23 ms·

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

196 points by MilnerRoute 10y ago

niftich 10y ago
Not sure why they decided to build an elaborate viaduct [1] to allow for a high-speed curve radius in Southeast Fresno, if Fresno will be a likely stop anyway. Just make all trains stop in Fresno, a place conveniently midway between SF and LA and desperate for improved connections with California's more prosperous areas. After all, isn't the whole point of HSR to improve connectivity between more than just the two termini, since those who want to go direct between SF and LA will always have a direct flight as an option? [1] https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1NYS0Y3nyyYZowXFDtJst5nEJYKg&hl=en&ll=36.72964523009003%2C-119.77272911322018&z=12 https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1NYS0Y3nyyYZowXFDtJ...
- magila 10y ago
  > since those who want to go direct between SF and LA will always have a direct flight as an option Therein lies the problem. The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA, because that's the only conceivable way to get enough ridership. The problem is the distance between SF and LA means being competitive with flying in terms of travel time is incredibly difficult. To achieve parity the trains will need to average around 220 MPH, which is incredibly optimistic. Existing high speed rail lines rarely run at 200 MPH even momentarily due to high operating costs. All this means that most trains will have to run nonstop between SF and LA to even have a hope of competing with flying. If the trains fail to draw passengers away from the airlines, ridership will be far too low to sustain the line without absurdly high subsidies.
  - melling 10y ago
    NYC to Boston is 230 miles, about 3.5 hours by "fast" train. It's about an hour flight. A lot of people still take the train. If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option.
    - magila 10y ago
      That theory doesn't really work for LA because it's so spread out that you are very likely going to need to take a car to your final destination regardless of which mode of transportation you use to get into the city.
      - trome 10y ago
        Depends what part of LA your in, but in most cases your absolutely right. Most areas are designed with cars being the prime transport, with sidewalks halfheartedly tacked onto high speed roads. I'd never walk along that by choice!
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option. That's because Boston and NYC are both navigable without a car. Only one side of the SF-LA link can claim to be close to that ideal. But the time and hassle of airport parking and security and delays might be able to keep a 3.5 hour train ride viable even in CA. That would require a train system that allowed passengers to step through a quick scanner with no line and onto the train without queueing or carefully organized boarding. Lots of train systems used to do that in the USA but the bureaucrats don't like passengers freely walking around platforms by heavy machinery or directing themselves or quick predictable security procedures. Acela has been abandoning efficient and established traditional practices to copy instead the airports. How long are they going to stand for a train system that isn't as awful as airport security and boarding? Since politicians can't risk being blamed for trouble, we have no ability to control the bureaucrats and every high speed transportation system will inevitably get to be as bad as airports. If rail could be built at the same costs as in France or Japan (or even, optimistically, Spain or Korea), to wit, $20-30MMM, you could justify it just for saving the cost of airport expansion. But at $80-120MMM it's lunacy to proceed.
      - 0max 10y ago
        You don't think Measure M passed last year would make any difference? http://theplan.metro.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/factsheet_measurem.pdf http://theplan.metro.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/factshee...
  - kwhitefoot 10y ago
    > Existing high speed rail lines rarely run at 200 MPH even momentarily Really? Zaragoza to Barcelona does 310kph and very smoothly too. Much more comfortable than flying: https://dilemma-x.net/2014/03/14/high-speed-rail-in-spain-is-more-popular-than-the-airplane/ https://dilemma-x.net/2014/03/14/high-speed-rail-in-spain-is...
    - iso-8859-1 10y ago
      That's 193 miles per hour, doesn't refute what your parent said
    - magila 10y ago
      310kph is probably the maximum cursing speed. I can't find precise distance information for AVE between Zaragoza and Barcelona, but it's somewhere around 320-330 km. The minimum travel time I see listed is about 1.5 hours. So conservatively the average speed is around 220 kph or 137 mph.
  - jimmybobbyjones 10y ago
    > The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA, I have no trouble imagining that the train can compete with flying between SF and LA. Even if the train has to stop in several backwater towns along the way. The shuttle flights between SFO/SJC and LAX are completely unreliable. When I was doing the SF-LA haul regularly, I'd be delayed (delayed!) by 6+ hours at least once per month. That's longer than it takes to drive. Do you really think the high speed train will take that long to travel between LA and the Bay Area? So what if the minimum time of the train is a little longer than a flight? The expected time enroute is still much less.
    - _red 10y ago
      That assumption is: plane with current on-time arrival percentage vs train with mythical 100% on-time arrival. There are a whole host of additional problems that affect rail travel that you never have to think about with air-travel. Currently, Amtrak OTA is 80% - so that means 1/5 of your trips will experience a delay of some sort.
      - khuey 10y ago
        Amtrak doesn't own the right of way for most of their routes.
      - DrScump 10y ago
        Where right-of-way is shared with freight, freight has priority.
        toomanybeersies 10y ago
        That seems rather backwards. Passengers are the more time-sensitive cargo than freight.
        dc_gregory 10y ago
        Presumption would be it's much harder to stop/start a freight train vs. a passenger train.
  - saosebastiao 10y ago
    This is completely false. The entire flight demand of SF to LA is so pathetically low in comparison to the demand from the Cartesian set of intermediary routes that catering to just SF to LA would doom the project to failure. There isn't a successful HSR system in the world that hasn't already learned this lesson. Not only is Fresno crucial to ridership projections, but so are all the other small towns like Merced.
    - obstinate 10y ago
      I would love to read about this lesson that other HSR systems have learned in more detail. Do you have any articles about it?
  - joshuaheard 10y ago
    According to the figures released before the project, it will cost the same, but take twice as long to go from LA to SF compared to flying. No one is going to take the train instead of flying, except maybe John Madden.
    - mistersquid 10y ago
      I have a friend who cannot fly due to temperament. He's tried everything from hypnotherapy, to beta blockers, to getting near black out drunk. His fear, which he knows is irrational, has only worsened over time. He would take such a train. Another thing is that a one hour flight from SF to LA means, 30 minutes to airport, 30 minutes to get through gate, 15 minutes to board, 10 minutes on tarmac, an hour flight, 10-20 minutes for landing/deplaning, 15 minutes to ground transport. So, two hours seems ballpark. Trains typically don't have as much security and boarding is simplified. I'm thinking plane and train travel times door-to-door would be comparable. Finally, train seats are usually much more comfortable than seats on domestic flights. I think a substantial number of travelers would use the train instead of flying.
    - acchow 10y ago
      But wouldn't train connect city centers? Airports aren't really near anything.
      - cardiffspaceman 10y ago
        This is not 100% true and the situations that "not near anything" is true for are varied. DFW was located "in the middle of nowhare" ca. halfway between two cities when it opened. I visited there more in the past than now but "anything" was building up around it when I did go sporadically. LAX is not close to Downtown LA but there are lots of office buildings out there. San Diego's and Pheonix's airports are very close to Downtown. In the case of San Diego it would be difficult to do anything but reuse the existing railways. I suspect if you look around there are a range of airport distances and a range of abilities to get high-speed railways close to city centers, rather than everything setup like Heathrow vs London.
      - ghaff 10y ago
  - lispm 10y ago
    France has tracks with 320km/h. Germany uses 300km/h on some tracks. Here the view from a train at that speed overtaking cars on the Autobahn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js3XDTE5Iyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js3XDTE5Iyg China learned from it, here using a version of a German Siemens ICE train, Shanghai/Beijing in under five hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvytUaRs2dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvytUaRs2dU
    - magila 10y ago
      320 kph is the maximum cruising speed. Average speed for a trip is typically much less than that because the trains can only hit 320 kph on certain stretches of track. Even 320 kph is about 30 kph short of what the California trains are planing to average. From what I understand the operating costs go up considerably between 320 kph and 350 kph due to the need for much more stringent track maintenance.
      - lispm 10y ago
        > 320 kph is the maximum cruising speed. Average speed for a trip is typically much less than that because the trains can only hit 320 kph on certain stretches of track. France and Spain have those tracks in Europe. The newer German tracks with 300km/h are operated at 300km/h with the ICE 3. Even through towns and tunnels. It's not the average speed, but a typical cruising speed on those tracks. France has more and longer high-speed tracks, thus the high-speed trains operate at higher average speed than in Germany. Operating at 300km/h and beyond is indeed expensive. As are high-speed train in general. Still Western Europe now has an extensive amount of high-speed tracks: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/High_Speed_Railroad_Map_of_Europe.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/High_Spe...
        martinald 10y ago
        UK HS2 project is being planned for 400km/h operation.
        10y ago
  - the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
    I would be utterly shocked if even the top speed reaches 220 MPH.
valuearb 10y ago
$64B just in startup costs, for a slower trip than flying. Why this infatuation with a technology that hasn't been leading edge since the 1800s?
- erentz 10y ago
  Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.
  - jimrandomh 10y ago
    They are also much, much cheaper per mile. Something is wrong with construction in the US that makes rail lines dramatically more expensive here.
    - jjawssd 10y ago
      I'm interested in finding out more about this issue
      - niftich 10y ago
        Some write-ups and musings on this: [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-infrastructure-costs-so-much https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i... [2] http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/06/how-much-bang-do-we-get-our-infrastructure-buck http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/06/how-much-bang-... [3] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r... [4] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comparative-subway-construction-costs-revised/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp... [5] http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridge-america http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridg...
      - MK999 10y ago
        Why Trains Suck in America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ
erentz 10y ago
Huge supporter of rail but sadly I believe there are a number of mistakes being made. This is a classic example of how projects like this in the US need to be monolithic, self contained, and gold plated to the hilt. The correct action would have been for CA to incrementally acquire and build railways along a number of corridors. Take the SF bay for example. There should be one agency running Caltrain, the Capitol Corridor, the ACE. It should electrify and improve all the routes. Extend reach to Monterey and other Central Valley locations. And do the same in Southern California. The incompatibility of CAHSR with other rail strikes me as a repeat of the BART mistake.
- JimboOmega 10y ago
  A large part of what made the shinkansen work in ways that the current US rail system doesn't is its dedicated right of way, so I think building it separately makes some sense. sharing with freight otrain slower commuter trains really reduces the value of HSR, especially on an older, slower right of way.
- CalChris 10y ago
  > a repeat of the BART mistake. Probably a different mistake but BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5". This means that every railcar, every everything, has to be custom made with no economies of scale. No one can remember why they did this.
  - privong 10y ago
    > BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5". Interesting. When I saw this, I wondered if it was to match another standard gauge that was judged to be superior. But, looking at the list of rail gauges on wikipedia[0], 5'6" is the gauge for railways in India ("Indian broad gauge" to be specific). The initial BART rolling stock seems to have been build by Rohr, Inc.[1], which is based in California. So it seems unlikely that they were benefiting from any economies of scale from Indian rail construction. Rohr also seems to have built rolling stock for the Washington, D.C. metro, which uses a near-standard 4'8.25" gauge[2]. Perplexing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc. (you'll need manually add the period to the end of the URL, because of how HN converts this into a link) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#System
sand500 10y ago
As I see it, the price of rail tickets will be pretty high.whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too?
- privong 10y ago
  > whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too? The construction of the high-speed rail system is/will be heavily subsidized by the government. So presumably, the government will have a vested interest in keeping the train service running and will subsidize operating costs if airlines cut prices in that manner.
  - fennecfoxen 10y ago
    > the government ... will subsidize operating costs By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice.
    - Inconel 10y ago
      This is my big reservation about HSR even as a huge proponent of rail transit. I live in a working class area of south LA and there is huge demand here for local/regional rail and other transit. Neither LA, despite its improvements over the last decade, nor the Bay Area, have anywhere near the needed levels of regional mass transit. My big fear is that HSR will ultimately be subsidized by middle class Californians so business people and wealthy vacationers can travel between SF and LA at the expense of more regionally focused transit that has a greater impact on the lives of working/middle class people.
    - setpatchaddress 10y ago
      Taxpayers subsidize all successful transit. True of cars, true of rail.
jack9 10y ago
Love the government pork being championed by a city who, increasingly, has to import a large portion of its workforce.
- macawfish 10y ago
  I can't tell if this comment is xenophobic or what
intrasight 10y ago
>America’s biggest infrastructure project is both in limbo and full-speed ahead. There is a logic to that for a project of this magnitude that may take dozens of years to complete.
zlynx 10y ago
"planning snafus" AKA politically motivated outright lies.
jorblumesea 10y ago
Forget high speed rail, where's the commuter trains? It seems ridiculous that in most US cities public transit is mostly non-existent. Traffic is bad in most major US cities you'd think people would be jumping for this as urbanization increases.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Well, without really disagreeing, you tend to need a layout where hub & spoke makes sense. With older east coast cities (e.g. NYC & Boston) you have commuter rail lines radiating out from central city stations from which people can walk or take the subway to jobs connecting to suburban stations with parking. It doesn't work if you don't have that central density & transit. It doesn't generally work in the opposite direction either. (Urban dwellers to suburban jobs.)
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  Lost in the high speed rail bit, the CHSR is actually what you're asking for. Because it serves as commuter rail in the Bay Area and LA Basin. And to a lesser extent elsewhere. That's the actual reason it's expensive.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Those are covered under other bond measures. LA has a multi-generation plan [1] for building out several new rail lines, busways, etc. It's harder to find an overarching document for the Bay Area because there are too damn many counties and transit agencies around here, but there are lots of projects -- BART to San Jose, Caltrain electrification, new rail lines and improved lines in SF, rebuilding the Dumbarton Rail Bridge -- that are in various stages of planning and construction. [1] http://theplan.metro.net/ http://theplan.metro.net/
- ubernostrum 10y ago
  Part of the fallout of this is likely that the electrification and modernization of Caltrain will die, since it's dependent on funding from the high-speed rail project. Caltrain is currently running 30-year-old diesel locomotives and 30-year-old passenger carriages on many of its trains, because they have no funding to get more modern equipment or electrify the line. Minor breakdowns have been increasing for a while, with occasional major problems (like last week when they had a fire in one of the locomotives during the evening rush hour).
datahack 10y ago
If I had known that they were going to run this through the Central Valley instead of down the coast where it belongs I never would have voted for it. It should have gone straight from la to Oakland or emeryville, turned and gone straight to Sacramento. Instead we have a convoluted mess of rail connections that take people places they don't even want to go (no offense to Bakersfield buts it's hardly a holiday destination). It's a farse because of how it's getting implemented, and nobody is under any illusions this isn't going to turn into another bay bridge budget monster in California. Still a rail proponent, but bitterly disappointed in the implementation choices of this project.
- scythe 10y ago
  Nah, the coast is too expensive; you have to go over a bunch of hills and deal with steep terrain and thick forests. The correct option is to go for the cheapest land available, which any private company (not sure this kind of thing should be privatized but it's a useful comparison imo) would have obviously gone for. That would be just west of I-5, up the eastern edge of the Central Valley. Throw in a few improvements to the E-W roads between [Modesto/Bakersfield/Santa Cruz/etc] and the train corridor (which can be put off a few years to raise money) and you end up with nearly the same level of service to those areas anyway. But because it's political and activists want train service to their towns because [ideology] or just for the property values, we get cost overruns while delaying the big prize: service from SF to LA.
  - acchow 10y ago
    > while delaying the big prize: service from SF to LA. I don't think that's the biggest deal here. I'll refer you to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13630341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13630341
    - scythe 10y ago
      The inner areas will be more likely to want transit to the endpoints than to each other. Of course having only two stops wouldn't pay for the train but it's probably easier to drive from Bakersfield to Fresno eg and you need a car both places whereas going to LA/SF without a car doesn't present a hassle. If you look at page 43 here on the ridership projections: http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/2016_Business_Plan_Ridersihp_Revenue_Forecast.pd http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/2016_Busines... It looks like about 2/3 or so of the revenue is to either the MTC or SCAG regions, with the remainder dominated by the San Joaquin Valley. So while traffic may not be entirely between the endpoint it is highly concentrated in trips going to and from the endpoints, and for this purpose, driving 30 minutes down a freeway to the train might not be too much of an inconvenience for the residents of Modesto who despite technocrats' brainwashing ambitions will probably still like to drive cars in 2030. Plus they won't complain about a cheaper fare, even if road improvements take another ten years to get in place (the train is the important part).
arca_vorago 10y ago
I loved Chomsky's response to this "Like the one I took in Japan... in the 1950's..." For extra fun, realize that California had already begun about the same time as Japan to install more public transport, but the car companies moved muscle on them to stop it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
klinquist 10y ago
One thing that nobody has mentioned - autonomous cars. Close to the time this will be completed, I assume I'll be able to sit in my vehicle and be shuttled from SF to LA in 5 hrs in the comfort of my own vehicle.
- jwatte 10y ago
  The car is slower, and an order of magnitude less efficient. And efficiency matters -- there's a limit to how much energy can be sustainably spent, and if transportation is more efficient, we get to do more other things.
  - adventured 10y ago
    Not to mention that the US is going to continue to expand in terms of population. We've added 60 million people in 20 years, nearly equal to the population of France. We'll add another 20+ million in the next decade. Simultaneously we'll become slightly less rural and more urban in terms of population concentration. Even if the autonomous electric vehicle has a huge role to play in improving traffic in the US - which it clearly does - high speed rail (whether hyperloop-like, above ground, below ground, whatever) will still make sense alongside that. There is going to be plenty of demand to go around, such that having multiple approaches will be useful. Sometimes the autonomous car will make sense, sometimes rail will make sense.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    > The car is slower Only in theory - current estimates are that by the time stops, noise abatement, track changes, etc have all been factored in, the CAHSR trains will average under 100MPh - closer to 80, which is easily achievable on i5 by a car.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Normally I'm as skeptical of autonomous vehicle timeframes as anyone. But this is a case where even just the highway portion would be a huge win. And one of the cities (as well as pretty much all the intermediate locations) aren't very public transit or pedestrian friendly. If I'm leaving SF and will be in LA in 5-6 hours (door-to-door) with a minimum of driving [ADDED: with my own vehicle], how attractive is that train? I do get the efficiency of train travel but if you're already skeptical that the numbers work...
jboggan 10y ago
Probably should be spending that money on infrastructure (read: dam) maintenance.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Both can, should, and are being done. The California Water Project is rather adequately funded. The Oroville Dam problem is due to a pretty unprecedented winter, not a lack of maintenance. The emergency overflow seems to have held, at least for now, so with hope they can put in a fix for the spillway.
Figs 10y ago
I was against the project back when it was a ballot measure, but since then my opinion on it has changed -- I don't care if trains ever run on the damned thing, what really matters in this project is getting the right of way to the land, because they're going to put in a MASSIVE amount of fiber optic cable as they dig out the path.
Proven 10y ago
No one cares if the damn train and railways are built or not. Opponents object to the fact that the State is acting as a (clueless) investor that will push the state into an even more unsustainable fiscal position. It's a generic and valid objection that has nothing to do with the train. And of course it's being built: it's a way for various parasites, from crony capitalists to public unions, to do really well for themselves at the expense of the taxpayer. Again.
bcheung 10y ago
I would prefer to see the money spent on improving Caltrain. It really is not a viable option for a lot of people. South of SJ Diridon, the trains only run 3x in the morning and 3x in the evening and they require you to basically wake up at 5 or 6 AM depending on the train you want to catch. A lot of tech workers don't come into the office until after 10 AM. The high speed rail won't really help people already living in Silicon Valley except for the rare few who live near downtown San Jose and plan to work in SF (or vice versa). And yet, they are the ones who will bear the inconvenience. The proposed plans I have seen will have the train elevated 60 ft in the air, it's about 70-80 ft total from my bedroom window and the train will travel 150 mph several times an hour at around 100 dB. Additionally, they will be narrowing a major road that is 2 lanes in each direction to 1 lane in each direction to make room for the train. Which is weird, because the Caltrain tracks are just another 30 feet away so not sure why they don't just build it above that. There was some talk of a proposal to reimburse home owners due to the loss of value to their homes if this goes through. Based on the proposal I was looking at they showed a $100K to $200K loss of property value if the train goes through. If I actually wanted to take the train, it would take me 20-45 minutes to get to the train station in San Jose even though I am already in San Jose. I'm really disappointed in how impractical this is for the majority of people who live and work in SF bay area and the level of cost and inconvenience it will cause.
- ericd 10y ago
  High speed rail isn't generally meant for commuters - if it had frequent stops, it would never have a chance to reach high speeds before it would have to slow down again. Perhaps they could provide some subsidy to help you soundproof the side of your house facing the tracks? Also, it's 100 dB at what distance?

196 points by MilnerRoute 10y ago

Not sure why they decided to build an elaborate viaduct [1] to allow for a high-speed curve radius in Southeast Fresno, if Fresno will be a likely stop anyway. Just make all trains stop in Fresno, a place conveniently midway between SF and LA and desperate for improved connections with California's more prosperous areas. After all, isn't the whole point of HSR to improve connectivity between more than just the two termini, since those who want to go direct between SF and LA will always have a direct flight as an option? [1] https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1NYS0Y3nyyYZowXFDtJst5nEJYKg&hl=en&ll=36.72964523009003%2C-119.77272911322018&z=12 https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1NYS0Y3nyyYZowXFDtJ...

magila 10y ago
> since those who want to go direct between SF and LA will always have a direct flight as an option Therein lies the problem. The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA, because that's the only conceivable way to get enough ridership. The problem is the distance between SF and LA means being competitive with flying in terms of travel time is incredibly difficult. To achieve parity the trains will need to average around 220 MPH, which is incredibly optimistic. Existing high speed rail lines rarely run at 200 MPH even momentarily due to high operating costs. All this means that most trains will have to run nonstop between SF and LA to even have a hope of competing with flying. If the trains fail to draw passengers away from the airlines, ridership will be far too low to sustain the line without absurdly high subsidies.
- melling 10y ago
  NYC to Boston is 230 miles, about 3.5 hours by "fast" train. It's about an hour flight. A lot of people still take the train. If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option.
  - magila 10y ago
    That theory doesn't really work for LA because it's so spread out that you are very likely going to need to take a car to your final destination regardless of which mode of transportation you use to get into the city.
    - trome 10y ago
      Depends what part of LA your in, but in most cases your absolutely right. Most areas are designed with cars being the prime transport, with sidewalks halfheartedly tacked onto high speed roads. I'd never walk along that by choice!
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option. That's because Boston and NYC are both navigable without a car. Only one side of the SF-LA link can claim to be close to that ideal. But the time and hassle of airport parking and security and delays might be able to keep a 3.5 hour train ride viable even in CA. That would require a train system that allowed passengers to step through a quick scanner with no line and onto the train without queueing or carefully organized boarding. Lots of train systems used to do that in the USA but the bureaucrats don't like passengers freely walking around platforms by heavy machinery or directing themselves or quick predictable security procedures. Acela has been abandoning efficient and established traditional practices to copy instead the airports. How long are they going to stand for a train system that isn't as awful as airport security and boarding? Since politicians can't risk being blamed for trouble, we have no ability to control the bureaucrats and every high speed transportation system will inevitably get to be as bad as airports. If rail could be built at the same costs as in France or Japan (or even, optimistically, Spain or Korea), to wit, $20-30MMM, you could justify it just for saving the cost of airport expansion. But at $80-120MMM it's lunacy to proceed.
    - 0max 10y ago
      You don't think Measure M passed last year would make any difference? http://theplan.metro.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/factsheet_measurem.pdf http://theplan.metro.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/factshee...
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  > Existing high speed rail lines rarely run at 200 MPH even momentarily Really? Zaragoza to Barcelona does 310kph and very smoothly too. Much more comfortable than flying: https://dilemma-x.net/2014/03/14/high-speed-rail-in-spain-is-more-popular-than-the-airplane/ https://dilemma-x.net/2014/03/14/high-speed-rail-in-spain-is...
  - iso-8859-1 10y ago
    That's 193 miles per hour, doesn't refute what your parent said
  - magila 10y ago
    310kph is probably the maximum cursing speed. I can't find precise distance information for AVE between Zaragoza and Barcelona, but it's somewhere around 320-330 km. The minimum travel time I see listed is about 1.5 hours. So conservatively the average speed is around 220 kph or 137 mph.
- jimmybobbyjones 10y ago
  > The cost of the line can't be justified unless it provides a viable alternative to flying between SF and LA, I have no trouble imagining that the train can compete with flying between SF and LA. Even if the train has to stop in several backwater towns along the way. The shuttle flights between SFO/SJC and LAX are completely unreliable. When I was doing the SF-LA haul regularly, I'd be delayed (delayed!) by 6+ hours at least once per month. That's longer than it takes to drive. Do you really think the high speed train will take that long to travel between LA and the Bay Area? So what if the minimum time of the train is a little longer than a flight? The expected time enroute is still much less.
  - _red 10y ago
    That assumption is: plane with current on-time arrival percentage vs train with mythical 100% on-time arrival. There are a whole host of additional problems that affect rail travel that you never have to think about with air-travel. Currently, Amtrak OTA is 80% - so that means 1/5 of your trips will experience a delay of some sort.
    - khuey 10y ago
      Amtrak doesn't own the right of way for most of their routes.
    - DrScump 10y ago
      Where right-of-way is shared with freight, freight has priority.
      - toomanybeersies 10y ago
        That seems rather backwards. Passengers are the more time-sensitive cargo than freight.
        dc_gregory 10y ago
        Presumption would be it's much harder to stop/start a freight train vs. a passenger train.
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  This is completely false. The entire flight demand of SF to LA is so pathetically low in comparison to the demand from the Cartesian set of intermediary routes that catering to just SF to LA would doom the project to failure. There isn't a successful HSR system in the world that hasn't already learned this lesson. Not only is Fresno crucial to ridership projections, but so are all the other small towns like Merced.
  - obstinate 10y ago
    I would love to read about this lesson that other HSR systems have learned in more detail. Do you have any articles about it?
- joshuaheard 10y ago
  According to the figures released before the project, it will cost the same, but take twice as long to go from LA to SF compared to flying. No one is going to take the train instead of flying, except maybe John Madden.
  - mistersquid 10y ago
    I have a friend who cannot fly due to temperament. He's tried everything from hypnotherapy, to beta blockers, to getting near black out drunk. His fear, which he knows is irrational, has only worsened over time. He would take such a train. Another thing is that a one hour flight from SF to LA means, 30 minutes to airport, 30 minutes to get through gate, 15 minutes to board, 10 minutes on tarmac, an hour flight, 10-20 minutes for landing/deplaning, 15 minutes to ground transport. So, two hours seems ballpark. Trains typically don't have as much security and boarding is simplified. I'm thinking plane and train travel times door-to-door would be comparable. Finally, train seats are usually much more comfortable than seats on domestic flights. I think a substantial number of travelers would use the train instead of flying.
  - acchow 10y ago
    But wouldn't train connect city centers? Airports aren't really near anything.
    - cardiffspaceman 10y ago
      This is not 100% true and the situations that "not near anything" is true for are varied. DFW was located "in the middle of nowhare" ca. halfway between two cities when it opened. I visited there more in the past than now but "anything" was building up around it when I did go sporadically. LAX is not close to Downtown LA but there are lots of office buildings out there. San Diego's and Pheonix's airports are very close to Downtown. In the case of San Diego it would be difficult to do anything but reuse the existing railways. I suspect if you look around there are a range of airport distances and a range of abilities to get high-speed railways close to city centers, rather than everything setup like Heathrow vs London.
    - ghaff 10y ago
- lispm 10y ago
  France has tracks with 320km/h. Germany uses 300km/h on some tracks. Here the view from a train at that speed overtaking cars on the Autobahn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js3XDTE5Iyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js3XDTE5Iyg China learned from it, here using a version of a German Siemens ICE train, Shanghai/Beijing in under five hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvytUaRs2dU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvytUaRs2dU
  - magila 10y ago
    320 kph is the maximum cruising speed. Average speed for a trip is typically much less than that because the trains can only hit 320 kph on certain stretches of track. Even 320 kph is about 30 kph short of what the California trains are planing to average. From what I understand the operating costs go up considerably between 320 kph and 350 kph due to the need for much more stringent track maintenance.
    - lispm 10y ago
      > 320 kph is the maximum cruising speed. Average speed for a trip is typically much less than that because the trains can only hit 320 kph on certain stretches of track. France and Spain have those tracks in Europe. The newer German tracks with 300km/h are operated at 300km/h with the ICE 3. Even through towns and tunnels. It's not the average speed, but a typical cruising speed on those tracks. France has more and longer high-speed tracks, thus the high-speed trains operate at higher average speed than in Germany. Operating at 300km/h and beyond is indeed expensive. As are high-speed train in general. Still Western Europe now has an extensive amount of high-speed tracks: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/High_Speed_Railroad_Map_of_Europe.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/High_Spe...
      - martinald 10y ago
        UK HS2 project is being planned for 400km/h operation.
        10y ago
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  I would be utterly shocked if even the top speed reaches 220 MPH.

valuearb 10y ago

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

erentz 10y ago
Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.
- jimrandomh 10y ago
  They are also much, much cheaper per mile. Something is wrong with construction in the US that makes rail lines dramatically more expensive here.
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    I'm interested in finding out more about this issue
    - niftich 10y ago
      Some write-ups and musings on this: [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-infrastructure-costs-so-much https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i... [2] http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/06/how-much-bang-do-we-get-our-infrastructure-buck http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/06/how-much-bang-... [3] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-rail-construction-costs/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r... [4] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comparative-subway-construction-costs-revised/ https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp... [5] http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridge-america http://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridg...
    - MK999 10y ago
      Why Trains Suck in America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

erentz 10y ago

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

JimboOmega 10y ago
A large part of what made the shinkansen work in ways that the current US rail system doesn't is its dedicated right of way, so I think building it separately makes some sense. sharing with freight otrain slower commuter trains really reduces the value of HSR, especially on an older, slower right of way.
CalChris 10y ago
> a repeat of the BART mistake. Probably a different mistake but BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5". This means that every railcar, every everything, has to be custom made with no economies of scale. No one can remember why they did this.
- privong 10y ago
  > BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5". Interesting. When I saw this, I wondered if it was to match another standard gauge that was judged to be superior. But, looking at the list of rail gauges on wikipedia[0], 5'6" is the gauge for railways in India ("Indian broad gauge" to be specific). The initial BART rolling stock seems to have been build by Rohr, Inc.[1], which is based in California. So it seems unlikely that they were benefiting from any economies of scale from Indian rail construction. Rohr also seems to have built rolling stock for the Washington, D.C. metro, which uses a near-standard 4'8.25" gauge[2]. Perplexing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc. (you'll need manually add the period to the end of the URL, because of how HN converts this into a link) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#System

sand500 10y ago

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

privong 10y ago
> whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too? The construction of the high-speed rail system is/will be heavily subsidized by the government. So presumably, the government will have a vested interest in keeping the train service running and will subsidize operating costs if airlines cut prices in that manner.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  > the government ... will subsidize operating costs By which you mean taxpayers will subsidize operating costs. I wonder exactly how regressive the wealth transfer from the average middle-class California taxpayer to the California weekly-commute bullet-train businessperson will be, in practice.
  - Inconel 10y ago
    This is my big reservation about HSR even as a huge proponent of rail transit. I live in a working class area of south LA and there is huge demand here for local/regional rail and other transit. Neither LA, despite its improvements over the last decade, nor the Bay Area, have anywhere near the needed levels of regional mass transit. My big fear is that HSR will ultimately be subsidized by middle class Californians so business people and wealthy vacationers can travel between SF and LA at the expense of more regionally focused transit that has a greater impact on the lives of working/middle class people.
  - setpatchaddress 10y ago
    Taxpayers subsidize all successful transit. True of cars, true of rail.

jack9 10y ago

Love the government pork being championed by a city who, increasingly, has to import a large portion of its workforce.

macawfish 10y ago
I can't tell if this comment is xenophobic or what

intrasight 10y ago

>America’s biggest infrastructure project is both in limbo and full-speed ahead. There is a logic to that for a project of this magnitude that may take dozens of years to complete.

zlynx 10y ago

"planning snafus" AKA politically motivated outright lies.

jorblumesea 10y ago

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

ghaff 10y ago
Well, without really disagreeing, you tend to need a layout where hub & spoke makes sense. With older east coast cities (e.g. NYC & Boston) you have commuter rail lines radiating out from central city stations from which people can walk or take the subway to jobs connecting to suburban stations with parking. It doesn't work if you don't have that central density & transit. It doesn't generally work in the opposite direction either. (Urban dwellers to suburban jobs.)
Gibbon1 10y ago
Lost in the high speed rail bit, the CHSR is actually what you're asking for. Because it serves as commuter rail in the Bay Area and LA Basin. And to a lesser extent elsewhere. That's the actual reason it's expensive.
Sanddancer 10y ago
Those are covered under other bond measures. LA has a multi-generation plan [1] for building out several new rail lines, busways, etc. It's harder to find an overarching document for the Bay Area because there are too damn many counties and transit agencies around here, but there are lots of projects -- BART to San Jose, Caltrain electrification, new rail lines and improved lines in SF, rebuilding the Dumbarton Rail Bridge -- that are in various stages of planning and construction. [1] http://theplan.metro.net/ http://theplan.metro.net/
ubernostrum 10y ago
Part of the fallout of this is likely that the electrification and modernization of Caltrain will die, since it's dependent on funding from the high-speed rail project. Caltrain is currently running 30-year-old diesel locomotives and 30-year-old passenger carriages on many of its trains, because they have no funding to get more modern equipment or electrify the line. Minor breakdowns have been increasing for a while, with occasional major problems (like last week when they had a fire in one of the locomotives during the evening rush hour).

datahack 10y ago

If I had known that they were going to run this through the Central Valley instead of down the coast where it belongs I never would have voted for it. It should have gone straight from la to Oakland or emeryville, turned and gone straight to Sacramento. Instead we have a convoluted mess of rail connections that take people places they don't even want to go (no offense to Bakersfield buts it's hardly a holiday destination). It's a farse because of how it's getting implemented, and nobody is under any illusions this isn't going to turn into another bay bridge budget monster in California. Still a rail proponent, but bitterly disappointed in the implementation choices of this project.

scythe 10y ago
Nah, the coast is too expensive; you have to go over a bunch of hills and deal with steep terrain and thick forests. The correct option is to go for the cheapest land available, which any private company (not sure this kind of thing should be privatized but it's a useful comparison imo) would have obviously gone for. That would be just west of I-5, up the eastern edge of the Central Valley. Throw in a few improvements to the E-W roads between [Modesto/Bakersfield/Santa Cruz/etc] and the train corridor (which can be put off a few years to raise money) and you end up with nearly the same level of service to those areas anyway. But because it's political and activists want train service to their towns because [ideology] or just for the property values, we get cost overruns while delaying the big prize: service from SF to LA.
- acchow 10y ago
  > while delaying the big prize: service from SF to LA. I don't think that's the biggest deal here. I'll refer you to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13630341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13630341
  - scythe 10y ago
    The inner areas will be more likely to want transit to the endpoints than to each other. Of course having only two stops wouldn't pay for the train but it's probably easier to drive from Bakersfield to Fresno eg and you need a car both places whereas going to LA/SF without a car doesn't present a hassle. If you look at page 43 here on the ridership projections: http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/2016_Business_Plan_Ridersihp_Revenue_Forecast.pd http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/2016_Busines... It looks like about 2/3 or so of the revenue is to either the MTC or SCAG regions, with the remainder dominated by the San Joaquin Valley. So while traffic may not be entirely between the endpoint it is highly concentrated in trips going to and from the endpoints, and for this purpose, driving 30 minutes down a freeway to the train might not be too much of an inconvenience for the residents of Modesto who despite technocrats' brainwashing ambitions will probably still like to drive cars in 2030. Plus they won't complain about a cheaper fare, even if road improvements take another ten years to get in place (the train is the important part).

arca_vorago 10y ago

I loved Chomsky's response to this "Like the one I took in Japan... in the 1950's..." For extra fun, realize that California had already begun about the same time as Japan to install more public transport, but the car companies moved muscle on them to stop it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

klinquist 10y ago

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

jwatte 10y ago
The car is slower, and an order of magnitude less efficient. And efficiency matters -- there's a limit to how much energy can be sustainably spent, and if transportation is more efficient, we get to do more other things.
- adventured 10y ago
  Not to mention that the US is going to continue to expand in terms of population. We've added 60 million people in 20 years, nearly equal to the population of France. We'll add another 20+ million in the next decade. Simultaneously we'll become slightly less rural and more urban in terms of population concentration. Even if the autonomous electric vehicle has a huge role to play in improving traffic in the US - which it clearly does - high speed rail (whether hyperloop-like, above ground, below ground, whatever) will still make sense alongside that. There is going to be plenty of demand to go around, such that having multiple approaches will be useful. Sometimes the autonomous car will make sense, sometimes rail will make sense.
- djrogers 10y ago
  > The car is slower Only in theory - current estimates are that by the time stops, noise abatement, track changes, etc have all been factored in, the CAHSR trains will average under 100MPh - closer to 80, which is easily achievable on i5 by a car.
ghaff 10y ago
Normally I'm as skeptical of autonomous vehicle timeframes as anyone. But this is a case where even just the highway portion would be a huge win. And one of the cities (as well as pretty much all the intermediate locations) aren't very public transit or pedestrian friendly. If I'm leaving SF and will be in LA in 5-6 hours (door-to-door) with a minimum of driving [ADDED: with my own vehicle], how attractive is that train? I do get the efficiency of train travel but if you're already skeptical that the numbers work...

jboggan 10y ago

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

Sanddancer 10y ago
Both can, should, and are being done. The California Water Project is rather adequately funded. The Oroville Dam problem is due to a pretty unprecedented winter, not a lack of maintenance. The emergency overflow seems to have held, at least for now, so with hope they can put in a fix for the spillway.

Figs 10y ago

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

Proven 10y ago

No one cares if the damn train and railways are built or not. Opponents object to the fact that the State is acting as a (clueless) investor that will push the state into an even more unsustainable fiscal position. It's a generic and valid objection that has nothing to do with the train. And of course it's being built: it's a way for various parasites, from crony capitalists to public unions, to do really well for themselves at the expense of the taxpayer. Again.

bcheung 10y ago

I would prefer to see the money spent on improving Caltrain. It really is not a viable option for a lot of people. South of SJ Diridon, the trains only run 3x in the morning and 3x in the evening and they require you to basically wake up at 5 or 6 AM depending on the train you want to catch. A lot of tech workers don't come into the office until after 10 AM. The high speed rail won't really help people already living in Silicon Valley except for the rare few who live near downtown San Jose and plan to work in SF (or vice versa). And yet, they are the ones who will bear the inconvenience. The proposed plans I have seen will have the train elevated 60 ft in the air, it's about 70-80 ft total from my bedroom window and the train will travel 150 mph several times an hour at around 100 dB. Additionally, they will be narrowing a major road that is 2 lanes in each direction to 1 lane in each direction to make room for the train. Which is weird, because the Caltrain tracks are just another 30 feet away so not sure why they don't just build it above that. There was some talk of a proposal to reimburse home owners due to the loss of value to their homes if this goes through. Based on the proposal I was looking at they showed a $100K to $200K loss of property value if the train goes through. If I actually wanted to take the train, it would take me 20-45 minutes to get to the train station in San Jose even though I am already in San Jose. I'm really disappointed in how impractical this is for the majority of people who live and work in SF bay area and the level of cost and inconvenience it will cause.

ericd 10y ago
High speed rail isn't generally meant for commuters - if it had frequent stops, it would never have a chance to reach high speeds before it would have to slow down again. Perhaps they could provide some subsidy to help you soundproof the side of your house facing the tracks? Also, it's 100 dB at what distance?