It does look like Burbank to Union Station will at least be utilizing the existing Metrolink ROW, so that portion will have to be electrified at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. I wonder how much grade separation they'll try to achieve there as well. That's low hanging fruit at least that could be completed relatively quickly and easily, since it looks like Palmdale to Burbank and Bako to Palmdale will require extensive tunneling.

Probably anywhere that's blended should get the Caltrain treatment, just to give the project more visibility. They can run local trains before HSR service starts as well on those lines, to get use out of the upgrades earlier and I hope this could even be applied to the phase two cities before phase two starts. I'm pretty sure the major urban areas/cities have to use some form of blended...

I think I read somewhere that the HSR trains would be limited to 110 miles on the Peninsula corridor. The question I had: won't that corridor between San Jose and SF get really congested once the HSR trains are added to the Caltrain trains? Caltrain runs a lot of trains. Caltrain's non-express trains stop at stations that are spaced fairly close together and so are going much slower. In many places there are only two tracks. What happens when HSR throws all its trains into the mix? Are there plans to add more tracks, especially tracks to allow HSR trains to bypass all the intermediate stations between San Jose and SF?

That is correct, trains will be limited in their speed while in the blended corridor, but Caltrain's new Stadler KISS electric trains can go 110. Even with limited speeds, it is still just shy of the Brightline's maximum speed of 125 mph. There are quadruple tracks for passing in Redwood City and Sunnyvale, triple tracks at SFO and Tamien, then everything south of San Jose (Coyote) is single tracked and will be upgraded once full HSR comes through. It should be enough with coordinated schedules where Caltrain makes stops that HSR does not and could allow it to pass.

The capacity of the blended corridor is limited by the Transbay Terminal's six platforms. There will be a maximum of four HSR trains per hour arriving and departing DTSF, or one roughly every 15 minutes.

If a second Transbay Tube can be built, the Terminal can be turned into a through-running station, and it will instantly be able to serve many more trains.

Also, the planned approach tunnel to Transbay Terminal will be three tracks.

Nothing really new, just the ball starting to roll faster...
 

I'm not sure I was aware the test speed was set at 242mph...

People are going to wet their pants when they see that streaking across the Central Valley. Naysayers will be converted. Indifferent, ignorant and oblivious will be amazed. Pols will react and state government will start to get serious about expediting Phase 1. My prediction.



California high speed train request for proposals approved

By Railway Gazette International
12 April 2024

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USA: The California High-Speed Rail Authority board has approved the release of a request for proposals for the supply and maintenance of high speed trainsets.

Alstom Transportation and Siemens Mobility have prequalified for the process. Their proposals are to be submitted this autumn, with the authority aiming to award a contract by the end of the year.

The contract is to cover two prototype trainsets to be delivered for testing and trial running within four years of the noticed to proceed, and four production trainsets for passenger services on the initial 275 km Merced to Bakersfield early operating segment of the planned high speed line from 2030-33. The trainsets must be capable of operating at 355 km/h (220 miles/h) and tested up to 390 km/h (242 miles/h).

The contract would include a driving simulator, spare parts and 30 years of maintenance, including a mid-life overhaul.

The federal funding contribution requires compliance with Buy America rules, although waivers may be sought for components which cannot be sourced domestically.

Rest

Wish we were getting those for Brightline West. LA to Vegas in one hour.

Brightline (both in Florida and in Southern California/Las Vegas) is going to be significantly inferior to CAHSR.

The trainsets for BW and CAHSR will be almost the same. The reason they won't go as fast is not the trains, it's the tracks. Like the poster above said, BW is a vastly inferior system

I don't know the specifics about the trainset for Brightline West but it's reported to go up to 186mph (through flat desert), and the journey from Rancho Cucomonga to Las Vegas is expected to take about two hours. You're right though, it might not be the train. The track itself could still impose a speed limit.

There should be a separate thread for Brightline West on here once contruction starts and we start getting regular updates.

Curve radii inside the median that follows the highway automobile design speed mixed with >5% grades will keep the average speed significantly lower than the CHSR design speed.

This is a fundamental distinction. CAHSR is designing a fully double tracked high speed rail line for 200+mph trains. BW is laying a track in the median of an existing interstate designed for the automobile with max speeds of 80mph. Things like curve radius for train speeds of 200+mph the interstate was not designed for. And I have gratitude for both systems and their place.

There are reports that Brightline has already selected the Siemens trainset, but the linked press release is no longer live. The Brightline West home page still shows a slower TGV style train in what looks like an old rendering, and recently published articles also quote a top speed of 186mph.

Maybe they are waiting on CAHSR to make their choice first, since there are plans for a connection and interoperability.

Yeah CAHSR should blow away Brightline West in average speed. I wish we got the same track/train setup for Brightline, but leveraging existing infrastructure has its advantages too (can it actually open on schedule?). And I'm still holding out hope we'll be seeing 200+ mph on these desert straightaways.

The engineering of the original DesertXpress proposal was superior in nearly every way. It's r.o.w. was shifted to one side of I-15 allowing geometry for higher speeds as well as several short tunnels lowering peak grade percentages. Every decision Brightline has made has been made to make the project cheaper to build at the expense of performance. That said, it is a fair question whether the current approved plans will be sufficient for what the purpose here is. Obviously, we all want to see this thing get built and the money behind it felt making some sacrifices was worth it to do so and don't feel the negatives outweigh the positives.

The $1 billion question (actually probably much, much more than that) is how much the public is willing to pay to enjoy a higher ride quality plus a 10, 20, 30-minute faster ride.

"HSR", thanks to Brightline, is turning into "BRT". The term is going to end up meaning nothing specific.

That would depend on the ticket price.

Isn't the big plan to have everyone going to Vegas from NorCal to take the DesertXPress branch while everyone going to Vegas from SoCal would take the Rancho Cucamonga (and eventually LA Union Station) branch?

^^^

???

Are you talking about the High Desert Corridor link once CHSR is running through Palmdale?

Mea culpa, yes.

The eventual plan appears to be that Brightline would concurrently operate out of Rancho Cucamonga as well as over a new High Desert link to Palmdale enabling through running to LAUS using the CHSR basin tunnels. Thus the thinking being that LAUS-LV Brightline trains would be used by those who find that route convenient and Rancho Cucamonga-LV train for those where an IE departure would be more convenient and capturing more ridership.

BusyBee...........

You stated earlier that once the first section in the Interior Corridor opens up and people see trains flying by them at lightening speed will get rid of all the naysayers, people will push for the completion of the line maybe a tad overoptimistic. Remember this CHSR is going to be saddled with a monstrous debt and so prices may be higher than one is hoping for. For one person the price maybe worth it as opposed to paying for gas but 2 or more, probably not. Also, due to opening in this section first, demand will not be near as high as it would be if it served SF or LA.

HSR is only successful if it has the connecting transit services to the stations on each end and these cities have pathetic transit ridership and frequencies. We also know that outside the big US cities, Americans are loath to take transit and especially the bus which they would have to as these cities have no rail. They could take Uber to get to the station and/or getting from the station to your final destination but that would wipe out a lot of the cost savings of taking the train in the first place. This is why Acela works in the NEC...........you have connecting transit so you don't need a car to get to where you are going.

Also, due to also not having near the ridership if it served SF and/or LA, the frequencies of the trains will not be very high taking the high speed out of high speed rail. You see this all over the US where cities build expensive rapid transit but with their low frequencies, their ridership levels are pathetic.

I appreciate your optimism and I hope you are correct but if the completion of the line depends upon the success of this section.........careful what you ask for.

I think that when the High Desert Link is built, CAHSR Trains should operate on it from Palmdale to Victor Valley/Victorville in a sort of "through running" mode overlapping with Brightline who would operate from Palmdale all the way to Las Vegas.

There could even be a CAHSR "circular" that goes from Palmdale to Victor Valley to Rancho to Union Station and back to Palmdale.

Yes, to all this. I've mentioned this in the past, and hope I'm wrong, but the entire CAHSR process is ass-backwards. You need service to SF and LA, not Bakersfield. The future of HSR in North America is dependent on getting some of the most transit-hostile geographies in existence to start taking transit at Euro- or Japan-levels. I have no idea how this will work. I imagine the vast majority of initial service will be people taking it like a Disney ride, not as actual functional urban-to-urban transit. These are metros with transit shares of 1-2%, and almost no choice riders.

If initial phase ridership sucks, will voters and bureaucrats have the patience to push forward? I hope so, bc this will work in the end. But I'm worried most voters are stupid and have no long-term vision, and we're gonna get nothing past the initial phase (which can still be spun as a dramatic improvement in service quality).

The most realistic scenario for successful HSR in the US requires riders to treat it like air travel. HSR can succeed because airports currently succeed at short-haul flights. It will not prompt Americans to rethink their suburban auto-oriented lifestyle, but it could cut carbon emissions substantially along with the adoption of EVs.

That means, outside of a few select cities, most riders will not ride a subway to catch their HSR train. They will take a car - drive themselves and park in a garage, get dropped off, get an Uber. So the spatial needs for an American HSR station are different from Euro and Asian ones. Local transit connections will be available, but not a realistic or desirable option for most users.

Of course, there is a second tier of wealthy riders who live or work in/around *certain* core cities. So I think we will end up with modest city-center terminals, paired with huge park-and-ride shoulder stations in the suburbs. For those who believe in the continued growth and importance of core cities, we need to fight for core-city HSR stations to remain in the program, because I fear the emerging centrist consensus around HSR will deem outlying suburban mega park-and-rides to be "good enough".

What debt are you talking about? Ticket revenue is not required to pay back construction costs. And currently, the Authority has no debt at all. They are not on the hook for the Prop 1A bonds. So far, construction has been paid by that, cap and trade revenue, and federal grants.

Completely agree with everything said. I think the success of NJ's Metropark along with New Carrollton outside DC and Route 128 outside Boston shows that yes, people will Park and Ride or Kiss and Ride to intercity rail just like they do for suburban rail and airports. "Success" here meaning the number of Acela and other trains that still stop at Metropark. I've also seen this first hand at the Kirkwood stop outside St. Louis. It almost seems to get more passengers for the Missouri River Runner than the Downtown STL stop does. But I completely agree, city center stops are still crucial for longevity and achieving a world class transportation network.

Metropark is in the heart of the most transit-oriented geography in the U.S. And it's a commuter station much moreso than an intercity station. It doesn't seem to have much relevance to whether people will take trains from Fresno to Merced.

I don't know why transit-oriented vs transit-hostile really matters for HSR. Again, millions of people currently fly between US cities even when driving is a realistic option.

Flying between cities means making a local connection of some kind, and somehow millions of people find a way to travel those last few miles even when local transit isn't an option. HSR will end up working the same way, with the added bonus that you can take the train into downtown if that's where you need to go.

Personally I wish HSR was a catalyst for US cities to re-orient around transit, but that's wishful thinking. Our culture has not gotten any less auto-centric in the last 30 years, and the cost of building transit has now wildly exceeded our willingness to pay for it as a society. Honestly the cost : demand ratio is worse than it's ever been; for decades many cities were able to build out light-rail systems with Federal help, but now it's just not fiscally possible - just look at Austin.

Where in the world do you have successful HSR in a transit-hostile environment?

And if it doesn't matter, why are we even bothering with SF and LA? You could build 90% of the system at half the cost. The airports are nowhere near downtown either. Forget the tunnels and in-town construction and just end it short of the passes.

^Saudi Arabia

It's hard to debate if HSR can or cannot work in transit-hostile environments because there is no where in the world where HSR has been built in a transit hostile environment. Despite not being true HSR, Brightline Florida is the closest example and even then most station are located in/near downtowns. Merced-Bakersfield and Brightline West will be the first case studies on if HSR can work in places far from downtowns, with little to no transit

Edit: Ha, Busy Bee posted before me

Ok, but that's a pretty unique case. It's a religious pilgrimage train, basically. And Saudi builds stuff without any serious consideration of demand or practicality.

Yes, but Saudi Arabia like many other middle eastern cities is notorious for having next to no urban public transit... Medina for example has essentially zero and relies on taxis almost exclusively. Not sure about Mecca. Who knows anything about Mecca really?

Many Californians will arrive at future CAHSR and Brightline stations just as they currently arrive at local airports--by private car and Uber/taxi. But some Californians will also arrive by public transit, as they currently do at the airports today.

CAHSR (and perhaps Brightline, one can hope) stations will almost certainly become focal points for local public transportation systems. The San Francisco and Los Angeles stations already are. However, the question remains whether locals will take public transit to the train stations. Time will tell.

San Jose's as well. In terms of rail connections, it might even be better than San Francisco's, as it'll have CAHSR, Caltrain, BART, VTA light rail, ACE, and Amtrak. The San Francisco station AFAIK will only have Caltrain, and possibly BART by way of a Second Transbay Tube. But no connection to Muni (unless you count the pedestrian tunnel connecting to the Embarcadero station) or ACE or Amtrak.

Yeah, San Jose Diridon is already the nominal rail hub of the region, and will only be more so with the addition of CAHSR. However, San Jose's very low transit ridership limits the value of Diridon as a functional hub.

As for Salesforce Transit Center, it is already a busy transit hub. It is currently served by Muni (including the heavily utilized 38 local and limited lines), AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit, WestCAT, Greyhound, and Amtrak ThruWay (buses to Emeryville Station). When Caltrain and CAHSR arrive, that terminal will get significantly busier. You are right to note that it won't be served by Muni Metro light rail, but I'll point out that the vast majority of SF transit riders travel by bus.

Agreed on all counts. It'll be interesting to see if SJ can become more of a transit oriented city by the time CAHSR rolls around. I'm guessing the BART extension will be completed ahead of it and then it'll probably be another decade for CAHSR to arrive, at which point SJ should have had plenty of time to prepare and re-orient itself around Diridon.

Hopefully the CV cities can get some height, for SJ though...what are the limits around Diridon? That station is gonna have so many rail connections..

Well, so far every country rich enough to build HSR is also not pathologically opposed to public transportation. America is unique in this respect.

The reason California is "bothering" with LA and SF is because the law requires them to link those two destinations, and CA has a lot of political power vested in its inner cities. On the other hand, Brightline West and Texas Central are both stopping short of major downtowns, because it is very expensive and difficult to build those segments. As private companies they have decided the juice ain't worth the squeeze, especially when the downtown is weak and will not actually generate much ridership; an inner or mid suburban station is good enough.

I think they're right in a pure business sense; they can get the ridership they need even if they don't go all the way downtown. So for those of us who want to see HSR investment benefit inner cities, we need to grapple with this reality. Orlando actually is an interesting case here; Brightline was set to take a freeway alignment south of the airport, and the city/county agreed to share the costs with Brightline to do a better and more costly alignment that served the convention center, Universal, etc.