8 ms·
While this article finds an issue with the way the Tejon Pass route was eliminated in favor of the Tehachapi Pass route, Tejon Pass route would skip a station i
by niftich 8y ago
While this article finds an issue with the way the Tejon Pass route was eliminated in favor of the Tehachapi Pass route, Tejon Pass route would skip a station in Lancaster/Palmdale, which would be a mistake. As the article acknowledges, these are rapidly growing exurbs that are refuge from the exorbitant land prices in the LA Basin. There is existing commuter rail service between there and Downtown LA, but a HSR is a significant level-of-service upgrade, and offers connections to Bakersfield and beyond. The fact that a rail line offers connections between many points with the same service, while air service must fly at least as many services as there are destinations, is lost on these commentators.
That being said, there are many facepalm-worthy decisions made by CAHSR or by others early on in the process, like an extremely sweeping curve on a long, expensive viaduct just outside of Fresno station [1], or the barely-realistic journey times written into legislation that drive up cost. Another is the choice of the torturous Pacheco Pass over the easier Altamont, or even going around the mountains following the Strait the old rail does. Besides, there's no point to pining after LA-SF rail traffic when airports are perfectly fine between those two. But what about LA-Bakersfield? Modesto-Sacramento? SF-Fresno? That's where a train helps. And to do that, all you need is a train that does comfy, European speeds like 100 mph, instead of a painstakingly-built one that does twice as fast.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16172313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16172313
- cco 8y agoWhat the heck is the train line doing near Fresno? Why is it not following I-5 and making zero stops in between the South Bay and LA?
- Aloha 8y agoIt's supposed to link the whole state, not just LA to the Bay
- tropo 8y agoWe can do both. Put all the stations on sidings so that stopped trains do not block the main track. Trains operate point-to-point just like aircraft, with everybody getting on and off at the same time. This means that there is little downside to adding more stops. The trip time for other stops is unaffected. There is no energy or time wasted on intermediate stops.
- Retric 8y agoOnly if the route is unchanged. Looking at a map it’s not going to be a straight line which increases travel time for every detour. http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Newsroom/Multimedia/maps.html http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Newsroom/Multimedia/maps.html
- yellowapple 8y agoYeah, but we're talking about a train that gets people from SF to LA in a couple hours or so. That's already pretty awesomely fast.
- masonic 8y agogets people from SF to LA in a couple hours or so Only if it had zero stops, which would defeat the purpose in the first place. Every stop means deceleration, stop to offload people and freight, then onload people and freight, then reacceleration to speed.
- yellowapple 8y agoWith zero stops, it'd be about 2 hours or so in the 200-220 MPH target speed the HSR Authority's mandating. I can't find any published numbers for a proposed timetable/schedule for the SF/LA line, but I'd be really surprised if the stops added much more than another hour.
- tropo 8y agoI'm saying there should be zero stops. Privately-run transportation is smarter about stops. The airlines don't make all those stops when going from SF to LA. They do a non-stop flight. There is no reason a train has to stop, and non-stop trains are still capable of serving all those cities. You buy a ticket, board the train, and it goes non-stop to the destination city. All this requires is that a stopped train doesn't block the other trains from passing through. Put the station off to the side, maybe even a couple miles from the main track.
- kaikai 8y ago
- yellowapple 8y agoBecause California is more than just two coastal cities.
- vadym909 8y agoFresno to Silicon Valley is very bad road route (single lanes, towns, redlights) with no major highway and very poor Greyhound/Amtrak connection. It will be great to have an HSR instead of the 3 hr drive.
- tathougies 8y agoFresno is the third largest city in the state and the agricultural capital of the state. Going through Fresno will link the three largest industries: technology, entertainment, and agriculture.
- elgenie 8y agoFresno's merely the seventh largest urban area, and nowhere close to being the third largest city in the state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_urban_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_urban_areas It is the biggest population center between San Jose and Southern California, though.
- yellowapple 8y ago"and the agricultural capital of the state" We Sacramentans would object to that. We wouldn't adopt some silly slogan about being the world's "Farm-to-Fork Capital" otherwise. Granted, Sacramento's already the actual capital, so I'm fine with letting them have this one.
- cco 8y agoI know Fresno is relatively large but the entire purpose of this route was/is/I guess isn't to get people from SF to LA as a rival to air travel.
- dragonwriter 8y agoNo, the purpose cited and the comparison made in cost justifications was to North/South freeway traffic it would displace, not competition with air travel.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Fresno is the third largest city in the state Fifth, behind LA, San Diego, San José, and San Francisco.
- GuardianCaveman 8y agoThere is a sizable population of Silicon Valley workers who live in Fresno and commmute daily. I grew up there and they started moving there in the late 90s. This is just based of my observation, friends parents, newspaper articles in the Fresno bee so I don’t have statistics. Also not sure the actual financial impact of tourism but Fresno is the gateway to the major tourist attraction - Yosemite Valley and Kings canyon. I’m sure a lot of foreigners would ride from LA or the bay to then take the bus tours from Fresno.
- timr 8y agoPolitics. Other responses on this thread are bending over backwards to explain it rationally, but honestly, the route was chosen to help keep state legislators from the rural parts of California from scuttling the deal.
- yellowapple 8y agoIf Fresno, Bakersfield, etc. weren't included as stops, then those rural legislators would be entirely rational in scuttling said deal, given that it'd be a massive expenditure with exactly zero benefit to their constituents.
- timr 8y agoThat's clearly nonsense -- it has some benefit, in the sense that it grows the economy which pays the taxes which funds things like dams and bridges and fire departments -- but let's put a pin in that. Frankly, I wish we'd stop using my tax dollars for road subsidies in Flyover, Oklabraska and military assault vehicles for local police, but we live in a society, and we don't always get what we individually want. I'm not naïve and realize that politics have always been selfish, but the subsidy arrow in America points solidly toward the middle, and has done so for decades. They're already getting more than their fair share in Bakersfield, so maybe they can shut up for a little while and take a hit for the common good.
- yellowapple 8y ago"it has some benefit, in the sense that it grows the economy which pays the taxes which funds things like dams and bridges and fire departments" The inland cities won't get to see that benefit, since the train that's supposed to be providing that economic growth would only be doing so for two coastal areas. Unless you're claiming here that the prosperity of San Francisco and Los Angeles means that Fresno and Bakersfield magically become richer, in which case that'd just be trickle-down economics (but maybe that'd be fitting for the state where Reagan was Governor). "Frankly, I wish we'd stop using my tax dollars for road subsidies in Flyover, Oklabraska" Okay, you're free to vote that way. I don't wish that, and I'll tend to vote accordingly. Or, more precisely: I'll be inclined to vote for politicians who in turn vote/act/etc. accordingly. (I do agree with you about the proliferation of military assault vehicles in civilian police departments, for what it's worth; that's a waste of money that'd be better spent elsewhere, like on transportation infrastructure). In the case of this train, the point of the State of California funding it is for the State of California as a whole to benefit. If San Francisco and Los Angeles want to build a train that only connects those two cities and leave the rest of the state high and dry, then they can spend their own money on it. If you expect us inland Californians to pitch in, then the least y'all can do is give us some stops in the bigger of our cities. "They're already getting more than their fair share in Bakersfield" It's called redistribution of wealth. Just like how some individuals are disadvantaged relative to others, some cities are disadvantaged relative to others. Just like how we help subsidize the welfare of less-fortunate Americans by asking for a greater contribution from more-fortunate Americans, we help subsidize the welfare of less-fortunate cities by asking for a greater contribution from more-fortunate cities. The subsidy arrow in America points solidly toward the middle because that's where it's needed most right now. Trying to move the arrow back toward the coasts will only amplify that need.
- dekhn 8y agoFresno is a very important area in Central California. It was politically necessary to include them.
- dragonwriter 8y agoAlso, economically. You can't really displace a bunch of Valley freeway construction if your train bypasses all the populated parts of the Valley that generate the traffic driving freeway demand.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> What the heck is the train line doing near Fresno? A major purpose of the train is to reduce future expected freeway traffic that is largely driven by demand between the San Joaquin Valley and the two (well, four in the longest view) termini. Avoiding the populated parts of the San Joaquin Valley would have missed much of the point of the project.
- Aloha 8y agoI'd love to know the rationale in choosing Pacheco over Altamont.
- gumby 8y agoPacheco is southern enough that the line can continue up through San Jose and up through Silicon Valley to SF. Altamont is far enough north that it would bypass SJ/SV, plus would require a bridge. Also the land further south is a lot cheaper.
- mateo411 8y agoIt would be a circuitous route to take the Altamont pass, then go south to San Jose, and up the Peninsula to SF. The plan is to use the Caltrain tracks to travel between San Jose and SF.
- missingcolours 8y agoEndeavoring to solve all of our transportation problems in a single rail line seems like the underlying issue. If HSR had been built successfully and fairly directly, on or under budget, it would have been much easier to muster political support for future expansions.
- scythe 8y ago> these are rapidly growing exurbs that are refuge from the exorbitant land prices in the LA Basin. What kind of country are we building where we send people to live in exurbs in a literal barren desert -- I'm not exaggerating, I was in Palmdale a few weeks ago, and it could have inspired Solzhenitsyn -- with a fast train into the city, lest the petit bourgeois of L.A. be forced to live in -ugh- townhomes? There are great reasons for infill stations, but "encouraging the growth of exurbs" are not among them. Especially not when the exurbs are to function as the servants' quarters so that we can facilitate the continued excesses of Angelenos. If you want to help the people of California, build the train line to Ventura and then north to Bakersfield. Those places are habitable. And I believe the commoners deserve to go to the beach once in a while.
- yellowapple 8y agoThe CHSR indeed does have a Phase 1 stop in Bakersfield (among other inland cities).
- fspeech 8y agoHe wants to go to Ventura. Bakersfield has or had oil, but no beach!
- yellowapple 8y agoMight be cheaper to melt the ice caps and give Bakersfield a beach.
- tathougies 8y agoPeople like living in Palmdale. Believe it or not, many people find deserts beautiful. Having grown up in So Cal, I certainly do.'
- njarboe 8y agoMost of the LA basin was open desert, not that much different than the land around Palmdale, until developed, water piped in, and new vegetation grown.
- porpoisely 8y agoSaw "There Will Be Blood" the other day. Thought I recognized Tehachapi and looked it up. Turns out that movie was based in California and not in Texas as I assumed. Excellent movie btw.
- dmode 8y agoYou nailed it. If the HSR was viewed as a SF and LA to Central Valley connection, it would have been much easier to implement. Also, they could have taken a typical MVP style product launch and only completed a small section such as between Gilroy and SF to have a proof of concept. There is a good product lession here of taking on too much scope and then dealing with inevitable scope creep