3 ms·

Yeah, that was the original sin of the CAHSR project. They drew some lines on surface freight rail lines and said "we'll build it here". But they actually canno

by flomo 3y ago

Yeah, that was the original sin of the CAHSR project. They drew some lines on surface freight rail lines and said "we'll build it here". But they actually cannot build it "there", they have to build it over or under "there", which gets extremely expensive. Foamers never got this, HSR is more like a new freeway than the Southern Pacific. In Europe, it seems like HSR stations are often in greenfield locations outside of town. In California it became some hypothetical "downtown revitalization" scheme. But Bakersfield etc really should want better local public transit.

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
> In Europe, it seems like HSR stations are often in greenfield locations outside of town. This is not true at all. If this were the case, it would thoroughly defeat the core advantage of HSR over air travel: fast connections between city centres without requiring passengers to travel to some far-flung port of call, adding an additional two hours at least. All the Gares, Hauptbahnhofs, Staziones, Estacións, and St Pancrases of Europe are bang smack in the middle of their respective cities, and almost all predate the introduction of HSR by around a century or so, barring renovations here and there. The only truly brand-new HSR stations are in Japan and China. Plenty of HSR within European cities use existing infrastructure and 1435 mm standard gauge, and travel at lower speeds to account for this. The trains usually only get up to speed as they leave the city and enter dedicated high-speed railways with grade separation, concrete sleepers, reduced turning radii, etc.
- flomo 3y ago
  That's what I mean by foamer logic, most of that American passenger rail stuff went defunct a hundred years ago. Fresno has 20mph vegetable trains and now a 20 mile long HSR viaduct to "revitalize" (blight) their pathetic downtown. There's no money for all the tunneling they want to do. (Take a look at the EIRs.) The French came here and recommended a greenfield route, which is what they built in France, you can see the bypasses on google maps. They concluded that California is full of shit, and built HSR in Morocco instead.
Gibbon1 3y ago
You can easily look and confirm this. The current central valley part of the project is mostly grade separation projects. There is something like 30 of them. Not including a half dozen really major projects. Either where the line goes through a city, crosses a river, or over an existing rail line. My take is there are a bunch of reasons to build the thing. None of them on their own is convincing but taken together it's reasonable. Things like. All the major airports in California are maxed out and expanding them would be near impossible or very expensive. You can look at costs to do that in non US countries. I think $15 billion for two runways at Heathrow. Imagine doing that times six. Growing population in the central valley makes the current at grade rail crossings untenable. Distinct lack of high speed commuter rail in the major metro's.

by flomo 3y ago

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago

> In Europe, it seems like HSR stations are often in greenfield locations outside of town. This is not true at all. If this were the case, it would thoroughly defeat the core advantage of HSR over air travel: fast connections between city centres without requiring passengers to travel to some far-flung port of call, adding an additional two hours at least. All the Gares, Hauptbahnhofs, Staziones, Estacións, and St Pancrases of Europe are bang smack in the middle of their respective cities, and almost all predate the introduction of HSR by around a century or so, barring renovations here and there. The only truly brand-new HSR stations are in Japan and China. Plenty of HSR within European cities use existing infrastructure and 1435 mm standard gauge, and travel at lower speeds to account for this. The trains usually only get up to speed as they leave the city and enter dedicated high-speed railways with grade separation, concrete sleepers, reduced turning radii, etc.

flomo 3y ago
That's what I mean by foamer logic, most of that American passenger rail stuff went defunct a hundred years ago. Fresno has 20mph vegetable trains and now a 20 mile long HSR viaduct to "revitalize" (blight) their pathetic downtown. There's no money for all the tunneling they want to do. (Take a look at the EIRs.) The French came here and recommended a greenfield route, which is what they built in France, you can see the bypasses on google maps. They concluded that California is full of shit, and built HSR in Morocco instead.

Gibbon1 3y ago

You can easily look and confirm this. The current central valley part of the project is mostly grade separation projects. There is something like 30 of them. Not including a half dozen really major projects. Either where the line goes through a city, crosses a river, or over an existing rail line. My take is there are a bunch of reasons to build the thing. None of them on their own is convincing but taken together it's reasonable. Things like. All the major airports in California are maxed out and expanding them would be near impossible or very expensive. You can look at costs to do that in non US countries. I think $15 billion for two runways at Heathrow. Imagine doing that times six. Growing population in the central valley makes the current at grade rail crossings untenable. Distinct lack of high speed commuter rail in the major metro's.