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Depressing?!? It’s incredibly exciting! The United States wasn’t going to build these. Americans have been making excuses since the 1970s. Jerry Brown tried
by melling 7y ago
Depressing?!? It’s incredibly exciting!
The United States wasn’t going to build these. Americans have been making excuses since the 1970s.
Jerry Brown tried to build the CA bullet train 4 decades ago.
Electric cars, electric buses, bullet trains, low-speed maglevs, high speed maglevs... China is making it happen!
In America, all we want is “drill, baby, drill”
- Gibbon1 7y ago> Jerry Brown tried to build the CA bullet train 4 decades ago. Amusing to me he did the Rip Van Winkle and popped up as Governor again after 30 years. In office he pushed hard to get CHSR built. Every time California's high speed rails come up on HN it's obvious that everyone here hates the idea. So the US is getting what it's collectively asking for and deserves here.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Every time California's high speed rails come up on HN it's obvious that everyone here hates the idea California's major cities are almost in a line along the coast. That's the route that makes sense. California's HSR instead took a tour through the Central Valley's farming communities, taking a slam dunk pitch for linking San Francisco and San Diego via L.A. and turning it into a carcass.
- MrFlynn 7y agoUnless you wanted to build an HSR line through a long coastal mountain range most of way from SF to LA further driving up the cost, having it go the majority of the distance through a relatively flat valley definitely has its benefits. I do think that the line should have paralleled i-5 instead of going through Bakersfield and Fresno, but that's not the choice that was made.
- beamatronic 7y agoNot only that but you could put housing there
- jbay808 7y agoMountain ranges didn't seem to be a problem for Japan's high speed rail network.
- lmm 7y agoHuh? They absolutely were. Cities that look close on a map can easily take 3x long as you would think to get to by train because the high speed line goes a long way around (or, in the case of e.g. Nagasaki, because there's no high speed line there at all).
- MrFlynn 7y agoThat's because they mostly avoided mountains on their high speed routes. The Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen mostly follow the coastline and the Tohoku Shinkansen mostly goes through a valley. There are lines that do bore through mountain ranges, but nothing to the extent of several hundred miles as would be required for a line through the California coastal range.
- jbay808 7y agoExcept the one they're building now... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen "About 90% of the 286-kilometre (178 mi) line to Nagoya will be built underground or through tunnels"
- Gibbon1 7y agoI feel like this sort of thing just proves that the problem with building high speed rail in the US is cultural[1] and political[2] not technical or economic. [1] Americans have been carefully propagandized to believe that governments can't do anything right. And cars represent manhood and freedom. [2] For instance Ubber and Lift are funding the same anti public transportation organizations the Koch brother(s) were.
- WillPostForFood 7y agoAmericans have been carefully propagandized to believe that governments can't do anything right Then the people decide to give the government a chance, pass a proposition asking for rail, and then the government completely screws it up. Terrible route, corrupt, massively over budget, graft, and effectively cancelled after a decade of waste and work. So now even progressive people in progressive California are thinking the government can't so anything right, not because of propaganda, but because they see the failure.
- Gibbon1 7y agoBakersfield and Fresno metro's are about half a million people each. And also the current planned route is close to Santa Cruz and Monterrey Counties which adds another 3/4 of a million people. No matter how you slice it the original route is going to leave some people out.
- MrFlynn 7y agoIf you count Gilroy as close to Santa Cruz and Monterrey, then sure. But the planned line does take a hard east turn through the Pacheco pass into the central valley south of Gilroy.
- souprock 7y agoBeing along the coast also makes offshore supersonic flight possible. With a good aircraft, San Diego to Seattle should be about an hour.
- Gibbon1 7y agoSix and a half million people live in the Central Valley. So it's about 15% of the state population. And running high speed rail through the central valley is fairly cheep. The planned high speed rail line tends to follow the existing freight rail lines. Always possible to build the high speed rail and then run another connector down the Salinas Valley between Monterrey and Santa Barbara on to Thousand Oaks. (Following HWY 101 basically) Political opposition that is probably bigger than the geography though.
- outside1234 7y agoWe hate the idea of a "high speed" rail that connects 15 central valley "cities", but I'm all for San Francisco to San Jose to LA without other stops.
- Gibbon1 7y ago> "cities" Take a drive down HWY99 instead of I5 sometime.
- Japhy_Ryder 7y ago> Electric cars, electric buses, bullet trains, low-speed maglevs, high speed maglevs... China is making it happen! No rule of law, organ harvesting, labor camps.... China is making it happen!
- JaRail 7y ago> In America, all we want is “drill, baby, drill” Actually, it is much easier to build a pipeline, now that I think about it..