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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

#381

Post by inferiorhuman »

pests wrote: post #337
SllX wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Props 13 and 8.

Highly recommend Paradise Lost by Peter Schrag. Raising revenue requires supermajority voter approval in most cases. A huge chunk of the budget is already allocated by voter mandates and the legislature fights over the scraps.

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

#382

Post by saagarjha »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #380
saagarjha wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully California is, last I checked, in one country.

> Thankfully California is, last I checked, in one country You can replicate the experience between Caltrain and BART. To my knowledge, the HSR will share tracks with other trains. That makes the sort of scheduling problems that make Amtrak a pain more of a possibility. Not a reason to shoot down the project. But a decent reason to take OP's concerns seriously.

Caltrain and BART are rarely delayed by a significant amount, and they run frequently enough. Not as much as I'd like, but frequently enough that you're not ever going to be waiting more than 30 minutes. I don't think it's comparable at all to a cross-country journey that may require switching trains and different jurisdictions. Heck, Caltrain shares its own track already and it does just fine, and HSR will mostly have its own track except when it needs to share with Caltrain.

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

#383

Post by inferiorhuman »

booi wrote: post #357
upelephants wrote: post #259

Earlier 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,…

Yah it's BART that uses an odd track gauge. Although I did read a report saying they did it to make the trains both lighter and also able to withstand wind shear in certain parts of the system. To be honest though, I didn't find that report very compelling and they didn't back it up with actual load calculations. You really don't hear standard trains being blown over and the Bay Area isn't exactly famous for "high wi…

  Yah it's BART that uses an odd track gauge
Mainline BART. e-BART uses standard gauge diesel trains and the half billion dollar Oakland Airport shuttle is a completely bespoke cable car monstrosity.

  withstand wind shear
Specifically on the Golden Gate Bridge. Which may or may not be true. The track gauge is perhaps the most standard thing about BART cars.

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

#384

Post by inferiorhuman »

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.

Upgraded signaling along the Caltrain ROW is in the works, but again you've got to balance the egos of the three big stakeholders. Caltrain is a far smaller problem to CAHSR than e..g Metro North is to Acela. The big issue is going to be the approach to downtown SF — which is still a ridiculous political football.

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

#385

Post by bombcar »

saagarjha wrote: post #366
everybodyknows wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because of disruption during drilling, apparently, but mostly because they’re rich and can complain.

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

#387

Post by api »

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…

After living in California for a while and observing its urban planning culture more up close, I came away with the distinct impression that this is all by design.

California is owned by boomer homeowners, real estate speculators, and the auto industry, and the first commandment of all California planning is "allow nothing to change from the way it was in 1972." In the event that the first commandment fails, the second is "make anything new as expensive as possible so there's as much potential for graft as possible, and so existing home values aren't threatened."

Maybe things will change when there's a generational transition, but unfortunately it may just pass power on to the SV neoreactionary VC set who will proceed to implement their own different set of bizarre schemes that don't work like planned charter cities in the middle of nowhere. Or they might just turn into fuddy-duddies in their old age and change it to "allow nothing to change from the way it was in 2003 when I moved here and got rich."

California is the fourth largest economy, so clearly something is working, but I don't think California's urban planning culture is it. Places, companies, and people can all be extremely successful in spite of massive dysfunction.

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

#388

Post by wffurr »

nelox wrote: post #386

Convincing a car obsessed populace will be the clincher. What will you do at your destination? Rent a car? Stroll through quaint medieval environs of cosmopolitan downtown Los Angeles?

LA actually has a fair bit of transit. Also taxis are a thing, you may have read about them here from time to time.

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

#389

Post by api »

ergsef wrote: post #170
jonahrd wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is actually exactly what has been happening over the past few decades, and with the current proposal, for HSR from Toronto to Montreal, two of the largest cities in terms of both population and economy in Canada. Ottawa felt excluded, and is where the federal govt is based, so instead of going along the 401, a straight highway that follows a river valley and lake and has existing rail corridors, it has to go fro…

The fact is that politicians are insanely car-brained and nobody has any enthusiasm for improving rail infrastructure. Via Rail is trapped in this insane spiral of service cuts where it's miserable for staff and riders, and the solution is to cut more to make up for declining ridership. The new HSR is only happening because with the innovation of P3 deals the government can pay for the project but give all the profit…

Cars employ more people.

A lot of the opposition you hear from EVs comes from the fact that they require less maintenance and upkeep and so they employ fewer people.

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

#390

Post by infecto »

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…

Agreed. We should be striving for to build where it makes sense. It would be great to build for the future but let’s be real, America does not have the appetite.

SD - LA - SF makes a lot of sense both from a business and tourism perspective. Build along the I5 and figure out the rest later.

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