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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

#401

Post by narrator »

In San Francisco they did a 1 mile extension of the subway and it cost 1 billion dollars. That's 10x what it would cost in any other major city anywhere in the world, but a whole bunch of middle management surplus elites found a way to get at all the tech company tax revenue, so the tunnel served it's purpose and nobody is upset.

The high speed rail project is serving a similar redistributive purpose to act as middle class welfare for people who work from home, go to zoom meetings and produce and review reports. Living in California is already as good as it gets, nothing needs to improve, but it sure is expensive so the governments job is to take tech money and dig and fill up holes in the ground and use homeless crackheads who randomly attack people and are never put in prison to terrorize the normies into continuing to pay for it all. If any of these projects got finished or there was a reasonable resolution to the homeless issue, all those middle class liberal arts degree meeting attenders would be out of a job and couldn't afford to live here.

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

#402

Post by joncrocks »

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?

Depending on the depth of the tunnel and the construction of the structure, you can get vibrations through the ground and foundations of the structure transmitted such that they are noticeable.

e.g. If you live above a tube line in London (London Underground) then you may hear/feel rumbling every time a train passes under you.

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

#403

Post by scop »

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…

- plan is presented

- (the many) stakeholders issue critiques

- new plan is presented that includes all the worst elements of said stakeholders but achieves unity across teams

- stakeholders toast and have an expensive dinner at achievement of unified plan

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

#404

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

andbberger wrote: post #300
nostrademons wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also less than that in travel time, since CAHSR goes at its full 350 km/h on the Central Valley vs just 130 km/h on the Caltrain corridor from SF to Gilroy. It adds about 10 minutes to non-stop travel time. The real benefit is opening the Central Valley to commuter development. San Jose to Madeira on CAHSR is around 45 minutes, not much more than commuting from Palo Alto with current traffic on 101, and so it’d…

CAHSR is almost certain to not be priced competitively for commuting. it is far more valuable to have that seat full all the way to LA. OTOH had altamont been selected, it would have been extremely useful for commuting from sacramento to the bay (branch line, no seats to displace)

This really depends on how it ends up being priced.

In Germany, you can pay for a year-long high-speed rail all-you-can-ride pass. It costs just under 5000 Euros, which is very reasonable if you're using it every workday.

This is a bit like AWS pricing. If you book an entire year of usage up-front, you get a much lower price. Casual users pay much more per use.

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

#405

Post by babyent »

agent281 wrote: post #377
babyent wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in America. I’m sure Europe has nice trains. I’ve rode the best trains in the world in Japan. America is a completely different dynamic and is not at all comparable to Europe nor Japan. The culture here has always revolved around cars (objectively better IMO for ME, I don’t like tiny cramped cities like in EU or Japan), and our roads are big and our buildings are large and really nice. New builds especially in…

I live in America. I have all my life. I've ridden on nice trains in Europe and Japan. The culture in the last 80-100 years has revolved around cars, but before that relied heavily on trains. I much prefer riding a spacious train to riding in a cramped airplane. I like to be able to get up and walk around while the train is traveling. I prefer the minimal security processes on a train to an airplane. Driving 6-10 hou…

Right but have you flown for business every few days like that? It seems like you’re still thinking about leisure travel between LA and SF.

My whole point was about business flight. Sure for leisure I’ll take a train. But if I’m flying for work I’d rather deal with a consistent (mostly, compared to any rail I’ve taken) experience.

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

#406

Post by babyent »

saagarjha wrote: post #382
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ha…

30 minutes is a lot between just the Bay Area when the entire flight between LA and SF takes 90 minutes.

Not to mention, you have to get to and from the train station or airport.

For example from where I live in SF, it takes about 20 minutes (depending on traffic) to get to King St station. It takes about 30 minutes to get to SFO. If I was taking MUNI to king street, looking at like 40+ minutes plus walking.

I’m a seasoned traveler so I’ll get there JIT for my flight.

In LA, if I’m going to El Segundo or Santa Monica, it’s like 10-30 minutes uber. If I was going to Pasadena or La Canada I’d fly to Burbank.

So yes the train is a silly idea to start with, unless it would be direct from heart of LA to SF, going like 300 mph (it is not). Not to mention once you’re in LA you have to get to your final destination which might take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more. And LA has horrible public transit

It’s far more convenient to fly.

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

#407

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #396
ergsef wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A lot of being "car brained" is because even the best transit sucks compared to a Taxi. People objectively don't want to share space with the masses. Even in Singapore or Japan, the stress of being in crowds is simply not worth it. Its slower, requires far more mental energy to plan your route, and requires a lot of physical movement which is hard for fatass americans. Especially when America has quite cheap, awesome…

If gasoline was sold for a fair price, cars would be reduced to a novelty within a generation

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

#409

Post by frickinLasers »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #339
frickinLasers wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Okay, but the I-5 doesn't bother with loops and tunnels. It just barrels right over the top of the mountains, including a 5-mile section of 6% grade according to the sign (https://www.crashforensics.com/tejonpass.cfm). Trucks struggle to crawl over the top at like 30 mph, with tires. It's not exactly a roller coaster hill to be overcome with inertia.

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

#410

Post by vlovich123 »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #384
vlovich123 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Something something something “solve the hard problems first”.
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