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Honestly this is the weirdest infrastructure project in the world. Reminder that the initial plan was 130 miles of track laid by 2018. They are at 0.0 miles. T

Honestly this is the weirdest infrastructure project in the world. Reminder that the initial plan was 130 miles of track laid by 2018. They are at 0.0 miles. The initial intended section they planned to finish wasn't even touching SF or LA, its in between with two fairly small cities (Merced to Bakersfield, populations 84K and 380K). Is it even needed, for all this money? High speed rail between SF and LA would be neat for a bunch of upper-middle class people, but I would think > 90% of inhabitants would be better served simply by having better intra-metro-area rail. In other words it seems like LA would be better served by spending the billions on strong hub and spoke public transport in the ~20-40 mile area around LA far more than it needs a faster way to get to San Francisco. But I'm far away on the outside looking in, maybe there's something crushlingly obvious to locals that I'm not seeing for why this is actually a great idea.

ggm 4y ago
I believe almost all long distance high speed train proposals are based on land banking for future value increase, and nonsense like that. The actual social benefit agenda is secondary to an investment model which sees speculative rise in land and property value along the route at strategic locations with a very long tail, and the local and state tax outcomes which follow motivate agreements by authorities. Instance in point: Brisbane Cross River rail. The economic impact statement is spectacular for land, rent, rate and building income. Same for intercity rail Sydney Brisbane Melbourne. For Brisbane, a state minister lost her job over a house purchase near a significant rail development (rightly or wrongly) but it's even explicit in economic modelling: they bank the future economic impact.
lightedman 4y ago
If you've ever driven the I-5 Corridor, it isn't exactly always an easy thing. To be able to do LA-SF without the possibility of a road accident causing you a multiple-hour delay is a huge benefit. Intra-state would be even better. Link the entire West coast with high-speed passenger rail.
- barbacoa 4y ago
  West coast is no where near dense enough to support mass transit rail system. You would have to get in your car, drive to a central rail station, park in a massive parking garage, ride the train to your destination, then rent a car when you get there. At that point you basically have slower and far more expensive version of an airport. Many east coast cities have the advantage of being planned out before cars so they are structured for high urban density. It is different in cities like LA or SF where it's all about urban sprawl.
  - ffggvv 4y ago
    yeah i did that flight dozens of times and super simply easy and cheap. dont see the benefit of making it a train
    - mulmen 4y ago
      Scale. Cost. The continued existence of humanity.
      - ffggvv 4y ago
        scale and cost are already coveted by the plane. the last seems dramatic
        mulmen 4y ago
        You can’t scale air travel to serve as many people as HSR. There’s not room and we don’t have enough pilots. Airlines are already barely keeping up. Rail is much less expensive than flying because trains don’t have to overcome gravity. It’s simple physics. The science is settled, we can’t all drive cars, let alone all fly. We have to stop burning gas to get around. HSR enables that and enables more sustainable urban development. There’s nothing dramatic about this. These are plain facts. If we don’t act now future generations will suffer. HSR will make California a more hospitable and sustainable place to live.
  - 4y ago
erbdex 4y ago
"The Concord" models often get speculated as the future, but as often the energy economics does not sustain. There is perhaps a very probable risk of rising energy costs this decade, which might make such models unfeasible. In that light, your comment makes a lot of sense to me.
btreesOfSpring 4y ago
CityNerd does an informative video on SF-LA highspeed rail vs aircraft[0]. Your variables may vary. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cvt8QA4SvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cvt8QA4SvY
lern_too_spel 4y ago
Any infrastructure project that touches land is going to be bogged down in a NIMBY quagmire in California. That includes your LA metro rail proposal. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-20/the-landmark-environmental-law-inside-a-nimby-firestorm https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-20/the-landm... The stupidest part is that now we have politicians campaigning on not doing big infrastructure projects instead of fixing the things that make them fail.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
shaburn 4y ago
Not weird when you understand its intended purpo$e.
nalrey 4y ago
Judging the road by its endpoints is not a fair assessment. Merced to Bakersfield will connect a large portion of the Central Valley, which is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world with 7.2M people living in it. While indeed Merced and Bakersfield have 84K and 380K populations in the cities, the population of these and covered areas are much larger; (250K in Merced, 930K in Fresno area, 850K in Bakersfield, etc.) edit: grammar
- soheil 4y ago
  > is not a fair assessment > one of the most productive agricultural regions And since when farmers relied so heavily on trains for their commute?
  - culi 4y ago
    Since trains were invented and the seasons kept cycling? The largest migrations of people are seasonal agricultural workers around the world. Until gen z gets their polyculture garden cities with a large variety of crops for each season, I don't see that changing
  - sfvegandude 4y ago
    Well, nobody relies heavily on trains for their commute in this region because the train hasn’t been built yet. Also, a vast majority of the people who work in agriculture aren’t “farmers” who walk out of their house and till their own land. They are laborers, who often live far away from their work sites, which shift with the seasons.
    - WillPostForFood 4y ago
      Grape pickers using HSR to commute from their condo I. Palo Alto to the fields in Merced. Yep.
      - nalrey 4y ago
        Well, how about living in Merced and working in SF area? If a trip from Merced to SF would be less than 70mins, this would beat all rush-hour traffic along 101, and become viable living option.
laurencerowe 4y ago
To be fair some of the HSR money did end up being spent on electrifying CalTrain, the Bay Area commuter railway on which HSR will run unto SF. The upgrade to 1970s tech should improve service substantially since electric trains accelerate much faster.
- mulmen 4y ago
  25kV was developed in the 1960s but is a world standard now. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
gumby 4y ago
When first it was approved, the Bakersfield routing appeared to be a boondoggle to get a specific vote. But the more I think about it the more important I think it is to tie the Central Valley into SV, SF, and the LA basin. It will reduce housing pressure, move some industry into the Central Valley, and tie a red place together with a blue and a purple area. And it was smart to start in the reddest part of the state and give them any benefit first.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Its so that you don't have to go threw the mountains and that should actually make it cheaper. Most housing needs to be fixed with infill, not continuing sprawl around more cities.
  - frankharv 4y ago
    Not to mention there will no water left after draining the Colorado River and the place will need to be abandoned before any rail can be used. Wrong priorities here. You cannot continue agriculture in a desert. https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/08/colorado-river-water-california/ https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/08/colorado-river-wa...
- antognini 4y ago
  To be honest I think the debates over the route miss the main issue, namely why the project is so expensive. If we could bring costs down to Spanish levels (not a country that is known for its frugality!), we could build both a direct SF-LA route and a route that hits the Central Valley cities, along with spurs to San Diego and Sacramento, and still save more than $40 billion over what the current SF-LA line is expected to cost. Instead the debates get reduced to "we should build this no matter what the cost" and "we should cancel the project entirely." There doesn't seem to be much interest in digging into why the costs of the project are so out of line with other countries. (Which, to be fair, is a hard question to answer).
  - sofixa 4y ago
    Such a project's costs are highly location specific - labour costs, geography, regulatory environment, existing infrastructure to adapt to/connect to/work around, etc. However, it usually gets better over time with experience.
kurupt213 4y ago
This is the most money wasted on something nobody wants in the history of California. It’s just a kickback scheme for political supporters
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  As someone that lives in the Bay Area and doesn't want to fly or drive to LA I want this so bad.
ffggvv 4y ago
people get realt sensitive if you criticize their boondoggle because they worship public transit even if its clearly awfully executed
8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago
I would love a postmortem of the whole thing, understand what on Earth happened there.
- culi 4y ago
  Vox basically did exactly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0dSm_ClcSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0dSm_ClcSw tl;dr: US regulation makes it too easy for individuals to sue and stall megaprojects like this into nonstop litigation
- flomo 4y ago
  They pretty much chose the most expensive route possible, requiring long urban viaducts and numerous tunnels through seismically active areas. It is probably unconstructible, but the engineering consultants made out.
panick21_ 4y ago
The whole point of HSP rail so connect the different rail-system and serve a backbone between the northern and southern rail systems. If you want to be serious about rail, having a such a backbone makes sense. Of course, you need to continue improving regional rail as well. And as far as I know, California has been trying to do that too.
clairity 4y ago
yes, the LA metro area is roughly 18.5M people (nearly half of CA; the bay area is about half of this at ~9.5M) and the 2nd densest metro area in the country (though that density is pretty unevenly distributed). improving the LA metro would have provided better bang for buck, but it doesn't spread the wealth nearly as much, and we're already building metro rail here as part of the run up to the '28 olympics (but not nearly enough, given that the LA region extends roughly 100 miles along the main axes). the main problem with this HSR is that it doesn't beat air for time or price between LA/SF, and that accounts for the majority of the projected trips (and purported benefit) of this rail line. i've done the air trip many times, and door-to-door times are about 4-5 hours, while this train will take that long without the door-to-door part (though city center to city center is nice, if they ever complete that part).
- runarberg 4y ago
  It is mandated to take under 2 hours and 40 minutes between LA and San Francisco, not 4-5 hours.
ac29 4y ago
>Reminder that the initial plan was 130 miles of track laid by 2018. They are at 0.0 miles. This is a bit of a disingenuous take. There is a significant amount of work to be done before tracks get laid. There are dozens of active construction projects right now including building bridges, viaducts, overcrossings and grade separations. Actually laying the high speed track is probably one of the last things they'll do (there's no value in having tracks laid until a substantial section can be laid without gaps). See: https://www.buildhsr.com/ https://www.buildhsr.com/
ipnon 4y ago
Much faster, cheaper, and comfortable to take HSR between major metros a few hundred miles apart than fly. For a trip like Osaka to Tokyo it’s a no brainer, the airport experience fails in every category. The issue with CAHSR is that it’s right at the margin of economic sense. LA and SF are huge metros, but they are far enough apart that airfare will still be competitive for many even if this project succeeds.
- mulmen 4y ago
  What if we stopped subsidizing fuel costs? What if we accounted for environmental externality? California HSR is forward looking. Every state in the nation should be building and expanding public transit infrastructure. It’s an existential necessity.
DrBazza 4y ago
Some perspective from the UK: HS1 completed in 2009 for domestic passengers (also used by the Eurostar to Europe) is our first high speed railway since the 60s. The three "high speed" stations on the route once leaving central London are Stratford (London Olympics 2012 site), Ebbsfleet, and Ashford, have between them probably had close to 200,000 homes built within walking/cycling distance of the station. Further 'slow line' stations that the services serve once they leave the high speed line probably contribute as much new housing again. That's over the 30 years of route planning to opening. Yes, there's a bit of a spurious correlation between the UK house building, and the high speed line, but there is a direct and indirect economic correlation. Regarding 'personal safety' on the service. Trains in the UK are typically pretty safe, but the HS1 route in particular, they're obsessive about catching fare dodgers, so the trains are staffed with 'revenue protection officers', and often British Transport Police (and branch of the police force peculiar to the railway). And then there's Canary Wharf, reachable from... Stratford on the HS1 route. The former London Docklands that since the late 80s/early 90s has gone from being acres of empty docks, to skyscraper offices and skyscraper apartment blocks (pretty uncommon in London). My point being that there's a virtuous circle of 'build it and they will come'. Planning is everything in making it successful. In fact, any large infrastructure project in the UK is government planned (federal - in the US?), and the cost/benefit value is calculated, and explains why the south and south-east of England gets a disproportionate amount of investment, because the economic returns are so high. California high speed rail would have money thrown at it if it were in the UK. I really hope California's high speed rail works. But people need to be patient. It really is going to be 20 or 30 years before the economic and social benefits become obvious to everyone. In the UK if there's a mainline station in a city, we typically build many high rise office buildings in and around that station wherever possible, and then the outer stations often become 'dormitory towns'. I'd envisage something similar in California. The areas around the terminal stations in particular will grow offices, and the other stations, will see more housing and commuters. If, of course, working from home doesn't kill it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Wharf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Wharf
- mulmen 4y ago
  I think there’s a lot to learn from the UK’s rail system so thanks for sharing this. > In fact, any large infrastructure project in the UK is government planned (federal - in the US?) California the state is more comparable to the UK than the UK is to the US. California is about 60% of the population of the UK in 170% of the land. California: 40,000,000 people in 163,000 square miles UK: 67,000,000 people in 94,000 square miles US: 330,000,000 people in 3,800,000 square miles So I think UK rail modernization is probably actually pretty comparable to California HSR. Federal dollars and regulators are involved in California HSR but it’s a necessity in the United States that the states do a lot of this for themselves.
mulmen 4y ago
California HSR includes modernizing connecting services. Caltrain is converting to world standard 25kV overhead lines. Service starts in 2024.
TradingPlaces 4y ago
I was just in South Florida, and they have one of the few good setups in the US for this with Miami-Ft Lauderdale-W Palm Beach being close, but far enough that getting on the hellscape of I-95 is daunting. The train is fairly slow by HSR standards, but the routes are straight, and there are only 3 stops total (they are adding Orlando for the 4th). By contrast, the CA HSR is connecting two dense areas with not much in between. Because of all the “stakeholder” negotiations, it is not straight, and there are far too many stops. There is no need for a stop in LA and Burbank and Palmdale. The Palmdale stop is a bit mindblowing. There are 170k people in Palmdale. You don’t need a stop in Anaheim and Fullerton and Norwalk. I could keep going This was a real lost opportunity. There should have been 4 stops total: Anaheim-LA-SJ-SF. The result of all this is that the trip is going to take too long to make sense vs a 45 minute flight
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ggm 4y ago

I believe almost all long distance high speed train proposals are based on land banking for future value increase, and nonsense like that. The actual social benefit agenda is secondary to an investment model which sees speculative rise in land and property value along the route at strategic locations with a very long tail, and the local and state tax outcomes which follow motivate agreements by authorities. Instance in point: Brisbane Cross River rail. The economic impact statement is spectacular for land, rent, rate and building income. Same for intercity rail Sydney Brisbane Melbourne. For Brisbane, a state minister lost her job over a house purchase near a significant rail development (rightly or wrongly) but it's even explicit in economic modelling: they bank the future economic impact.

lightedman 4y ago

If you've ever driven the I-5 Corridor, it isn't exactly always an easy thing. To be able to do LA-SF without the possibility of a road accident causing you a multiple-hour delay is a huge benefit. Intra-state would be even better. Link the entire West coast with high-speed passenger rail.

barbacoa 4y ago
West coast is no where near dense enough to support mass transit rail system. You would have to get in your car, drive to a central rail station, park in a massive parking garage, ride the train to your destination, then rent a car when you get there. At that point you basically have slower and far more expensive version of an airport. Many east coast cities have the advantage of being planned out before cars so they are structured for high urban density. It is different in cities like LA or SF where it's all about urban sprawl.
- ffggvv 4y ago
  yeah i did that flight dozens of times and super simply easy and cheap. dont see the benefit of making it a train
  - mulmen 4y ago
    Scale. Cost. The continued existence of humanity.
    - ffggvv 4y ago
      scale and cost are already coveted by the plane. the last seems dramatic
      - mulmen 4y ago
        You can’t scale air travel to serve as many people as HSR. There’s not room and we don’t have enough pilots. Airlines are already barely keeping up. Rail is much less expensive than flying because trains don’t have to overcome gravity. It’s simple physics. The science is settled, we can’t all drive cars, let alone all fly. We have to stop burning gas to get around. HSR enables that and enables more sustainable urban development. There’s nothing dramatic about this. These are plain facts. If we don’t act now future generations will suffer. HSR will make California a more hospitable and sustainable place to live.
- 4y ago

erbdex 4y ago

"The Concord" models often get speculated as the future, but as often the energy economics does not sustain. There is perhaps a very probable risk of rising energy costs this decade, which might make such models unfeasible. In that light, your comment makes a lot of sense to me.

btreesOfSpring 4y ago

CityNerd does an informative video on SF-LA highspeed rail vs aircraft[0]. Your variables may vary. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cvt8QA4SvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cvt8QA4SvY

lern_too_spel 4y ago

Any infrastructure project that touches land is going to be bogged down in a NIMBY quagmire in California. That includes your LA metro rail proposal. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-20/the-landmark-environmental-law-inside-a-nimby-firestorm https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-20/the-landm... The stupidest part is that now we have politicians campaigning on not doing big infrastructure projects instead of fixing the things that make them fail.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

shaburn 4y ago

Not weird when you understand its intended purpo$e.

nalrey 4y ago

Judging the road by its endpoints is not a fair assessment. Merced to Bakersfield will connect a large portion of the Central Valley, which is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world with 7.2M people living in it. While indeed Merced and Bakersfield have 84K and 380K populations in the cities, the population of these and covered areas are much larger; (250K in Merced, 930K in Fresno area, 850K in Bakersfield, etc.) edit: grammar

soheil 4y ago
> is not a fair assessment > one of the most productive agricultural regions And since when farmers relied so heavily on trains for their commute?
- culi 4y ago
  Since trains were invented and the seasons kept cycling? The largest migrations of people are seasonal agricultural workers around the world. Until gen z gets their polyculture garden cities with a large variety of crops for each season, I don't see that changing
- sfvegandude 4y ago
  Well, nobody relies heavily on trains for their commute in this region because the train hasn’t been built yet. Also, a vast majority of the people who work in agriculture aren’t “farmers” who walk out of their house and till their own land. They are laborers, who often live far away from their work sites, which shift with the seasons.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    Grape pickers using HSR to commute from their condo I. Palo Alto to the fields in Merced. Yep.
    - nalrey 4y ago
      Well, how about living in Merced and working in SF area? If a trip from Merced to SF would be less than 70mins, this would beat all rush-hour traffic along 101, and become viable living option.

laurencerowe 4y ago

To be fair some of the HSR money did end up being spent on electrifying CalTrain, the Bay Area commuter railway on which HSR will run unto SF. The upgrade to 1970s tech should improve service substantially since electric trains accelerate much faster.

mulmen 4y ago
25kV was developed in the 1960s but is a world standard now. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

gumby 4y ago

When first it was approved, the Bakersfield routing appeared to be a boondoggle to get a specific vote. But the more I think about it the more important I think it is to tie the Central Valley into SV, SF, and the LA basin. It will reduce housing pressure, move some industry into the Central Valley, and tie a red place together with a blue and a purple area. And it was smart to start in the reddest part of the state and give them any benefit first.

panick21_ 4y ago
Its so that you don't have to go threw the mountains and that should actually make it cheaper. Most housing needs to be fixed with infill, not continuing sprawl around more cities.
- frankharv 4y ago
  Not to mention there will no water left after draining the Colorado River and the place will need to be abandoned before any rail can be used. Wrong priorities here. You cannot continue agriculture in a desert. https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/08/colorado-river-water-california/ https://calmatters.org/environment/2022/08/colorado-river-wa...
antognini 4y ago
To be honest I think the debates over the route miss the main issue, namely why the project is so expensive. If we could bring costs down to Spanish levels (not a country that is known for its frugality!), we could build both a direct SF-LA route and a route that hits the Central Valley cities, along with spurs to San Diego and Sacramento, and still save more than $40 billion over what the current SF-LA line is expected to cost. Instead the debates get reduced to "we should build this no matter what the cost" and "we should cancel the project entirely." There doesn't seem to be much interest in digging into why the costs of the project are so out of line with other countries. (Which, to be fair, is a hard question to answer).
- sofixa 4y ago
  Such a project's costs are highly location specific - labour costs, geography, regulatory environment, existing infrastructure to adapt to/connect to/work around, etc. However, it usually gets better over time with experience.

kurupt213 4y ago

This is the most money wasted on something nobody wants in the history of California. It’s just a kickback scheme for political supporters

jonny_eh 4y ago
As someone that lives in the Bay Area and doesn't want to fly or drive to LA I want this so bad.

ffggvv 4y ago

people get realt sensitive if you criticize their boondoggle because they worship public transit even if its clearly awfully executed

8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y ago

I would love a postmortem of the whole thing, understand what on Earth happened there.

culi 4y ago
Vox basically did exactly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0dSm_ClcSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0dSm_ClcSw tl;dr: US regulation makes it too easy for individuals to sue and stall megaprojects like this into nonstop litigation
flomo 4y ago
They pretty much chose the most expensive route possible, requiring long urban viaducts and numerous tunnels through seismically active areas. It is probably unconstructible, but the engineering consultants made out.

panick21_ 4y ago

The whole point of HSP rail so connect the different rail-system and serve a backbone between the northern and southern rail systems. If you want to be serious about rail, having a such a backbone makes sense. Of course, you need to continue improving regional rail as well. And as far as I know, California has been trying to do that too.

clairity 4y ago

yes, the LA metro area is roughly 18.5M people (nearly half of CA; the bay area is about half of this at ~9.5M) and the 2nd densest metro area in the country (though that density is pretty unevenly distributed). improving the LA metro would have provided better bang for buck, but it doesn't spread the wealth nearly as much, and we're already building metro rail here as part of the run up to the '28 olympics (but not nearly enough, given that the LA region extends roughly 100 miles along the main axes). the main problem with this HSR is that it doesn't beat air for time or price between LA/SF, and that accounts for the majority of the projected trips (and purported benefit) of this rail line. i've done the air trip many times, and door-to-door times are about 4-5 hours, while this train will take that long without the door-to-door part (though city center to city center is nice, if they ever complete that part).

runarberg 4y ago
It is mandated to take under 2 hours and 40 minutes between LA and San Francisco, not 4-5 hours.

ac29 4y ago

>Reminder that the initial plan was 130 miles of track laid by 2018. They are at 0.0 miles. This is a bit of a disingenuous take. There is a significant amount of work to be done before tracks get laid. There are dozens of active construction projects right now including building bridges, viaducts, overcrossings and grade separations. Actually laying the high speed track is probably one of the last things they'll do (there's no value in having tracks laid until a substantial section can be laid without gaps). See: https://www.buildhsr.com/ https://www.buildhsr.com/

ipnon 4y ago

Much faster, cheaper, and comfortable to take HSR between major metros a few hundred miles apart than fly. For a trip like Osaka to Tokyo it’s a no brainer, the airport experience fails in every category. The issue with CAHSR is that it’s right at the margin of economic sense. LA and SF are huge metros, but they are far enough apart that airfare will still be competitive for many even if this project succeeds.

mulmen 4y ago
What if we stopped subsidizing fuel costs? What if we accounted for environmental externality? California HSR is forward looking. Every state in the nation should be building and expanding public transit infrastructure. It’s an existential necessity.

DrBazza 4y ago

Some perspective from the UK: HS1 completed in 2009 for domestic passengers (also used by the Eurostar to Europe) is our first high speed railway since the 60s. The three "high speed" stations on the route once leaving central London are Stratford (London Olympics 2012 site), Ebbsfleet, and Ashford, have between them probably had close to 200,000 homes built within walking/cycling distance of the station. Further 'slow line' stations that the services serve once they leave the high speed line probably contribute as much new housing again. That's over the 30 years of route planning to opening. Yes, there's a bit of a spurious correlation between the UK house building, and the high speed line, but there is a direct and indirect economic correlation. Regarding 'personal safety' on the service. Trains in the UK are typically pretty safe, but the HS1 route in particular, they're obsessive about catching fare dodgers, so the trains are staffed with 'revenue protection officers', and often British Transport Police (and branch of the police force peculiar to the railway). And then there's Canary Wharf, reachable from... Stratford on the HS1 route. The former London Docklands that since the late 80s/early 90s has gone from being acres of empty docks, to skyscraper offices and skyscraper apartment blocks (pretty uncommon in London). My point being that there's a virtuous circle of 'build it and they will come'. Planning is everything in making it successful. In fact, any large infrastructure project in the UK is government planned (federal - in the US?), and the cost/benefit value is calculated, and explains why the south and south-east of England gets a disproportionate amount of investment, because the economic returns are so high. California high speed rail would have money thrown at it if it were in the UK. I really hope California's high speed rail works. But people need to be patient. It really is going to be 20 or 30 years before the economic and social benefits become obvious to everyone. In the UK if there's a mainline station in a city, we typically build many high rise office buildings in and around that station wherever possible, and then the outer stations often become 'dormitory towns'. I'd envisage something similar in California. The areas around the terminal stations in particular will grow offices, and the other stations, will see more housing and commuters. If, of course, working from home doesn't kill it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Wharf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canary_Wharf

mulmen 4y ago
I think there’s a lot to learn from the UK’s rail system so thanks for sharing this. > In fact, any large infrastructure project in the UK is government planned (federal - in the US?) California the state is more comparable to the UK than the UK is to the US. California is about 60% of the population of the UK in 170% of the land. California: 40,000,000 people in 163,000 square miles UK: 67,000,000 people in 94,000 square miles US: 330,000,000 people in 3,800,000 square miles So I think UK rail modernization is probably actually pretty comparable to California HSR. Federal dollars and regulators are involved in California HSR but it’s a necessity in the United States that the states do a lot of this for themselves.

mulmen 4y ago

California HSR includes modernizing connecting services. Caltrain is converting to world standard 25kV overhead lines. Service starts in 2024.

TradingPlaces 4y ago

I was just in South Florida, and they have one of the few good setups in the US for this with Miami-Ft Lauderdale-W Palm Beach being close, but far enough that getting on the hellscape of I-95 is daunting. The train is fairly slow by HSR standards, but the routes are straight, and there are only 3 stops total (they are adding Orlando for the 4th). By contrast, the CA HSR is connecting two dense areas with not much in between. Because of all the “stakeholder” negotiations, it is not straight, and there are far too many stops. There is no need for a stop in LA and Burbank and Palmdale. The Palmdale stop is a bit mindblowing. There are 170k people in Palmdale. You don’t need a stop in Anaheim and Fullerton and Norwalk. I could keep going This was a real lost opportunity. There should have been 4 stops total: Anaheim-LA-SJ-SF. The result of all this is that the trip is going to take too long to make sense vs a 45 minute flight

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]