Quote:
Quote:
|
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.
|
Quote:
|
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
|
Quote:
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. |
Quote:
If not...time to flood NY threads with "subway to nowhere". Quote:
Quote:
Check out the wikipedia for Capitol Corridor. Quote:
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
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. |
Quote:
|
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.
|
Quote:
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
|
Quote:
|
Quote:
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. |
Quote:
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. |
All times are GMT. The time now is 7:29 PM. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.