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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

#321

Post by bobthepanda »

vlovich123 wrote: post #317
bobthepanda wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

China would have likely just stopped the rail line at San Jose, the same way the Shanghai HSR stops at Hongqiao 50 minutes away from the actual city center.

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

#322

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

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…

It later says that taking the more direct route along the I-5, and then connecting the bypassed areas with branch/stub lines would lead to the same costs.

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

#323

Post by bronson »

trollbridge wrote: post #250
legitster wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hundreds of thousands? A TGV holds 500 people, so you're saying a successful TGV line does... 400 trips a day?

Sure. Gare du Nord handles thousands of train movements per day. Shinjuku Station is even busier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku_Station

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

#324

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gamblor956 wrote: post #222
porphyra wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other countries can build entire rail lines entirely on viaducts for the same cost as it takes to grade separate a single Caltrain station. For example it was recently estimated that grade separating Broadway Station with a center platform would take $889 million and 5-5.5 years [1]. This is mind boggling. [1] https://burlingameca.granicus.com/DocumentViewer.php?file=bu...

Building in earthquake territory generally increases costs by at least 2x. Ignoring private land rights also generally helps but costs.

> Building in earthquake territory generally increases costs by at least 2x

Japan. Most of Europe.

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

#325

Post by decimalenough »

trollbridge wrote: post #250
legitster wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hundreds of thousands? A TGV holds 500 people, so you're saying a successful TGV line does... 400 trips a day?

The Tokaido Shinkansen in Japan carried 452,000 passengers per day on 365 daily services in 2016.

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

#326

Post by JumpCrisscross »

anon7000 wrote: post #306
babyent wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know most of these are business travelers right? The last thing I want (as a former consultant who did like 400k plus miles flying) is to spend more time traveling. Not to mention flights booked out in advance are like sub 200 bucks, or even 100-150. It takes like 2-3 hours from leaving home to arriving at destination. Have you flown between SFO and LAX? SFO is easy to get to, no real headaches. So is San Jose an…

You should try riding real HSR, like Madrid to Barcelona. Superior to flying in every way.

> You should try riding real HSR, like Madrid to Barcelona

Within countries, yes. Between countries, never again. Italy France sort of worked, but the UK and Germany consistently ruined everything.

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

#327

Post by JumpCrisscross »

janalsncm wrote: post #157
legitster wrote: post #58

The reality is for every government constraint, there are even more difficult economic constraints that it has to work against. A 90-minute flight between these SF and LA can be had for ~$80 or less. A 7-hour bus ticket between these two cities is ~$50. To put it another way, the train would have to be only half-again more expensive per passenger to operate than a bus to beat a flight on price. I get it that there ar…

90 minutes in the air + 1 hour on each end at the airport. On a train I can work the entire time with internet.

I arrive 30 minutes before boarding, sail through security, and work on the internet on a plane. I don’t check a bag, either, so I’m out in twenty reliably enough that I can call a car when I deplane. Unless you live in San Francisco or LA, loyalty programmes probably mean you’ll default to taking a flight between cities.

(Saying this as someone who likes flying, loves trains and dislikes driving.)

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

#328

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rsynnott wrote: post #225
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always support trains because once you have it it doesn't go away Plenty of trains have gone away...

Likely few trains will ever go away again. The lesson of having to rebuild the damn things was far too expensive.

> few trains will ever go away again

Why? If we stop CAHSR midway, there is zero chance Sacramento will keep subsidising a Bakersfield-Merced line. And once shut down the land is more productive doing something else.

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

#329

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mmmBacon wrote: post #285
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256

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. 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/

Las Vegas is basically on the California border and exists mainly because it's on the California border, so all the people in Southern California can go to the place where gambling is legal. It's an outlier that both doesn't get you a national high speed rail network and evidently doesn't require federal involvement to happen regardless.

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

#330

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sampullman wrote: post #287
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256

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. 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

The federal government isn't going to make the stuff. They'd just buy it from the existing companies that make rolling stock etc., as could any state government in the same way.
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