3 ms·
I think the parent commenter's point that it would have been much more useful to extend the main line itself into LA city centre rather than stop ~75 km away in
by delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
I think the parent commenter's point that it would have been much more useful to extend the main line itself into LA city centre rather than stop ~75 km away in the middle of nowhere. The good thing about railway stations is that they take up much less space than an airport—they're about the size of a large condominium complex—so cities could actually fit them inside, without having to do the whole airport thing and put the terminal tens of kilometres away.
And many cities even build office blocks and hotels on top of their railway stations. See London, Paris, Berlin, etc.
- jessriedel 3y agoThe problem is the space for the tracks running to the station, not the space for the station itself. Taking enough land by eminent domain to run tracks to downtown (or anywhere else dense) is prohibitively costly. And digging tunnels is even more expensive.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoRancho Cucamonga isn't near downtown LA, but it also isn't in the middle of nowhere. The whole stretch along I-210/I-10 from downtown LA to Rancho, and further past to San Bernardino, is contiguous suburbia (urban in some places). There are existing commuter rail lines between them too.
- jandrese 3y agoThe size of the train station isn't the issue, it's the space taken by the tracks. This is when Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) are supposed to step in and save the day, but the cost of going underground is still too high to make it feasible.