[HN Gopher] Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail h...
___________________________________________________________________
Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been
greatly exaggerated
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 114 points
Date : 2025-04-28 18:38 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asteriskmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asteriskmag.com)
| moralestapia wrote:
| Imagination: Another ~3,800 words worth of "opinion".
|
| Reality: Zero miles of high-speed rail deployed.
|
| Many such cases.
|
| Edit: Downvote all you want, that still won't make the rails
| appear, lmao.
| jeffbee wrote:
| As the piece points out, the lack of rail is pretty much
| irrelevant. Once all the guideways are in place, there is a
| machine that you just drive along that poops out perfect rails
| at ~1km/hr. It is the most trivial part of the project.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I've heard so many business guys running startups say the
| same thing about their brilliant idea. Once the plan is in
| place you just do daily standups and your engineers poop out
| perfect features at the rate of 1 ticket/day.
| regentbowerbird wrote:
| Alright, but one of the central findings of software
| engineering of the 80s is that software engineering cannot
| be driven rigidly, unlike other engineering fields.. Such
| as railways.
|
| Think about it, rail is an eminently standardized piece of
| infrastructure that has existed for more than a century and
| millions of kilometers have been laid out. Don't you think
| _some_ effort has gone into automating the process and
| making it predictable?
|
| Here is a (french) example of laying up to 2km of
| continuously-welded rail a day:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o97SB8c7Ezk
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _Don 't you think _some_ effort has gone into automating
| the process and making it predictable? Here is a (french)
| example_
|
| This really underscores Klein and Thompson's argument:
| this infrastructure sclerosis seems to be a uniquely
| American problem.
|
| This review of Klein and Thompson's book sums it up
| pretty well:
|
| _Adding a kilometre of subway track in the United States
| now costs twice what it does in Japan or Canada, and six
| times what it does in Portugal; in the past fifty years,
| the inflation-adjusted cost of a mile of interstate
| highway has tripled_
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/10/abundance-
| ezra...
| queenkjuul wrote:
| The whole point of building the grade separated guideway is
| to make the track maintenance (and installation) as
| predictable and reliable as possible. Once the guideway is
| there, laying the track really is the easy part.
|
| Hundreds of tons of concrete is no longer a "brilliant
| idea," it's physical infrastructure designed for the
| purpose of installing rails.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Too bad CHSR, as described by CHSR, wouldn't entirely be
| grade separated. https://hsr.ca.gov/about/safety/grade-
| separation/
| queenkjuul wrote:
| That won't stop them from laying hundreds of miles of
| rail at 1km/day
| jandrese wrote:
| That's kinda like saying a car is easy to build because they
| have automated painting robots.
|
| Fundamentally the problem is that most of the land they want
| to use is owned by someone else, and that means every single
| parcel is a potential, and often actual, legal fight. In
| theory this is what eminent domain is supposed to accomplish,
| but people dislike eminent domain more than they like high
| speed rail. Well meaning but onerous environmental
| regulations don't make it any quicker either. When your rail
| plan goes through the nesting site of an endangered bird
| species or something that's another big legal fight.
|
| Even though the measure passed with a majority of the
| population, you have a situation where thousands of people
| have effectively a personal veto over it. Either their rights
| get trampled or the project doesn't happen.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The point is that people who talk about the lack of literal
| rails are doing that because they have no idea how a
| railroad is built, or they are intentionally misleading
| you.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| If the car just needs to be painted, then yeah it is easy
| to finish when you have automated painting robots.
|
| The article doesn't make right of way seem like a major
| issue, are there areas where that is blocking construction?
| Animats wrote:
| That would be the Plasser & Theurer SVM1000 new-track
| construction machine.[1]
|
| Incidentally, Caltrain is now up to high-speed rail standards
| except for grade crossing elimination. All welded rail on
| concrete ties, 25KV electrification, and the new commuter
| trains are capable of 125MPH, although they are not run that
| fast.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/XwiNaHmOscU?t=400
| kaonwarb wrote:
| There are some really good details in the article. But, to quote:
| > Despite more than a decade of predictions of its failure, the
| project has persevered -- even if its completion is in limbo.
|
| I'm not sure that's much of an endorsement.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yeah. Reports of its death may have been exaggerated, but
| reports of its life are a bit flimsy.
| bombcar wrote:
| Once a project is measured in papal reigns instead of years
| ... yeah.
| mannyv wrote:
| It's taken longer than WW1 and WW2 combined. Time to kill it.
| divbzero wrote:
| Does anyone know how Florida's Miami-Orlando Brightline is doing?
| I believe that's the only higher-speed rail route opened since
| Acela.
| cuuupid wrote:
| It's actually doing really well but it has not much to do with
| them being a red state and everything to do with them having an
| aging or tourist transit population that needs to get between
| cruise lines and theme parks.
|
| Besides those cases there are not a lot of reasons to be
| transiting that route, or at least not nearly compared to the
| number of folks that would want to transit SF <-> LA. Totally
| different needs that are easier to address, and less pressure
| to prove out value / fewer digestible alternatives.
| pkaye wrote:
| The Florida Brightline is limited to 125 mph. Also no grade
| separation which is needed for higher speeds. Generally
| countries use grade separation when speeds exceed 110-120 mph.
| California really needs the 200-220 mph to make the trip
| worthwhile so it needs to be grade separated. A lot of the work
| done so far in California is the overpasses over freeways and
| roads its crossing.
|
| Brightline has had a lot of fatalities due to lack of grade
| separation.
|
| https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/death-train-a-timeline-of...
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| It won't be killed. Too much grift.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Exactly, the contractors, lobbyists and politicians are lining
| their pockets. Why would they kill the golden goose?
| cuuupid wrote:
| The problem with local infrastructure projects is their
| responsibility and execution fall to local community leaders (in
| this case local = state of California). These leaders are far
| less efficient and impactful than the federal government, a bar
| which is already way too low. Nearly every city in the US has had
| recent collisions with corruption, blatant mismanagement,
| ideological forces co-opting process, etc. and so most local
| infrastructure projects are doomed from the start.
|
| The problem with high speed rail, then, is that it is always
| going to be a local (=state) infrastructure project. America is
| far, far, far too large for high speed rail to be feasible at a
| national level, and so we have invested in airports. This is
| largely a success; much of the year you can travel from NYC to
| Miami (~1200 mi, roughly UK -> Spain) for $100-200 in a few
| hours. There are, of course, many issues with air travel that we
| are still working on, but unless there is a breakthrough to make
| supersonic land travel affordable, we are stuck with air travel
| at a national level.
|
| But where do we go from here? We know the federal process is too
| bloated to succeed with infrastructure projects, and when it is
| forced to it ends up being prohibitively expensive. We know the
| state process is doomed to fail and similarly be very expensive.
| We have already tried privatizing it and failed, and even when
| subsidizing private industry we get subpar results at best. What
| options are even left at this point?
| ryandrake wrote:
| > What options are even left at this point?
|
| Look at countries that do have high speed rail, which are of
| similar size to US states, and study what they are doing
| differently?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| they have more efficient central planning, less red tape, and
| they don't let people like Elon Musk come in and derail the
| project with dubious and irrelevant alternatives
| jeffbee wrote:
| It really all comes down to civil vs. common law. In
| America, anyone can hold you over a barrel in court,
| indefinitely, for any or no reason, until you agree to
| their extortion.
| SSJPython wrote:
| What does that have to do with civil vs. common law?
| There isn't anything inherent in rule of law based on
| cases and precedent that should restrict infrastructure
| projects.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| unfortunately it is worse than that.. a basic and non-
| trivial State of California project was being done in an
| office near me, and I knew some of the people. So I saw a
| bit about how it progressed.. lots of requirements, lots
| of people from multiple unrelated and slightly
| competitive groups. The work was mostly intellectual
| assesment and evaluations with a lot of reports. The
| thing was funded at professional values.
|
| About six months of work with lots of progress meetings
| with State of California bureaucrats to "keep them
| informed" .. and lo-and-behold.. as the required
| deadlines started getting closer, the State reps changed
| requirements, made amendments to deliverables.. the last
| three weeks, even MORE change orders "non-negotiable" ..
| I have never in my life seen major requirements changed
| on a multi-party project in the last weeks of a deadline
| like that. It was like the bureaucrats drank a lot of
| something, felt the "excitement" and HAD to change things
| to be "involved and hands on" .. it was STUPID and caused
| DAMAGE. There was no choice -- the State was paying.
|
| That is how they do things in "infinite income"
| Sacramento ?
| brailsafe wrote:
| The dictatorship part is on its way, but multiplying
| population by 5 might be a challenge
| cuuupid wrote:
| This would work if we could run state governments like mini
| "countries" but there is not enough interest from the
| electorate and thus very little oversight so they end up in a
| bad way.
|
| I would like very much for California's state legislature to
| be on par with, say, South Korea (similar population size &
| dispersion with great bullet train infrastructure).
| Unfortunately it operates much more like Thailand or El
| Salvador pre-"throw everyone in jail".
| mlyle wrote:
| > This would work if we could run state governments like
| mini "countries" but there is not enough interest from the
| electorate and thus very little oversight so they end up in
| a bad way.
|
| Which is circular; there's less attention because we don't.
|
| > I would like very much for California's state legislature
| to be on par with, say, South Korea (similar population
| size & dispersion with great bullet train infrastructure).
|
| About 1/4th the land area of California and much more ..
| "square". The long line in South Korea is 275 miles long;
| versus roughly 800 miles for the California HSR system. And
| California's system is facing a public that's much less
| accustomed to and receptive to rail, and endpoints that
| basically require you to have a car anyways.
|
| We should have spent all this money on making local rail
| awesome. It'd make a much bigger difference in day to day
| life, would pay off quicker, and would prepare the ground
| for doing HSR.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Your theory does not explain why the state of California is
| capable of discharging $25 billion into freeway construction
| _annually_. It obviously cannot be the case that US states are
| incapable of executing public works projects.
| bombcar wrote:
| CA has built tens of miles, probably hundreds, maybe even
| into the thousands of miles of tracked transit in the time
| HSR has been building. CA can certainly do what it wants - or
| maybe do what it _needs_.
| cuuupid wrote:
| It is so, so, so much easier to build freeways, roads, and
| highways than rail systems.
|
| It is also absolutely necessary to have roads to move people
| and goods as not everyone and everything can be transported
| on rail or even is near rail (even post-HSR).
|
| It is also an income center. California _makes_ money from
| spending on roads because of job creation (=tax revenue),
| taxes on vehicle sales, taxes on fuel, tolls, freight fees,
| and more: https://www.calbike.org/there-is-no-deficit-in-
| californias-t...
| danans wrote:
| > It is also an income center. California _makes_ money
| from spending on roads because of job creation (=tax
| revenue), taxes on vehicle sales, taxes on fuel, tolls,
| freight fees, and more: https://www.calbike.org/there-is-
| no-deficit-in-californias-t...
|
| Please provide a reference for CA making money by building
| roads. Road building is foundational to other economic
| activity, but AFAIK, it's not turning a profit (nor should
| it be expected to). Unfortunately, we have a double
| standard where we consider public transport to be a failure
| if it doesn't generate a profit.
| giarc wrote:
| Calling the leaders of the State of California, the 4th largest
| economy in the world, "local" and less efficient than the
| federal government is interesting.
| bombcar wrote:
| The main advantage the feds have is they can preempt the
| state. Versa vice doesn't work.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > What options are even left at this point?
|
| I suspect we're dealing with the fallout of the loss of an
| American _nomos_ (shared values, traditions, and moral
| principles formalized into law, custom, and convention) -- the
| very issue John Adams wrote about in a 1798 letter:
|
| _While our country remains untainted with the principles and
| manners which are now producing desolation in so many parts of
| the world; while she continues sincere, and incapable of
| insidious and impious policy, we shall have the strongest
| reason to rejoice in the local destination assigned us by
| Providence. But should the people of America once become
| capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and
| towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice
| and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and
| extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the
| charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while
| it is working diligently under the cover of these pleasing
| appearances and employing the most insidious and base
| artifices, this country will be the most miserable habitation
| in the world. Because we have no government, armed with power,
| capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by
| morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and
| licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our
| Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution
| was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
| inadequate to the government of any other._
|
| When moral virtue is not valued, who will rise to the top and
| be elected to public office but non-virtuous people?
|
| Failing the development of something like what John Adams is
| referring to, I fear that the only way "forward" (if it can be
| called that) is a different form of government, in which
| individual liberties will be greatly reduced or denied
| altogether.
|
| My personal opinion -- it's a spiritual problem that needs a
| spiritual solution. Pray for the nation.
|
| Or we can just keep trying to run through molasses :)
| queenkjuul wrote:
| >But should the people of America once become capable of that
| deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign
| nations, which assumes the language of justice and
| moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance,
| and displays in the most captivating manner the charming
| pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is
| working diligently under the cover of these pleasing
| appearances and employing the most insidious and base
| artifices
|
| It's always amazing to me that slave owning men on stolen
| land could not see the hypocrisy of such a statement
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| John Adams in particular was not a slave owner, and he
| called slavery an "evil of colossal magnitude." So he and
| those like him (and there were many) shouldn't be condemned
| in any sense along that line.
|
| I agree that slavery and ill treatment of Native Americans
| were egregious problems. But on both issues, there were
| prominent voices speaking out in favor of what was right,
| including among the founding fathers -- Ben Franklin,
| Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, etc. Also, William Penn
| (founder of Pennsylvania) was an awesome example of someone
| who insisted on honest, fair dealings with Native
| Americans, and he won their respect in a big way.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| It is hypocrisy to preach about freedom and the equality
| of man while also owning slaves and believing some men to
| be unequal. It's not that this was unknown at the time
| either. Abolitionism was not a new idea in 1798.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| edited my comment already before I saw your response.
| Yes, I agree.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Well sure, Adams in particular maybe not, but for him to
| warn about this hypothetical scenario while it was
| ostensibly unfolding in front of his eyes is still
| something i can find a bit ridiculous.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > for him to warn about this hypothetical scenario while
| it was ostensibly unfolding in front of his eyes
|
| Well why wouldn't he? See something, say something.
|
| I'm sure he saw direct reasons to be worried about people
| becoming ungovernably immoral, and I bet slavery was one
| of those reasons -- after all, he did believe it to be a
| colossal evil.
|
| So I'm not sure I understand your point.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| Because he's talking about it as if it weren't happening.
| "Should the day ever come..." Well, sure seems like it
| already had
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| That's a misquote - that phrase doesn't appear in the
| letter. I don't think that idea was present either. Could
| you clarify which phrase(s) conveyed that to you?
|
| Here's a link to the full text of the letter: https://fou
| nders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102
|
| If anything, I think he felt compelled to write what he
| did (not only in this letter) because he felt a sense of
| imminent danger -- that if the people individually and
| collectively failed to rise to the high calling of good
| moral character, the new republic would not last.
| Remember, the longevity of the United States was by no
| means a foregone conclusion at the time -- the US
| Constitution had been ratified a mere 10 years before he
| wrote this letter, and Adams himself had just been
| elected as the second president the year before.
|
| (All of which doesn't make his thoughts inapplicable to
| our time.)
| prpl wrote:
| We could actually just pay more money to public governmental
| employees, allow them to build careers (and raise families),
| and stop contracting out everything. This would also increase
| competition for such roles.
|
| How we got here is ultimately, especially for CA, land and
| legal cost, cost of living, and public employee salary relative
| to private salaries. That's endemic to major metro areas in the
| US, with some small exceptions, but especially true in CA.
|
| Before it was shut down, we did see a real reversal with 18F in
| getting things through, for software projects. Of course, they
| weren't even being paid industry wages there.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > We could actually just pay more money to public
| governmental employees
|
| When their pensions are taken into account, government
| employees are ridiculously overcompensated already. They're
| basically minor nobility at this point.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I have done the numbers for myself, and even taking pension
| and treating an extra week of vacation as a 1/52 pay raise,
| doing a software job for the government would be a huge
| step down for me financially. Basically gives me 0% chance
| of ever buying a home where I currently live
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > me 0% chance of ever buying a home where I currently
| live
|
| The housing crisis is the Everything Crisis. It's
| destroying competence of government services, as no one
| ambitious will accept this fate.
|
| It destroyed competitiveness of our industry because you
| can't pay a worker less than it costs to rent.
|
| It's causing apathy and rise in extremist views among
| younger population as they realise they have no path to
| dignified future.
|
| I am hoping that China does well for itself and one day
| we can just consider them as an example of competent and
| coherent governance and sort out our shit.
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| For every underpaid government software engineer there's
| an overpaid paper pusher, and they're both paid the same
| amount.
| bombcar wrote:
| To be fair, we should all work to normalize retiring at 55
| - it's eminently doable but the earlier you decide to the
| easier it is.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| but nobody likes working even longer to pay for others to
| retire earlier.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can do it entirely "yourself" if you adopt FIRE
| concepts early in your working career.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Then you would have two retirees for every three working
| age people. And given that only ~70% of working age
| Americans are actually working, it would mean three non-
| working adults for every two adults with jobs. Either the
| retirees would have a really low standard of living, or
| workers would get much smaller share of the value they
| create than they currently do.
|
| If you are not already retired or close to retirement,
| you should assume that the normal retirement age is ~70
| years. Anything lower cannot be sustained with the
| current demographic structure.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| This is an absurd statement.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I guess we'll see how I'm doing in 20 years to compare, but
| as of now, my dad is a former California public employee on
| a pension who had to move to the middle of the desert to
| stay within his budget, does all domestic work himself, and
| regularly needs to ask me for money. "Minor nobility" is a
| laughable characterization of his status in life.
|
| For what it's worth, it's also quite illuminating these
| days to compare injury history with him. We've had a lot of
| the same stuff happen, but when it happens to me, he always
| overestimates the effect because he's still suffering from
| never recovering properly thanks to a lifetime of no-
| premium but shitty Kaiser HMO treatment that used the
| lowest-cost option for literally everything, whereas I had
| to pay for stuff but at least got the latest available
| surgical procedures and proper supervised rehab, so my
| injuries actually healed and I'm not just suffering for the
| rest of my life like he does.
| cuuupid wrote:
| You're right and everyone -- including government contractors
| -- has been quietly shouting this for ages, but existing
| efforts have already been ideologically co-opted and new
| efforts are too brash and can't wrap their head around
| spending more to save more.
|
| Also 18F was not truly shut down and still lives on at GSA,
| albeit only the worst parts. They're hard at work adding as
| much red tape as they can imagine to procurement of software
| and recently boasted about their collective organization
| answering a whopping 1200 emails in a month.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > has been quietly shouting
|
| That's one hell of a contradiction
| tdb7893 wrote:
| So I think the best argument against this is that the US has
| done massive infrastructure projects in the past. Some cities
| had (and some still have) decent public transportation and
| we've done large canals and even the interstate highway
| project. I've also seen local infrastructure (and I mean
| actually local, on the city/county level) be very impactful in
| the community.
|
| My experience is that unless the community really wants the
| infrastructure it won't get done and I've seen a lot of
| opposition to forms of transport that aren't just roads (with
| the most extreme case of a vocal group in a town not wanting a
| rail line into the city because they were worried people from
| the city would come out to their town. They literally didn't
| _want_ too easy of transportation into /out of the city).
| bombcar wrote:
| Some of the massive projects done by the USA involved tons of
| heartache and stress - but were deemed necessary.
|
| When we want to, we move, and quickly. CA HSR is more
| indicative of people not really caring than of any major
| failure.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| I get so tired of hearing that HSR doesn't make sense
| federally.
|
| The entire country east of the Mississippi has comparable
| population and density to western Europe. Plus the sheer size
| and lack of people sure doesn't stop the federal government
| from maintaining thousands of miles of interstate through vast
| swaths of nowhere.
| bombcar wrote:
| Those interstates move millions of pounds of goods - probably
| way more important than the people.
|
| And the US _freight_ rail system is the envy of the world.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| I assure you, it is not, but union pacific repeats that
| line enough that everyone seems to believe it
| cuuupid wrote:
| If you look at it by map there's not much more interstate
| highway than railway.
|
| Interstate highway is also far cheaper to build and maintain
| than you would imagine. It took around $114 billion to build
| interstate across the entire country, while the high speed
| rail project in just California is already upwards of $128
| billion.
|
| On Europe that is kind of exactly my point, high speed rail
| in Europe is built and maintained by federal governments with
| high levels of participation, interest and oversight from
| their population. This can never happen in the US because our
| federal government has to oversee a very wide amount of area
| and states are not so autonomous and self-governed that their
| populations primarily interest themselves with their state
| governments.
| andbberger wrote:
| the inflation adjusted cost of the interstate system is
| closer to a trillion
| andbberger wrote:
| HSR is perfectly viable for the east. decades of steady
| investment could have built a massive network out through
| chicago by now, and with a few more we could be closing in on
| the last gap in the network between kansas city and las vegas.
| rayiner wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. California is bigger and richer than
| all but the largest European countries. It has some of the top
| universities in the world. Why shouldn't it have a higher
| caliber of public official than say Denmark?
| danans wrote:
| > It has some of the top universities in the world. Why
| shouldn't it have a higher caliber of public official than
| say Denmark?
|
| Many officials in the current administration who are wreaking
| havoc on the US economy went to the top universities, like
| Harvard, Columbia, etc. Attending those universities doesn't
| imply responsibility or sense of duty to public service at
| all.
|
| CA does have "high caliber" public officials, but it also
| produces very corrupt ones. As everyone knows, CA has
| exported many from both categories to the national stage.
|
| CA is not like Denmark in many ways. California has huge
| wealth inequality, and its economy and governance are heavily
| influenced by plutocrats from industries that grow via
| massive scaling properties, like tech, entertainment, and
| agriculture.
|
| Two of those industries have a history of labor exploitation,
| and the other has been actively trying to snuff out the power
| and leverage it mistakenly gave to its workers over the past
| several decades.
|
| Without a doubt, Denmark has problems also, and it has
| plutocrats, but its politicians hold them more accountable to
| the populace that CA does.
| rayiner wrote:
| Why are the politicians in California different than the
| ones in Denmark? And are those reasons related to it being
| a sub-national entity, which seems to have been the
| argument being made above.
| rsync wrote:
| One issue with "CA HSR" is that it isn't even "high speed".
|
| We may have happily referred to is as "high speed rail" 30 or 40
| years ago but, given a possible completion date of 2035 (or
| whatever) the 2:40 travel time from SF <-> LA is unimpressive ...
| and even that will not be achieved:
|
| "California legislative overseers do not expect the 2 hr 40 min
| target will be achieved."[1]
|
| The simple fact is that the I-5 corridor is the spine of
| California and should be leveraged for all additional
| infrastructure build-out ... which would yield economies of scale
| and network effects for rail, network lines, water transmission,
| electrical distribution and (eventually) autonomous trucking.
|
| Instead we're spending billions to build a slow, circuitous route
| to Fresno.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
| jeffbee wrote:
| The CAHSR "peer group" which issued that quote is a political
| commission full of axe-grinding losers, specifically created by
| state politicians who want to kill the project. Nobody with a
| clue thinks that the 2h40m target is unattainable.
| xienze wrote:
| LOL I bet in 2010 if someone said that by 2025 the project
| would be grossly over budget and only have a short segment
| between nowhere and nowhere to show for 17 years of work
| you'd have called that propaganda by axe-grinding losers
| (paid off by big oil, naturally).
|
| Just admit it, it's a boondoggle just like everyone said it
| would be.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Shut up you axe grinding loser we know what we're doing
| here in california we're good at governing and stuff.
| gruez wrote:
| >Instead we're spending billions to build a slow, circuitous
| route to Fresno.
|
| Because with a big project like this, everyone wants to claim
| some slice for themselves. The optimal route crosses counties
| like Fresno, which means they can veto the project (or at least
| delay it). They use that as leverage to extract benefits for
| themselves, like changing the route so it passes through their
| county seat.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Article states that I-5 corridor skips all major towns in
| central valley which kinda kills the purpose of HSR connecting
| SF to central valley towns to LA
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I thunk it boils down to the fact that acquiring land near
| San Francisco or LA through imminent domain would be both
| hideously expensive and extremely unpopular.
|
| Building "High Speed Rail to nowhere" in the Central Valley
| allowed them kick that can of political infighting down the
| road.
| gruez wrote:
| >and extremely unpopular
|
| Who's shedding a tear for some farmer getting paid above
| market rates (presumably) for their land? California is
| probably the last place I'd expect people to think using
| eminent domain in this case is a slipper slope to communism
| or whatever.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Eventually you will have to build out the rail line in
| densely populated areas (especially near San Francisco
| and LA). High speed rail requires that you to avoid
| unnecessary curves.
|
| At that point, you're going to have to start using
| imminent domain.
|
| Putting it off until after you have billions of dollars
| in sunk costs in the Central Valley doesn't change that.
| gruez wrote:
| >Eventually you will have to build out the rail line in
| densely populated areas (especially near San Francisco
| and LA). High speed rail requires that you to avoid
| unnecessary curves.
|
| why can't you have it run slowly in built up areas? As
| another commenter mentioned that's how it works in
| France.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Because competing with the airlines requires some
| semblance of "high speed"?
|
| California is fairly densely packed once you get away
| from the Central Valley and nearer to the coast where the
| people are.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The current plan actually accounts for this; the 2:40
| includes the amount of time it takes to run on the
| current Caltrain tracks from San Jose to SF which will
| _not_ be running at the highest speeds.
| fwip wrote:
| *eminent domain, from a Latin-ish phrase "dominium
| eminens."
| slt2021 wrote:
| the state can manage that expense over time, for example
| by refusing to enforce laws, spiking crime rates, turning
| into dystopia and chaos, thus lowering property values.
|
| after land is acquired, the property and law enforcement
| will bring up values
| gruez wrote:
| /s?
| rsync wrote:
| "... which kinda kills the purpose of HSR connecting SF to
| central valley towns to LA ..."
|
| Yes, that's exactly right.
|
| The original - and highest value - purpose was a high speed
| rail route between SF and LA.
|
| The meandering route through Fresno (and the new, ex post
| facto "purpose" the article refers to) is the result of
| political machinations that happened after the fact and
| traded utility for brief, local (and trivial) political
| gains.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The route through Fresno is only 50 km longer than the I-5
| route. It's a difference of 7% in total length.
|
| Going through the two biggest cities in the Central Valley
| is worth a 7% increase in track length.
| andbberger wrote:
| the opportunity cost isn't a 7% increase in length, it's
| the tens of billions in extra infrastructure to build
| 350km/h right of way straight through the middle of every
| town all the way down the central valley, and the massive
| hit to SF-LA run time that will come with that. beyond
| the stop penalty, HSR just doesn't run at full speed
| through city centers anywhere in the world. doesn't
| happen.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| As I wrote elsewhere, the average speed of CA HSR (as
| planned) is 250 km/h, which is very competitive,
| internationally. It's about as fast as the fastest French
| TGV routes. It only really lags behind the fastest
| Chinese routes, which run at average speeds of about 290
| km/h.
|
| If CA HSR can go through the cities in the Central Valley
| and still achieve an average speed of 250 km/h, that's
| well worth it.
| nostrademons wrote:
| 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 open vast
| tracts of land in the Central Valley to housing. It might
| actually be practical to work in the Bay Area on
| something non-tech, live in a SFH, and commute less than
| an hour again.
| slt2021 wrote:
| there is no need to connect SF to LA only, there are many
| airports in each town that connect these large metro areas.
|
| the purpose of HSR is to transform large swatchs of land
| into a large megalopolis, like in China.
|
| China's HSR connects large metro areas into one giant
| megalopolis with up to 250+ mln population that totally
| changes the ballgame in terms of economic output
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolises_in_China
| legitster wrote:
| Unfortunately there simply isn't enough demand between SF and
| LA alone to justify the insanely long stretches of a direct
| rail project.
|
| A better way would have been to build it out from the city into
| the suburbs first as a commuter rail project. There isn't a ton
| of intercity demand for this rail, but there is tons of traffic
| in and out of each singular city to justify even medium speed
| rail.
| rsync wrote:
| "Unfortunately there simply isn't enough demand between SF
| and LA alone to justify the insanely long stretches of a
| direct rail project."
|
| I will stipulate that that is correct _at this very moment_.
|
| However, it is my contention that a _truly high speed_ rail
| link (sub two hour) between SF and LA would have manufactured
| demand as an entirely new set of trips, activities and
| lifestyles would have been enabled by the ability to step on
| a train in LA and step off at the salesforce tower 1:55 later
| ...
| legitster wrote:
| This could be absolutely true if people adapt to it, but
| that wouldn't happen overnight.
|
| I would also strongly doubt that even after full adoption,
| Bakersfield to LA in 30 minutes is going to be much more
| useful and heavily trafficked on a daily basis than SF to
| LA in 2 hours would.
|
| Even in Europe, their marquee city-to-city rail routes
| contribute a small share of overall rail traffic compared
| to their daily commuters.
| nineplay wrote:
| I'm not convinced. The train is not competing with driving
| to SF, the train is competing with flying to SF. LAX -> SFO
| is 1.25 hours. There's time to the airport, time to check
| in, time through security of course, but there's going to
| be similar issues at the train station so the customer has
| to be convinced that the train is a time savings.
|
| Plus, of course, SWA has 4 direct flights to SFO, 6 to
| Oakland, 4 to San Jose. If you miss your flight you get on
| the next one. It is going to be really hard for a high
| speed train to complete with that.
| detaro wrote:
| Station location of course plays a role (i.e. if it gets
| stuffed somewhere out of town with crappy transport links
| its no good, and rail links into the middle of an
| existing city are expensive), but I don't know a major
| airport where people would routinely trust less than 45
| mins for checkin and passing security. Whereas for a
| train station its 10 mins.
|
| > _If you miss your flight you get on the next one. It is
| going to be really hard for a high speed train to
| complete with that._
|
| Why would you bother to build a fancy new HSR line and
| then _not_ run trains every hour, or more if demand is
| there? Running trains is not _that_ expensive once you
| 've got the infrastructure.
| yongjik wrote:
| Forget security; I used SFO last week and just going from
| long term parking to where security is took 20 min, and
| the reverse (around midnight) took 30+ min. A train
| starting in downtown SF could as well be past San Jose at
| that point.
| detaro wrote:
| To be fair long-term parking at a train station would
| also be inconvenient (although at least in this case
| you'd not share facilities with all the international
| travelers), and honestly didn't even register as an
| option to me, so I was assuming local train/shuttle
| bus/cab/uber dropping off in a convenient central
| location.
| yongjik wrote:
| I think the differentiating factor is that a rail station
| is more likely to be in the city center, where you can
| get to by other means (bus, BART, whatever), while going
| to SFO is much less convenient.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Sounds like you've never taken a train. Time through
| security? There's basically no security in American train
| stations (or French TGV stations). I've only experienced
| Chinese train stations with security but with wait times
| far less than American airports. Time to the airport?
| Well yes because the airports are inconveniently located.
| Train stations are right there in the downtown.
| legitster wrote:
| > Train stations are right there in the downtown.
|
| A train station in downtown LA or SF _would_ be
| inconveniently located for most people in these cities.
| com wrote:
| International HSTs with passport required border
| crossings (ie Schengen-UK) have passport control and
| security - I think the security checks are to minimise
| the risk of terror attacks in the channel tunnel though.
|
| But yeah, for intra-Schengen you just go to the platform
| a few minutes before departure, find where your carriage
| will be, and step in once the train comes to a stop.
|
| So much less faff than air travel, and I've noticed
| better pubs at major stations meaning waiting for your
| train isn't as boring as it used to be...
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| If you miss your high speed train in Tokyo, you get on
| the next one five minutes later. Sometimes just 3.5
| minutes later.
| andbberger wrote:
| there absolutely is, SF-LA is an ideal city pair
| rayiner wrote:
| Do people actually travel between SF and LA?
|
| It makes sense in the east coast: traveling from the seat
| of government in DC to the seat of finance in NYC. But does
| california have that dynamic?
| nineplay wrote:
| Yes but they take Southwest Airlines which is already
| really convenient.
| andbberger wrote:
| there are a ton of nonstop flights between SFO and LAX so
| i'm going with yes
| legitster wrote:
| Outside of work reasons I don't know many people who
| actually travel between these cities on a regular basis.
| Maybe once or twice a year for that?
|
| I would argue the east coast works much differently. The
| traffic patterns are not so much between NYC and DC, but
| most people moving in and out of dense areas. Much of the
| Acela is M-F commuter traffic.
| pcwalton wrote:
| > Do people actually travel between SF and LA?
|
| Yes. The most obvious example of a company that's built
| around that corridor is Netflix: tech in the Bay Area,
| film production in L.A.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| I think it's actually the opposite. The latent demand is
| _only_ present in LA and SF. Fresno and Bakersfield are not
| car-less cities. Taking a train between them makes no sense
| (you 're gonna have to rent a car on either end).
|
| While connecting the LA Metro and SF BART with a high speed
| rail line makes the most sense. Regardless of the
| construction inefficiencies this is really the original sin
| beating at the heart of this project.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _you 're gonna have to rent a car on either end_
|
| BTW, this is one big reason HSR isn't a great fit for the
| US.
|
| In most countries, you arrive to major city by train, and
| you then move around the city using the local train
| network.
|
| This is only barely true for a few US cities, so even if
| HSR lines are built, they won't be as useful here.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I agree with you today, but by the time it's finished
| self driving car services like Waymo will be ubiqutous.
| I'm already addicted.
| ricw wrote:
| That's entirely unfounded. There are more than 100 daily
| flights between the Bay Area and LA metro.
|
| That's ridiculously high demand.
|
| https://simpleflying.com/san-francisco-los-angeles-flight-
| ma...
| legitster wrote:
| It's hard to know for sure, but the majority of these
| flights are probably going to be transfers. I've never set
| foot in LA but I've taken that flight several times.
|
| Even so, there are only ~20k daily seats between the two
| cities. The ridership on successful high speed rail lines
| elsewhere in the world are measured in the hundreds of
| thousands per day.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| CA HSR actually is "high speed."
|
| The distance from LA to SF is about 665 km (following the
| planned HSR route). A travel time of 2:40 means the train has
| an average (not top) speed of 250 km/h, which is very
| competitive internationally. Even if we use the shorter I-5
| route as the baseline, the average speed is still 230 km/h.
|
| That's competitive with the fastest French TGV lines, and much
| faster than most European HSR lines. For reference, the fastest
| lines in the world run at an average speed of about 290 km/h
| (e.g., Beijing - Shanghai).
|
| Calling this a "slow, circuitous route" is really not accurate
| at all. _If_ CA HSR gets built as originally planned, it will
| be one of the faster systems in the world, and nearly as good
| as the best systems in Europe.
| fraserharris wrote:
| Fresno / Central Valley is not the circuitous route, which is
| quite close to the I-5 near Bakersfield. The true circuitous
| detour is between Bakersfield and LA, where the route is
| planned to go East through the Antelope Valley with a station
| at Palmdale.
| porphyra wrote:
| The operating speed on the fast stretch is actually one of the
| fastest in the world at 350 km/h, it's just that it has to
| waste half an hour on the Caltrain tracks from San Francisco to
| Gilroy and from Burbank to Anaheim. It's kinda like how the TGV
| from Paris to Nice goes from Paris to Marseille super fast but
| then has to spend hours to go from Marseille to Nice even
| though the latter part is a small fraction of the distance.
|
| And yes, I agree that this "blended" design that has a lengthy
| slow section is very lame and bad. If only Caltrain could be
| quad tracked elevated viaducts.
| nineplay wrote:
| Sheesh
|
| > First, the I-5 route avoids every major population center in
| the Central Valley, bypassing more than a million people who
| would be unserved
|
| Who the hell is has been clamoring for a faster way to get to
| Fresno? What a pile of shit.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Once you count airport time, 2:40 is about on par with what
| it'd take to fly from SF to LA. It's about half what it takes
| to drive between them, even without traffic.
| scythe wrote:
| It would be one thing if they were just going to Fresno. There
| are three major cities in the Central Valley: Bakersfield,
| Fresno and Sacramento. You get Bakersfield for free; Sacramento
| is north of SF and has existing commuter rail. Fresno is big
| enough to justify a stop; it has room to grow, too. You could
| put a stop that's ten miles outside of Fresno, and you don't
| have to cut through the city too much. That's what they do with
| airports. Throw in a LRT while you're at it.
|
| But the plan also calls for Tulare and Madera to have stops.
| Now you're doing three times the work for a 20-40% increase in
| the population served. Then they want a line to Sacramento that
| goes through Merced and Visalia At this point it looks silly.
| Fresno is larger than Tulare, Madera, Merced and Visalia
| combined. Stockton already has the Altamont Commuter Express
| line to San Jose.
| tptacek wrote:
| This piece seems to concede all of the problems critics of CAHSR
| (notably Ezra Klein) bring up, and then argues they never should
| have been problems in the first place or begs their underlying
| questions. For instance, yes, it took forever for funding to get
| secured. That's part of the state capacity critique of CAHSR!
|
| Or, for another example, yes, the current Central Valley routing
| is practically just as hard (per mile) as a direct I5 route which
| would actually serve the largest population centers in CA. But,
| the piece argues, this would leave "more than a million people"
| in the Central Valley underserved. Uh... and? The I5 route would
| have served _over twenty million people_.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Yeah, I had the exact same reaction to this that you did. One
| of Klein and Thompson's primary arguments is that we are
| failing by letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. This
| article's thesis seems to be 'yeah but perfect is better than
| good, so we should do that.'
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| It's absolutely critical that a country with California's GDP
| learns how to rearchitect itself to build again -- literally
| critical for America's progression. Nothing in this article makes
| me feel any better about the prospects of that happening.
| alpb wrote:
| Unfortunately our country has no motion any longer and the
| crumbling infrastructure is a good sign of prolonged decay that
| has started.
|
| I think this whole article/title is ragebait at best.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| More young people need to actually start voting to get all the
| NIMBYism out of the government, and then change can happen.
| twoodfin wrote:
| If by NIMBY you mean litigation-mediated environmental
| regulation and union-optimized labor & wage rules, sure!
| porphyra wrote:
| Other countries can build entire rail lines entirely on
| viaducts for the same cost as it takes to grade separate a
| single Caltrain station. For example it was recently estimated
| that grade separating Broadway Station with a center platform
| would take $889 million and 5-5.5 years [1]. This is mind
| boggling.
|
| [1]
| https://burlingameca.granicus.com/DocumentViewer.php?file=bu...
| rayiner wrote:
| It's structurally impossible. The half of the political
| coalition that contains virtually all the people who want to
| build any sort of urban infrastructure is too fractured into
| groups that each have their own distinct priorities unrelated
| to infrastructure or good governance. And of course the other
| half of the polity hates the government.
|
| If you're a democrat in california, where does infrastructure
| fall on your list of priorities? What big voting bloc does it
| get you?
|
| Here in Maryland, we've been building a 16 mile above ground,
| mostly non-grade-separated light rail for a decade already and
| it's nowhere near done:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_(Maryland). I don't
| know a single person other than myself who is motivated to make
| it happen. Nobody is agitating to get our miserable commuter
| rail system to run more timely. Road construction is the only
| thing that ever penetrates into the public consciousness.
| Making anything better is very low on everyone's list of
| priorities.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > If you're a democrat in california, where does
| infrastructure fall on your list of priorities? What big
| voting bloc does it get you?
|
| As of now, nothing because everything takes forever to build.
| The authors of _Abundance_ talk about how rural broadband is
| gummed up in bureaucratic processes. Same with CHIPS. Biden
| couldn't point to it as an accomplishment because...it wasn't
| accomplished yet.
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Nowhere near done" seems like a bit of an exaggeration,
| given that the link at the top of your linked page suggests
| that it's over 3/4ths done[1].
|
| It's also, to my understanding, not grade-separated in
| various important places. I was in College Park two weeks ago
| and saw lots of at-grade development on the line, which
| presumably gets bogged down by Route 1 and the other high-
| traffic roads nearby.
|
| (This isn't to imply that the construction isn't slow or
| inefficient; it's almost certainly both of those things.)
|
| [1]: https://purplelinemd.com/media/jdwhz3kj/purple-line-
| press-re...
| rayiner wrote:
| The last 10-20% of these projects always takes surprisingly
| long. The 2027 opening date is already looking
| questionable: https://wjla.com/news/local/purple-line-
| construction-project.... And it was supposed to open in
| 2022.
| nineplay wrote:
| Why?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| California will need to hit Rock Bottom hard more than once
| before replacing CEQA with something sane becomes possible. And
| that's just one of several wet moldy blankets blocking
| progress.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Even if it succeeds on its current trajectory, it will be studied
| for 100 years as a massive failure.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I doubt it. People were literally gaslighting people into
| thinking the Big Dig was a good deal for the money as the roof
| panels were falling on cars. This will be a "failure" for 20yr,
| tops.
| nostrademons wrote:
| All civil engineering projects are failures until people forget
| what it cost to build them and just start taking the
| infrastructure for granted. Eleven people _died_ constructing
| the Golden Gate Bridge, 96 for the Hoover dam, thousands for
| the Panama Canal. Do we remember them, or think that these
| projects were failures for killing people? No. We just think of
| how convenient they are.
|
| I grew up contemporaneous with the Big Dig in Boston. People
| called that a massive failure too, even though it only killed
| one person instead of thousands. 15 years after completion,
| it's a big success.
| cantrecallmypwd wrote:
| CAHSR was opined years before SR 85 and 87 and before VTA light
| rail.
|
| It's the perpetually never-happening, chicken-vs-egg aspirational
| project for mass transit in an area dominated by urban sprawl and
| car-first infrastructure that would need massive investment in
| local mass transit like Japan first.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| LA has been investing very heavily in mass transit for decades,
| fwiw. If the terminals (SF and LA) can be navigated by transit,
| then leaving the car at home and taking the train becomes a
| plausible option for most people.
|
| It always made more sense for me to leave the car at home and
| take the train to Chicago than deal with the traffic and
| parking in the city, it's hard to imagine SF being that
| different in that regard but i haven't been.
| nimish wrote:
| I think the biggest issue with CAHSR is that Florida just did it
| anyway.
| bombcar wrote:
| Florida does have the advantage that the tallest mountain there
| is like 60 feet.
| xnx wrote:
| Be careful citing the Brightline as a success. It is expensive,
| doesn't go to many places, has low ridership, regularly kills
| pedestrians and drivers, and is hemorrhaging money.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| "Regularly kills pedestrians and drivers" doesn't seem like
| the train's fault. Railroad crossings aren't hard to
| understand. If you're a driver or pedestrian, best to make
| sure you heed the lights, gate, loud sounds.
|
| Sounds like you haven't ridden it. It's the best train in the
| country. Sure makes you realize what train travel could be.
| levocardia wrote:
| But, importantly, _it actually exists and you can buy a
| ticket and ride on it_. That 's the bar we're talking about
| here. Not "did they make the best train line ever" -- just
| _did they make a train line_.
| nimish wrote:
| This is basically it. MVP and you can ride it!
| screye wrote:
| > regularly kills pedestrians and drivers
|
| Ah yes, the train that seeks you out and kills. Much like all
| the free-soloists who are killed by the ground. Come on man.
| Expecting people to stay behind barriers and rail lines is a
| basic expectation.
|
| Brightline has killed zero people. If anything, it has
| reduced ~150 deaths by guiding people to a safer mode of
| transport. Ridership has tripled in 3 years. Brightline is a
| private company, so you can be sure that they are charging a
| decent price for each ticket, and the demand is still there.
|
| Brightline aims to make money by developing properties around
| this new value add (the train stations). They are making
| massive profits off their first few developments. The housing
| developments are owned by Brightline's parent company, so
| they don't show up on Brightline's balance sheets.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Brightline's maximum operating speed is 125 mph (200 km/h)
|
| I mean, you could call it high speed rail, I suppose, but it's
| not really the same sort of thing.
| xnx wrote:
| Average speed is 68 mph
| rsynnott wrote:
| Oof. Dublin to Cork is 66mph average, and that one's
| considered kind of embarrassing, and is currently being
| upgraded to ~85mph average. (There's separately a proposal
| to build a real high speed line, but it seems unlikely to
| happen; it'd have to be a whole new line.)
| slt2021 wrote:
| Reading the article I think CAHSR is using agile method of
| delivering value. Electrification of caltrain in sfbay, removing
| rr crossings in LA, finishing overall plan and acquisitions,
| laying relatively low cost and easy central valley track, while
| putting the most costly activities to the end: boring an actual
| tunnels in mountain ranges
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The problem is that it takes a long time to bore tunnels. If
| anything they should have started that early.
| andbberger wrote:
| this statement has little bearing on how this project is
| actually playing out, but if it were true - why would we want
| to manage massive infrastructure projects in the same way bad
| software projects are managed? via a method regarded by
| everyone except middle managers with a massive eye roll and a
| sigh
| slt2021 wrote:
| imagine the opposite situation: boring tunnels costs like 60
| blns+.
|
| and taxpayer won't see a penny of the benefit from some
| tunnel somewhere in mountain ranges that nothing else
| connects to
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| If by agile you mean "exploiting sunk cost fallacy", sure
| slt2021 wrote:
| the real sunk cost would be the opposite approach: spending
| 60 blns on boring tunnels through mountains that nothing else
| connect to.
|
| what would be the benefit of tunnel from LA across the
| mountain range? or a tunnel from SF across the diablo
| range???
|
| keep in mind these ar elike half of the project cost
| taco_emoji wrote:
| Is this headline meant to be deliberately confusing?
| Lammy wrote:
| > Only if the Central Valley alignment had been selected would
| CAHSR actually the "train to nowhere" that critics deride it as.
|
| Can't wait to pay $400 per trip to visit all of these lovely
| places: https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/04/20220427-Agend...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Where are you getting $400 from?
| digianarchist wrote:
| Not prioritizing the linking of two major cities (SF <-> LA <->
| SD - take your pick) is a major mistake. If this project does
| end up cancelled then we will end up with a "High[sic]-Speed-
| Rail" that only joins California's interior cities with a
| ridership level that will never justify the cost.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The ironic thing is it probably will be an (extremely
| expensive) boon to Merced -> Bakersfield.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The California HSR reveals pretty much every problem with
| building anything in the US: private property, local interests
| and grift.
|
| It also shows that mandating the speed in the amendment was
| probably a bad idea as it's greatly increased the cost
| projections.
|
| China has a command economy so simply doesn't have to deal with
| eminent domain (and challenges thereto), environmental challenges
| (as much as environmental protection is a nobel goal, laws in
| California like CEQA have really been weaponized and the sole
| purpose is to stop any development whatsoever by local property
| interests), etc.
|
| The route is being changed so include towns of 30,000 in the
| Central Valley. It's running down the I-5 corridor last I heard
| because that's where these small towns are vs the faster route to
| the west.
|
| Just build connecting lines if connections to small communities
| are important. The primary purpose should be LA to SF&SJ.
|
| If the HSR runs a train from LA to SF before 2050 I'll be
| shocked.
| queenkjuul wrote:
| I don't really have a huge problem with the route. Branch lines
| to individual towns don't really make sense - you lay even more
| track, need more trains, complicate operations, and the value
| proposition for potential customers in those towns drops
| substantially vs a one seat ride to any destination.
|
| Honestly given the once in a lifetime scale of the project,
| too, if they run a train from LA to SF by 2050 it even 2060
| I'll actually be quite happy. There's no reason it couldn't
| keep operating for a hundred years after that. I mean I'm
| skeptical of that happening as well lol I'm just saying,
| projects like these will serve many generations and will only
| get more expensive in the future, so i support biting the
| bullet on doing them now despite our inefficient, backwards way
| of doing them.
| digianarchist wrote:
| Brightline West will probably have more success primarily
| because the private property issues will be largely avoided.
|
| > The project aims to transform transportation in the region
| with fully electric trains capable of reaching speeds up to 186
| miles per hour, enabling the 218-mile trip between Rancho
| Cucamonga, California and the Las Vegas, Nevada to be completed
| in approximately two hours. Brightline has secured all key
| rights-of-way necessary to construct the railroad under long-
| term agreements, including leases, licenses and easements, with
| the states of Nevada and California and the federal government
| for passenger rail access to the existing I-15 corridor.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Can you kill something that isn't, technically speaking, alive?
| xnx wrote:
| California "high-speed" rail is failing because it doesn't make
| sense. For all the billions already spent and planning to be
| spent, the delivered product is severely underwhelming. Trains go
| few of the places people want to go on the schedule they want to
| go.
|
| Planes, by comparison, are an absolute bargain. Travel between
| almost any two cities quickly and affordably. By most
| calculations, planes also have less environmental impact because
| you don't need to build hundreds of miles of concrete and steel
| tracks.
|
| Trains are great for bulk freight, but have very few sensible
| applications in the US. California would be better off with bus
| service if they really want a public option.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Travel more buddy because holy shit.
|
| Also, stop spewing unresearched garbage about emissions. Its
| not 1990.
|
| https://chatgpt.com/share/680fe50f-3cec-8009-bd5e-609bb1e485...
| legitster wrote:
| The reality is for every government constraint, there are even
| more difficult economic constraints that it has to work against.
|
| A 90-minute flight between these SF and LA can be had for ~$80 or
| less. A 7-hour bus ticket between these two cities is ~$50. To
| put it another way, the train would have to be only half-again
| more expensive per passenger to operate _than a bus_ to beat a
| flight on price.
|
| I get it that there are niche reasons some individuals would
| prefer a train. But the economies of scale that they need to
| achieve here is ridiculous.
| fvrghl wrote:
| The flight doesn't include the time to get to and from the
| airport plus TSA screening.
|
| I greatly prefer taking a train because I can just show up and
| go.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's a similar distance to Paris to Marseille, a 3 hour
| journey. Price for that seems to vary between 29 and 80 EUR
| depending on time of day.
|
| That's "get on the train, get off the train three hours later",
| so in practice is much faster than a 90 minute flight, which is
| "get to airport, go through security, walk seemingly endlessly
| to gate, fly, walk seemingly endlessly through baggage claim
| etc etc, get out of airport". The train is, of course, also
| _far_ more comfortable than a plane. Personally, I'd opt for
| the train...
|
| I suspect if the damn thing ever gets built, flying between SF
| and LA will more or less become a thing of the past. Like, why
| would you?
| legitster wrote:
| I love trains! And I agree that they are superior in comfort
| and ease than flying. But the train still has to generate
| massive amounts of new traffic that doesn't currently exist
| to justify its huge costs.
|
| The TGV is something of an anomaly, and tough to compare
| against. It both beats all ridership estimates, and also
| comes in at half the price of even the Shinkansen:
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/06/21/why-does-
| tgv-r...
| rsynnott wrote:
| Eh, ICE journeys of similar distance seem to be in the same
| general price range.
|
| > But the train still has to generate massive amounts of
| new traffic that doesn't currently exist to justify its
| huge costs.
|
| There are apparently about 130 SF Bay Area to LA flights
| daily. Let's say on average 200 person planes, at 80%
| occupancy, so 20,000 people. The biggest high speed trains
| have a capacity on the order of 1300, though those are very
| long trains; 800 or less is more common. Assuming an 18
| hour day, that's a train every 45 minutes or so. That
| seems... fine? You'd also expect some traffic to the
| intermediate destinations, and possibly some increase in
| travel because, really, it is so much less bloody awful
| than flying (anyone who tells you otherwise has either
| never been on an intercity train or never been on a plane).
|
| One weird aspect of American exceptionalism is that it is
| not _just_ Americans saying "we're the best"; sometimes it
| is Americans saying "we can't have the nice things that all
| other large rich countries have because [whatever]". The US
| can manage a high speed rail line or two.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| That's 90 minutes in the air, not total trip time.
|
| The HSR is 160 minutes from downtown to downtown. There's no
| check-in, no security check, no arriving 1-2 hours early, no
| travel to and from the airport. When you count all of that, HSR
| will be faster than flying. It's also far, far more comfortable
| - there's no comparison there.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Trains are routinely competitive with flights on corridors like
| this. Thats why its being built in this stretch
| janalsncm wrote:
| 90 minutes in the air + 1 hour on each end at the airport.
|
| On a train I can work the entire time with internet.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Having a high-speed train be less expensive to operate than a
| bus isn't unrealistic, as long as the train is packed. You have
| to pay the bus driver, while the train amortizes operational
| salaries over many more people.
| andbberger wrote:
| CAHSR was killed decades ago by politics and corruption. whether
| or not choosing the valley route over I5 doomed the project is
| debatable, but choosing pacheco and tehachapi over altamont and
| tejon certainly did.
|
| your guess is as good as mine as to why things like water
| infrastructure and telecoms are quietly built to requirements in
| the background while rail infrastructure is opened to the public
| forum, but the inability or unwillingness of the state government
| to go full climate stalin on this project and design it without
| compromise killed it.
| dekhn wrote:
| I simply cannot see HSR sharing track with Caltrain between San
| Jose and SF working at all. There are only two tracks (North and
| South) and there is no room to build more. So it would seem that
| no high speed rail could go faster than caltrain on that segment
| and could not achieve the target travel time.
|
| What I wish- although it may not be feasible- was a straight shot
| from Burbank to San Jose- as a single tunnel.
| ianburrell wrote:
| It is an advantage that HSR uses Caltrain track to get to SF.
| It would be super expensive to build a separate high speed
| line, and it wouldn't be worth the time savings. Caltrain
| should spend money grade separating the whole line, adding
| passing lines where possible, and increasing the speed to
| 125mph or 150mph since it would be good for Caltrain service.
| At 125mph, HSR (250mph) would save 10 minutes, and 150mph would
| save 6 minutes.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Caltrain has sections with four tracks. At these sections
| express trains overtake local trains. They did this improvement
| long time ago and called the service "baby bullet" back then.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Caltrain has passing tracks at Sunnyvale and Brisbane. There
| are joint plans with CAHSR to add 4-track segments at Millbrae,
| San Mateo (between Hayward Park and Hillsdale), Redwood City,
| and Palo Alto (California Ave).
|
| The Millbrae tracks are part of the new station design: they
| are removing one of the 3 BART tracks (superfluous because BART
| terminates at Millbrae) and using the space to construct two
| dedicated HSR tracks on the inside of Caltrain, as well as a
| HSR platform.
|
| The San Mateo area is relatively straightforward: Caltrain
| already owns the land, it is currently surface parking lots for
| the Hillsdale station as well as the land used for the old
| station (which was moved a few years ago).
|
| Redwood City is elevating the entire Caltrain/HSR track above
| the city as part of their grade separation strategy. The new
| viaduct will be built with 4 tracks instead of 2.
|
| The only major sticking point is Cal Ave, where there is
| limited space and an unfriendly city.
|
| 5-6 passing track sections should be plenty for running blended
| service.
| dekhn wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the reminder there are passing tracks already.
|
| Are passing tracks really practical? Wouldn't they have to be
| extremely long to accomodate high speed trains mixed with
| local Caltrains? I have a hard time picturing this all
| working out even under ideal circumstances.
| exabrial wrote:
| Can we please just kill this dumb project for good? Billions
| funneled into people's pockets for like a mile of rail.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| 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 Valley would have
| to wait for branches to be built.
|
| _SO INSTEAD_ we took the more circuitous route through Central
| Valley so that the 1M people feel immediately included and _NO
| ONE_ is getting a high speed rail.
|
| Sir! ChatGPT couldn't come up with a more California scented
| boondoggle.
| jonahrd wrote:
| this is actually exactly what has been happening over the past
| few decades, and with the current proposal, for HSR from
| Toronto to Montreal, two of the largest cities in terms of both
| population and economy in Canada.
|
| Ottawa felt excluded, and is where the federal govt is based,
| so instead of going along the 401, a straight highway that
| follows a river valley and lake and has existing rail
| corridors, it has to go from Montreal to Ottawa (a short
| stretch also along a river) and then cut from Ottawa to Toronto
| via Peterborough, which requires new track, fixing old windy
| track to allow HSR, some sections have to be speed limited, and
| has to build through hills and dense forest.
|
| Also, Quebec feels that they don't get "enough" out of the
| project connecting their largest city to another economic
| powerhub, so it of course also has to be extended the extra
| 250km to Quebec city (luckily along a river)
|
| The logical method would be to build Toronto to Montreal 30
| years ago, then build a branch to Ottawa one day, and an
| extension to Quebec another day. The Canadian economy would
| probably be much stronger if that was the case.
|
| Or we can just wait 30 more years and have this project not be
| implemented.
| ergsef wrote:
| 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 profits to their private-sector pals. Suddenly investing
| in public infrastructure is appealing again (as long as the
| public doesn't actually get to own it!)
| bardak wrote:
| Even if you insist on going through the cities in the valley
| they chose a construction sequence that takes the longest time
| to show any process. If they fast tracked LA-Bakersfield they
| could have extended the Amtrak San Joaquin service to LA by
| now. Concentrat on the SF-Merced section next and then you can
| work on the Merced-Bakersfield piece meal.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I thought they were unclear if LA-Bakerfield is even
| possible.
|
| My understanding comes from a podcast that wasn't about the
| rail at all, it was about how to make decisions. In the
| podcast they gave the example that if you decide to have a
| music box and a dancing monkey at a fair to make money, which
| do you do first, make the music box or train the monkey. The
| answer is, train the monkey, because if you can't train the
| monkey there is no point in making the music box (something
| you know can be made).
|
| Her point was people delude themselves into thinking they're
| making progress on a project by starting with the easy stuff.
| But the easy stuff is pointless if the hard stuff is
| impossible.
|
| She gave the example of the California high-speed rail.
| They're building the flat easy part first but engineers have
| not figured out how they're going to build the train between
| Bakersfield and Los Angeles through the Tehachapi Mountains.
| Until they've figured that out the flat part is a waste of
| time and a false example of progress.
| tidbits wrote:
| 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_...
| frinxor wrote:
| SNCF was one of the early bidders for this project, proposing
| the I5 route. They later pulled out from the politics of the
| Central Valley line in 2011, and went on to successfully
| implement high speed rail in Morocco instead - which went live
| in 2018.
|
| Here we are 8 years after they finished a different project
| with nothing. American infrastructure at its finest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF#Modern_era
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Not sure what specifically is "california" about this - There
| is very little support from either side of the aisle in
| continuing this project, which of course, the article states
| because it is an unavoidable truth. The criticisms offered by
| both sides are valid and the few proponents that still hold
| water for this dismiss these arguments with very bad or
| incomplete reasoning as written here.
|
| For instance, brushing over the "possible original sin" of the
| project was way underestimating cost. Yea, no shit, that's like
| 95% of the problem voters have with it, that and how long it's
| taken with very little usable progress. Author spends very
| little time on this.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > claim that the relative failure of the California High-Speed
| Rail "boondoggle" represents the political dysfunction of either
| California
|
| > This criticism also misunderstands one of the main challenges
| that CAHSR has faced. Al Boraq had full funding lined up before
| the project began. CAHSR did not. This led to delays that reduced
| support and encouraged critics, which starved it of funding
| commitments and thus led to further delays. California undermined
| CAHSR from the start.
|
| That just sounds like describing dysfunctional government using
| more words. Either the government can get it done or they can't.
| Allowing endless vetos and delays to gum up the process is a
| political decision.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| In the exact same amount of time, China has gone from 0 to 25,000
| miles in high speed rail.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_railway_lin...
| vondur wrote:
| It probably helps when you can simply take the land you need.
| One major issue with the California project has been the
| difficulty in securing land rights. Additionally, California's
| strict environmental laws have made construction even more
| challenging. In contrast, China can largely ignore these
| obstacles.
| makotech221 wrote:
| Stop spreading racist lies. Look up china Nail Houses https:/
| /www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...
|
| China respects personal property far more than any western
| country does
| tekno45 wrote:
| they don't have billionaires bullying their way to cancelling
| projects for their personal fantasy tubes
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I remember when BART was first built and San Mateo county opted
| out of BART. You couldn't take BART to SFO or even South San
| Francisco. Now they are talking about extending it to San Jose?
| This may sound very Californian, but I always support trains
| because once you have it it doesn't go away and eventually you
| get more that makes the train even more useful.
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