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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

#331

Post by johnnyanmac »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #318
johnnyanmac wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That will be a relief. Though if I may rant a bit to a bikeshed:

I really hate that thr naming scheme of "people mover" was probably part of the reason this project is coming next year and not 2035. The phrase itself just oozes this sentiment that no one politically involved was allowed to say "train" or "rail" so it doesn't scare off investors.

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

#332

Post by dragonwriter »

Article is deeply misleading, pretending that Brightline West has proceeded many times faster than CA HSR, when that is not at all true. While the particular operator and name are relatively recent, that project has been through many names and operators, each of which has built on the progress done by the previous one, and, despite being much simpler project than CA HSR, is also older than CA HSR, starting as Desert Xpress in 2005 (the ballot measure which set up the California High Speed Rail Authority and outlined the basic concept of the project was passed in 2008.)

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

#333

Post by refurb »

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've done LA-SF many times for work, and I was able to be in the rental car in LA only 2 hr after being dropped off at SFO. Luckily both airports are pretty easy to navigate.

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

#334

Post by WalterBright »

wiml wrote: post #314
WalterBright wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The train that runs from downtown to Seatac.

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

#335

Post by ActorNightly »

ImJamal wrote: post #299
ActorNightly wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More young people need to actually start voting to get all the NIMBYism out of the government, and then change can happen.

Every one is anti-NIMBY until they own a backyard, then they don't want their house to be eminent domained or have a noisy train running near them.

The problem is that they have the option to own a house to begin with. Cali cities need to be all high rise apartment buildings.

Once the government starts raising property taxes, people will start selling off their homes, and then developers can buy the land and build apartments.

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

#336

Post by deadfoxygrandpa »

anon7000 wrote: post #304
frinxor wrote: post #190

Earlier 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.

yeah and the author of the article totally misses the point

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

#337

Post by pests »

SllX wrote: post #242
Eridrus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it have to be funded by a proposition? Could the CA legislature not have passed a law?

Tax increases and bond measures have to go through the voters. The alternative is to get enough of the legislature, including probably some in Central Valley, to agree to cut a bunch of other more popular programs in order to fund it out of the general fund.

What does California do with all its income?

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

#338

Post by cheinic40081 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #313
nineplay wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> After a potential 30 minute commute (even if you live downtown already) and some 2 hours of checking, yes. Only 1.25 hours.

HSR stations are no different.

45-60 minute uber from Berkeley or Cupertino to the SF HSR station? Then another 45-90 minutes on the LA end?

You’d rather just fly SFO (or SJC, OAK) nonstop to Orange County or Ontario or Burbank or Palm Springs or Long Beach or …

Not to mention if you are an experienced flyer, it’s not unreasonable to arrive at the airport curbside 15-30 minutes before your flight boarding door closes and comfortably make the flight. Fuck the lounges.

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

#339

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

frickinLasers wrote: post #275
pj_mukh wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they're going to build the train between Bakersfield and Los Angeles through the Tehachapi Mountains." OMG, just join the I-5 after Bakersfield. It's right there. Why are we barreling through the mountains?

You mean the train? I don't think they do well with steep grades [1]. [1] https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/23106/what-d...

Depends on how steep. 4% is no problem for modern traction.

Just look at this https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Wiedtalbrücke_Blickricht...

which is used at 300kph by electric multiple units like the german Inter City Expres.

I've rode over this at about 330kph shortly after opening, it's slightly noticable, but not like a roller-coaster at all, as one might think.

Meanwhile this is also used by more conventional electrical engines for passenger trains up to 250kph, also in 'pusher' mode,

and short freight trains, no longer than 700m, at anything between 160 to 200kph during nights.

According to Wikipedia 'the Bakersfield–Palmdale section of the line will cross Tehachapi Pass, roughly parallelling the Union Pacific Railroad's Mojave Subdivision. Due to its heavy freight traffic and sharp curves (including the famous Tehachapi Loop), there is no current passenger service through the pass. While the proposed high-speed rail alignment will not include any long tunnels comparable to those in Pacheco Pass, it has nine shorter tunnels and several viaducts more than 200 feet (61 m) high. The maximum grade through the pass would be - 2.8 - percent, making it the steepest portion of the Phase 1 route.'

Easy peasy.

Edit: TL;DR? All of this is explained here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline_West

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

#340

Post by apexalpha »

Critics: wow this is a great example of government dysfunction through excessive regulations and political steering of a engineering project.

Author: Actually, you are entirely wrong. Let me explain to you in 3000 words how this project failed due to political interference and excessive regulations in California while pretending this is somehow not CAHSR fault and also not providing any path forward to fix it.

???

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

This author isn't evaluating this project fairly, this author seems to be in first stage of grief: denial.

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