City transit systems and intercity rail aren't the same thing. The Wilshire subway was supposed to be the first line built in LA but Henry Waxman killed it because he knew that its absence would undermine the viability of the whole system. In the Bay Area, draconian zoning fights have kept high-density construction away from some BART stations.

Many people DO commute via HSR around the world. Fresno will become a 45-minute train ride from San Jose. Right now, many people commute more than an hour on traditional commuter railroads all over the country.

HSR is about way more than people going from San Fransisco to LA. It's about connecting all of CA, and a great way to make cities more affordable. It's about turning central CA cities in to suburbs of SF and LA, allowing workers in those two cities to live in affordable communities while working in vastly more expensive cities. It's about turning California in to a cohesive whole.

So you are saying that the people already commuting from the central valley in the form of ACE, Capitol Corridor, and the San Joaquin train will stick with the slow ass train they are currently buying tickets for? :haha:

I'll repeat that the real winner is San Jose.

The "flaw" with the HSR plan is that San Francisco loses out to San Jose as the effective northern terminus of the LA-SF stretch. San Jose is physically closer to LA by about 45 miles, which should pass by in just 15 minutes on a HSR line. But the "blended" Caltrains line is going to restrain HSR speeds AND capacity.

So everyone talks about slow LA-SF times but LA-San Jose times will be very fast. Plus, trains that originate in SF will get to San Jose much faster than Caltrains does now because there will only be one stop. So not only will San Jose draw commuters from Merced and Fresno but also from...San Francisco.

It is believed that the Transbay Terminal will have capacity for four HSR trains per hour. I expect that all four of those trains will be express trains to LA -- they will only stop at Mibrae and San Jose. They will then run express from San Jose to LA.

But San Jose will be where the "local" trains terminate. These trains will only run between San Jose and Sacramento or between San Jose an LA.

So San Jose will be the true hub of the network, to San Francisco's detriment. So who is behind all of the anti-HSR propaganda? San Francisco real estate interests.

Don't worry San Jose will still be lame and most people will go into Silcon Valley/SF and the East Bay

Obviously, yes, as is true as everyone else on the planet. Why aren't people in the Northeast commuting to Manhattan via Acela? Gee, I wonder why. Why isn't half of France commuting to Paris via TGV?

There is no example on the planet where high-cost HSR replaced low-cost commuter rail (because, obviously, if you could afford commuting by HSR every day, you wouldn't be living in the sticks in the first place, and HSR is geared towards intercity travel, not commuting patterns).

And what people? There are barely any passengers riding those trains. If 100% switched to commuter rail it would be essentially meaningless to regional growth patterns. In places where you have like 50x the rail commuter flows (say Paris), it's still meaningless.

The arguments being advanced for CA HSR have no precedent anywhere on the planet. The whole plan is fantasy.

So those are discussions better suited for the NY and Paris transport threads. Your anger is misplaced....focus that on NE Transport planning.
If not...time to flood NY threads with "subway to nowhere".

This can be something new.

I think you are just generally unaware of what's going on with the project, and what is going on with local transportation agencies. When is the last time you have read California's state rail plan, huh? NEVER.
Check out the wikipedia for Capitol Corridor.
It's already construction reality for Northern California. So at the minimum if New Yorkers plan to stop this project, our local systems can use the infrastructure. 100+ miles of rail and road projects in Fresno and the electrification of Caltrain will be very helpful. Hell, trains that you claim are empty, are actually going to increase capacity and frequency because of it.

Because there is lots of affordable housing within a reasonable commute of Manhattan. The same is not true for San Francisco.

The argument against this happening on a large scale isn't the theoretical practicality of it -- it's that the capacity of the full HSR is unknown at this point because they haven't ordered the trains.

The Parsons-Brinkerhoff study from around 2008 projected 4 trains per hour to SF and at least 2 more that will terminate at San Jose. But the problem is that they are limiting the station platforms to 800 feet, not 1600 feet as exists in France and Japan. So each train will be limited to about 400 passengers, not 800.

That means many if not most trains will sell out far in advance. The big advantage of the 1600-foot trains is that few trains sell out, so ticket prices can be lower, which incentivizes people to take the train instead of fly or drive.

CHSR hasn’t ordered any trains yet. Suppose they order double level TGV HSR train sets - wouldn’t they transport the same number of passengers as a twice longer single level train?

The specifications for CHSR rolling stock has been established for some time as it was required to be known for even preliminary engineering of structures and track geometry. CHSR will not be using bilevel, Duplex-style rolling stock as used on some TGV routes. A single level train is what is called for. I have read about the 800 foot platform detail but am not sure how finalized that is and to the best of my knowledge there is not specification in the engineering doc's that specifically identify how long the planned rake of cars will be. I too hope they do not pigeon hole themselves into capacity and scheduling conflicts by cutting corners with platform lenghth. Perhaps engineering is accommodating the flexibility of future platform lengthening as demand warrants. This I have no knowledge of. It is important to remember though that a 1600' rake is an outlier. With the exception of the Eurostar, as far as I know the only other HSR consists of this length are when two separate trains are coupled together (proper term?) while sharing a specific leg of the journey. I believe this occurs frequently on certain trunk line segments in Germany and France, I also believe it is practiced in Japan, though I am not sure. Regardless, this practice wouldn't be necessary on CHSR anyways, so it was unlikely one would expect trains of that length planned or engineered for. For example, a 1600' rake would be something in the order of 20 passenger coaches with two power cars. I'm not convinced such single train capacity is even remotely warranted.

A combination of journey time, frequency, capacity, cost, and origin/destination connectivity.

Acela has several key flaws that undermine its ability to be a viable mode of commuting, which is why the entire Amtrak NEC had just 12mn riders (FY17). TGV’s tend to have low frequencies, measured in terms of frequency per day rather than per hour which isn’t conducive to commuting, especially over long-distances.


Coming to the topic of trainsets. I think the majority of trains on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen are 400m trainsets rather than 2x200m coupled units. 400m trainsets only really make sense if there is the demand to fully utilise the entire train; moving empty trains at high-speed is not cost effective, which is why you tend to have a mixture on routes that are high-intensity (Beijing-Shanghai, the u/c HS2, etc…). A big benefit of running two coupled units is that it gives you operational flexibility either to split the train further down the line to serve two destinations or regulate capacity whilst maintaining frequencies off-peak.

Double-decker trains aren’t too much of a problem if they are running non-stop, the issue is when you have stopping services, the dwell time eats into the journey time savings. It also makes operating high frequencies more of a problem.

Some numbers:
*Total cost is estimated around $98 billion for the scaled back version from what was originally promised to cost $33 billion for the entire system before they eliminated phases and spurs of HSR.

*The cost to relocate utilities along a 32 mile segment in the Central Valley was initially estimated to be $25 million, it is now expected to cost $400 million to relocate utilities.

*Last week $40 million was pulled from the overall budget for utility relocation to keep the project funded through June. That's money pulled from the yet-to-be-spent budget for the future construction of the actual rail tracks for the entire 119-mile Valley section.

*Total costs to completion of the entire 119-mile Valley sections are estimated at $10.6 billion – an increase of $2.8 billion from the rail authority’s 2016 estimate of $7.8 billion.

*1900 parcels of land have been identified to be acquired for HSR, yet to date only 607 parcels have been acquired.

BART went incredibly, ridiculously over budget as well. And could you imagine San Fransisco without it?

Well shoot. I guess since things cost money, we should all just throw in the towel and give up on living like 1st world 21st century citizens. Let's all just be happy with our crumbling 1950s transportation system and tremble in fear at the sound of big scary amounts of money that the government wants to spend. Ambition is hard.

Cue Jeff Daniels...

Sometimes stuff just costs money, the UK high speed rail project is probably going to cost $85bn but it's needed because the current intercity network is going to be at full capacity shortly so it just needs to be paid for. These are big numbers but if you work out the cost per resident and spread it over the lifetime of the infrastructure it's only a few dollars a year each

BART has OK ridership, though, at least compared to this boondoggle. And it serves a tangible purpose.

First, this isn't true. There are no real "cheap" areas within 40 miles or so of Manhattan, at least not places where professionals would willingly live.

Second, we have data on supercommuting, and there are actually far more supercommuters to NYC than to SF. But they're almost all in local trains, on buses, ferries or cars. Very few Acela riders.

Again, the logic behind CA HSR assumes things that don't exist, anywhere. There are no "Barb from Bakersfield" commuters who are gonna pay 5k a month to gain a few minutes on a hell commute.

It's water under the bridge because the decision has already been made to go with 800-foot platforms, but the big advantage of the bigger trains is that it drives down the per-seat cost. Running a 2x train doesn't cost 2x. It might cost 20-30% more accounting for electricity and train/track wear.

They're going to be selling out these 800-foot trains right away. Four trains per hour leaving SF Transbay, with three headed for LA and 1 to Sacramento is not really that much capacity -- specifically, a max of about 1,200 passengers per direction between LA and SF, with one of those trains likely being an all-stops local.

So they're going to end up charging big $ to ride this thing since so many trains will sell out 7 days per week.

Plus, we return to the issue of San Jose having a much larger capacity for trains than SF. Transbay is maxed out at 4 trains per hour, forever. San Jose could have those 4 plus 6-8 more that originate there.

Why does the Transbay terminal (excuse me Salesforce Transit Center) have to be a stub terminal? Can't tracks be theoretically extended to Oakland someday? (maybe not in our lifetimes, but our grand-kids lifetimes)

It IS ridiculous how much transit infrastructure costs in the US. Completely absurd and Europe and Asia have strong unions but are able to build high quality infrastructure at a fraction of the cost here. It is unacceptable. Doesn't mean we shouldn't build it but in the US we love to re-invent the wheel why can't we contract out to some of those European or Asian transit/infrastructure companies to build this?

Yes, they can be extended, and that will make SF Transbay a through station. If a new terminal station is built in Oakland with 8 tracks, then the capacity of the system will be doubled. I assume that Caltrains would also be extended.

I have seen chatter elsewhere about combining BART and HSR in the same pair of new tubes. I have no idea how that would work, technically. The different rail gauges and electric sources aren't so much of an issue as would be scheduling.

Ideally there will be two new pairs of transbay tubes -- one for HSR/Caltrains and then another for BART.

It is possible to do a large-bore tube below the Bay with two levels, similar to how Muni and BART are stacked below Market St, or in NY, how the 63rd St tunnel combines subway trains and LIRR trains. On the SF side, conventional rail would come from Transbay while BART would come from a new Geary subway. On the East Bay side, the tube would probably have a BART stop in Alameda and then a combined BART/HSR stop at Jack London Square.

This would obviously be more expensive than a BART-only tunnel or an HSR-only tunnel, but less than two sets of new tunnels.

However, if the rapid transit function of the new tunnel is performed by Caltrain, then you only need one pair of tracks below the Bay, since HSR and Caltrain are compatible. Basically, electrified Caltrain would pick up more of the riders from Millbrae/SFO/South San Francisco, so BART could run fewer trains to that branch and open up slots for Geary trains in the existing Transbay Tube. Certain Caltrain runs would be extended to Oakland where the service would (initially) terminate, but could later be extended or merged with Capitol Corridor.

Technical difficulties can be solved, regulation difficulties are very difficult to solve. Don’t forget BART is regulated by the FTA while Caltrains is regulated by the FRA. While they both may share the same tunnel, they will never be allowed to share the same tracks!
CHSR will also be regulated by the FRA. That’s why Caltrain’s can share the same tracks with CHSR - because both will be regulated by the FRA. If BART used standard gauge tracks as Muni, they could have shared the same tracks - because both are regulated by the FTA.
You’ll find it difficult to find anywhere in the USA where trains regulated by different federal agencies sharing the same tracks, exclusive of diamond crossings, and even those are very rare.

^Correct. Chatter about a new transbay tube has never suggested Bart sharing tracks with Caltrain/HSR, just that they would take advantage of the same tube.

I'm not opposed to the decision to not plan for double trainset operation and to limit the trains to a single trainset length. I do think they are making a mistake with such a relatively short platform length. A 1000' minumum would have been a good compromise and would have provided greater operational flexibility. A 1000' platform for example would accommodate a 10-12 car trainset, depending on specific trainset spec and assuming it's not a short carriage AGV style procurement.

Are there plans to run the trains from SF/SJ northward to Sacramento in the future? That seems kind of silly, given the route alignment following 152 to the south of San Jose. Given such an out of the way route, it hardly seems that beneficial than using the existing Amtrak from Oakland to Sacramento. Especially for the 3+ million in the Eastbay. Taking a 30 minute BART ride to SF + time for connections/layover takes away from the notion of a 'High Speed Rail' trip.

The routing in general really seems flawed to skip the entire Eastbay. It's not convenient at all, especially compared to just flying OAK and arriving in 1/3 the time. It's good for the Southbay and Peninsula, but not so much for the rest of the Bay area. Hopefully, ridership projections took that into account.

Why all this concern over HSR train lengths (and their platforms).
The NEC, the busiest passenger rail corridor in the USA by far, see's Amtrak using Acela train sets that have 6 cars plus the 2 power cars at 665 and 3/4 feet.

Power + 1st class + business + bistro + business + business + business + power.

An 800 feet long platform would allow 8 Acela cars plus 2 power cars.
Only Amtrak's long distance trains with sleepers are longer - just about all Amtrak's Regional trains on the NEC are shorter than 800 feet.

Please do not suggest California's central valley will provide more riders than the NEC can. No one will take that point seriously. :runaway:

Increasing the length of HS platforms isn’t too onerous when considering the cost of the entire project, but it enables a doubling of line capacity by running longer trainsets, either at peak or at a future date when demand necessities it, especially when you can’t boost frequencies. Another point is that having more capacity means that you can regulate ticket prices better to increase utilisation throughout the day and make the business case more viable. Limiting capacity limits revenue collection. For some context, the chairman of HS2 has stated that he is focusing on a very high utilisation (daily ridership of 600,000) and that is only possible by having lots of capacity to target commuters, business users, tourists, and other leisure riders at all hours of the day.

As for whether a future CSHR could have higher ridership than the Amtrak’s services along the NEC (total ridership was 12mn, of which Acela Express accounts for 3.5mn), that is of course debateable; aviation and intercity rail travel is quite low as it is between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It comes back to the key variables such as journey time, frequency, capacity, cost and origin/destination connectivity coming into alignment.

They're building up to Merced as part of Phase 1. So if they start running trains out of San Jose before SF, there will already be two routes -- one to Merced and one to Fresno.

I have never seen anything describing how operation up to Sacramento will work. Will the trains originate in SF or San Jose? I don't know. Will a scheduled train operate between LA and Merced before they extend to Sacramento? Again, I don't know.

If a detailed operational analysis has been performed since the Parsons-Brinkerhoff one back in 2008, I'd love to see it. A lot has changed since then.

If I'm traveling from LA to NYC, I'd rather be packed in like sardines on an airplane than HSR which would would arrive hours later than a plane would.

I think I've said this before but I'll say it again, I think the CAHSR would be really cool to have. I'd use it every once in awhile. But things that are cool to have are simply that, cool. They haven't even done any studies to see who the riders of this train will be. What will the costs be each way? I believe I saw figures at one point and they were laughable.

But that isn't the issue here. The issue is that a project like this in a state that can barely build a 7 mile subway isn't building a train that will cost more than 100 billion dollars and isn't scheduled to fully open until the late 2050's.

Then you have the other group of transit advocates who oppose anything that would fund freeways and expand them better alienating the majority of commuters in California who probably wouldn't use this train anyways. But have fun waiting for it.

At this point, I think the U.S. should adequately expand all of its freeways to flow with existing and future predicted capacity levels, redesign streets and strengthen bike and pedestrian trails, build more freeways in and around cities to give vehicles more direct routes where needed, build more grade separated intercity rail, build HSR in dense areas like the NE for now. Wait to see for a newer innovative solution for a national high speed transportation network as an alternative to flying. I am specifically thinking of the Hyperloop, but I have my doubts about it. We'll see what will happen. At this

Building a national HSR network with conventional HSR would be a waste of time and money. I would even go for Japan's MagLev. This country should innovate and go beyond what we currently have by thinking outside the box.

So you want to turn CA into a giant city that has the largest suburb in the world located in the Valley linked together by park and ride stations?

You say that like connecting all of CA is a bad thing. If SF and LA keep getting progressively more expensive, this is a great way to provide middle-class housing to those working in high-priced areas.

Yes, it would be if the HSR trains charged cheap fares as slower speed trains - but they won't! HSR will expect much higher fares for the faster speeds they provide - mainly because it costs more to make the trains go faster. So they will be far too expensive for middle class commuters to use for a daily commute.

There's two ways to raise revenues from property taxes; one is to raise the rates and the second is to raise the property's evaluations. There's two ways to raise revenues from income taxes as well, one is to raise the rates and the second is to reduce the deductions and credits. California has been double dipping for decades.

If the cost of living is too expensive for the middle class to live and work in your community, you need to change your local government's policies and programs. Because what they have been doing is leading to chaos and destruction. People shouldn't have to commute a hundred miles on a HSR train just to go to work every day.

It's absurd how few people seem to understand this. Even the shitty Acela Express train costs like $150 a seat just to ride from DC to NYC. Given the capital costs involved prices for CAHSR would be $200-$500 one way. Maybe the state will provide even more massive subsides to reduce those prices, but that would just be throwing even more money down the toilet.

Personally, I'm not super worried about the high costs of a ticket. High speed rail has generally shown to have a high market share in other parts of the world, even when the price of a ticket is high (no source for this).

I am worried, however, about the high capital costs. I hate to be aspirational (JK, I don't), but isn't it indulgent to spend $60B + on a high speed rail project on a medium-density corridor when the country as a whole is facing a debt crisis?

^Well we better scale back that $700,000,000,000 defense budget and think twice about a $1,500,000,000,000 tax cut for the rich and corps on the national credit card... oops too late.

This sort of logic both the parties use is some dumb. It's always, "Well you wasted X amount so now we can waste Y amount". No, that's stupid. Pointing out the other sides irresponsibility doesn't give you leave to be just as irresponsible.

That makes sense if you consider building a highspeed railway network in the countries' richest, most economically prosperous state a "waste of money." I don't believe it is. I think its an incredibly wise investment in the future. A tax giveaway scam so a corp cuts a $1,000 bonus check for x amount of employees instead of the $10,000+ increase in wages/salaries that inflation/corp profits/worker productivity actually calls for, to make it look like average Joe Schmo is benefiting when in reality most corps and large businesses are just taking the savings and passing it onto shareholders through stock buybacks (just like Dems said would happen) and cash hoarding, etc, etc, etc.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound so combative.

I think that discussions about the federal budget are complicated and I don't want to get into one. It is CA's right to spend its own money on a high speed rail system, just as it is any other state's right to do the same.

I should acknowledge this and hope that we can all be friends. :cheers:

Unfortunately the ticket prices will tend to be high because they are not building the 2x platforms. The capacity of any HSR line is limited by the amount of space necessary to stop a train. It doesn't matter how large that train is. A faster system (300mph) actually has a *lower* capacity because of the longer distance (more time) necessary to stop a train. So all of these calls for Maglev, etc., don't make any business sense.

If the system can operate 12 trains per hour per direction, and each train has 500 passengers instead of 1,000, well then do the math on fares. The higher the capacity, the more the operator is incentivized to fill trains with lower-priced tickets.

24 trains per hour x 1,000 passengers = 24,000 people departures between, say, 5pm and 6pm on a Friday. So 12,000 people headed from SF to LA and 12,000 people headed from LA to SF. If they each pay $100 that's $2.4 million in gross revenue in a single hour.

Halving the train sizes means half the potential gross revenues, if the fares remain constant. So a $200 one-way fare to collect the same gross revenue.

Part of the goal of California HSR should have been cheap fares, and running a bunch of huge trains would have enabled them to do very cheap fares in order to fill the off-peak trains.

Do we know how firm the platform length decision is? Could this easily be changed before the tunneling through the mountains in the Bakersfield-LA portion begins?

I believe it will be set in stone when the tunnel is built connecting Caltrans and the Transbay Terminal. If they do 800-foot platforms then the tunnel can curve immediately outside the terminal, which might be less expensive, but will permanently doom the terminal to shorter platform lengths.

It's theoretically possible for long platforms to only be built at SF, SJ, and LA, and to only operate the long trains express, but the feds might not permit it since it would make unloading a train at a shorter station in case of a technical issue a very clumsy event.

Got it, thanks.

Does anyone else find the claim of "under 3 hour trips" frustrating and disingenuous given that the authority's own schedules show zero LA-SF trips actually making it in 3 hours?

http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/bus...ethodology.pdf

Thanks for the link.

Section 4.2 specifies station passing siding track lengths of 1,410 feet. Trains will be 660 feet w/450 seats. Stations will accommodate double trains lengths of 1,320 feet. This information contradicts previous public information. So I'm not sure who or what is wrong. Articles were definitely published 3-4 years ago that declared double trainsets were dead.

The second big point is the graphic on Page 3. Herein we see where so much of the dark anti-HSR effort comes from. We see clearly that the winner in all of this is San Jose, which will have more trains than San Francisco. And with completion of BART to San Jose by the time HSR opens, East Bay residents and workers won't have to ride all the way in to SF.

Also, check the bottom page of the link for the total annual mileage -- 32,000,000 miles! So about 87,000 miles of scheduled service per day, 365 days per year!

New Jersey transit trains that are longer than the platforms of many of the stations they stop at are a thing. They just ask people in the last few cars to walk up to disembark. Never seemed like a huge issue and if it can save a lot of money then why not?

Interesting, so if this is correct, the capacity will be roughly double what's been discussed the past few pages?

I'm not train savvy enough to know where to look, but you might find more information about which is correct in one of these documents:

http://www.hsr.ca.gov/About/Business...ness_Plan.html