17 ms·

> 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 jus

by 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...
    - WildUtah 10y ago
      You can't make a city transit and walking friendly by grafting rail infrastructure over a car-based design. You need to allow development on narrower streets without minimum parking requirements on every lot and you need more population density. You'd have to actually change the rules and overcome the NIMBYs. Some problems can't be solved with cash.
      - trome 10y ago
        Pretty much this, if its sub-5 story slum (aka most US cities & nearly all suburbs) overlaying rail is a bandaid. The city was built wrong in the first place, and needs to gain density, rail can keep a dense city economically viable by providing reliable, rapid transit. There is no good transit solution for suburban sprawl.
- davidf18 10y ago
  I'm one of those people that go NYC to Boston and NYC to DC. I work in the dining car with laptop and WiFi. Only take planes when taking early AM flights to get to Boston or DC early in the morning.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    And if you're coming from outside Boston to Manhattan Westwood station can be a lot easier than Logan airport. I avoid flying like the plague but I'll do it if morning meeting and can't go down night before.
- nhf 10y ago
  I live about 30 minutes from BOS by bus/rail. Let's say everything is timed perfectly: I get TSA Precheck, 10 minute curb-to-gate, 5 minute wait, boarding commences at T-20, first in line for takeoff. That means I leave for the airport 75 minutes before my flight, fly for 1 hour, arrive in JFK/LGA/EWR, and then take about 30-40 minutes of public transit to my destination in Manhattan. And that's the ideal. There's some break-even point for travelers between the more relaxed pace of train travel as opposed to the efficiency of air travel, but BOS - NYC is still within the realm of the train, even at Amtrak speeds.
- milesrout 10y ago
  Plus with a train you don't have all the stupid security that you do on a plane.
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.

by magila 10y ago

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...
  - WildUtah 10y ago
    You can't make a city transit and walking friendly by grafting rail infrastructure over a car-based design. You need to allow development on narrower streets without minimum parking requirements on every lot and you need more population density. You'd have to actually change the rules and overcome the NIMBYs. Some problems can't be solved with cash.
    - trome 10y ago
      Pretty much this, if its sub-5 story slum (aka most US cities & nearly all suburbs) overlaying rail is a bandaid. The city was built wrong in the first place, and needs to gain density, rail can keep a dense city economically viable by providing reliable, rapid transit. There is no good transit solution for suburban sprawl.
davidf18 10y ago
I'm one of those people that go NYC to Boston and NYC to DC. I work in the dining car with laptop and WiFi. Only take planes when taking early AM flights to get to Boston or DC early in the morning.
- ghaff 10y ago
  And if you're coming from outside Boston to Manhattan Westwood station can be a lot easier than Logan airport. I avoid flying like the plague but I'll do it if morning meeting and can't go down night before.
nhf 10y ago
I live about 30 minutes from BOS by bus/rail. Let's say everything is timed perfectly: I get TSA Precheck, 10 minute curb-to-gate, 5 minute wait, boarding commences at T-20, first in line for takeoff. That means I leave for the airport 75 minutes before my flight, fly for 1 hour, arrive in JFK/LGA/EWR, and then take about 30-40 minutes of public transit to my destination in Manhattan. And that's the ideal. There's some break-even point for travelers between the more relaxed pace of train travel as opposed to the efficiency of air travel, but BOS - NYC is still within the realm of the train, even at Amtrak speeds.
milesrout 10y ago
Plus with a train you don't have all the stupid security that you do on a plane.

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.