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Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is th
by strongpigeon 7mo ago
Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.
- BryantD 7mo agoI don't think you're wrong. Every time someone says we can't do high speed rail it makes me very sad. And as far as Seattle goes... my commute is substantially affected by the I-5 closures. It's somewhat shocking to me that we allow infrastructure to decay as much as we do. I'd be happy about the light rail expansion if they weren't talking about delaying the Ballard line indefinitely. :(
- amanaplanacanal 7mo agoEvidently tax cuts for the wealthy are more important than infrastructure.
- zardo 7mo agoCan't do highspeed rail because it's too impractical and expensive, while we're spending a west coast highspeed rail network worth of money on the least popular war in US history.
- coryrc 7mo agoCalifornia is spending the money and what they're building is useless (oh big passenger demand from Merced to Bakersfield, fuck right off with that) and costs 10x what China, France, Japan, etc pay.
- mlrtime 7mo agoThere are no environmental impact studies on wildlife when you drop a bomb.
- coryrc 7mo agoThe commute is slow because the light rail is slow. It's the wrong technology for commuter rail and there are too many stops. (I'm assuming you live north). (more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47457884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47457884)
- BryantD 7mo agoMy commute is via car. The light rail will not speed it up, but I may do it anyhow because it's more relaxing. My point is that closing two lanes of the interstate for over a year is a failure of maintenance, rather than anything about light rail vs. driving.
- dogemaster2025 7mo agoIt’s too complicated to corruptly make money off of a large project like that. It’s much easier to just buy a bunch of drugs and needles and give it to the methheads, or spend money on homeless while building zero homes.
- jcranmer 7mo agoYou mean, like NYC Water Tunnel #3? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No._3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No....
- com2kid 7mo agoSeattle just got done building light rail tracks over a floating bridge. It is an insane engineering achievement. A train literally running on tracks on a road that is floating on water!
- strongpigeon 7mo agoFair. Maybe I'm too much if the weeds of this because all I can think of is how much of a fight it was to pass ST2 and ST3 and how we haven't even started on the Ballard line despite voting for it in 2016 (10 years ago!) and how it might be delayed forever.
- coryrc 7mo agoNo, it's not an insane engineering achievement. It's just a normal one, because nobody else has floating bridges, nobody else needed it. It's also years late and costs 10x more than it should. It's also the wrong stupid technology. The trains are constrained on space because of the low-floor bullshit. It's the longest light rail in the country, it's too fucking long and slow. Even if we fully built out ST3 it can't handle more than ~20% of commuters. It can't be expanded with express tracks because it's built deep underground, so the commute is so much slower than the equivalent in other countries and will NEVER compete with the automobile except during peak rush hour. The northern stations are next to the freeway so over half the land that could be transit-oriented development can't be, and then what's left is devoted to parking anyway. Complete, total waste of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, built and planned by people who don't and won't ever use transit. That 10x cost directly makes it so we can't build out our system properly and we keep building out car infrastructure because people would rather have a car and save 2 hours a day commuting.
- com2kid 7mo ago> No, it's not an insane engineering achievement. It's just a normal one, because nobody else has floating bridges, nobody else needed it. It's also years late and costs 10x more than it should. Your other points aside - Doing something no one else has ever done is the definition of an engineering achievement. There isn't a set of best practices. There aren't a bunch of off the shelf parts, there aren't any contractors who can help you out because they've done it a dozen times before. It is an original engineering challenge. Pulling it off is by definition an achievement. That said, 100% agree about the station placement. Heck the stations that are well placed were poorly designed, they should be profitable by including commercial real estate and residences, with the revenue from both going to Sound Transit to pay for the system. But no, we didn't do that and I can't even get a cup of coffee, in Seattle, at our light rail stations.
- rabid_0wl 7mo agoThose projects would literally be impossible today with the environmental regulations in place, especially in California.
- OskarS 7mo agoCertainly that’s part of it, but also just NIMBYism. Los Angeles were able to defeat the Owen’s Valley farmers back then, I don’t think they would be now.
- kibwen 7mo agoIf you watch the OP, you'll see that the construction of this aqueduct caused billions of dollars worth of environmental devastation. Rail all you want against regulations, but when an argument boils down to "I wish we didn't have to internalize all these costs and could just push them off on someone else", I'm not especially sympathetic.
- rabid_0wl 7mo agoLA has paid billions to remediate, but the actual cost is incalculable. Not sure who is "railing against regulations" but there are obviously downsides to heavy environmental regulations. Debatable if CA is striking the right balance.
- schlauerfox 7mo agoWe're literally right now building a huge high speed rail project that is planned to link san diego to san francisco through LA, bakersfield and fresno. Progress is made on it daily. https://www.youtube.com/CAHighSpeedRail https://www.youtube.com/CAHighSpeedRail
- AnimalMuppet 7mo agoProgress is made on it daily? Great. How soon can I ride it?
- Animats 7mo agoCaltrain, from SF to SJ, is part of the California high speed rail system, and you can ride it right now. It's now electrified at 25KV, welded rail, concrete ties, and compatible with high speed rail. The Stadler trains are capable of 125MPH but are run slower because there are so many stations.
- bobanrocky 7mo agoIf you are claiming that Caltrain is part of the grand high speed rail system, you are literally being taken for a ride
- Animats 7mo agoThe track is. That's how the SF connection is supposed to be made.
- ianburrell 7mo agoThe initial segment in Central Valley has current date of 2032. It depends on if federal government restores funding or if California has to fund itself. Phase 1 from SF to LA is estimated for 2035-2040. They might do end-to-end service before that with existing tracks and slower speeds, especially from Palmdale to LA. The SF and LA segments require tunneling to get over the mountains.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- oatmeal1 7mo agoThe grand projects the US has embarked on have been completed using unethical means and without regard for real environmental consequences.
- stringfood 7mo agoalso they were completed during a time of much less housing density and eminent domain laws were more powerful - even getting a railroad setup nowadays costs billions because of land purchasing
- phyzome 7mo agoThis particular grand structural project was never a good idea, as the video describes. So it might not be the best basis for comparison.