Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 8:37 AM UTC

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 would have been far better spent improving urban metro and regional rail.

CA HSR was the political lever to get funding to improve urban metro and regional rail, so, in a sense, the money was spent doing that.

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

#462

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 8:44 AM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #232

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_...

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

> Did it have to be funded by a proposition?

Yes.

> Could the CA legislature not have passed a law?

To fund a long-term capital project? No, for a number of reasons. First, at that time, the CA legislature couldn't practically fund anything reliably (budget process is Constitutionally mandated to be annual, and at that time required a 2/3 supermajority to pass, which caused regular budget crises.) Second, and more importantly, structurally, to fund major capital projects, debt financing is required, and California cannot, Constitutionally, issue bonds without voter approval. Prop 1A was a legislative initiative amendment -- that is, the legislature had to pass a bill to put it on the ballot -- to secure that approval.

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

#463

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 8:52 AM UTC

pj_mukh wrote: post #364

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But by then 25M would have access to the main trunk of the train generating massive revenues.

No, they wouldn't. Because Prop 1A funds are a tiny drop in the system funding requirements, and choosing the I-5 alignment would not have sped up any of the issues that make the things around the termini more time consuming, and not having a ready-to-work initial construction segment that actually formed part of an initial operating segment that actually connects populated areas (even if they are much smaller than the termini) would have meant no federal ARRA funding (not to mention the weaker in-state political support), so what actually would have happened is that the project would take longer and, in the year-of-expenditure way CA HSR costs are always estimated and quoted, cost much more before anything got built or operational.

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

#464

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 8:54 AM UTC

inferiorhuman wrote: post #383

booi wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Specifically on the Golden Gate Bridge

BART never operated on the Golden Gate Bridge (or any of the other Bay Area bridges).

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

#465

Post by ta1243 » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 9:05 AM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #442

ta1243 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA to Bakersfield is 110 miles. That's about an hour, certainly plenty of people do that journey in the UK multiple times a week. Tamworth for example is exactly 110 miles from Euston. In peak times the fast trains stop there for the commuter traffic and it takes 67 minutes. Peterborough, Gratham, Newark (100-140 miles) are all common commuter places,

If we ever got HSR I'm not saying the is unviable. People commuting from suburbs to downtown LA have a 60-79 minute commute, a commute they can't sleep or be productive through. That's no issue. I'm just saying the hubs are completely incompatible in both culture and market. Bakersfield is an energy/agriculture hub and LA is an entertainment hub. The utility here isn't exactly efficient if people are traveling that f…

You don't need HSR, just a normal 125mph train line.

Imagine you are born in Bakersfield, your family is from Bakersfield, perhaps they are agricultural workers, but you don't want to be a farmer, you want a job in a big city, perhaps an accountant, or a civil engineer, or a whatever. It's a typical modern desk job, for whatever reason you need to be in an office a few times a week, maybe not 5 since covid, but certainly 2-3.

You can either move a long way from your home, family, support network and live near your work, or you can maintain that community and support network but have a limited access to jobs. Or you can do both - stay living close to family so you can pop round in 10 minutes for a chat, but also have an increased choice of jobs and careers that a large city provides.

Nobody is commuting 100 miles a day for a minimum wage job sure, but there's far more jobs than cashiers - I assume LA has decent jobs somewhere between the "Holywood A-Lister" and the "$10/hour cleaner" scale, and due to its size it likely has more opportunities than Bakersfield alone.

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

#466

Post by ta1243 » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 9:06 AM UTC

stuaxo wrote: post #458

ta1243 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tens of millions? £1.2 BILLION before a single spade in the ground for the lower thames crossing https://www.ft.com/content/917d4b7f-318e-46fe-ba44-664551ebc... The planning document alone was 350,000 pages long, and cost about £1000 per page (£350m). What western countries lack is someone empowered enough to just say "fuck it, make it happen", and be held accountable once it's built.

How did France and Spain build their high speed rail?

I would guess less institutionalised corruption and less weight put on planning objections.

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

#467

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 9:20 AM UTC

babyent wrote: post #406

saagarjha wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

This is of course a personal choice but I really can't understand people's insistence that a train that takes a single minute longer than a plane ride is inferior. I actually like planes, especially going down the California coast, which is pretty much every day of the year. But plane seats are cramped, and half the time you can't use your computer even if you wanted to. I usually fly from SJC if I want to go to LAX, and I think SFO and SJC are two of my favorite airports, but even then it's a bunch of walking to get to your terminal, and you're still going to be going through security. They're nothing like LAX, which is miserable in comparison, but an airport can only be so good.

But if we're going to talk about time: I don't agree with your numbers. SFO to LAX is like 50-60 minutes in the air. I feel like your 90 is a reasonable number for gate-to-gate. Arriving 30 minutes before departure at SFO will probably just get you to do your gate on time for last call on boarding. Add another 15 minutes to get out of LAX. Then, on both sides, whatever transportation you need to get to and from the airports, which I think is reasonable to cancel out when compared to the train.

For a train they're targeting a little over 2.5 hours for the journey. I can be outside in 5 minutes, and I can also feel comfortable arriving five minutes early. Let's be generous and say it takes 3 hours, curb to curb. The plane does the same in like 2-2.5 hours. I don't really see this being significantly different.

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

#468

Post by ImJamal » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

agent281 wrote: post #372

ActorNightly wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

California can't raise property taxes unless Prop 13 is repealed and that's a very high bar to pass.

A lot of retired people would lose their houses so it would be a political disaster to remove it.

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

#469

Post by johnnyanmac » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 7:57 PM UTC

ta1243 wrote: post #465

johnnyanmac wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we ever got HSR I'm not saying the is unviable. People commuting from suburbs to downtown LA have a 60-79 minute commute, a commute they can't sleep or be productive through. That's no issue. I'm just saying the hubs are completely incompatible in both culture and market. Bakersfield is an energy/agriculture hub and LA is an entertainment hub. The utility here isn't exactly efficient if people are traveling that f…

You don't need HSR, just a normal 125mph train line. Imagine you are born in Bakersfield, your family is from Bakersfield, perhaps they are agricultural workers, but you don't want to be a farmer, you want a job in a big city, perhaps an accountant, or a civil engineer, or a whatever. It's a typical modern desk job, for whatever reason you need to be in an office a few times a week, maybe not 5 since covid, but certa…

>You can either move a long way from your home, family, support network and live near your work, or you can maintain that community and support network but have a limited access to jobs.

Is there enough people with that mindset in Bakersfield?the population is 400k, and the opposite narrative of commuting out the city to work the oil rigs probably isn't as common.

From a political point of view, LA doesn't exactly in need of even more starry-eyed youth to compete with trying to make some career in the entertainment sector.

>I assume LA has decent jobs somewhere between the "Holywood A-Lister" and the "$10/hour cleaner" scale, and due to its size it likely has more opportunities than Bakersfield alone.

Definitely not in 2025. I guess we'll see if we're still in one piece in a decade.

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

#470

Post by agent281 » Wed, Apr 30, 2025, 10:43 PM UTC

ImJamal wrote: post #468

agent281 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California can't raise property taxes unless Prop 13 is repealed and that's a very high bar to pass.

A lot of retired people would lose their houses so it would be a political disaster to remove it.

Yeah, I think we should keep that aspect of prop 13. That is what it was originally billed as.

It just doesn't make sense that golf courses pay taxes that are more aligned with the 70's property values.

If there was ever a major change to prop 13 taxes, I think we would need to phase in the new taxes over a five to ten year period. Otherwise, the market would be thrown into chaos.