California approves final high-speed rail link connecting San Francisco to LA

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/california-high-speed-rail-19542125.php

by edward • 2 years ago

86 165 2 years ago

Tangentially, one of my big hopes of this upcoming election in the UK is that Labour get a big enough majority in parliament that they can force through a lot of infrastructure projects with minimal process. We could have a golden age again where parliament pass individual acts supporting simplified processes for HS2, a third Heathrow runway, etc, given the upcoming super-majority

pestatije• 2 years ago

third Heathrow runway?...say that often and loud enough and your Labour majority goes up in smoke

ducttapecrown• 2 years ago

https://hsr.ca.gov/2024/06/27/news-release-california-high-s...

https://www.buildhsr.com/

fuzzythinker2• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

Invictus0• 2 years ago

$100 billion for 463 miles of track is outrageous, and that's surely to double by the time it's completed. In 1964, Japan was able to build its 320 mile long Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka in just 5 years for less than $12B, inflation adjusted.

bsimpson• 2 years ago

New York has the most famous mafia, but it does seem like Americans have just accepted that all our urban infrastructure construction is rife with corruption. See also the Central Subway in SF, the Big Dig in Boston, and the general perception that anything infrastructure related will cost infinity dollars and approximately never be completed.

pokepim• 2 years ago

American exceptionalism

lazide4• 2 years ago

It’s largely a factor of all this being ‘nice to have’, no one having a reason to cut through the BS, combined with an outrage driven media/culture.

Because let’s be serious - California doesn’t actually need high speed rail.

No one sane wants, or needs, to rock the boat - especially since doing so just gets a giant eye of Sauron pointed at them. Extra bonus? Turning the crank endlessly on this while everyone complains gets them rich.

kjkjadksj2• 2 years ago

I’m surprised that you are surprised that there is a difference in both property and labor costs between a japan 19 years post allied strategic bombing and present day california.

kortilla2• 2 years ago

Im surprised you think the issue is labor and land costs.

mitthrowaway2• 2 years ago

Most of the land for the Shinkansen route was actually acquired in the 1930s, before any strategic bombing.

guywithahat2• 2 years ago

Ok well Brightline, a private company, built 170 miles of high speed rail in Florida for $5 billion 6 years ago.

Not only is 100 billion a bad deal, given CA’s track record they could easily spend $200 billion and never complete it

martinald4• 2 years ago

This line will last for 100+ years - I really don't think it's that much for a state with a GDP of $3trillion+ to connect many of the major cities.

The other thing to think about is what is the alternative - road or airport construction in california is not cheap. Replacing 2 bridges on I-5 in stockton is going to cost nearly $1b alone.

And I think a lot of the benefit won't just come from the main SF LA route, it'll be intermediate stations to SF or LA too. It'll only take 19 minutes to go from Palmdale to LA for example - compared with 1hr+ now. In a way it would have been better to have the IOS be one of those routes, but they are also the most difficult geography.

throwawaymaths4• 2 years ago

it'll be intermediate stations to SF or LA too. It'll only take 19 minutes to go from Palmdale to LA

Is there evidence that people will want to pay the high price of such a train ticket... And then what, once you're in LA? The last mile problem in LA and San Francisco (mind you HSR is not currently planned to enter the city, and BART is insanely expensive) is real.

diogenescynic• 2 years ago

But why is it exponentially more expensive to build infrastructure in the US than in other countries? Germany just built a tunnel under the sea to Denmark for a lot less $ per mile. Surely it's not just the wages and cost of living--it has to be all the consultants and cronies who take their cut.

vineyardlabs• 2 years ago

Notably, Palmdale, CA is the city where residents have the longest average commute of anywhere in the US, largely because people are commuting from there into the city of LA to work. Palmdale is probably one of the only places where you can afford to live / own a home / etc. if you work in LA and don't have a very high income. If you live in Palmdale and work in LA your one-way commute is probably somewhere between 1.5 - 2.5 hours. Just the Palmdale -> LA stretch of this project would massively improve those poor folks' lives, if the ticket prices are reasonable and the boarding process efficient enough for a daily commute. Unfortunately as a CA taxpayer I don't have high hopes for either of those things.

jonathankoren• 2 years ago

There’s no single answer to why infrastructure is ludicrously expensive in the United States. It’s too easy to delay, so the costs go up. (Especially in California with its multiple rounds of public feedback.) Laws requiring American contractors, mean no one has experience building large complex projects, so things get delayed. Add in contractors along every link in the chain charging a government job premium, and the fact that government agencies have been gutted so whose left is easily bamboozled by the private grifters, or forced to hire expensive consultants to do jobs that used be done more cheaply in house, it’s no wonder everything is expensive.

It’s simultaneously too much regulation, and too little government oversight.

https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs...

shiroiushi4• 2 years ago

In 1964, Japan was able to build its 320 mile long Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka in just 5 years for less than $12B, inflation adjusted.

Another important factor here is the cost of construction: the California project will all be above-ground, AFAIK. However, a significant portion of the Tokaido line between Tokyo and Osaka is through tunnels, so the difficulty of construction was far greater.

For a more apples-to-apples comparison, Japan is currently building the [Chuo Shinkansen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen) line between Tokyo and Nagoya (286km/178mi), which will be a 505km/h maglev train that's 90% underground, as they have to tunnel through various mountains. It's projected to be finished in about a decade I think. Current costs have risen from the initial projection, and are at about 7 trillion yen for the first leg (Shinagawa to Nagoya), which at the current exchange rate is about USD$44B. But remember, that's about 160 miles of tunnels through mountains, plus all the rolling stock (which doesn't actually roll LOL), including the deepest tunnel in the country, and a line which isn't even conventional rail, it's a maglev track. By comparison, California is spending all that money on an above-ground train, in a place with excellent weather, using the same rail technology Japan was using 50+ years ago.

guywithahat2• 2 years ago

Or more recently, Brightline built a private high speed rail in Florida for $5 billion, spanning 170 miles. It’s hard to imagine a plausible reason this should cost 100 billion, especially given the fact they already have Amtrak rail running through California

instagib2• 2 years ago

“High speed” ended up being about 70mph. Max of 77mph in Florida.

fransje266• 2 years ago

Current tracks are still being built for roughly the same cost.

Your Japanese example comes in at about $23 million/km built.

I was recently looking at the costs of the Paris-Strasbourg line (opened in 2016), which cost €5.15B for 406 km of track, so about €13 million/km.

twelvechairs3• 2 years ago

Of course what they should do to fund it is what they figured out in Hong Kong or Singapore decades ago. Have government requisition land around stations and redevelop it as high density towers and profit on the sales.

givemeethekeys2• 2 years ago

Wouldn't they have to confiscate the land first?

throwup2383• 2 years ago

Caltrans would buy it the land this case. They've got a pretty significant real estate portfolio that they've acquired for a variety of projects over the decades.

One random house I think they still own is Julia Child's childhood home in Pasadena.

twelvechairs3• 2 years ago

If you dont want government to compulsorily purchase land first, you can also do "value capture" which is in essence saying "anything developed to the new planning controls needs to pay money based on the difference between old and new controls". The economics is quite simple for developers to cost in but it needs to be there early, not imposed after all the developers have bought land without factoring it in.

lmm3• 2 years ago

All long-distance transport construction requires "confiscating" land. Somehow it's completely routine to take huge swathes of land for freeway widening, but build one little train line and everyone loses their minds.

aqme28• 2 years ago

I’m all for eminent domain when it comes to providing infrastructure, but I feel icky about it being used just to hopefully profit. Reminds me too much of Kelo v. New London

llamaimperative7• 2 years ago

“Profit” is a misnomer. It’s to allow the taxpayers to recoup the costs of the project they funded. Who profits normally from such public investment is typically an extremely small set of landowners who happen (coincidentally or not) to be near those public investments.

Which of those actually seems more fair?

bhl• 2 years ago

Does Caltrans have any history of developing profitable mixed used properties around new stations, like with the MTR Corporation?

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

ttymck• 2 years ago

Did MTR have a history of developing profitable mixed use properties around stations before they started developing profitable mixed use properties around stations?

handelaar• 2 years ago

https://archive.is/D6LT5

johnea• 2 years ago

For anyone who's used high speed railin Japan, Europe or China knows how much more efficient it is than flying.

It really is sad just how hard it is to build anything in the US at this point.

As a San Diego resident, it's also sad that it was a state representative from San Diego that first introduced this idea to the state legislature, and yet now, San Diego has been dropped from the planned route. 8-(

ghaff2• 2 years ago

It really depends. I try to train in Europe when time and price aren’t overriding considerations but flying is often faster/cheaper over any real distance—especially between countries.

vondur• 2 years ago

I doubt it will ever be completed. If they can at least linkup the Bakersfield area with SoCal that would be a win. There are a lot of people commuting between the LA area and Bakersfield.

fuzzythinker2• 2 years ago

I would welcome this when I was traveling between LA & SF many years ago. I drove to Bakersfield to catch the Caltrain that takes me to Oakland. May not be a reason for many as the Caltrains weren't that packed.

BobaFloutist• 2 years ago

They might be busier if they can take a high speed train directly between Bakersfield and LA, though.

RichardCA• 2 years ago

If they succeed in getting it through the Tehachapi's, it will be a civil engineering feat without precedent in California history.

I am not holding my breath that it will come in 10 years, or even in my lifetime.

rubiquity• 2 years ago

I might be fairly cynical but after recent public infrastructure massive bids and failures it seems obvious this will result in $100B of wealth transfer from the public to the private for 0 miles of rail.

issa• 2 years ago

This doesn't seem like that cynical of a take at all. The US is terrible at infrastructure projects. I feel like you would never go wrong betting against them. Or at least betting that they take 10x the time and cost than predicted.

parineum7• 2 years ago

The initial bill for HSR was one of the first things I remember voting on. If I recall correctly, it was a bond for 8b dollars. I voted against it because I had extreme doubts that would be the end of it.

If it actually cost $8B, I would have supported it.

joenot443• 2 years ago

The Brightline rail in Florida which connects Miami to Orlando began construction in 2014 had its first service in 2018 and full route in 2023. I took it last year, it was just fine. I’ve begun to see that sometimes the private sector can be much, much better at managing these infrastructure projects than the State of California .

dehrmann• 2 years ago

There's a strong argument that the money would have been more effective on local mass transit projects since they'd see more immediate use and are easier to complete.

anamax• 2 years ago

Does the predicted revenues (predicted fare * predicted ridership) exceed the interest on the bonds?

I ask because it didn't in previous iterations.

xtalx• 2 years ago

This won’t get done in the next 25 years, if ever.

kylehotchkiss4• 2 years ago

Is this like a perpetual approval or does it expire in 5 years and have to get a new environmental review? My understanding of this project so far is that it will need 2 more democrat presidents with infrastructure bills to get 78% funded and somehow we’ll figure out the other 22% later or have japans sovereign wealth fund foot the bill

39896880• 2 years ago

The sad thing is, I can't tell if this is a joke.

kylehotchkiss4• 2 years ago

I’m being snarky but Japan does support other countries railroad projects (like how they loaned Delhi Metro) which is how they can get the projects done, so maybe it could work for us too

rmason• 2 years ago

Have they ever defined what 'high speed' means? I well remember travelling to Florida in the nineties when motels offering 'high speed Internet' meant they had high speed modem dial up in each room.

In Japan and China they have trains running in excess 0f 250 mph. In America the only train I know over 100 mph is the Acela which runs from Washington D.C. to New York City. Although they are promising that Acela will go 150 mph sometime in the future. France had trains going over 150 mph in the seventies when I was first there.

gabruoy• 2 years ago

Yes. In fact California defining how fast their high speed rail must go is part of what put them in their current situation because they aimed too high when no one in the USA has ever built anything like what they are trying to do. In their own legislation for the project the train must have a top speed of over 200 miles per hour and must go from LA to San Fransisco in 2 hours and 40 minutes, which necessitates an average speed of over 150 miles per hour.

ac29• 2 years ago

If they went with a more modest goal of 250kph (155mph) maximum speed (Class I HSR), it almost certainly would have been easier and cheaper to build. The problem with that is that the Bay Area -> LA times would have been 4+ hours which would have been a pretty hard sell vs flying or even driving.

shiroiushi4• 2 years ago

I'm sorry, but most of what you wrote here is wrong.

First, Japan doesn't have any (operational) trains going 250mph. The Tokaido shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka has a top speed of 300kph, which is 186mph. The Tohoku line in north Japan reaches 320kph (200mph) according to Wikipedia, and this seems to be the fastest in the country (I haven't ridden that one myself, but I have ridden the Tokaido multipel times and verified its speed with a GPS speedometer app.). The new maglev Chuo shinkansen, when it's open for service in 10 years, will go 505kph (314mph). China does have some maglev train currently; I can't be bothered to look up its max speed, but it's a short line that just goes to that city's airport. It's not a long-distance train line, really more of a demo.

America has at least 2 trains that go over 100mph: the Acela, which runs from DC to Boston (not NYC), and the Northeast Regional, which runs on the same route on the same tracks. The Northeast Regional hits a max speed of 125mph, and the Acela hits 150mph. The catch is, these trains only hit their max speeds for somewhat brief durations on certain parts of the line (mainly between Philly and Newark NJ), so their average speeds are actually rather lousy because in other places they have to slow down a lot because the track sucks, the tunnels are a century old, there's a cargo train in the way, etc. If the US built an all-new track (with new tunnels where needed) between DC and Boston, they could use the exact same trains they use now and have much, much faster average speeds, but they really don't want to do that.

Finally, there is a definition in the US for "high speed rail", and the Acela meets that definition because its max speed is pretty high. (Of course, the definition completely ignores average speed.)

aednichols• 2 years ago

Amtrak reaches 110 mph in a few places in diesel territory (outside of the NEC). The Empire Service and Lincoln Service, for example.

9999000009992• 2 years ago

I voted for the initial 10 billion bond many many years ago.

It's amazing how long it's taken, how does a train take over a decade ?

Even just high speed from Bakersfield to LA would help tons of people.

There's no reason we can't have high speed throughout the nation. Imagine taking a train from LA to NYC in 30 hours.

Too many pockets to line...

erikpukinskis• 2 years ago

* Imagine taking a train from LA to NYC in 30 hours.*

Who is the customer for that ticket?

defrost2• 2 years ago

People who can't spare 72 hours to travel on The Ghan ?

Long train journeys are a thing for some- with a private car there's also the appeal of views out the window while working on a script | program | report and having a car on a transport flat behind.

Not for everyone, but there are customers.

shrubble• 2 years ago

I have flown from Pensacola to Rochester, MN and it basically takes almost a day with plane changes, delays etc. 1000 miles distance. With a delayed flight it was 17 hours, I could almost have driven that distance by car in the same elapsed time.

With security and other hassles you basically burn a day in flight; so 30 hours NY/LA and being able to sleep, have high speed Internet, make normal phone calls, move around a bit, and eat (hopefully) normal food would not really cost any more time.

9999000009992• 2 years ago

People who'd like to go from NYC to Chicago in 10.

Denver to LA in 15.

I largely hate flying even though I've accepted it's the only way to travel overseas.

I'd love to take the full 30 hour train ride vs the 70 it takes now

Someone• 2 years ago

Reading https://www.flightsfrom.com/LAX-JFK, https://www.flightsfrom.com/LAX-EWR and https://www.flightsfrom.com/LAX-BUF there are about 40 direct flights on that route every day. I guess that’s about 4,000-ish people.

That probably is not enough to make a train line profitable (they have larger capacity than airplanes, and you’d need fairly frequent service)

Luckily, as the crow flies, it is about 4,000 km from LA to NY, so a train route connecting population centers would probably be about 6,000. With a fast train (300+ km/hour top speed), the target of 30 hours will allow for some stops.

That will increase demand, with most passengers doing only part of the route.

tstrimple• 2 years ago

There's no reason we can't have high speed throughout the nation.

We are a nation of middlemen. Everyone at every level needs their cut and we will invent more levels if there is a possibility of money being left on the table.

beej71• 2 years ago

It burns me that other countries can build things like this and we can't.

baud147258• 2 years ago

It's amazing how long it's taken, how does a train take over a decade ?

Honestly, as some living in France, with a lot of high speed train lines, I'm not surprised. For example one of the most recent lines [0] took more than a decade.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Bretagne-Pays_de_la_Loire

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

Meanwhile China has pretty much built up an entire nations worth of high speed rail in that time and India is adding 5000kms of new railway lines per year (about the size of Switzerland’s entire system).

thunkshift1• 2 years ago

Why cant they start a daily airbus between the two cities. It will most certainly cost less and adoption can be evaluated before putting in massive costs

TrapLord_Rhodo• 2 years ago

Why do we keep trying to import european/chinese ideas and force them to fit the american mode. LA has plenty of transit options, trains and buses that never get used... Americans hate public transportation and no one ever uses them even when they are built.

Why does the government keep trying to do these giant infrastructure projects that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of consultants and have very little chance of completing on time and on budget?

Why does socialism keep creeping into every inch of our republic? Leave these ideas to private industry which is proven to be more efficient over and over again....

drtgh• 2 years ago

IMHO, those distances of 463 miles (745 Km) seem more suitable for maglev trains, which I imagine would put those cities at a distance of around 3 hours, including wait times at station to board.

By airplane, I imagine the total time from Los Angeles airport to San Francisco airport, including wait times to board and latter to pick up luggage, may be around 4 hours?

Just crossed my mind quickly, I did not made numbers.

kylehotchkiss4• 2 years ago

If LA could just make their existing SLOW heavy trains go to the airport (Amtrak/Metrolink/SD's Coaster), an incredible amount of traffic could be reduced. I live in SD and would like to take LAX more often, but the closest station is Union Station and a bus ride or uber is required between the two, which limits viability. LA metro rail leaves a lot to be desired safety wise.

California approves final high-speed rail link connecting San Francisco to LA

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