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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

#361

Post by inglor_cz »

bombcar wrote: post #254
socalgal2 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they were unclear if LA-Bakerfield is even possible. My understanding comes from a podcast that wasn't about the rail at all, it was about how to make decisions. In the podcast they gave the example that if you decide to have a music box and a dancing monkey at a fair to make money, which do you do first, make the music box or train the monkey. The answer is, train the monkey, because if you can't train the…

But neither would have to be the first step. Making the route from San Diego to LA high-speed is perfectly doable (the route exists already), and would be a great stepping stone. Even if it turns out the Tehachapi is basically the mountains of Mordor and the project ends, you'd still have a valuable high-speed corridor.

The Basque Y high speed rail project in Spain, currently being built, goes through some very challenging mountainous terrain.

If Spain, with 33 500 USD GDP per capita, can do it, then so should California, whose GDP per capita exceeds 100 000 USD.

But yeah, better private sector does not necessarily buy better public sector.

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

#362

Post by occz »

legitster wrote: post #65
rsync wrote: post #13

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 claim is unfounded based on the amount of direct flights alone, and then on top of that you have to add the car traffic going between the cities as well, and trips that now become viable when the travel time is faster and more convenient.

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

#363

Post by occz »

rayiner wrote: post #105
andbberger wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there absolutely is, SF-LA is an ideal city pair

Do people actually travel between SF and LA? It makes sense in the east coast: traveling from the seat of government in DC to the seat of finance in NYC. But does california have that dynamic?

Anecdotally, I know of someone who used to commute together with a group by private airplane from LA to SF.

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

#364

Post by pj_mukh »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #322
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.

But by then 25M would have access to the main trunk of the train generating massive revenues. That's the point.

Holding up 25M people to try and include 1M more while bloating costs and showing no progress is the essence of how you kill a project.

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

#365

Post by saagarjha »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #209
tidbits wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at the voting data for Prop 1A. It is very likely HSR would not have been approved in the first place if the central valley had been excluded. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_...

> likely HSR would not have been approved in the first place if the central valley had been excluded Then don't build it. That money would have been far better spent improving urban metro and regional rail. (And airports and roads and charging stations, et cetera .)

That money did literally improve urban metro and regional rail–Caltrain electrification came out of it.

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

#366

Post by saagarjha »

everybodyknows wrote: post #265
bombcar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But neither would have to be the first step. Making the route from San Diego to LA high-speed is perfectly doable (the route exists already), and would be a great stepping stone. Even if it turns out the Tehachapi is basically the mountains of Mordor and the project ends, you'd still have a valuable high-speed corridor.

You'd think. But efforts long underway to incrementally improve the SD-LA section are now caught in a deep mire of NIMBYism: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/new-study-...

These people are objecting to…a train running under them? Why?

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

#367

Post by saagarjha »

trollbridge wrote: post #271
stephen_g wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, as people are priced out of the cities, having good HSR connections to SF and LA would be able to spur a lot of regional growth. This is a pretty common kind of blindspot for people to have, talking about how crazy it is to build transit to places with or lower populations or less population density, but forget that a lot of well-connected, dense places with good transit weren't very dense before good transi…

Transit to... Bakersfield? It's 112 miles from Los Angeles. Dumping high-speed rail (which in the current plan won't be high speed at all between Bakersfield and LA, but is going to be a slow, circuitous route going through Palmdale and Lancaster) is not really going to be realistic for any kind of commuting to LA. There is a reason these cities never got developed more than they are. It's kind of flat, unappealing s…

112 miles at 200 mph?

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

#368

Post by simplesocieties »

trollbridge wrote: post #237

This was both a very good read and thoroughly depressing. It makes a lot of sense to connect San Diego/LA/Sacramento/San Francisco. It makes a lot less sense to try to connect Merced, Bakersfield, Fresno, et al. People there like to have cars, like to drive, there isn't a lot of traffic. Once you arrive in those places, there is very little transit infrastructure. You basically need a car. And they're far more centre…

[dead]

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

#369

Post by agent281 »

twoodfin wrote: post #92
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.

If by NIMBY you mean litigation-mediated environmental regulation and union-optimized labor & wage rules, sure!

Porque no los dos?

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

#370

Post by saagarjha »

cheinic40081 wrote: post #338
johnnyanmac wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ex…

There's a San Jose stop.
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