8 ms·

This is the most California article ever written. The author admits that if the line was run along the I-5 it probably wouldn't need all the costly grade-separa

This is the most California article ever written. The author admits that if the line was run along the I-5 it probably wouldn't need all the costly grade-separation and state property issues it's now facing. It may have even finished with its original funding! But instead of immediately being able to serve the upwards of 18M people of Greater Los Angeles and 7.5M people of the Bay Area, the 1M people of the Central Valley would have to wait for branches to be built. SO INSTEAD we took the more circuitous route through Central Valley so that the 1M people feel immediately included and NO ONE is getting a high speed rail. Sir! ChatGPT couldn't come up with a more California scented boondoggle.

jonahrd 1y ago
this is actually exactly what has been happening over the past few decades, and with the current proposal, for HSR from Toronto to Montreal, two of the largest cities in terms of both population and economy in Canada. Ottawa felt excluded, and is where the federal govt is based, so instead of going along the 401, a straight highway that follows a river valley and lake and has existing rail corridors, it has to go from Montreal to Ottawa (a short stretch also along a river) and then cut from Ottawa to Toronto via Peterborough, which requires new track, fixing old windy track to allow HSR, some sections have to be speed limited, and has to build through hills and dense forest. Also, Quebec feels that they don't get "enough" out of the project connecting their largest city to another economic powerhub, so it of course also has to be extended the extra 250km to Quebec city (luckily along a river) The logical method would be to build Toronto to Montreal 30 years ago, then build a branch to Ottawa one day, and an extension to Quebec another day. The Canadian economy would probably be much stronger if that was the case. Or we can just wait 30 more years and have this project not be implemented.
- ergsef 1y ago
  The fact is that politicians are insanely car-brained and nobody has any enthusiasm for improving rail infrastructure. Via Rail is trapped in this insane spiral of service cuts where it's miserable for staff and riders, and the solution is to cut more to make up for declining ridership. The new HSR is only happening because with the innovation of P3 deals the government can pay for the project but give all the profits to their private-sector pals. Suddenly investing in public infrastructure is appealing again (as long as the public doesn't actually get to own it!)
  - api 1y ago
    Cars employ more people. A lot of the opposition you hear from EVs comes from the fact that they require less maintenance and upkeep and so they employ fewer people.
    - nayuki 1y ago
      Make-work is not a virtue - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window . People want transportation, not necessarily cars. Cars also contribute to an immense amount of misery in society - the financial burden, being stuck in traffic, road expansions demolishing houses, noise and pollution, injuries.
      - api 1y ago
        I wasn't saying it was good, just pointing out a reason politicians support them. Jobs and tax base gets politicians elected.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    A lot of being "car brained" is because even the best transit sucks compared to a Taxi. People objectively don't want to share space with the masses. Even in Singapore or Japan, the stress of being in crowds is simply not worth it. Its slower, requires far more mental energy to plan your route, and requires a lot of physical movement which is hard for fatass americans. Especially when America has quite cheap, awesomely fast and fun cars (your local C8 Corvette can be had for 15% off MSRP from the factory right now). Cars are freedom. Mass transit is biopolitics/biopower. Big ass off road capable trucks literally don't even need roads.
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
      If gasoline was sold for a fair price, cars would be reduced to a novelty within a generation
      - 1y ago
- thehappypm 1y ago
  I’m sorry I don’t really see the problem with this, connecting Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec city seems like a pretty reasonable route
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    The problem is it doesn't get built.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      Exactly. A huge part of these projects is proving to the public the value. So even a short, direct line is useful - as some will start to use it and then extending it becomes a simple "this thing we have is good, it should be good more."
      - jltsiren 1y ago
        But the short direct line might also not get built, if the projections show passenger volume will not be high enough to justify the costs. Passenger rail has high fixed costs and low marginal costs. Even with high-speed rail, you generally want to maximize the number of passengers rather than speed. Making detours to nearby major cities often makes sense, while stopping at smaller cities the route already passes through might not. A direct connection between Toronto and Montreal would serve one pair of major cities, while a Toronto – Ottawa – Montreal – Quebec City route would serve six. The longer route could be economically more viable, even if the costs are twice as high, as the number of potential passengers is much higher.
        Kon-Peki 1y ago
        At the high level, it made huge sense to create a Toronto - Ottawa - Montreal -QC route. Up until a few months ago, the plan was to create a new link between Toronto/Detroit/Chicago and upgrade the links between Toronto/New York City and Montreal/New York City. In this previous world view in which we were all friends, getting as many larger Canadian cities as possible connected to this rail network was worth the cost.
- drpgq 1y ago
  I was surprised to find out it was going the Peterborough route. Didn't make a lot of sense.
- petesergeant 1y ago
  This is every attempt to improve a software project in a corporation ever… Small QoL fix gets pushed off because “the big rewrite work will fix it anyway” and five years later the small fix still hasn’t been done.
bardak 1y ago
Even if you insist on going through the cities in the valley they chose a construction sequence that takes the longest time to show any process. If they fast tracked LA-Bakersfield they could have extended the Amtrak San Joaquin service to LA by now. Concentrat on the SF-Merced section next and then you can work on the Merced-Bakersfield piece meal.
- socalgal2 1y ago
  I thought they were unclear if LA-Bakerfield is even possible. My understanding comes from a podcast that wasn't about the rail at all, it was about how to make decisions. In the podcast they gave the example that if you decide to have a music box and a dancing monkey at a fair to make money, which do you do first, make the music box or train the monkey. The answer is, train the monkey, because if you can't train the monkey there is no point in making the music box (something you know can be made). Her point was people delude themselves into thinking they're making progress on a project by starting with the easy stuff. But the easy stuff is pointless if the hard stuff is impossible. She gave the example of the California high-speed rail. They're building the flat easy part first but engineers have not figured out how they're going to build the train between Bakersfield and Los Angeles through the Tehachapi Mountains. Until they've figured that out the flat part is a waste of time and a false example of progress.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    Unless, of course, the flat easy part has value anyway. note: I'm not arguing whether it does or does not.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - bombcar 1y ago
    But neither would have to be the first step. Making the route from San Diego to LA high-speed is perfectly doable (the route exists already), and would be a great stepping stone. Even if it turns out the Tehachapi is basically the mountains of Mordor and the project ends, you'd still have a valuable high-speed corridor.
tidbits 1y ago
Take a look at the voting data for Prop 1A. It is very likely HSR would not have been approved in the first place if the central valley had been excluded. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_1A https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_...
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > likely HSR would not have been approved in the first place if the central valley had been excluded Then don't build it. That money would have been far better spent improving urban metro and regional rail. (And airports and roads and charging stations, et cetera.)
  - jimt1234 1y ago
    > Then don't build it. That money would have been far better spent... ...only literally anything else!
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    That money did literally improve urban metro and regional rail–Caltrain electrification came out of it.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > That money would have been far better spent improving urban metro and regional rail. CA HSR was the political lever to get funding to improve urban metro and regional rail, so, in a sense, the money was spent doing that.
- Eridrus 1y ago
  Did it have to be funded by a proposition? Could the CA legislature not have passed a law?
  - SllX 1y ago
    Tax increases and bond measures have to go through the voters. The alternative is to get enough of the legislature, including probably some in Central Valley, to agree to cut a bunch of other more popular programs in order to fund it out of the general fund.
frinxor 1y ago
SNCF was one of the early bidders for this project, proposing the I5 route. They later pulled out from the politics of the Central Valley line in 2011, and went on to successfully implement high speed rail in Morocco instead - which went live in 2018. Here we are 8 years after they finished a different project with nothing. American infrastructure at its finest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF#Modern_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF#Modern_era
- anon7000 1y ago
  This is discussed in the article.
  - onionisafruit 1y ago
    That’s why we are discussing it here.
  - deadfoxygrandpa 1y ago
    yeah and the author of the article totally misses the point
  - doright 1y ago
    I had a chuckle at these two subsequent paragraphs. > One regular snipe is that it’s “easier to build rail in Morocco than in California.” > Al Boraq had full funding lined up before the project began. CAHSR did not. This led to delays that reduced support and encouraged critics, which starved it of funding commitments and thus led to further delays. California undermined CAHSR from the start. So, uh... it is easier to build rail in Morocco than in California. And California is part of the cause. It's not even a "snipe", it's just the truth.
JohnMakin 1y ago
Not sure what specifically is “california” about this - There is very little support from either side of the aisle in continuing this project, which of course, the article states because it is an unavoidable truth. The criticisms offered by both sides are valid and the few proponents that still hold water for this dismiss these arguments with very bad or incomplete reasoning as written here. For instance, brushing over the “possible original sin” of the project was way underestimating cost. Yea, no shit, that’s like 95% of the problem voters have with it, that and how long it’s taken with very little usable progress. Author spends very little time on this.
- asdsadasdasd123 1y ago
  [flagged]
mullingitover 1y ago
The problem is that this should've been a federal project from the start, one of many running concurrently nationwide. Doing it nationwide would give economies of scale that wouldn't be possible with these local half-measures. California, and every other of the dozen plus states where this rolled out should've barely even had any say in the matter. Maybe deciding what artwork to put up in the stations and what to name them. At the same time, it should've been completely federally funded.
- Eridrus 1y ago
  If you don't try and reinvent everything, you can get economies of scale by doing what the rest of the world is already doing.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    Washington state decided to have light rail. But instead of using off-the-shelf rail cars, they just had to have them "custom designed" for the Pacific Northwest. Nobody was ever able to identify what about the PNW needed custom rail cars, but they sure cost a lot!
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      Light rail is almost always some sort of bespoke system.
    - upelephants 1y ago
      The only light rail operating in Washington State is LINK Light Rail, which Sound Transit operates using Siemens Mobility’s S700 model (although some older train sets are still used on the same tracks). Looking at the Wikipedia page for the S700, you can find these trains all over the US, including California, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia. They seem to be popular in Europe, too. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_S700_and_S70 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_S700_and_S70 From what I can tell, these train sets are as off-the-shelf as can be reasonably expected, although apparently LINK has ordered their trains to run on 1500 volts as that’s what their catenaries use. Perhaps you’re thinking of BART? -An occasional S700 passenger
aylmao 1y ago
In my region (Latin America) when a "boondoggle" of such high monetary cost happens, we call it for what it usually is— corruption. All those billions of dollars are going to someone's pockets. There's a lot of money to be made from inefficient infrastructure projects.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  Yeah it happens a lot here as well. It goes into contractors pocket who dig/drill/build -> stop -> dig/drill/build -> stop and get their $$ on partially completed work and milk the system for all it will give them. Quite often they are friends/relatives of the politicians.
- anon7000 1y ago
  Well, in this case, the problem is more so that money wasn’t spent on large swaths of the project.
  - arrowsmith 1y ago
    Idk about Canada, but what you usually see in the UK is that tens of millions of pounds get spend before a single brick is laid. Money disappears into consultations, reviews, studies and reports of dubious value, the paperwork keeps piling up and it takes years before the public sees anything tangible, if the project ever gets built at all. Someone somewhere is getting very rich off this, but it ain't the taxpayer.
    - ta1243 1y ago
      Tens of millions? £1.2 BILLION before a single spade in the ground for the lower thames crossing https://www.ft.com/content/917d4b7f-318e-46fe-ba44-664551ebcf13 https://www.ft.com/content/917d4b7f-318e-46fe-ba44-664551ebc... The planning document alone was 350,000 pages long, and cost about £1000 per page (£350m). What western countries lack is someone empowered enough to just say "fuck it, make it happen", and be held accountable once it's built.
      - 1y ago
whakim 1y ago
As the article points out, the difference in cost between these two routes is pretty small in the grand scheme of things; more than two-thirds of the costs associated with the project are at either end getting in and out of Los Angeles/the SF Bay Area. On the other hand, as the author points out, building the route through the Central Valley population centers has a number of advantages (political support, having a useful rail line before the entire project is complete, etc. etc.)
- Gibbon1 1y ago
  If you use google maps to find the distance between Los Banos and Tehachapi. Via I5 is 210 miles. Via HWY99 is 223 miles. So a 13 mile difference. That's 5-7 minutes at high speed rail speeds. And you are right the extra cost is minimal. It's probably $10-15 billion. My thought about the grade separation costs and my beef is. One is those grade separation projects need to be done anyways. The beef is why is the high speed rail project paying for road infrastructure. That should come out of gas taxes or something.
LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
It later says that taking the more direct route along the I-5, and then connecting the bypassed areas with branch/stub lines would lead to the same costs.
- pj_mukh 1y ago
  But by then 25M would have access to the main trunk of the train generating massive revenues. That's the point. Holding up 25M people to try and include 1M more while bloating costs and showing no progress is the essence of how you kill a project.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > But by then 25M would have access to the main trunk of the train generating massive revenues. No, they wouldn't. Because Prop 1A funds are a tiny drop in the system funding requirements, and choosing the I-5 alignment would not have sped up any of the issues that make the things around the termini more time consuming, and not having a ready-to-work initial construction segment that actually formed part of an initial operating segment that actually connects populated areas (even if they are much smaller than the termini) would have meant no federal ARRA funding (not to mention the weaker in-state political support), so what actually would have happened is that the project would take longer and, in the year-of-expenditure way CA HSR costs are always estimated and quoted, cost much more before anything got built or operational.
api 1y ago
After living in California for a while and observing its urban planning culture more up close, I came away with the distinct impression that this is all by design. California is owned by boomer homeowners, real estate speculators, and the auto industry, and the first commandment of all California planning is "allow nothing to change from the way it was in 1972." In the event that the first commandment fails, the second is "make anything new as expensive as possible so there's as much potential for graft as possible, and so existing home values aren't threatened." Maybe things will change when there's a generational transition, but unfortunately it may just pass power on to the SV neoreactionary VC set who will proceed to implement their own different set of bizarre schemes that don't work like planned charter cities in the middle of nowhere. Or they might just turn into fuddy-duddies in their old age and change it to "allow nothing to change from the way it was in 2003 when I moved here and got rich." California is the fourth largest economy, so clearly something is working, but I don't think California's urban planning culture is it. Places, companies, and people can all be extremely successful in spite of massive dysfunction.
scop 1y ago
- plan is presented - (the many) stakeholders issue critiques - new plan is presented that includes all the worst elements of said stakeholders but achieves unity across teams - stakeholders toast and have an expensive dinner at achievement of unified plan
- stuaxo 1y ago
  This is not a California or public sector thing, it's applies across all big organisations.

jonahrd 1y ago

this is actually exactly what has been happening over the past few decades, and with the current proposal, for HSR from Toronto to Montreal, two of the largest cities in terms of both population and economy in Canada. Ottawa felt excluded, and is where the federal govt is based, so instead of going along the 401, a straight highway that follows a river valley and lake and has existing rail corridors, it has to go from Montreal to Ottawa (a short stretch also along a river) and then cut from Ottawa to Toronto via Peterborough, which requires new track, fixing old windy track to allow HSR, some sections have to be speed limited, and has to build through hills and dense forest. Also, Quebec feels that they don't get "enough" out of the project connecting their largest city to another economic powerhub, so it of course also has to be extended the extra 250km to Quebec city (luckily along a river) The logical method would be to build Toronto to Montreal 30 years ago, then build a branch to Ottawa one day, and an extension to Quebec another day. The Canadian economy would probably be much stronger if that was the case. Or we can just wait 30 more years and have this project not be implemented.

ergsef 1y ago
The fact is that politicians are insanely car-brained and nobody has any enthusiasm for improving rail infrastructure. Via Rail is trapped in this insane spiral of service cuts where it's miserable for staff and riders, and the solution is to cut more to make up for declining ridership. The new HSR is only happening because with the innovation of P3 deals the government can pay for the project but give all the profits to their private-sector pals. Suddenly investing in public infrastructure is appealing again (as long as the public doesn't actually get to own it!)
- api 1y ago
  Cars employ more people. A lot of the opposition you hear from EVs comes from the fact that they require less maintenance and upkeep and so they employ fewer people.
  - nayuki 1y ago
    Make-work is not a virtue - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window . People want transportation, not necessarily cars. Cars also contribute to an immense amount of misery in society - the financial burden, being stuck in traffic, road expansions demolishing houses, noise and pollution, injuries.
    - api 1y ago
      I wasn't saying it was good, just pointing out a reason politicians support them. Jobs and tax base gets politicians elected.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  A lot of being "car brained" is because even the best transit sucks compared to a Taxi. People objectively don't want to share space with the masses. Even in Singapore or Japan, the stress of being in crowds is simply not worth it. Its slower, requires far more mental energy to plan your route, and requires a lot of physical movement which is hard for fatass americans. Especially when America has quite cheap, awesomely fast and fun cars (your local C8 Corvette can be had for 15% off MSRP from the factory right now). Cars are freedom. Mass transit is biopolitics/biopower. Big ass off road capable trucks literally don't even need roads.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
    If gasoline was sold for a fair price, cars would be reduced to a novelty within a generation
    - 1y ago
thehappypm 1y ago
I’m sorry I don’t really see the problem with this, connecting Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Quebec city seems like a pretty reasonable route
- WalterBright 1y ago
  The problem is it doesn't get built.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    Exactly. A huge part of these projects is proving to the public the value. So even a short, direct line is useful - as some will start to use it and then extending it becomes a simple "this thing we have is good, it should be good more."
    - jltsiren 1y ago
      But the short direct line might also not get built, if the projections show passenger volume will not be high enough to justify the costs. Passenger rail has high fixed costs and low marginal costs. Even with high-speed rail, you generally want to maximize the number of passengers rather than speed. Making detours to nearby major cities often makes sense, while stopping at smaller cities the route already passes through might not. A direct connection between Toronto and Montreal would serve one pair of major cities, while a Toronto – Ottawa – Montreal – Quebec City route would serve six. The longer route could be economically more viable, even if the costs are twice as high, as the number of potential passengers is much higher.
      - Kon-Peki 1y ago
        At the high level, it made huge sense to create a Toronto - Ottawa - Montreal -QC route. Up until a few months ago, the plan was to create a new link between Toronto/Detroit/Chicago and upgrade the links between Toronto/New York City and Montreal/New York City. In this previous world view in which we were all friends, getting as many larger Canadian cities as possible connected to this rail network was worth the cost.
drpgq 1y ago
I was surprised to find out it was going the Peterborough route. Didn't make a lot of sense.
petesergeant 1y ago
This is every attempt to improve a software project in a corporation ever… Small QoL fix gets pushed off because “the big rewrite work will fix it anyway” and five years later the small fix still hasn’t been done.

bardak 1y ago

Even if you insist on going through the cities in the valley they chose a construction sequence that takes the longest time to show any process. If they fast tracked LA-Bakersfield they could have extended the Amtrak San Joaquin service to LA by now. Concentrat on the SF-Merced section next and then you can work on the Merced-Bakersfield piece meal.

socalgal2 1y ago
I thought they were unclear if LA-Bakerfield is even possible. My understanding comes from a podcast that wasn't about the rail at all, it was about how to make decisions. In the podcast they gave the example that if you decide to have a music box and a dancing monkey at a fair to make money, which do you do first, make the music box or train the monkey. The answer is, train the monkey, because if you can't train the monkey there is no point in making the music box (something you know can be made). Her point was people delude themselves into thinking they're making progress on a project by starting with the easy stuff. But the easy stuff is pointless if the hard stuff is impossible. She gave the example of the California high-speed rail. They're building the flat easy part first but engineers have not figured out how they're going to build the train between Bakersfield and Los Angeles through the Tehachapi Mountains. Until they've figured that out the flat part is a waste of time and a false example of progress.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  Unless, of course, the flat easy part has value anyway. note: I'm not arguing whether it does or does not.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bombcar 1y ago
  But neither would have to be the first step. Making the route from San Diego to LA high-speed is perfectly doable (the route exists already), and would be a great stepping stone. Even if it turns out the Tehachapi is basically the mountains of Mordor and the project ends, you'd still have a valuable high-speed corridor.

tidbits 1y ago

Take a look at the voting data for Prop 1A. It is very likely HSR would not have been approved in the first place if the central valley had been excluded. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_1A https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_...

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> likely HSR would not have been approved in the first place if the central valley had been excluded Then don't build it. That money would have been far better spent improving urban metro and regional rail. (And airports and roads and charging stations, et cetera.)
- jimt1234 1y ago
  > Then don't build it. That money would have been far better spent... ...only literally anything else!
- saagarjha 1y ago
  That money did literally improve urban metro and regional rail–Caltrain electrification came out of it.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > That money would have been far better spent improving urban metro and regional rail. CA HSR was the political lever to get funding to improve urban metro and regional rail, so, in a sense, the money was spent doing that.
Eridrus 1y ago
Did it have to be funded by a proposition? Could the CA legislature not have passed a law?
- SllX 1y ago
  Tax increases and bond measures have to go through the voters. The alternative is to get enough of the legislature, including probably some in Central Valley, to agree to cut a bunch of other more popular programs in order to fund it out of the general fund.

frinxor 1y ago

SNCF was one of the early bidders for this project, proposing the I5 route. They later pulled out from the politics of the Central Valley line in 2011, and went on to successfully implement high speed rail in Morocco instead - which went live in 2018. Here we are 8 years after they finished a different project with nothing. American infrastructure at its finest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF#Modern_era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF#Modern_era

anon7000 1y ago
This is discussed in the article.
- onionisafruit 1y ago
  That’s why we are discussing it here.
- deadfoxygrandpa 1y ago
  yeah and the author of the article totally misses the point
- doright 1y ago
  I had a chuckle at these two subsequent paragraphs. > One regular snipe is that it’s “easier to build rail in Morocco than in California.” > Al Boraq had full funding lined up before the project began. CAHSR did not. This led to delays that reduced support and encouraged critics, which starved it of funding commitments and thus led to further delays. California undermined CAHSR from the start. So, uh... it is easier to build rail in Morocco than in California. And California is part of the cause. It's not even a "snipe", it's just the truth.

JohnMakin 1y ago

Not sure what specifically is “california” about this - There is very little support from either side of the aisle in continuing this project, which of course, the article states because it is an unavoidable truth. The criticisms offered by both sides are valid and the few proponents that still hold water for this dismiss these arguments with very bad or incomplete reasoning as written here. For instance, brushing over the “possible original sin” of the project was way underestimating cost. Yea, no shit, that’s like 95% of the problem voters have with it, that and how long it’s taken with very little usable progress. Author spends very little time on this.

asdsadasdasd123 1y ago
[flagged]

mullingitover 1y ago

The problem is that this should've been a federal project from the start, one of many running concurrently nationwide. Doing it nationwide would give economies of scale that wouldn't be possible with these local half-measures. California, and every other of the dozen plus states where this rolled out should've barely even had any say in the matter. Maybe deciding what artwork to put up in the stations and what to name them. At the same time, it should've been completely federally funded.

Eridrus 1y ago
If you don't try and reinvent everything, you can get economies of scale by doing what the rest of the world is already doing.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Washington state decided to have light rail. But instead of using off-the-shelf rail cars, they just had to have them "custom designed" for the Pacific Northwest. Nobody was ever able to identify what about the PNW needed custom rail cars, but they sure cost a lot!
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    Light rail is almost always some sort of bespoke system.
  - upelephants 1y ago
    The only light rail operating in Washington State is LINK Light Rail, which Sound Transit operates using Siemens Mobility’s S700 model (although some older train sets are still used on the same tracks). Looking at the Wikipedia page for the S700, you can find these trains all over the US, including California, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia. They seem to be popular in Europe, too. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_S700_and_S70 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_S700_and_S70 From what I can tell, these train sets are as off-the-shelf as can be reasonably expected, although apparently LINK has ordered their trains to run on 1500 volts as that’s what their catenaries use. Perhaps you’re thinking of BART? -An occasional S700 passenger

aylmao 1y ago

In my region (Latin America) when a "boondoggle" of such high monetary cost happens, we call it for what it usually is— corruption. All those billions of dollars are going to someone's pockets. There's a lot of money to be made from inefficient infrastructure projects.

EasyMark 1y ago
Yeah it happens a lot here as well. It goes into contractors pocket who dig/drill/build -> stop -> dig/drill/build -> stop and get their $$ on partially completed work and milk the system for all it will give them. Quite often they are friends/relatives of the politicians.
anon7000 1y ago
Well, in this case, the problem is more so that money wasn’t spent on large swaths of the project.
- arrowsmith 1y ago
  Idk about Canada, but what you usually see in the UK is that tens of millions of pounds get spend before a single brick is laid. Money disappears into consultations, reviews, studies and reports of dubious value, the paperwork keeps piling up and it takes years before the public sees anything tangible, if the project ever gets built at all. Someone somewhere is getting very rich off this, but it ain't the taxpayer.
  - ta1243 1y ago
    Tens of millions? £1.2 BILLION before a single spade in the ground for the lower thames crossing https://www.ft.com/content/917d4b7f-318e-46fe-ba44-664551ebcf13 https://www.ft.com/content/917d4b7f-318e-46fe-ba44-664551ebc... The planning document alone was 350,000 pages long, and cost about £1000 per page (£350m). What western countries lack is someone empowered enough to just say "fuck it, make it happen", and be held accountable once it's built.
    - 1y ago

whakim 1y ago

As the article points out, the difference in cost between these two routes is pretty small in the grand scheme of things; more than two-thirds of the costs associated with the project are at either end getting in and out of Los Angeles/the SF Bay Area. On the other hand, as the author points out, building the route through the Central Valley population centers has a number of advantages (political support, having a useful rail line before the entire project is complete, etc. etc.)

Gibbon1 1y ago
If you use google maps to find the distance between Los Banos and Tehachapi. Via I5 is 210 miles. Via HWY99 is 223 miles. So a 13 mile difference. That's 5-7 minutes at high speed rail speeds. And you are right the extra cost is minimal. It's probably $10-15 billion. My thought about the grade separation costs and my beef is. One is those grade separation projects need to be done anyways. The beef is why is the high speed rail project paying for road infrastructure. That should come out of gas taxes or something.

LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago

It later says that taking the more direct route along the I-5, and then connecting the bypassed areas with branch/stub lines would lead to the same costs.

pj_mukh 1y ago
But by then 25M would have access to the main trunk of the train generating massive revenues. That's the point. Holding up 25M people to try and include 1M more while bloating costs and showing no progress is the essence of how you kill a project.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > But by then 25M would have access to the main trunk of the train generating massive revenues. No, they wouldn't. Because Prop 1A funds are a tiny drop in the system funding requirements, and choosing the I-5 alignment would not have sped up any of the issues that make the things around the termini more time consuming, and not having a ready-to-work initial construction segment that actually formed part of an initial operating segment that actually connects populated areas (even if they are much smaller than the termini) would have meant no federal ARRA funding (not to mention the weaker in-state political support), so what actually would have happened is that the project would take longer and, in the year-of-expenditure way CA HSR costs are always estimated and quoted, cost much more before anything got built or operational.

api 1y ago

After living in California for a while and observing its urban planning culture more up close, I came away with the distinct impression that this is all by design. California is owned by boomer homeowners, real estate speculators, and the auto industry, and the first commandment of all California planning is "allow nothing to change from the way it was in 1972." In the event that the first commandment fails, the second is "make anything new as expensive as possible so there's as much potential for graft as possible, and so existing home values aren't threatened." Maybe things will change when there's a generational transition, but unfortunately it may just pass power on to the SV neoreactionary VC set who will proceed to implement their own different set of bizarre schemes that don't work like planned charter cities in the middle of nowhere. Or they might just turn into fuddy-duddies in their old age and change it to "allow nothing to change from the way it was in 2003 when I moved here and got rich." California is the fourth largest economy, so clearly something is working, but I don't think California's urban planning culture is it. Places, companies, and people can all be extremely successful in spite of massive dysfunction.

scop 1y ago

- plan is presented - (the many) stakeholders issue critiques - new plan is presented that includes all the worst elements of said stakeholders but achieves unity across teams - stakeholders toast and have an expensive dinner at achievement of unified plan

stuaxo 1y ago
This is not a California or public sector thing, it's applies across all big organisations.