Why is your entire pessimistic position based on what poorer people will or will not do? Are there tons of very low income people flying between SF-LA now? Probably not, but they may take a morning HSR train from LA Union Station to Bakersfield to visit friends or grandma or insert person/thing here instead of committing to driving a shitty or nonexistent car or having to take the horrible bus.

Well it hasn't gotten built and it a train to nowhere right now.

As for declining ridership in transit, most people prefer to drive and want their cars because they are superior in every way to transit other than being less eco friendly, less efficient in terms of space, and transit has a better social aspect if that's your thing to do when commuting. But cars offer customization in terms of entertainment, climate, comfort, etc. You don't have to deal with others directly, it's much nicer and I love commuting in my car and prefer traffic to having to deal with people on trains.

Wait until autonomous cars come out. I think those will put a serious hurt on mass transit.

If you think this country is a shithole, you a very ignorant person. Seriously. Leave if it's that bad. For every person like you that doesn't want to be here, there's 100,000 other people that would gladly take your place even over places like Canada or Australia.

So being in the process of construction isn't good enough? The whole thing with construction is...........it has to finish. It's likely because you would prefer construction in the LA area now? Let's be clear that the people that don't like it are
A. Out of state
B. Not included the first phase
Not being included in the phase or recent construction can cause resentment.
Would you prefer they built it "somewhere" first, all at once? I wish these things too but unfortunately the populated areas provide resistance to it being built first lol.

HAHAHAHA no there aren't.

And I have no plans of leaving this shithole anytime soon.

It is true some Western countries have a higher proportion of people immigrating to their countries but the United States has 5x more people every year than any country in the world(minus countries dealing with refugees) immigrating here. That isn't anything to laugh at or discount.

I work with an African immigrant who has been here for 3 years. Another coworker was speaking about politics in general and mentioned there " was no opportunity in the USA." My African friend quickly and loudly dismissed this and spoke about his current situation vs his old one.

Lets be real, if you live in America and hate it, you are a spoiled brat. And historically speaking you are incredibly ungrateful and ignorant. Now, this doesn't mean if you want to leave for whatever reason(lets see how many people give up their American citizenship outright though) you are anti American etc, that is fine, many countries have great qualities I really appreciate personally. But to act like this is a shithole country because of a bathroom bill or taxes aren't high enough or because we don't have universal healthcare, again, shows how fortunate you really are.

^ As a veteran of the Air Force reserves thanks bro-besides America is still a relatively young country-sure we are learning and progressing in many areas but compared to much of the world we have a long ways to go.

It's literally the oldest state in the world. :haha:

Quit the excuses. America's problem isn't that it's young, America's problem is that its a country full to the brim with fat, stupid, racist, lazy, dumb, uncultured, heroin-addicted rednecks. We are not a virtuous people. We are probably the worst people that have ever existed in human history.

But I digress, let's get back to the train that everyone is going to pretend they always supported in 20 years. :)

Ok pizzaguy this is a true statement especially in the past 25 or so yrs, however please be careful what you say-I'm of mixed African-American/Caucasian/Native American decent plus I come from a well educated hard working family and I'm also 59 yrs old! Yes the facts you mentioned are true and a BIG reason why America has lost its edge in the business/tech/industry world but I thought we were supposed to be on the subject of California High Speed Rail.

You realize your hate of America(and your obvious proximity bias) has made you blind to real facts?

We are worse than the Mongols? Romans? Spanish and English empire and their slavery? The Congo under the Belgium? Germany under the Nazi? Soviet Russia? North Korea?

You are really making yourself incredibly hard to even pretend to take seriously. How old are you?

I think most people would want construction in actual areas where there are rail riders. Bakersfield and the like aren't going to generate traffic.

It would be like building the Paris Metro in 2018 and starting in some farmland. Odd, to say the least.

And has nothing to do with in-state out-of-state. Roughly half of Californians are opposed to HSR.

Satire can be tricky

First of all, cars aren't superior to all other forms of transportation. That's especially clear when people are stuck in traffic getting older and fatter. I would imagine more people would be willing to take the train than can presently imagine what the benefit would be once they did.

As for the "train to nowhere" comment. I hear comments like that in my city about transportation to outlying areas. The point is to develop transportation projects before those areas get built up and become congested. America always does things backward. We wait to develop our transportation infrastructure until after areas are already developed which creates a logistical problem to work around them and also after those areas are already seeing traffic congestion.

There are less nimby's in unpopulated areas and it's easier to build. Also Bakersfield is a bad example because passenger trains terminate there.
Caltrain is being electrified so technically that is also under construction and it's one of the areas that slowed the HSR process down/got their speeds reduced.
How many miles is the system going to be? CAHSR is being built in segments, and Caltrain is being electrified so the entire peninsula, which is heavily populated, is under construction.
source? I am referring to the resistance in this thread by looking at the location that goes along with their name. It's a transportation forum but people don't want it built :???:

This will be my last post on this thread:

Of course I want HSR. I want it done right though. For a good price. And on the most logical routes to serve the people best, not political compromises that end up hurting service or costs.

The reason this out of state person is against this is because im afraid this could go really bad and then people around the entire country will point at California and show the mistakes there and kill any new project in the country, and for good reason. Transportation for transportations sake isnt smart, just like I think all these streetcars will hurt the public enthusiasm for new transport(have you seen how slow Charlottes streetcar is?)

Ignorance is bliss I guess. :shrug:

It sure is exciting, but considering how massive this project is and its timeline, look at how little is under construction.

This project is on thin ice. All it would is the next governor to pull the plug and then what? We're just going to stick by "the people voted for it?" Would they still vote for it today given how much the cost has risen?

Anecdotally, I meet very few people that I talk with that support the project and a lot of people I know are big on mass transit. I would be interested so see how many people still support this.

Regardless of any of that, I stick by my prediction this train never sees the light of day.

You could widen the 5 to 3 lanes plus an express bus lane in each direction in between LA and SF, build new airports that only serve LA and SF plus rail connections between said airport to city centers probably for half the cost this is going to be.

Me personally, I think it'd be cool to hop on a bullet train even though I prefer cars over mass transit, it'd be really nice to have the option. I don't see it coming to fruition though.

If memory serves right, they still don't even know who will be riding this train because they didn't do any studies regarding that.

Be careful, I'm not so sure logic permitted here.

I'll be very quick to criticize this country(USA is my birth country and I've lived here all my life), but I can't get over people who think this place is garbage or don't understand how good they have it here. Of course very very few of them will leave because they either know how good this place is or don't and haven't gotten a reality check.

My family is from Iran and Brazil. I won't even start with those places how bad they are. They have beautiful aspects about them as every places does. By all means, I invite anyone who hates it here to leave but at the end of the day most won't and they know exactly why.

You think that shit is exclusive to America? Wow, you really fit the bill "dumber than a sack of rocks."

First off, I don't agree with the train to nowhere reference as the master plans have this train connecting the 2nd largest metro in the US to another major metro that is also recognized across the world. I respect that and I don't really take that comment seriously.

I don't think more people would be willing to take the train and as I mentioned, more people are ditching trains and mass transit entirely. Getting fat and older aren't exclusive to sitting in traffic but I know what you mean by that comment. I'm in great shape and I drive all over the place, lots of times sitting in traffic. That is because the freeways aren't designed to handle the traffic and need to upgraded/expanded.

From what I see, cars are most certainly superior to transit with few exceptions as I pointed out.

You last paragraph echoes my concerns for OKC street car. I believe it will fail because of how slow it will move and how it designed. I think that will set a bad precedent for a city that already severely undervalues mass transit and will likely hamper any progress to build real transit in the future that serves the entire city.

Likewise, I am concerned with CA's HSR project because it is technically the first real HSR project in the country. If it flops and isn't build, that could cause other areas to not build one of their own.

I would much rather have supported taking notes from how Japan has constructed and operated their system which I think is the best in the world and built ours accordingly. It's also important to note that geometric standards don't seem to be of much importance as it is clarified there will be several spots in this system where the train will slow way down from its average speed and it will share tracks with conventional commuter rail. Those are deal breakers, imo.

Both of those things are not unusual and work fine for many systems, including France, Germany, Spain, Italy and yes, even Japan.

And yet among those countries, the US is unique in that most or all of the shared segments would be controlled by private freight corporations with no incentive to ensure timely passenger service. In those other countries, both the HSR and legacy lines are operated by the same entity, usually a direct branch of the government. Japan does have a quasi-privatized system, but the rule still applies.

Is it possible to use a "phased approach" to build HSR? Of course. But the US has a bunch of unique and very difficult roadblocks to using that approach, including the urban sprawl that makes those "shared segments" drag on for tens or (over the length of CHSR) hundreds of miles.

Wait, I thought we were just talking about the Peninsula...

I was thinking of pretty much all HSR routing in Southern California. I think it's pretty much a given that HSR will have to use a blended plan south of Santa Clarita, no?

Also it's my impression that HSR will have to share tracks with freight from Gilroy to SJ, on a segment that is not controlled by Caltrain.

ROW blended yes with Metrolink, I'm not sure what the dedicated track situation will be or if they will in fact be shared track, I'll have to pour into the engineering docs again.



I have never heard such a thing and I highly highly doubt this. Isn't that the section that's calling for a long aerial segment?

yikes

rail construction in this country is pathetic

http://www.latimes.com/local/califor...309-story.html

^A good read from a couple years ago: Why We Can't Think Straight About Public Spending: California High-Speed Rail, and the Latest USAF Bomber

yeah whatevs we obv should not be wasting a trillion on the new fighter plane generation. still don't excuse this kinda shit we have the worst efficacy per dollar spent for rail in the world. not even close https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/n...ion-costs.html

Only way this is going to work....2 segments
 

The huge costs of tunneling through the transverse ranges (Tehachapis or San Gabriels) could be prohibitive, as would the seismic problems. If the thing is built at all build it in 2 segments. North--from Fresno or Bakersfield to S.F. and Sacramento. South--From L.A. to San Diego. The way they are postponing the southern construction leaves out 2/3rds of CA population. The south needs to wet its beak. A fast L.A.-Orange County-San Diego train would be welcome. Deferring the transverse range tunnel would save billions. At some future date, the 2 segments could be connected. But if not, the 2 segment idea could work as stand alones. Otherwise, ditch the whole thing and use the money for local transit in the cities and cheap housing.

It's not like the tunnels are the only issue, they can't even get the easy part done anywhere close to schedule and budget.

There's plenty of blame to go around INCLUDING property owners who have made this as hard and expensive as possible for the authority to acquire the needed ROW.

No, you can't really blame them. You have to blame the Government for allowing their absurd lawsuits to continue.

So no blame to the lawsuit-makers, just the lawsuit-allowers? Ok...

The Farmer and the Viper.

Central Valley construction update
 

This investment in clean, efficient, modern mobility is creating good jobs in the Central Valley.

Bullet train construction underway throughout Central Valley

By Nora Heston Tarte
March 22, 2018
Central Valley Business Journal

https://s3.amazonaws.com/cvbj.biz/wp..._Update_02.jpg
A stretch of the railroad tracks for the bullet train is under construction alongside Highway 99 through Fresno in the Central Valley. (Image courtesy of the Central Valley Business Journal)

"FRESNO—The much-anticipated bullet train project is inching its way to the finish line. Over 119 miles of the Central Valley leg is under construction from Madera to Wasco, with 1,700 workers dispatched to 21 active construction sites.

Approximately 1,200 workers are Central Valley residents.
“We’ve made a lot of really good progress in the Valley,” said Annie Parker, a spokesperson for the California High-Speed Rail Authority..."

https://cvbj.biz/2018/03/22/bullet-t...entral-valley/

I just booked a trip this summer to southwest France.

Paris to Bordeaux is 365 miles, which from LA would put you between San Jose and San Francisco.

The train costs €58 round trip, and takes 2 hours each way. It’s about a 7 hour drive.

How is that not superior to driving?

France isn't California. HSR makes a ton of sense in France; it makes little sense in California.

Also, those fares sound absurdly low, even for France. I've taken Mannheim-Paris a bunch of times, it's half the distance, and it has never been less than twice the price.

And second class seating (I assume that's the only way you're getting that price) is pretty awful. I've had too many bad experiences.

No that’s a 1st class fare. I am of course buying it quite early, not a week away like most business travel, which of course is more expensive (but can be expensed, so who cares). I would take 2nd class on a train over economy on a flight, by the way, and it’s not even close.

But what exactly is the difference between France and California in this regard? That is a TGV service that runs direct, so it’s not as if density between the origin and destination are important. In fact, an LA to SF train could make a few stops on the way (at the very least San Jose), and be even more economically viable. Bordeaux is no San Francisco either.

Sigh

This is just incorrect

Reminds me of "people will never buy stuff online when they can just go to the store to get it..."

Not sure what your quote has to do with anything.

Do you want me to outline the myriad ways that place matters when it comes to transit ridership? This isn't difficult stuff, folks.

1. LA has a greater population than Paris but like 1/30 the regional rail ridership. How about that for a start?
2. France has extremely expensive gas and extremely expensive toll roads everywhere; California has cheap gas and free roads.
3. France has the highest tax burden in the Eurozone, which pays for deeply subsidized transit; the U.S. has very low income taxes.
4. California has basically twice the household income as France. A huge proportion of French take transit because they have no other choice.
5. California is extremely sprawled and decentralized, France is hypercentralized in comparison, making rail service logical.

This will fail. It might get built, but it will never have strong ridership.

My household income is multiples of California’s, and I would never choose a 7 hour drive over a 2 hour (and 10 minutes, to be precise) train. Not even if tolls were eliminated and gas was free.

And anyway, leisure and business travellers are not a representative sample of the general population. Aside from students, there are few people taking a TGV (let alone the Eurostar) who couldn’t afford a car.

In fact, I would (and often do) pay a premium to take the train over flying. When you factor in travel time (and cost) to the airport, additional security procedures, checked baggage (not alone, but try getting a woman to travel for more than 3 days with carry-on), and potential delays, high speed rail is faster than flying up to at least 400 (and probably 500). It’s also more comfortable, and when was the last time you were on a plane with a bar car?

As for the “centralization” argument... of course, this has no bearing on the convenience of the train vs. flying. In fact when I get to Bordeaux, I’m picking up a rental car at the train station just as one would at the airport. All of the big train stations in Europe have locations for the major rental car companies.

When it comes to the train vs driving argument, I once might have agreed with you. But beyond the MASSIVE time savings involved (again, it’s a 2h10m train or a 7 hour drive), the need to have a car at your destination is quickly being eliminated by Uber. Self-driving cars are only going to make private cars more superfluous for leisure and business travellers alike.

You also picked a fairly bad example to argue... an Angeleno visiting SF isn’t going to want to pay for parking in the City, and a San Franciscan visiting LA probably doesn’t own a car and would have to rent one. ;)

Crawford:
This is a bit old but California is pretty dense, especially considering that most of the state's population lives in the corridor along the coast, whereas 2/3 of the state is mountains and desert in the east. The article below is from 2011. California has only grown denser since that time, and proposed statewide zoning changes will make it even denser still.

The LA-OC metropolitan region is also the densest in the United States because, although sprawling, it is very dense sprawl.

"The Census Bureau has population density data. Worldatlas.com's numbers are slightly different, but they're in a searchable database. That data shows California's population density ranks 11th in the U.S., at 239 people per square mile. (It's 13th if you include the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, as the Census Bureau does; the atlas doesn't.)

The densest state is New Jersey, with 1,195 people per square mile. Of the 10 states that are denser than California, eight are in the Northeast and are served by Amtrak. The other two are Ohio and Florida, the states that were offered federal rail funds but refused.

If California were a nation, it would rank 83rd in terms of population density, behind Spain and Turkey (both 241)..."

http://abc7news.com/archive/8203634/

Can we PLEASE put this to rest? Unlike France or most of Europe, California is EXTREMELY centralized, it has NO rural population, 99% of people live in the big metro areas.

The naysayers need to stop saying that nobody will ride a high speed train through California.

California should have high-speed rail; it would obviously be an alternative to driving and flying.

California is a huge state. Not the biggest in area, of course, but still pretty big:

http://i.imgur.com/NBUkL.png
Reddit

When I drive from Los Angeles to visit my sister in Chico, on the east coast, it's the equivalent of driving through several states!

And since someone brought up France, for shits and giggles, I'm gonna post this, from Newsweek a few years ago:


http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.news...11stategdp.jpg
http://www.newsweek.com/economic-out...-france-467614

I think the state with the largest economy in the US deserves something that would only add to its economy; I don't see why high speed rail couldn't also be used to transport goods, and mail, and packages too, not just people.

Paris has 8x the population density of Los Angeles. And as mentioned before the commuter rail system and subway system there make a mockery of Los Angeles. The idea that California is in any way comparable is ridiculous.

Paris' Metro and Los Angeles' Metro Rail compared at the same scale:

Los Angeles
http://urbanist.typepad.com/.a/6a00d...d549970c-320wi
humantransit.org

Paris
http://urbanist.typepad.com/.a/6a00d...d37c970c-320wi
humantransit.org

To be fair, the Paris map doesn't include the RER; LA's map is way outdated, it doesn't include the Gold Line extension to Azusa or East LA, nor does it include the Expo Line or the Orange Line Busway, which can be converted to light rail at a later date (and actually goes out of frame in this example), nor does LA's map include the commuter rail Metrolink, which has a system length of 534 miles (!).

But you can see that Paris' Metro is basically at the core of the city and covers a small area, albeit with many lines and stops; LA's Metro Rail, though very sparse in comparison with how many lines it has, travels through much longer geographical distances than Paris' Metro.

And of course, several American cities can fit within Los Angeles' city limits. LA is huge in area.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/m...q2-364x590.jpg
metro.net

Minnesota having a matching GDP with Norway is so beautifully perfect ;)

The State of California having the same GDP as France doesn't mean it has the same financial resources as France. Or does it? :shrug:
California's State budget in 2017-2018 was ~$125 Billion
France's budget in 2017 was $134 Billion (~109 Billion Euros)

Why does California need any matching Federal funds for HSR? :???:

Maybe France is better at making its' expenditures match its' revenues.. :yes:

Sources of data:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2017-18/pd...maryCharts.pdf
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...akdown-france/