sections are slower; China solved this problem mostly by having high speed trains skirt around built up areas.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Said another way, that SF/San Jose stretch accounts for 25-30% of the total time. That’s similarly true for the last stretch of LA meaning a truly engineering driven design could have done it within ~1h50. And note that the 2h40 goal is admitted as a pipe dream by everyone involved, particularly because of the last mile issues and the circuitous route.
IIRC the last stretch in LA is actually planned to be new build with Palmdale to Los Angeles taking about twenty minutes. Engineering is about optimizing and updating where you can. There aren't really high speed rail lines anywhere that go into the center of their major cities at full speed. In Europe and Japan the city-center sections are slower; China solved this problem mostly by having high speed trains skirt ar…
> China solved this problem mostly by having high speed trains skirt around built up areas.
Which is what we should have done. Follow the 5 and build out high speed spokes to the other cities. And really unfuck the rail system in the Bay Area instead of travelling at Caltrain speeds for San Jose -> SF.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 r…
FWIW at least the LAX Automated People Mover will be opening up next year and you can avoid the hell on Earth that is driving in/out of LAX.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#319This 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 u…
If you use google maps to find the distance between Los Banos and Tehachapi. Via I5 is 210 miles. Via HWY99 is 223 miles. So a 13 mile difference. That's 5-7 minutes at high speed rail speeds.
And you are right the extra cost is minimal. It's probably $10-15 billion.
My thought about the grade separation costs and my beef is. One is those grade separation projects need to be done anyways. The beef is why is the high speed rail project paying for road infrastructure. That should come out of gas taxes or something.
Re: Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
#320This 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…
Not sure what specifically is “california” about this - There is very little support from either side of the aisle in continuing this project, which of course, the article states because it is an unavoidable truth. The criticisms offered by both sides are valid and the few proponents that still hold water for this dismiss these arguments with very bad or incomplete reasoning as written here. For instance, brushing ov…
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