6 ms·
What 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?
by cco 8y ago
What 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 agoHow were you imagining that many trains running on the tracks simultaneously? Stopping on a siding and waiting for a train to pass going the other direction takes time, never mind if there were trains running in both directions for every possible combination of stops.
- burfog 8y agoYou seem to be assuming there would only be one main line, and that this is a proposed reduction. I don't see it that way at all. Assume the line is two tracks. Add two more at each station, for a total of four, but just at the stations. It's like with cars: we pull over to the side instead of just turning off the engine in the middle of the road. At a station that uses island platforms, from west to east you have: southbound through traffic, southbound stopping trains, the platform, northbound stopping trains, northbound through trains. At a station that uses separate platforms, from west to east you have: southbound platform, southbound stopping trains, southbound through trains, northbound through trains, northbound stopping trains, northbound platform. Of course, in reality the line may have sections with different numbers of tracks. It could be 1, 2, 3, or 4. There could even be gauntlet tracks.
- steve_gh 8y agoIn the UK, many of our main passenger rail lines run 4-track in commuter areas - you can run a slow local stopping service and high speed intercity services simultaneously without problems.
- XenophileJKO 8y agoIn Japan on the shinkansen lines, the local bullet train is passed by the express while they are boarding at the local stops and those are the only areas where they expand to 4 sets of rail. At least in most of the routes I've travelled, there are 2 lines.
- 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.