High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/High-speed-rail-taking-shape-even-as-opponents-10926131.php

by MilnerRoute • 9 years ago

196 287 9 years ago

niftich2• 9 years ago

Not sure why they decided to build an elaborate viaduct [1] to allow for a high-speed curve radius in Southeast Fresno, if Fresno will be a likely stop anyway. Just make all trains stop in Fresno, a place conveniently midway between SF and LA and desperate for improved connections with California's more prosperous areas. After all, isn't the whole point of HSR to improve connectivity between more than just the two termini, since those who want to go direct between SF and LA will always have a direct flight as an option?

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1NYS0Y3nyyYZowXFDtJ...

magila4• 9 years ago

since those who want to go direct between SF and LA will always have a direct flight as an option

Therein lies the problem. The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA, because that's the only conceivable way to get enough ridership. The problem is the distance between SF and LA means being competitive with flying in terms of travel time is incredibly difficult. To achieve parity the trains will need to average around 220 MPH, which is incredibly optimistic. Existing high speed rail lines rarely run at 200 MPH even momentarily due to high operating costs.

All this means that most trains will have to run nonstop between SF and LA to even have a hope of competing with flying. If the trains fail to draw passengers away from the airlines, ridership will be far too low to sustain the line without absurdly high subsidies.

melling• 9 years ago

NYC to Boston is 230 miles, about 3.5 hours by "fast" train. It's about an hour flight. A lot of people still take the train.

If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option.

kwhitefoot• 9 years ago

Existing high speed rail lines rarely run at 200 MPH even momentarily

Really?

Zaragoza to Barcelona does 310kph and very smoothly too. Much more comfortable than flying: https://dilemma-x.net/2014/03/14/high-speed-rail-in-spain-is...

jimmybobbyjones2• 9 years ago

The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA,

I have no trouble imagining that the train can compete with flying between SF and LA. Even if the train has to stop in several backwater towns along the way.

The shuttle flights between SFO/SJC and LAX are completely unreliable. When I was doing the SF-LA haul regularly, I'd be delayed (delayed!) by 6+ hours at least once per month. That's longer than it takes to drive. Do you really think the high speed train will take that long to travel between LA and the Bay Area?

So what if the minimum time of the train is a little longer than a flight? The expected time enroute is still much less.

saosebastiao3• 9 years ago

This is completely false. The entire flight demand of SF to LA is so pathetically low in comparison to the demand from the Cartesian set of intermediary routes that catering to just SF to LA would doom the project to failure. There isn't a successful HSR system in the world that hasn't already learned this lesson. Not only is Fresno crucial to ridership projections, but so are all the other small towns like Merced.

joshuaheard• 9 years ago

According to the figures released before the project, it will cost the same, but take twice as long to go from LA to SF compared to flying. No one is going to take the train instead of flying, except maybe John Madden.

lispm3• 9 years ago

France has tracks with 320km/h.

Germany uses 300km/h on some tracks. Here the view from a train at that speed overtaking cars on the Autobahn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js3XDTE5Iyg

China learned from it, here using a version of a German Siemens ICE train, Shanghai/Beijing in under five hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvytUaRs2dU

the_mitsuhiko4• 9 years ago

I would be utterly shocked if even the top speed reaches 220 MPH.

valuearb• 9 years ago

$64B just in startup costs, for a slower trip than flying. Why this infatuation with a technology that hasn't been leading edge since the 1800s?

erentz4• 9 years ago

Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.

jimrandomh• 9 years ago

They are also much, much cheaper per mile. Something is wrong with construction in the US that makes rail lines dramatically more expensive here.

thmsths2• 9 years ago

And the fastest if you take into consideration the fact that you can come to the train station less than 30 minutes in advance just hop in the train and travel downtown to downtown.

_red2• 9 years ago

For short distances high-speed rail can be a good option, particularly in connecting neighboring cities (LA-SF, etc).

The problems with all these projects are cost: Simple back of envelope calculations show it to be (a) dubious, or (b) possibly criminal (ie. standard taxpayer ripoff to cronies).

$64B - do the quick math on that. Figure a 30 year return on investment earning 4% per year:

$2.2B payback per year + operating cost of what? So somewhere around $7M per day in revenues minimum?

How many riders per day and what is average ticket price to make $7M per day?

I think you will suddenly find there are cheaper, faster, better options.

pzone3• 9 years ago

Yes but $64 billion more comfortable?

slacka• 9 years ago

Europe or Japan were nice, but China was amazing. No pre-paid ticket, no planning just show up at the Shenzen train station the morning, arrive in Beijing in the evening on the other size of the country.[1]

Imagine freedom, the innovation, the improvement in quality of life if we could hop on a train in the morning NYC and arrive in SF at night for ~$100. I found the trains so much more comfortable than even flying first class. Seeing the countryside fly by at 350km/hr is worth the price alone. Americans have no idea what they're missing.

http://www.beijingchina.net.cn/transportation/train/train-fr...

ghaff19• 9 years ago

It depends on the routing especially as you get to traveling over borders in Europe. It does seem to be steadily improving though. Just a few years ago, I was going from Dusseldorf to Paris and I was rather surprised that train really wasn't a very good option.

Today, as I go to whip that out as a counterexample, I see that Thalys would make a whole lot of sense vs. flying for me (though I don't know how door-to-door costs would compare).

stuckagain3• 9 years ago

It will be much faster than flying for door-to-door downtown-to-downtown trips.

djrogers7• 9 years ago

The Bay Area and Southern California are incredibly huge areas - The vast majority of travelers between the two are not going 'downtown-to-downtown'.

bbcbasic• 9 years ago

Flying has lots of externalised costs - noise, pollution, requires use of fossil fuels etc.

closeparen• 9 years ago

Ever lived near a busy level crossing? Passing trains may simply make the floors shake; train horns are deafening. You don't just hear them, you feel them in the core of your body. If you building is not well soundproofed, or you have any windows open for ventilation, you have no hope of sleeping through the night. Passing airplanes are background noise, passing trains refuse to be ignored.

Long/slow trains create an impermeable partition in the area, causing huge disruptions to local transportation (even pedestrians). Train tracks are also dangerous, requiring extra supervision of children and claiming the lives of the suicidal/oblivious/reckless every now and then.

If I asked to build something which

- Makes a huge amount of noise as it passes through residential areas at night.

- Disrupts all pedestrian, bicycle, and automobile traffic while it passes.

- Has no hope of stopping for the hazards that can trivially enter its path.

- Will obliterate anything it hits, 100% of the time.

You'd look at me like I was crazy, unless you grew up viewing trains as just part of the landscape.

All the same, I think we should build more of them. But trains are much worse for externalizing costs than airplanes.

erentz4• 9 years ago

Huge supporter of rail but sadly I believe there are a number of mistakes being made. This is a classic example of how projects like this in the US need to be monolithic, self contained, and gold plated to the hilt. The correct action would have been for CA to incrementally acquire and build railways along a number of corridors. Take the SF bay for example. There should be one agency running Caltrain, the Capitol Corridor, the ACE. It should electrify and improve all the routes. Extend reach to Monterey and other Central Valley locations. And do the same in Southern California.

The incompatibility of CAHSR with other rail strikes me as a repeat of the BART mistake.

JimboOmega• 9 years ago

A large part of what made the shinkansen work in ways that the current US rail system doesn't is its dedicated right of way, so I think building it separately makes some sense.

sharing with freight otrain slower commuter trains really reduces the value of HSR, especially on an older, slower right of way.

CalChris3• 9 years ago

a repeat of the BART mistake.

Probably a different mistake but BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5". This means that every railcar, every everything, has to be custom made with no economies of scale.

No one can remember why they did this.

privong6• 9 years ago

BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5".

Interesting. When I saw this, I wondered if it was to match another standard gauge that was judged to be superior. But, looking at the list of rail gauges on wikipedia[0], 5'6" is the gauge for railways in India ("Indian broad gauge" to be specific). The initial BART rolling stock seems to have been build by Rohr, Inc.[1], which is based in California. So it seems unlikely that they were benefiting from any economies of scale from Indian rail construction. Rohr also seems to have built rolling stock for the Washington, D.C. metro, which uses a near-standard 4'8.25" gauge[2].

Perplexing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc. (you'll need manually add the period to the end of the URL, because of how HN converts this into a link)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#System

sumbry• 9 years ago

It is pretty common knowledge why they did this. Original plans for the BART had it traveling over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County. Due to high winds across the bridge, they wanted a wider gauge to prevent trains from tipping.

acchow3• 9 years ago

Wtf is happening?

I want to believe that the different gauge standards is a bit like the proliferation of programming languages in software - they solve their slightly different problem space well. Is this true?

Animats3• 9 years ago

What's the incompatibility? It's 4' 8.5" standard gauge with 25KV AC catenary. (BART is 5' 6" with 1KV DC third rail, both of which are unique to BART.)

The construction process does seem to be insufficiently standardized. There's all that falsework and ground paving. Compare the way it's done in China, with standardized bridge sections placed on pylons by a very specialized machine.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbaD2-2Ktwc

erentz4• 9 years ago

They're insisting on a 50" above rail platform height for starters. Higher than anywhere else in the world and incompatible with all other rail in the US let alone CA. There is no comprehensive planning between the different agencies running commuter and regional rail and CAHSR to work towards common inter-operable standards. This should be state wide, if not across the whole west coast. (We really need state wide rail planning.)

stuckagain3• 9 years ago

Capitol Corridor improvements from Richmond to San Jose are something that could be done right now to dramatically improve transportation in the region. And all we need to do is nationalize the UPRR. Who would complain, really?

truebosko• 9 years ago

In Toronto and surrounding area we've seen the expansion of our suburban rail network, through incremental purchase of track, over the past decade. It's owned by one company (Metrolinx, which is a gov. Body) and it seems to be working out well. It's taken a long time (it feels like) to see progress in certain corridors but the rider ship and effect its having on the surrounding regions of Toronto is clearly identifiable.

This approach has its problems too, but I do agree with you hear type of monolithic projects always become a boondoggle.

rst• 9 years ago

Other successful high-speed rail systems (France's TGV, for example) also have dedicated rights-of-way, not shared with older equipment, and rail physically built to different standards (specially welded). You really don't want genuinely high-speed trains (300 km/h) running on the same tracks as anything slower, in normal operation. And if you try to build a high-speed system on earlier rights-of-way, you get something like Acela, in the US Northeast corridor. It can go at ~150 mph on track that can support it, but there are only a few miles of the route between Boston and Washington can support that. Net: it's only half an hour faster than conventional rail on the same route and track -- and something like half the difference is accounted for by the conventional trains making a lot more stops.

erentz4• 9 years ago

Correct. A difference is they start by thinking of (and running) the rail network as a whole system of supporting lines. Then add high speed railway segments to the network like expressways along key routes. This is what I think CA should do/have done. It's not too late actually, they could set up a "Caltrak". Develop a state wide rail plan that covered everything but urban metros, and begin buying assets/access and merging them into one whole network. What the CAHSR is building could continue, maybe with some adaptations of that plan, to just be those "expressway" sections mentioned.

theoh• 9 years ago

I had to look this up when you said "specially welded"...

As far as I can tell, TGV tracks are built to vey tight tolerances, but Continuous Welded Rail (CWR) is a worldwide standard on new railway lines, nothing special. I most recently saw some thermite welding equipment just about to be used in Dublin (Ireland) during the laying of new tramway tracks. So there's nothing exotic about the welding process, though it is quite dramatic.

ant6n4• 9 years ago

European high-speed rail systems have some dedicated rights of way, but they definitely didn't start that way. They are systems that are integrated with regional and urban rail, and have grown to have more dedicated higher speed sections over time. Compatibility is the main reason for the success of the TGV and ICE, for example over the failed Transrapid maglev system.

All track with passenger rail on it should be welded, so not sure what your point is. Also, every passenger rail should ideally be electrified; more freight trains should be electrified as well.

Yes high speed track is built to much tighter tolerances, but high speed trains can go on lower class tracks with slower speed. Plenty of ICE trains in Germany run on 160 km/h track. Extreme examples include TGVs being pulled by diesel trains to reach beach resorts.

sand500• 9 years ago

As I see it, the price of rail tickets will be pretty high.whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too?

privong6• 9 years ago

whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too?

The construction of the high-speed rail system is/will be heavily subsidized by the government. So presumably, the government will have a vested interest in keeping the train service running and will subsidize operating costs if airlines cut prices in that manner.

fennecfoxen• 9 years ago

the government ... will subsidize operating costs

By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs.

I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice.

privong6• 9 years ago

Folks down-voting: I know "subsidized by the government" == "subsidized by the taxpayers". My phrasing wasn't intended as a judgment on the merits of such action, just as a possible scenario in response to the GP's question.

TYPE_FASTER• 9 years ago

One advantage of rail is you can put a station in the middle of a metro area, removing travel time to the airport.

jzwinck• 9 years ago

You can sometimes put an airport in the middle of a metro area as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_City_Airport

London presently needs more runways and one of the serious proposals (now declined) was to build them in the Thames like the above.

k_sh2• 9 years ago

One major problem the HSR faces is the land acquisition to get into central LA... last I read, the plan was to terminate in Bakersfield.

djrogers7• 9 years ago

Los Angeles and the Bay Area don't have a single metro area to put one in the middle of - that's why there are 5 airports in SoCal and 3 up north that all have frequent flights between them.

ktRolster2• 9 years ago

The California High Speed Rail will end farther from San Francisco city than the airport currently is.

helthanatos• 9 years ago

High speed trains are much better than flights for small commutes, after the expenses are payed, it will be cheaper, it's easier to get on a train than wait hours for flights to take off. High speed rails are the future; flights are the past. Why would you not want to see this work out? Flying is quite annoying because it has constant delays, TSA, and hours of waiting in between.

ghaff19• 9 years ago

While I tend to agree, on the right routes, planes can easily run on an hourly shuttle schedule. As happens for some city pairs. And we're one attack away from potentially having increased security for trains.

pzone3• 9 years ago

It's not that I don't want to see it work out, or that I don't expect people would enjoy the ride more than flying. It sounds perfectly pleasant and nice.

But it has a pricetag of $64 billion. How much more exactly are they going to enjoy it, in dollar terms? How much is it worth sticking taxpayers so that wealthy SF<->LA commuters can have a slightly more pleasant experience?

dclowd9901• 9 years ago

You really think the TSA isn't going to want a piece of this?

Gibbon13• 9 years ago

My understanding and part of why I support the high speed rail project is this.

Airports in California coastal cities are near max capacity. And expansion is either very expensive[1] or near impossible. And would face even more community objections than the high speed rail project. So the airlines likely wouldn't try to compete with high speed rail. Instead they would try to attract more national and international travelers. Paradoxically to high speed rail would increase the airports area of service. Because one could then take the train + cab to the airport rather than drive 100 miles or take a puddle jumper.

[1] I offhand remember, between 500 million to 2 billion _each_.

gydfi3• 9 years ago

Even if the airports are near max capacity (and I think that's probably only LAX) there could be a lot more passenger-miles.

Right now most SFO-LAX flights are on nothing larger than a 737 or A320, and on LAX-SJC I seem to wind up on some abominable regional jet.

There's a lot of room to increase capacity by flying wide bodies if the demand exists. Compare to the SYD-MEL route, a similar distance, where you're likely to wind up on an A330 or 767.

pm246016• 9 years ago

SFO back in early 2000 was trying for a runway repositioning that was priced at $3.5 billion (http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=00-P13-0002...) . Mind you this was just for repositioning runways. Not increasing fair weather capacity.

ngokevin• 9 years ago

In China, the high speed rail tickets are just about equally as expensive as flights. Though not having to go through Chinese airport security and flights are worth it. No mobile devices allowed at all during flights!

milesrout6• 9 years ago

As I understand it, aeroplane tickets are already very low-margin.

coredog642• 9 years ago

Airlines generally have the same 3% margin that you would find in the grocery business.

It has long been an aviation joke that it is easy to make a small fortune running an airline...As long as you start with a large fortune.

fulafel• 9 years ago

Due to climate change air travel will have to be drastically reduced (or we get problems that make California transport irrelevant).

intrasight• 9 years ago

America’s biggest infrastructure project is both in limbo and full-speed ahead.

There is a logic to that for a project of this magnitude that may take dozens of years to complete.

zlynx• 9 years ago

"planning snafus" AKA politically motivated outright lies.

jorblumesea• 9 years ago

Forget high speed rail, where's the commuter trains? It seems ridiculous that in most US cities public transit is mostly non-existent. Traffic is bad in most major US cities you'd think people would be jumping for this as urbanization increases.

ghaff19• 9 years ago

Well, without really disagreeing, you tend to need a layout where hub & spoke makes sense. With older east coast cities (e.g. NYC & Boston) you have commuter rail lines radiating out from central city stations from which people can walk or take the subway to jobs connecting to suburban stations with parking.

It doesn't work if you don't have that central density & transit. It doesn't generally work in the opposite direction either. (Urban dwellers to suburban jobs.)

Gibbon13• 9 years ago

Lost in the high speed rail bit, the CHSR is actually what you're asking for. Because it serves as commuter rail in the Bay Area and LA Basin. And to a lesser extent elsewhere. That's the actual reason it's expensive.

Sanddancer5• 9 years ago

Those are covered under other bond measures. LA has a multi-generation plan [1] for building out several new rail lines, busways, etc. It's harder to find an overarching document for the Bay Area because there are too damn many counties and transit agencies around here, but there are lots of projects -- BART to San Jose, Caltrain electrification, new rail lines and improved lines in SF, rebuilding the Dumbarton Rail Bridge -- that are in various stages of planning and construction.

[1] http://theplan.metro.net/

ubernostrum• 9 years ago

Part of the fallout of this is likely that the electrification and modernization of Caltrain will die, since it's dependent on funding from the high-speed rail project.

Caltrain is currently running 30-year-old diesel locomotives and 30-year-old passenger carriages on many of its trains, because they have no funding to get more modern equipment or electrify the line. Minor breakdowns have been increasing for a while, with occasional major problems (like last week when they had a fire in one of the locomotives during the evening rush hour).

datahack• 9 years ago

If I had known that they were going to run this through the Central Valley instead of down the coast where it belongs I never would have voted for it. It should have gone straight from la to Oakland or emeryville, turned and gone straight to Sacramento. Instead we have a convoluted mess of rail connections that take people places they don't even want to go (no offense to Bakersfield buts it's hardly a holiday destination).

It's a farse because of how it's getting implemented, and nobody is under any illusions this isn't going to turn into another bay bridge budget monster in California.

Still a rail proponent, but bitterly disappointed in the implementation choices of this project.

scythe3• 9 years ago

Nah, the coast is too expensive; you have to go over a bunch of hills and deal with steep terrain and thick forests. The correct option is to go for the cheapest land available, which any private company (not sure this kind of thing should be privatized but it's a useful comparison imo) would have obviously gone for. That would be just west of I-5, up the eastern edge of the Central Valley. Throw in a few improvements to the E-W roads between [Modesto/Bakersfield/Santa Cruz/etc] and the train corridor (which can be put off a few years to raise money) and you end up with nearly the same level of service to those areas anyway. But because it's political and activists want train service to their towns because [ideology] or just for the property values, we get cost overruns while delaying the big prize: service from SF to LA.

acchow3• 9 years ago

while delaying the big prize: service from SF to LA.

I don't think that's the biggest deal here.

I'll refer you to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13630341

shiny• 9 years ago

Another potential concern is that it runs through some good farmland, which CA has some of the best of in the world.

I would love to have an HSR along the coast however. When I was in Taiwan it was amazing being able to get to the bottom of the island in a couple hours.

milesrout6• 9 years ago

some good farmland, which CA has some of the best of in the world.

Is that a joke? California is a terrible place to be farming. Farming in California is only viable because farmers are allowed unfettered access to water, depriving it from residents (who are told they should turn off the water in the shower while farmers are pouring untold millions of gallons on crops that could be grown somewhere actually suited to farming).

mmanfrin• 9 years ago

The amount of space railway needs is infinitesimally small compared the amount of arable land we have. This is not a concern.

gozur882• 9 years ago

We have more good potential farmland in CA than we have water. I don't see the impact to agriculture as being very large if the water allotment can be transferred.

jwatte2• 9 years ago

The coast is already full of private property and protected areas. No way to run a train there (unless you bury it all the way.)

SF/LA commuting is still a thing, though, and will be great!

capkutay• 9 years ago

It is really disappointing that it doesn't at least go near the coast. I doubt they'd be able to eminent domain coastal lands now that california homeowners are so politically powerful now, but they at least could have tried to build it along the 101 so it was driving/bus distance to the coast.

If you want to take a beautiful coastal train ride, nothing beats the Amtrak from LA to San Diego.

Justin_K• 9 years ago

Which takes longer than a drive in traffic.

solstice• 9 years ago

With climate change and rising sea levels those coastal areas arent going to be long-term habitable anyway

snomad• 9 years ago

I always thought they should have gone LA - Las Vegas - Reno, but that takes a more regional approach.

thinkcontext• 9 years ago

There is such an effort for LA to Vegas. Its been setback as it was a joint venture between a US firm and a Chinese partner. The Chinese pulled out, however, because of the requirement that high speed trains be manufactured in the US (there are currently no such manufacturers).

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-xpresswest-rail-line...

pm246016• 9 years ago

Seriously - trains should go where the people are. The people are in the central valley. Between Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz the population is very light and the terrain is very difficult.

It wasn't until the 20th century that access to the Big Sur area was possible. And even today for over a hundred miles highway 1 is the only access.

Fresno - 509,000 people Bakersfield - 363,000 people

The first segment connects 1 million people with a high quality dedicated rail connection. Take a trip on the San Joaguin train - that train slow as it is, is very popular.

Next take a look at a map. Los Angeles is due south of Lake Tahoe. So going to central valley is not a detour or some other political game.

The real political mess is the choice of Pacheco Pass (hwy 152) rather than the Altamont Pass.(I-580) Once again Altamont Pass - a lot of people. hwy 152 - crickets in comparison.

WillPostForFood4• 9 years ago

trains should go where the people are

That's why the money would be better spent on local transit improvements inside the Los Angeles area and the Bay Area, not connecting them.

masklinn5• 9 years ago

Seriously - trains should go where the people are.

For HSR you want to connect large hubs, there's no point in a train which can go 200mph if it has to stop every 60mi.

jmalicki2• 9 years ago

BART is already being extended to Livermore (just west of the Altamont pass), and already goes to Dublin, so that area is at least already well-served by regional transit.

Going over the Pacheco Pass allows the train to hit San Jose and the Silicon Valley without going through huge windy detours, which has a lot more people in it than the Altamont Pass area.

txdv• 9 years ago

In germany they have a similar problem, if you want to build a train rail through some unimportant backwaters, these backwaters will want you to make a stop in their little cities.

belorn• 9 years ago

There is a relative easy solution to that problem, one that I suspect has happened quite a few times in history. The budget to staff and maintain the stop is put on the local budget of the backwater, and sooner or later a local politician will want to reclaim those costs.

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

Sometimes the rail can reinvigorate those backwaters. Case in point: Montabaur, Germany.

dragonwriter3• 9 years ago

If I had known that they were going to run this through the Central Valley instead of down the coast where it belongs I never would have voted for it.

The coast would be a stupid place to run high speed rail; it would be both more expensive to the lay the track there and less useful.

rebootthesystem• 9 years ago

If I had known that they were going to run this through the Central Valley instead of down the coast where it belongs I never would have voted for it.

Do everyone a favor. In the future, when such projects come up for vote, assume the politicians are lying to you and, most importantly, they are as incompetent as a truck driver attempting open heart surgery. That's a good start. Then do some research and see if in the last fifty years they have ever completed any project on time, on budget and without major problems.

Armed with that reality, please don't vote to give incompetent liars the ability to create another mess and screw us all, again.

cr0sh• 9 years ago

no offense to Bakersfield buts it's hardly a holiday destination

No, it's not. I was born in and grew up there, and I'm glad I left (though as a kid, I thought it was a nice place to live).

But it (and Fresno, and the CV in general) does have something that the coast and SF/LA doesn't have: Low-cost housing/property.

Imagine being able to live in Bako, Fresno, etc - and commute quickly to SF or LA. By high-speed rail, it'd probably only take an hour or two each way. Provided that it didn't cost a lot (or you could get monthly 2-way passes), it would be a great way for those who want to work in SV or such to do so, and be able to afford to live comfortably in a home with a family.

In fact, the idea is interesting enough to me to consider moving back to California (I'd love a tech job in the SF area, but the cost of living - mainly housing - just blows that idea out of the water).

prostoalex• 9 years ago

Provided that it didn't cost a lot

Seems to be the kicker with using these trains for commuter purposes. Everywhere you look - Switzerland, Japan, Spain, Eurostar - the prices seem to be at either high double digits or low triple digits one way.

The way it was sold to voters in California is that it would become a revenue generator, so some additional padding is needed for profit margins.

redwood• 9 years ago

If you look carefully at a map, LA is actually as far East as Lake Tahoe. It's confusing but what this means is essentially going through the Central Valley is not really particularly out of the way. In fact that's why the fastest way to drive to La is on I5. It was also important to incorporate all major metropolitan areas in the state for political reasons.

arca_vorago• 9 years ago

I loved Chomsky's response to this "Like the one I took in Japan... in the 1950's..."

For extra fun, realize that California had already begun about the same time as Japan to install more public transport, but the car companies moved muscle on them to stop it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

klinquist• 9 years ago

One thing that nobody has mentioned - autonomous cars. Close to the time this will be completed, I assume I'll be able to sit in my vehicle and be shuttled from SF to LA in 5 hrs in the comfort of my own vehicle.

jwatte2• 9 years ago

The car is slower, and an order of magnitude less efficient. And efficiency matters -- there's a limit to how much energy can be sustainably spent, and if transportation is more efficient, we get to do more other things.

adventured• 9 years ago

Not to mention that the US is going to continue to expand in terms of population. We've added 60 million people in 20 years, nearly equal to the population of France. We'll add another 20+ million in the next decade.

Simultaneously we'll become slightly less rural and more urban in terms of population concentration.

Even if the autonomous electric vehicle has a huge role to play in improving traffic in the US - which it clearly does - high speed rail (whether hyperloop-like, above ground, below ground, whatever) will still make sense alongside that. There is going to be plenty of demand to go around, such that having multiple approaches will be useful. Sometimes the autonomous car will make sense, sometimes rail will make sense.

djrogers7• 9 years ago

The car is slower

Only in theory - current estimates are that by the time stops, noise abatement, track changes, etc have all been factored in, the CAHSR trains will average under 100MPh - closer to 80, which is easily achievable on i5 by a car.

ghaff19• 9 years ago

Normally I'm as skeptical of autonomous vehicle timeframes as anyone. But this is a case where even just the highway portion would be a huge win. And one of the cities (as well as pretty much all the intermediate locations) aren't very public transit or pedestrian friendly.

If I'm leaving SF and will be in LA in 5-6 hours (door-to-door) with a minimum of driving [ADDED: with my own vehicle], how attractive is that train?

I do get the efficiency of train travel but if you're already skeptical that the numbers work...

gydfi3• 9 years ago

Once autonomous driving works well, I see no reason why cars can't scream along I-5 at twice the current speed, too. So five hours could become three and a bit, door to door.

They could even autonomously draft behind each other for maximum efficiency. Cars could be designed with high speed drafting aerodynamics in mind. With that, a line of cars might actually be more energy efficient than a high speed train running at typical occupancy levels, or at least competitive.

seanmcdirmid2• 9 years ago

Trains as mass transit beat cars on efficiency driver or not. Autonomous cars are best used locally or to deal with last mile problems

wapz2• 9 years ago

The problem is that same person can pay about $50 for gas to go from SF to LA and have the car with them in LA or pay $130 for a one way ticket (I haven't read the numbers but that's about the cost in Japan and I expect other countries with high speed rail). Then you have to get to the station which might be a little far for some.

I really love the high speed rail system in Japan and Europe but it's not cheap.

pm246016• 9 years ago

I suppose if you regard sitting in a seat not being able to move as comfortable.

But before you get too relaxed in that glorious possible future:

1) high speed trains exist and proven - no new science or engineering to figure out

2) autonomous cars are constrained by the realities of space to put the vehicles. Too many vehicles, autonomous or otherwise = congestion and slow travel.

3) At 6 hours, this is nearly twice as long as the train will be.

4) In the autonomous car, you will need to stop for food and bathroom break. The train does not need to stop. So your trip time is extended, especially true with kids.

5) At 3.5 hours, someone can leave for LA at 6am - get to a 10am meeting and return in time for dinner and bed. Not going to happen if each direction takes 5-6 hours.

wapz2• 9 years ago

I really like high speed trains but have you paid for them? They are great for business where you need to go somewhere and come back, but for a family of 4 they are extremely expensive. From Tokyo to Osaka ~350 miles, it's about $130 per person each way on the Shinkansen. For 4 of us (2 adults, a child, and a free toddler), it would be ~$650 for round trip tickets.

jboggan• 9 years ago

Probably should be spending that money on infrastructure (read: dam) maintenance.

Sanddancer5• 9 years ago

Both can, should, and are being done. The California Water Project is rather adequately funded. The Oroville Dam problem is due to a pretty unprecedented winter, not a lack of maintenance. The emergency overflow seems to have held, at least for now, so with hope they can put in a fix for the spillway.

Figs• 9 years ago

I was against the project back when it was a ballot measure, but since then my opinion on it has changed -- I don't care if trains ever run on the damned thing, what really matters in this project is getting the right of way to the land, because they're going to put in a MASSIVE amount of fiber optic cable as they dig out the path.

bcheung• 9 years ago

I would prefer to see the money spent on improving Caltrain. It really is not a viable option for a lot of people. South of SJ Diridon, the trains only run 3x in the morning and 3x in the evening and they require you to basically wake up at 5 or 6 AM depending on the train you want to catch. A lot of tech workers don't come into the office until after 10 AM.

The high speed rail won't really help people already living in Silicon Valley except for the rare few who live near downtown San Jose and plan to work in SF (or vice versa).

And yet, they are the ones who will bear the inconvenience. The proposed plans I have seen will have the train elevated 60 ft in the air, it's about 70-80 ft total from my bedroom window and the train will travel 150 mph several times an hour at around 100 dB. Additionally, they will be narrowing a major road that is 2 lanes in each direction to 1 lane in each direction to make room for the train. Which is weird, because the Caltrain tracks are just another 30 feet away so not sure why they don't just build it above that.

There was some talk of a proposal to reimburse home owners due to the loss of value to their homes if this goes through. Based on the proposal I was looking at they showed a $100K to $200K loss of property value if the train goes through.

If I actually wanted to take the train, it would take me 20-45 minutes to get to the train station in San Jose even though I am already in San Jose.

I'm really disappointed in how impractical this is for the majority of people who live and work in SF bay area and the level of cost and inconvenience it will cause.

ericd• 9 years ago

High speed rail isn't generally meant for commuters - if it had frequent stops, it would never have a chance to reach high speeds before it would have to slow down again.

Perhaps they could provide some subsidy to help you soundproof the side of your house facing the tracks?

Also, it's 100 dB at what distance?

High-speed rail taking shape even as opponents seek to kill it

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