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  #941  
Old Posted Dec 21, 2011, 7:21 PM
pesto pesto is offline
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Originally Posted by zilfondel View Post
Cars are absolutely not a "sunk cost." They cost you real money to use and operate. Driving the 382 miles from LA to SF can be quite expensive - a 20 mpg vehicle filled up with $3.80/gal gas [current prices] in LA would burn 19.1 gallons on the trip, costing you $72.58.

That doesn't even include insurance, vehicle wear & maintenance, depreciation, tires, etc.


According to the AAA, the average costs for driving a car are:

small car: 36.6 - 56.4 cents/mile
SUV: 62.1 - 96.9 cents/mile


[AAA source]

That same trip of 382 miles would then cost:

small car: $140 - $215
SUV: $237 - $370


Rail can be cheaper, unless you like to ignore things like maintenance (I pay roughly $1,000/year to maintain my car). Sure, if you buy a 10-year old beater and drive it into the ground, and keep repeating, you can get by with a pretty low maintenance overhead - but don't be surprised if you end up using those little yellow telephones on the side of the California highways to call the highway patrol for help every now and then. Also, many people buy new cars and actually maintain them - particularly in California, which is renown for its "car culture."

Anyways, you will certainly have more productive and less-stressful time while in transit, and a high-speed train will be significantly faster than driving for many people.

Finally, note that San Francisco will be one of the 2 main terminuses for the CAHSR system. SF has a transit mode share of less than 40% for automobiles - one of the lowest rates in the United States. [source] This means there are a large potential market for non-automobile transportation around the state, as is evidenced by the 300-400 current daily flights mentioned above.
Commuter cars in 2035 will be almost entirely electric or hybrid. Even the oil companies include this in their oil usage projections (it's why they are putting money into solar and natural gas).
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  #942  
Old Posted Dec 21, 2011, 10:07 PM
zilfondel zilfondel is offline
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Originally Posted by pesto View Post
Commuter cars in 2035 will be almost entirely electric or hybrid. Even the oil companies include this in their oil usage projections (it's why they are putting money into solar and natural gas).
That's quite the prediction, Nostradamus. People in the 1950s also believed we would have flying cars by now.

By contrast, over the past 30 years, automobile technology has essentially stayed stagnant in regards to fuel consumption.



Also, even if all future cars were powered by antimatter warp-coil induced phase-shifted transmogrified diluthium crystals with infinte energy production, those cars will stay take up a lot of space on the freeways - necessitating massive, costly freeway expansion. The freeways in LA are what, 10 lanes now?

Not to mention that cars will be STILL be slower than taking a train.

Nice try tho.
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  #943  
Old Posted Dec 22, 2011, 8:30 AM
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Even if Pesto's baseless prognostication should come true, expanding freeways and runways to meet future demand will still cost more than building CAHSR to do the same thing.
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  #944  
Old Posted Dec 22, 2011, 7:39 PM
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Originally Posted by zilfondel View Post
That's quite the prediction, Nostradamus. People in the 1950s also believed we would have flying cars by now.

By contrast, over the past 30 years, automobile technology has essentially stayed stagnant in regards to fuel consumption.



Also, even if all future cars were powered by antimatter warp-coil induced phase-shifted transmogrified diluthium crystals with infinte energy production, those cars will stay take up a lot of space on the freeways - necessitating massive, costly freeway expansion. The freeways in LA are what, 10 lanes now?

Not to mention that cars will be STILL be slower than taking a train.

Nice try tho.
Thanks; wish I could say the same to you!

There are 3 huge highways connecting LA and the Bay and they move well most of the time. They certainly don't need expansion in the near future. (WITHIN the LA and Bay areas is a completely different story; this is often quite bad and that's where I would put transit money). Ditto for air: plenty of excess space in Ontario, SJ and Oakland, among others.

Train is slower and much more expensive; see my post above.

Prognosticating is difficult; that's why I let the industry analysts and professionals do it; you know, the ones who back up their b/s by putting billions of their money behind it. Naturally, opinions differ, but both the auto analysts and oil analysts have made predictions that over 50 percent of ALL cars will be electric or hybrid in 25 or 30 years. That number would presumably be larger for small to mid-size commuting vehicles (excluding SUV's, performance and luxury cars).

Again, just to be clear: I think HSR is great in some places; just not here.
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  #945  
Old Posted Dec 23, 2011, 3:01 AM
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Originally Posted by pesto View Post
There are 3 huge highways connecting LA and the Bay and...They certainly don't need expansion in the near future....

...Train is slower and much more expensive; see my post above.
Where are you getting these bizarre claims? The freeway and runway expansions necessary to handle population growth in the coming two decades would cost 70% more than CAHSR. It is clear to everyone you oppose the cheaper, cleaner railroad--but it's unclear why.

Transit choice: $98.5B for high-speed rail vs. $170B for roads, runways
David Goll
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
Tuesday, November 1, 2011

"...the escalating costs of high-speed rail still pales in comparison to the $170 billion needed to add 2,300 lane-miles of freeway, four additional airport runways and 115 airline gates to accommodate the state’s increasing transportation needs."
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  #946  
Old Posted Dec 23, 2011, 5:16 PM
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Originally Posted by fflint View Post
Where are you getting these bizarre claims? The freeway and runway expansions necessary to handle population growth in the coming two decades would cost 70% more than CAHSR. It is clear to everyone you oppose the cheaper, cleaner railroad--but it's unclear why.

Transit choice: $98.5B for high-speed rail vs. $170B for roads, runways
David Goll
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
Tuesday, November 1, 2011

"...the escalating costs of high-speed rail still pales in comparison to the $170 billion needed to add 2,300 lane-miles of freeway, four additional airport runways and 115 airline gates to accommodate the state’s increasing transportation needs."
Don't get into apples and oranges. HSR would AT MOST save some money on maintaining I-5, and not even much on that because it has to be maintained mostly for the huge number of trucks that use it as the main connection from LA harbor to the west coast. That's not including emergency vehicles and other public uses.

The construction of NEW freeways is an argument on MY side. I am arguing that if you put money into regional transit you need fewer (or no) new freeways; if you don't then you will presumably need to spend on them.

Ditto for airports: runways and gates are mostly for Europe, Asia, Latin America, Canada, the East Coast, midwest, south, Phoenix, LV, etc.

Cars on 5 are a microscopic percentage of what traffic there is on freeways WITHIN the LA an Bay areas.
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  #947  
Old Posted Dec 24, 2011, 2:33 AM
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Intra-state travel within California shall increase as the state adds millions of new residents over the next two decades. Our current transportation infrastructure won't be able to handle future demand; failure to plan for that growth would be the height of negligence and damage the state's economy, environment, and quality of life.

The choice the reality-based community must make is to accomodate future demand either by spending $100B for a clean and modern high-speed rail system or spending another $170B to pack more private cars onto jammed freeways and more exhaust-spewing jets onto crowded runways.
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  #948  
Old Posted Dec 26, 2011, 4:48 PM
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This is far more exciting than the California High Speed Rail imHo:

Quote:

BART planners begin work on new vision for future

Michael Cabanatuan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, December 26, 2011

Way back in 1957, Bay Area planners were thinking big. Concerned about the booming population and worsening traffic congestion, they proposed a round-the-bay rapid transit network that eventually spawned today's BART.

Now, 54 years and 4 million people later, it's BART's turn to think big. Planners are working on a new vision for the future - one that could include express trains, all-night service, new stations along existing lines, trains traveling different routes and extensions to Livermore, Ocean Beach, Brentwood and Crockett.


"Over the past few years, we've just been trying to keep our heads above water," said Carter Mau, BART's executive manager of budget and planning. "Now that we've recovered a bit, it's time to start looking at our future."

The planning effort, which is just getting started, is called the metro concept, and will focus more on growth within the existing system and the urban core of the Bay Area than on extending the system outward. Still, it could include extensions within the BART district, which includes Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties.

Mau said the main goals are to increase capacity, enhance service and increase coverage, recognizing that BART's original role as a system hauling commuters from the suburbs into San Francisco needs to be transformed.

BART is already taking the first step toward increasing capacity, ordering a new generation of cars with three doors - to speed loading and unloading - and increasing the size of its fleet. But it will also have to modify stations, and increase service, to handle larger crowds.

The BART of the future would run more frequently between the most popular - and populous - areas, offering more "show up and go" service where riders don't need to check schedules. It could also feature express or skip-stop trains that would provide more-direct - and faster - trips for commuters.

Service could also be routed to provide speedier trips to the increasing number of suburban employment centers. And the addition of extra tracks, including crossovers that allow trains to switch tracks or change directions, could enable the addition of late-night or round-the-clock service.

"One of the problems we really need to solve is late-night service," said director Tom Radulovich.

The study will also contemplate where, and how, BART should expand. Some of that expansion could bring new stations to existing lines.

So-called infill stations have been suggested by various sources in the past at 30th and Mission streets in San Francisco, Jack London Square in Oakland and Solano Avenue in Albany. A station in Irvington, in Fremont on the under-construction Warm Springs extension, is also under consideration.

And while the focus is on improving the existing BART system, the plan would also consider extensions using BART technology to Livermore and possibly out to Geary Boulevard through the Richmond District, a project director James Fang calls "BART to the Beach."

BART's e-BART line, a diesel-powered link between BART's Pittsburg/Bay Point station and Antioch, could also be extended to Brentwood, and a similar system could be added from Richmond to Crockett.

BART planners expect to spend seven to eight months studying current and expected travel patterns and future development, looking at different ways of transforming BART, then developing a plan. The agency will ask for public input with a series of town-hall meetings.

BART has no estimated cost for remodeling the system but the effort would clearly run into the billions. And those desires would have to compete with - or wait in line behind - an estimated $7.5 billion in long-term maintenance and modernization needs over the next 25 years that have no source of funding.

"The BART system is 40 years old now," Mau said. "We need to replace not only our railcars but the system that powers those railcars and supports those railcars. Finding some way to maintain the system we have now is going to be critical."

E-mail Michael Cabanatuan at mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com.
Express trains? Express means they go faster since they arent stopping right? Like to, uh Sacramento perhaps? And what about tracks being crowded-would they build a separate track for express trains? I dunno but this concept of express trains is long overdue and is definitely worthy of consideration. I have long thought a way to expand the Richmond(or via Martinez) Line to El Sobrante, Pinole and Hercules would greatly alleviate traffic on the busiest freeway in NorCal(80) Also, apart from the areas mentoned above, Anyone whose ever driven on I-80 thru Solano County during commute times can attest that expanding BART into that area would be awesome.


Not to mention all-night service!

An extension to Ocean Beach--interesting.


And why stop at Livermore when BART should really expand to the other side of the Altamont Pass since 200,000 cars are crossing the Alameda-San Joaquin county borders everyday.
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  #949  
Old Posted Dec 26, 2011, 8:26 PM
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BART to Marin County sure would be SMART!
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  #950  
Old Posted Dec 26, 2011, 11:17 PM
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Originally Posted by dimondpark View Post

Not to mention all-night service!

An extension to Ocean Beach--interesting.
I agree with both of these sentiments, though some MUNI loyalists would not agree that an extension to Ocean Beach sounds interesting, they seem to think that BART should stay where it is - connecting the downtown core with the East Bay, and SFO. I think that a BART subway line across the city from the Bay to the Pacific would work better, and not suffer the same problems that plague MUNI lines like the N-Judah.
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  #951  
Old Posted Dec 27, 2011, 5:56 PM
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Plan to use Amtrak as fallback for high-speed rail criticized (LA Times)

Plan to use Amtrak as fallback for high-speed rail criticized
Federal rules require another use for the track if the high-speed project unravels. But Amtrak officials have concerns about changing their popular Central Valley route.


California High Speed Rail Authority shows an artist's rendering of a high-speed train speeding along the California coast. (California High Speed Rail Authority / AP Photo / February 20, 2009 --via the LA Times)

By Dan Weikel and Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times
December 27, 2011

"When the Obama administration gave California $3.4 billion in startup money for a high-speed rail system, it insisted on a guarantee that the project would not become a white elephant — something critics could brand as a train to nowhere.

The first section of track had to run down the spine of the Central Valley and have another use, should the rest of the bullet train project collapse.

Those requirements are now at the center of an intensifying political battle, waged by critics who say the state's fallback plan to use a 130-mile stretch of track for slower Amtrak service is a sham because there's no guarantee the national rail service will ever use it..."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...360,full.story
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  #952  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2012, 7:08 PM
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California high-speed rail funding could be in jeopardy


January 3, 2012

Read More: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...ate-bonds.html

Quote:
The Legislature should not authorize the issuance of $2.7 billion in bonds to start building California's $98.5-billion bullet train project, a state-appointed review panel says in a key report to be released later Tuesday. The conclusion by the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group is a serious blow to the project as it is currently designed because state law specifically empowered the group to make recommendation before any serious money on the train could be spent. Gov. Jerry Brown has said he intends to ask the Legislature this month to appropriate and sell bonds to raise billions of dollars to start construction of the project.

But that plan is facing an increasingly skeptical Legislature and general public. And now, lawmakers would have to disregard the recommendation of the very group it directed to guide it on the project if they decide to approve the bond issue. Voters authorized $9 billion in bonds for the bullet train project in 2008, but the measure required that the Peer Review Group sign off on the feasibility and reasonableness of the plan to build the rail system before the state issues the bonds. A recent poll indicates a sharp drop in public support for the project. The report was expected to be issued Tuesday afternoon, but the overall conclusions were described to The Times by members of the group.

.....



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  #953  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2012, 7:14 PM
jg6544 jg6544 is offline
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Originally Posted by pesto View Post
Commuter cars in 2035 will be almost entirely electric or hybrid. Even the oil companies include this in their oil usage projections (it's why they are putting money into solar and natural gas).
Let me know when there is one that will do 80 on the interstate and still have plenty of power to pass; also, one that can make it through the Grapevine.
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  #954  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2012, 7:17 PM
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Jerry Brown proposes folding High-Speed Rail into new agency (Sacramento Bee)

Jerry Brown proposes folding High-Speed Rail into new agency

By David Siders
Sacramento Bee
1/5/2012

"Gov. Jerry Brown reiterated his commitment to California's high-speed rail project today, but he also proposed additional oversight, seeking to fold the troubled High-Speed Rail Authority into a new state agency....

As part of a measure to consolidate state agencies and departments, Brown proposed creating a Transportation Agency, including the Rail Authority, the Highway Patrol and the departments of Transportation and Motor Vehicles, among others..."

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalert...ew-agency.html
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  #955  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2012, 7:17 PM
jg6544 jg6544 is offline
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HSR would AT MOST save some money on maintaining I-5,
Just curious, how much of a profit did the 5 produce last year.
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  #956  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2012, 7:19 PM
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Why California needs high-speed rail (SF Chronicle)

Why California needs high-speed rail


By Peter Calthorpe
San Francisco Chronicle
January 5, 2012

"In 1956, the Federal Highway Act steered the American Dream away from small towns, streetcar suburbs and central cities toward today's auto suburb. It fit the time, shaped our communities, generated economic growth and changed our identity.

Today, our country desperately needs new infrastructure development that will create jobs and economic growth while updating the American Dream and ensuring its environmental future. The answer is high-speed rail.

More than a train ride is at stake; high-speed rail could catalyze the next generation of growth - one more oriented to who we are, what we can afford and what we really need. High-speed rail, along with innovative land use, will breed the kind of economic development and communities California is missing most - urban revitalization along with more walkable, affordable communities..."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz1icASgkum
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  #957  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2012, 7:26 PM
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Some of you opponents of high-speed, intrastate rail, should go back and read your history, concentrating on the straw men that were thrown up by the SPRR (which just happened to operate all of the trans-Bay ferries) predicting absolute disaster and utter financial ruin if the Bay and Golden Gate bridges were built. I seem to recall the prediction that the bonds for the Golden Gate would never be paid off; they were paid off within about 25 years.

California faces some very simple realities - continued population growth, concentrated in the LA-SD, Bay Area-Sac, and Central Valley parts of the state; an air transportation "system" that is already saturated (and anyone who thinks new airports will be built in this state doesn't know the politics of the Bay Area and the parts of LA adjacent to LAX), and an aging Interstate that, contrary to what someone said, is often crowded with traffic. That doesn't even address the freeway system in LA, most of which we should just probably blow up. The only solution to intra-state, intercity transportation, particularly of people, in CA is high-speed rail. Nothing else is going to do the job.
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  #958  
Old Posted Jan 6, 2012, 8:09 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 202_Cyclist View Post
Jerry Brown proposes folding High-Speed Rail into new agency

By David Siders
Sacramento Bee
1/5/2012

"Gov. Jerry Brown reiterated his commitment to California's high-speed rail project today, but he also proposed additional oversight, seeking to fold the troubled High-Speed Rail Authority into a new state agency....

As part of a measure to consolidate state agencies and departments, Brown proposed creating a Transportation Agency, including the Rail Authority, the Highway Patrol and the departments of Transportation and Motor Vehicles, among others..."

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalert...ew-agency.html
It would also be smart to either make sure the commuter rail agencies (Caltrans, BART, Metrolink, etc.) work in tandem with, or are incorporated into, this new agency.

Organisation vor Elektronik vor Beton, after all, organization before electronics before concrete. The best way to plan.
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  #959  
Old Posted Jan 7, 2012, 12:29 AM
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Originally Posted by jg6544 View Post
Some of you opponents of high-speed, intrastate rail, should go back and read your history, concentrating on the straw men that were thrown up by the SPRR (which just happened to operate all of the trans-Bay ferries) predicting absolute disaster and utter financial ruin if the Bay and Golden Gate bridges were built. I seem to recall the prediction that the bonds for the Golden Gate would never be paid off; they were paid off within about 25 years.

California faces some very simple realities - continued population growth, concentrated in the LA-SD, Bay Area-Sac, and Central Valley parts of the state; an air transportation "system" that is already saturated (and anyone who thinks new airports will be built in this state doesn't know the politics of the Bay Area and the parts of LA adjacent to LAX), and an aging Interstate that, contrary to what someone said, is often crowded with traffic. That doesn't even address the freeway system in LA, most of which we should just probably blow up. The only solution to intra-state, intercity transportation, particularly of people, in CA is high-speed rail. Nothing else is going to do the job.
If we get the government out of the way and bring all of our troops home from around the world and spend all that money here, that would be great for a high speed rail.
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  #960  
Old Posted Jan 8, 2012, 7:04 AM
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If we get the government out of the way and bring all of our troops home from around the world and spend all that money here, that would be great for a high speed rail.
Couldn't agree more about cutting military spending and putting that money to work here, but if the private sector wanted to step up and make the investment HSR requires, they would have done so years ago. Come to think of it, the transcontinental railroad wouldn't have gotten built in the 19th Century without significant financial support from the Federal government.
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