6 ms·

I love fast trains but we need them much more inside our metro areas than between distant parts of the state. Commutes within the major metro areas in Californ

I love fast trains but we need them much more inside our metro areas than between distant parts of the state. Commutes within the major metro areas in California (SF bay area, Los Angeles, Sacramento) are horrendous and just imagine how much good $77bn could do for those. A well designed and fast transportation network within metro areas would do much more to improve the lives of Californians and the environment, as well as make our cities much more livable.

YeahSureWhyNot 8y ago
you would be surprised how easy it is for a major city government to spend 77B and not achieve anything substantial
- dcosson 8y ago
  The SF Central subway project cost about $920M per mile, at those rates this $77B could be used for 84 miles of underground subway lines in the densest parts of SF and LA. That could be very substantial. (And not saying that's even the best way to improve transit, but it is probably the most expensive way and even still the money would go pretty far).
  - YeahSureWhyNot 8y ago
    A relatively small construction/infrastructure project (920M) will not maintain the same cost efficiency when the project is 80 times larger.
    - dkislyuk 8y ago
      SF Central subway cuts through one of the densest parts of SF (including crossing a BART line and an existing MUNI line), which substantially increases costs. Further away from the downtown core, costs per mile should be lower.
    - Ericson2314 8y ago
      If anything it would be more efficient.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      Right. It will be cheaper per mile with a larger project.
  - jonathankoren 8y ago
    Meanwhile, in Europe a subway will cost you somewhere between 200 and 500 million dollars per mile. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex...
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      It seems that construction companies have learned from the medical industry how to be f...ing expensive.
      - jonathankoren 8y ago
        And the defense industry. The defense industry has the advantage of not only maximizing cost, but also maximizing states. For instance, I believe Alaska is the only state without an economic impact from the F-35, the most expensive fighter jet ever made. https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map
    - thorwasdfasdf 8y ago
      The US has 2 big problems: 1. “as a result of existing union agreements covering the eastern seaboard area of the United States, underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe.” Holy crap, that means 75% of the personell are just sitting around not doing anything. Must be a very powerful union. 2. Regulation: But the problems are not just to do with labor. Working alongside active commuter or intercity rail lines brings a slew of new requirements and regulations.
- buxtehude 8y ago
  this is unfortunately true - however in this case it might be a municipal metro area body that comprises of one or more counties and multiple cities the process of awarding projects to developers by government entities is very flawed and seems to guarantee substandard results and cost overruns. edit: still having said this - it shouldn't be a reason to not try - we desperately need (and imo deserve) these improvements to our cities (as well as better municipal spending oversight as well as better planning)
nostrademons 8y ago
The challenge with fast trains in cities is the acceleration. If you ride BART, for example, you are basically spending all your time either speeding up or slowing down, and yet BART stations are still spread about as far apart as they can be and realistically cover the city. Actually, they don't even do a very good job at that - much of the city is not within easy walking distance to a BART station. We need the equivalent of offramps for trains. Some mechanism that would transport you for the last mile at 10-15 mph (scooters? pods?) while allowing trains to never come to a complete stop and wait for people to board.
- buxtehude 8y ago
  In many countries around the world they build more than two parallel tracks - at least 3 or 4 - so you can have fast lanes as well as slower local lanes. The problem with BART is that it's all a local train - stopping at every station on your way. If you are going from SF to Oakland - probably not a big deal - but if you live on the ends of the lines, quite annoying and very time consuming. These systems really need to change their mindset to compete with cars. It should be fast and efficient - preferably much faster than cars - so there is a strong incentive for the public to use them.
  - mjevans 8y ago
    Not just faster than cars; faster than cars under ideal circumstances for cars.
    - briandear 8y ago
      Is waiting 30 minutes for a train faster than just driving directly? Generally not. So trains aren’t necessarily faster.
      - LowLevelHacker 8y ago
        I don't think we include average wait times here, we assume the traveler can arrive at the station at about the right time before departure.
slg 8y ago
I would even argue that transit systems within a city are somewhat of a prerequisite to high speed rail adoption. It is the last mile problem. If you are planning a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, one of the major reasons to drive is so you have a car in LA. If you could reasonably get around LA without a car, taking a train from SF to LA becomes much more appealing. That is one of the big advantages for high speed rail in Japan. The high speed rail service is closely integrated with the local rail network of the cities it stops in. You get off the high speed rail, walk two minutes, and you are on a subway to your final destination.
- iaabtpbtpnn 8y ago
  It surprises many people to learn this, but LA actually has metro rail, which you can catch from Union Station. It services almost double the number of stations that BART does. My experience with the express buses on the west side is also far superior to MUNI.
  - TheHwangover 8y ago
    Honestly, one of the most underrated parts of LA. Granted, it's not well connected yet but if I could I would use the metro everyday.
  - simonbyrne 8y ago
    It's also a matter of integration (common ticketing, timetabling of connections, sharing stations): the Bay Area is atrocious for this. LA is slightly better, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
    - inferiorhuman 8y ago
      LA is a LOT better with this, and that's why they're actually building rail out. They've consolidated administration whereas the Bay Area is a fragmented rat's nest with BART being the best example of how toxic and provincial transit politics can be.
- hunter23 8y ago
nihonde 8y ago
Currently, a person living in Nagoya, Japan would have a one-way commute to central Tokyo of about 100 minutes. That’s almost too long to live in one city and work in the other. But after the Linear is completed, that commute time drops to 40 minutes each way—much more reasonable. Tokyo-Osaka drops to 67 minutes. Daily commuting may still be cost-prohibitive, but the distance between business people who want to hold a meeting is basically negligible at that point. Linking three major cities that are 250 miles apart as the crow flies, with about one hour of commute, and on time. If they can do it in Japan, why can’t we?
- mars4rp 8y ago
  I really don't know anything about Japan, but the way government contractors work in this country is they are milking the cow to the max that they can. I know of a 150 page front end app that was charged at least $40M. accomplishing anything serious with this attitude is not possible.
  - winrid 8y ago
    Well, that could be a very complex application... Maybe number of pages isn't the best metric.
    - mars4rp 8y ago
      You might think, but it is not that complex. I could have wrote that app in less than a year. The contractors just made it complex to justify the tag price. A simple change of address logic was 5000 line of java code !!
- jonathankoren 8y ago
  Because the US has a uniquely mismanaged procurement process, construction unions that insist on 4x the number of workers, and myopic regulations. The whole system has become warped to slow down and prevent construction, while at the same time maximize costs. It’s absurd. Let’s take California HSR for example. Multiple environmental impact studies and appeals, and even afterwards, every city on the peninsula demanded a different system to install the tracks. One wants elevated tracks, another wants a trench, another insists the train be at grade, yet another wants it moved miles away, finally someone wants a commuter rail stop. We can’t build anything in this country. It’s disgusting. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex... https://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridge-america https://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-brid...
yellowapple 8y ago
I rather strongly disagree. Connecting the smaller metro areas to the bigger metro areas opens up a lot of opportunities for both ends. The smaller metro areas become more accessible and thus amenable to growth. The larger metro areas get to relieve the pressure on housing costs as people can move to more affordable areas (thus paving the way for them to in turn grow even further). A statewide high-speed rail system is ultimately going to be a hard dependency on California continuing to grow and prosper for another century in the same way it has for the previous century. The approach to doing that needs a major rework, of course, but such a rail system is in the best interests of the state as a whole.
- phil21 8y ago
  Interconnecting the smaller cities in the region is entirely pointless until you achieve usable mass transit within the major city cores themselves. Otherwise great - you can take HSR from your sleepy small town exurb, but have no usable way to get to your final destination on either end so it ends up mostly being a novelty and serving a tiny handful of commuters. This pattern is observed in almost the entire US except a tiny handful of east coast cities and perhaps Chicago. Once you have a workable transit network on at least one side of the connection, branching out high speed rail to smaller "feeder" cities can induce demand and start creating denser development in those feeder cities to make the transit even more useful. The Netherlands is a great example here in my opinion. Lots of smaller suburbs/towns within 40 minutes on the high speed trains, typically with a walkable community on the "feeder" city side and either a walkable destination or a tram ride on the Amsterdam Centraal side. I cannot see a point to point HSR line being very useful if all it connects are essentially two train stations to nowhere. Basically I don't see a point in building HSR or commuter rail if the citizens of the major city it's built into require car ownership to realistically get around. This means there isn't a network robust enough to support bringing feeder traffic into. Or put another way - it'd be pretty silly for an airline to create a route between two cities, but have no connecting flights on either end. Sure, it's useful for a very few - but not really economically viable at scale.
  - yellowapple 8y ago
ummonk 8y ago
Yes, we could build a proper subway / el in SF for 30 billion.
- remarkEon 8y ago
  The only thing that could get a proper subway/el built in SF is $30B and a brutal, authoritarian government to do so. With today’s governance it would be 2049 before it’s complete and I’d be skeptical that all the lawsuits allowing construction would be settled before 2030. The lesson for everyone to learn here is this: direct democracy and grand vision public transit do not mix.

YeahSureWhyNot 8y ago

you would be surprised how easy it is for a major city government to spend 77B and not achieve anything substantial

dcosson 8y ago
The SF Central subway project cost about $920M per mile, at those rates this $77B could be used for 84 miles of underground subway lines in the densest parts of SF and LA. That could be very substantial. (And not saying that's even the best way to improve transit, but it is probably the most expensive way and even still the money would go pretty far).
- YeahSureWhyNot 8y ago
  A relatively small construction/infrastructure project (920M) will not maintain the same cost efficiency when the project is 80 times larger.
  - dkislyuk 8y ago
    SF Central subway cuts through one of the densest parts of SF (including crossing a BART line and an existing MUNI line), which substantially increases costs. Further away from the downtown core, costs per mile should be lower.
  - Ericson2314 8y ago
    If anything it would be more efficient.
  - ummonk 8y ago
    Right. It will be cheaper per mile with a larger project.
- jonathankoren 8y ago
  Meanwhile, in Europe a subway will cost you somewhere between 200 and 500 million dollars per mile. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex...
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    It seems that construction companies have learned from the medical industry how to be f...ing expensive.
    - jonathankoren 8y ago
      And the defense industry. The defense industry has the advantage of not only maximizing cost, but also maximizing states. For instance, I believe Alaska is the only state without an economic impact from the F-35, the most expensive fighter jet ever made. https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact-map
  - thorwasdfasdf 8y ago
    The US has 2 big problems: 1. “as a result of existing union agreements covering the eastern seaboard area of the United States, underground construction employs approximately four times the number of personnel as in similar jobs in Asia, Australia, or Europe.” Holy crap, that means 75% of the personell are just sitting around not doing anything. Must be a very powerful union. 2. Regulation: But the problems are not just to do with labor. Working alongside active commuter or intercity rail lines brings a slew of new requirements and regulations.
buxtehude 8y ago
this is unfortunately true - however in this case it might be a municipal metro area body that comprises of one or more counties and multiple cities the process of awarding projects to developers by government entities is very flawed and seems to guarantee substandard results and cost overruns. edit: still having said this - it shouldn't be a reason to not try - we desperately need (and imo deserve) these improvements to our cities (as well as better municipal spending oversight as well as better planning)

nostrademons 8y ago

The challenge with fast trains in cities is the acceleration. If you ride BART, for example, you are basically spending all your time either speeding up or slowing down, and yet BART stations are still spread about as far apart as they can be and realistically cover the city. Actually, they don't even do a very good job at that - much of the city is not within easy walking distance to a BART station. We need the equivalent of offramps for trains. Some mechanism that would transport you for the last mile at 10-15 mph (scooters? pods?) while allowing trains to never come to a complete stop and wait for people to board.

buxtehude 8y ago
In many countries around the world they build more than two parallel tracks - at least 3 or 4 - so you can have fast lanes as well as slower local lanes. The problem with BART is that it's all a local train - stopping at every station on your way. If you are going from SF to Oakland - probably not a big deal - but if you live on the ends of the lines, quite annoying and very time consuming. These systems really need to change their mindset to compete with cars. It should be fast and efficient - preferably much faster than cars - so there is a strong incentive for the public to use them.
- mjevans 8y ago
  Not just faster than cars; faster than cars under ideal circumstances for cars.
  - briandear 8y ago
    Is waiting 30 minutes for a train faster than just driving directly? Generally not. So trains aren’t necessarily faster.
    - LowLevelHacker 8y ago
      I don't think we include average wait times here, we assume the traveler can arrive at the station at about the right time before departure.

slg 8y ago

I would even argue that transit systems within a city are somewhat of a prerequisite to high speed rail adoption. It is the last mile problem. If you are planning a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, one of the major reasons to drive is so you have a car in LA. If you could reasonably get around LA without a car, taking a train from SF to LA becomes much more appealing. That is one of the big advantages for high speed rail in Japan. The high speed rail service is closely integrated with the local rail network of the cities it stops in. You get off the high speed rail, walk two minutes, and you are on a subway to your final destination.

iaabtpbtpnn 8y ago
It surprises many people to learn this, but LA actually has metro rail, which you can catch from Union Station. It services almost double the number of stations that BART does. My experience with the express buses on the west side is also far superior to MUNI.
- TheHwangover 8y ago
  Honestly, one of the most underrated parts of LA. Granted, it's not well connected yet but if I could I would use the metro everyday.
- simonbyrne 8y ago
  It's also a matter of integration (common ticketing, timetabling of connections, sharing stations): the Bay Area is atrocious for this. LA is slightly better, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
  - inferiorhuman 8y ago
    LA is a LOT better with this, and that's why they're actually building rail out. They've consolidated administration whereas the Bay Area is a fragmented rat's nest with BART being the best example of how toxic and provincial transit politics can be.
hunter23 8y ago

nihonde 8y ago

Currently, a person living in Nagoya, Japan would have a one-way commute to central Tokyo of about 100 minutes. That’s almost too long to live in one city and work in the other. But after the Linear is completed, that commute time drops to 40 minutes each way—much more reasonable. Tokyo-Osaka drops to 67 minutes. Daily commuting may still be cost-prohibitive, but the distance between business people who want to hold a meeting is basically negligible at that point. Linking three major cities that are 250 miles apart as the crow flies, with about one hour of commute, and on time. If they can do it in Japan, why can’t we?

mars4rp 8y ago
I really don't know anything about Japan, but the way government contractors work in this country is they are milking the cow to the max that they can. I know of a 150 page front end app that was charged at least $40M. accomplishing anything serious with this attitude is not possible.
- winrid 8y ago
  Well, that could be a very complex application... Maybe number of pages isn't the best metric.
  - mars4rp 8y ago
    You might think, but it is not that complex. I could have wrote that app in less than a year. The contractors just made it complex to justify the tag price. A simple change of address logic was 5000 line of java code !!
jonathankoren 8y ago
Because the US has a uniquely mismanaged procurement process, construction unions that insist on 4x the number of workers, and myopic regulations. The whole system has become warped to slow down and prevent construction, while at the same time maximize costs. It’s absurd. Let’s take California HSR for example. Multiple environmental impact studies and appeals, and even afterwards, every city on the peninsula demanded a different system to install the tracks. One wants elevated tracks, another wants a trench, another insists the train be at grade, yet another wants it moved miles away, finally someone wants a commuter rail stop. We can’t build anything in this country. It’s disgusting. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex... https://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-bridge-america https://theweek.com/articles/449646/why-expensive-build-brid...

yellowapple 8y ago

I rather strongly disagree. Connecting the smaller metro areas to the bigger metro areas opens up a lot of opportunities for both ends. The smaller metro areas become more accessible and thus amenable to growth. The larger metro areas get to relieve the pressure on housing costs as people can move to more affordable areas (thus paving the way for them to in turn grow even further). A statewide high-speed rail system is ultimately going to be a hard dependency on California continuing to grow and prosper for another century in the same way it has for the previous century. The approach to doing that needs a major rework, of course, but such a rail system is in the best interests of the state as a whole.

phil21 8y ago
Interconnecting the smaller cities in the region is entirely pointless until you achieve usable mass transit within the major city cores themselves. Otherwise great - you can take HSR from your sleepy small town exurb, but have no usable way to get to your final destination on either end so it ends up mostly being a novelty and serving a tiny handful of commuters. This pattern is observed in almost the entire US except a tiny handful of east coast cities and perhaps Chicago. Once you have a workable transit network on at least one side of the connection, branching out high speed rail to smaller "feeder" cities can induce demand and start creating denser development in those feeder cities to make the transit even more useful. The Netherlands is a great example here in my opinion. Lots of smaller suburbs/towns within 40 minutes on the high speed trains, typically with a walkable community on the "feeder" city side and either a walkable destination or a tram ride on the Amsterdam Centraal side. I cannot see a point to point HSR line being very useful if all it connects are essentially two train stations to nowhere. Basically I don't see a point in building HSR or commuter rail if the citizens of the major city it's built into require car ownership to realistically get around. This means there isn't a network robust enough to support bringing feeder traffic into. Or put another way - it'd be pretty silly for an airline to create a route between two cities, but have no connecting flights on either end. Sure, it's useful for a very few - but not really economically viable at scale.
- yellowapple 8y ago

ummonk 8y ago

Yes, we could build a proper subway / el in SF for 30 billion.

remarkEon 8y ago
The only thing that could get a proper subway/el built in SF is $30B and a brutal, authoritarian government to do so. With today’s governance it would be 2049 before it’s complete and I’d be skeptical that all the lawsuits allowing construction would be settled before 2030. The lesson for everyone to learn here is this: direct democracy and grand vision public transit do not mix.