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Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

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Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#14

Just curious..if China could help build it with half cost and half time, would CA accept? If not, why?

IIRC, SNCF, the French consortium, had offered up a plan to build the HSR from SF to LA. They asked for no public funding. http://marketurbanism.com/2012/07/10/what-i-learned-today-ab...

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#15
post #12

We're like the Yahoo of countries.

Based off our inability to build infrastructure?

Boeing still builds a ton of airplanes in America. Tesla is founded and manufactured in America. In 20 years we've created the empires of iPhone, Google and Facebook.

Wasn't CRISPR discovered in America as well?

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#16

I feel like more international airports in SF and LA would be much more useful. More locations to touch-down in, less crowded airports. Getting from LA to SF is already quite easy travel wise - a 1 hr flight. It's getting to and from the airport and how crowded they are that's most annoying. More airports would help solve both of those.

I feel like that wouldn't fix the issue in such close proximity locations.

Flying isn't optimal for that type of distance (less than 400 miles). You could lay track and get more volume on some high speed trains with comparable times (if you take into account the time for arrival / security clearance / etc at airports), the train could even be faster.

Land rights are obviously the issue (esp in california), but adding more airports as a transit option for end points that are less than 500 miles doesn't seem ideal at all.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#17
post #10

I feel like more international airports in SF and LA would be much more useful. More locations to touch-down in, less crowded airports. Getting from LA to SF is already quite easy travel wise - a 1 hr flight. It's getting to and from the airport and how crowded they are that's most annoying. More airports would help solve both of those.

There aren't a lot of good places to put them, at least in the Bay Area.

> There aren't a lot of good places to put [airports]

The Bay Area is mostly low-density sprawl. Pretty much anywhere is a fine place to put it. The problem is the veto rights small groups of people have over projects with regional utility, i.e. there's no way for 9 cities to over-rule 1 city for something that benefits them all.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#18
post #10

I feel like more international airports in SF and LA would be much more useful. More locations to touch-down in, less crowded airports. Getting from LA to SF is already quite easy travel wise - a 1 hr flight. It's getting to and from the airport and how crowded they are that's most annoying. More airports would help solve both of those.

There aren't a lot of good places to put them, at least in the Bay Area.

Concord has an airport that used to have daily nonstops. A plane crash into a mall and assorted NIMBY's have closed it to daily scheduled commercial traffic, but it's still perfectly capable.

Watsonville has an airport with plenty of room to better serve south bay and Santa Cruz.

Moffett, of course.

Even San Carlos has an airport with a fair amount of general aviation traffic.

Hayward Executive always looms when I fly into Oakland- it looks more than big enough.

Livermore, Novato, Palo Alto (busiest general aviation airport in the country), the list goes on.

Frankly just getting Concord back into the act would be tremendously difficult. My definition of "good places" differs somewhat from those in power, but that may slowly be changing.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#19

I feel like more international airports in SF and LA would be much more useful. More locations to touch-down in, less crowded airports. Getting from LA to SF is already quite easy travel wise - a 1 hr flight. It's getting to and from the airport and how crowded they are that's most annoying. More airports would help solve both of those.

I feel like that wouldn't fix the issue in such close proximity locations. Flying isn't optimal for that type of distance (less than 400 miles). You could lay track and get more volume on some high speed trains with comparable times (if you take into account the time for arrival / security clearance / etc at airports), the train could even be faster. Land rights are obviously the issue (esp in california), but adding…

how is it not optimal? its 1/3rd the travel time and $75 each way.

Re: Help wanted: CEO for CA high speed rail project. High pay, sleepless nights

#20

Just curious..if China could help build it with half cost and half time, would CA accept? If not, why?

The Buy America Act is some of the problem, AFAIK. There's going to have to be a fair amount of training and construction of manufacturing sites for what is ultimately going to be relatively small orders, unless further HSR is built in the US.
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