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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
by 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 agoYou 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 agoYou 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 agoPretty 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.
- hansef 10y agoI live in LA and travel to the Bay for work frequently. I can walk to a Metro station from my house in Highland Park in 10 minutes and be at Union Station in 13 minutes. If I could spend 3 hours on the train to SF from Union instead of driving to Burbank, arriving an hour before my flight, and then spending an hour on a plane, I would do it every time.
- twblalock 10y ago> 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. Just put some car rental places near the station in LA, just like is done for airports.
- ghaff 10y agoI think the point is that one of the things making train travel to, say, Manhattan attractive vs. air is that I can just walk, subway, or take a shortish cab trip to my destination from Penn Station. That's a big advantage over getting into Manhattan from any of the NYC airports. If the answer to arriving in LA is "you need to rent a car in any case" (which it often will be), then you lose one area of train potential advantage.