These are certainly good points. With increased methods of decreasing the amount of time it takes getting a passenger from the door of the airport to the passenger taking off from the runway coupled with freeway expansions and inner city mass transit improvements, this time could be greatly reduced.

LOL, I think we all know where he plans to move this money and it starts with "w" and ends with "all".

imagine if newsom inadvertently funds the wall by cancelling HSR

The grant that Trump is trying to take back is the second one -- the one that CAHSR was awarded after Ohio and Wisconsin Tea Party governors sent back Obama stimulus money for rail projects in those states.

It's extremely unlikely that the feds will be able to get this money back, even if it's in escrow.

Trump is going to be gone long before this is settled in court.

On a totally different note, how long it it until Amtrak could run trains Madera-Hanford on the HSR tracks? At 120 MPH, this would cut 30 min off the San Joaquin total trip time.

People who hate rail pretend that air and car travel are 100% reliable. I have flown maybe 20 times in my life and have experienced lengthy delays in perfect weather 3-4 times (I don't recall ever flying during the winter) and once had a flight cancelled after arriving at LaGuardia because the plane I was supposed to take was stuck in Philadelphia.

How many times have we all experienced random traffic jams on the interstate highways out in the middle of nowhere? I have been stuck in epic 2-hour traffic jams out in the middle of nowhere many times. Plus, when you drive anywhere around the east or Great Lakes region on a weekday, you inevitably hit rush hour in one of the cities because there are so many of them.

Oh, and we don't pay ourselves to drive. If we paid ourselves $15/hr to drive our own cars, then added depreciation, and had to pay that money at the time of the trip, our love for driving would be reduced.

Train delays are a thing too. The NJT trains into Penn Station get delayed all the time. Although that's more to do with the decrepit condition of the infrastructure than weather.

Egregiously delayed trains is primarily an American and third-world problem. Talk to the Germans and the Swiss and the Japanese about how they feel about showing up late. This is the standard that would be in place with a modern true high speed railway.

Yep

Imagine that and then imagine if it funds a wall in Texas or Arizona, instead of upgrading the wall that already exists in California.

If Trump & co actually understood what construction of a high speed rail line entails, they'd know that the entire thing requires a 10+ foot fence on either side of the railway. So a 300~ mile railway between LA and San Francisco will require 600~ miles of big-time industrial fencing.

All they have to do is say "why are we trying to keep people off tracks with no trains but not from illegally crossing into the USA USA USA".

Seriously though, the cost of 600+ miles of 10+ foot high-grade metal fencing will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, if not something approaching 5% of the total project cost. Heck, the fencing might cost as much as most or all of the trains.

People who think that the money for CAHSR is going to fund Trump's wall are out to lunch. Setting aside the rather huge constitutional issues of a president declaring an emergency because congress declines to fund what he wants, CA has already been given the money. You'd need a judge to issue a stay to halt construction, and for that you'd need absolute, 100% ironclad proof that it's impossible for CA to finish the HSR line from Madera to Bakersfield by 2021 (a line that's already under construction btw). The bar is so high because pulling the funding would ensure exactly that, a sudden loss of funding would guarantee the project would miss its deadline. While there are certainly some doubts if CA can accomplish this, the proof that Trump needs simply doesn't exist. All Newstrom said was that CA doesn't have the funding right now to build connecting segments to SF and LA, but even if he outright said they were being canceled all the terms of the grant say is that CA needs to complete the central valley segment. If there is any chance of that still happening by 2021 then CA is still fulfilling its end of the bargain.

Oh, and Trump is demanding $5.3 billion for his wall (for only 55 miles natch). Even if he got all $3.5 billion back from CASHR that wouldn't cover all of it.

Start enhancing SF-Sac and LA-SD rail connections
 

We have an opportunity to start electrifying the Capital Corridor, Surfliner and the San Joaquin as well as carving out more dedicated rights of way to enhance existing rail corridors and improve travel times.

There’s also an opportunity to move to obtain dedicated rights of way.

There’s a great article in the Sacramento Bee this morning about the opportunity to connect the Capitol Corridor directly to the new Transbay Terminal via the proposed second tunnel.

How trains under the bay - not high-speed rail - may connect Sacramento and San Francisco
BY TONY BIZJAK

FEBRUARY 20, 2019 12:58 PM


For decades, train riders from Sacramento to San Francisco have been forced to get off in the East Bay and take a bus or BART into the city, adding time and hassle to what should ideally be a one-seat ride all the way.

Now, Northern California train and transit officials are proposing a dramatic upgrade.

Capitol Corridor train officials have joined with Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to explore building a second transit tunnel under San Francisco Bay that would carry additional BART trains – as well as Capitol Corridor trains directly into San Francisco job centers.

Those trains, most of which start in downtown Sacramento, could continue down the peninsula, taking riders to San Francisco International Airport and San Jose.

Read:

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/a...226474345.html

They're going to build HSR's entrance into San Francisco without saying they're building it. This is how politics works.

This and future hsr are one in the same, they just don't know it yet. Tunneling costs aside it seems incredibly logical that having a Peninsula entrance into SF via San Jose as well as an Altamont corridor entrance branching from between Modesto and Stockton running thu Tracy to Oakland and thru a new multipurpose second tube to TT. Just imagine the operational flexibility there. It would take the pressure of the Peninsula timetable with Caltrain op's, returning HSR trains from Sacramento southward to LA and multiple options in the reverse as well as sending trains to La via East Bay and Modesto. Hell you could in theory run a circle HSR train from SF-Modesto-Merced-SJ-RWC-SF. And that's not even getting to the commuter advantages of having the ACE modernized, sped up and sharing electrification on quad-tracks all the way to Sacramento and operations to Oakland with select trains into TT if capacity allows.

Building a 3~ mile single-track tunnel to Pleasanton and another 4~ mile tunnel under Altamont ostensibly for commuter rail would enable Central Valley HSR to get to Oakland. One HSR train (600-foot, not double-length train, obviously) per hour to Bakersfield would help sell completion of the project to LA.

They could build a narrower bore single-track tunnel (around 23 feet in diameter) instead of the 28-foot bore that is necessary for 150+mph travel. If HSR from Bakersfield has to slow to 60mph for 7 miles it won't matter.

So Trump should just build an HSR line from Houston to San Diego and put it on the border?

Welp...

Sure, except they'd have to build the entire thing on the ground, or else those pesky Mexicans would just walk through a culvert or low bridge.

Yeah, just politics. That bill will fizzle but it'll fuel right wing radio. They'll just say it's all an Agenda 21 conspiracy.

BTW, NPR's On Point had a CAHSR discussion last night. The opposing view was classic Koch Bros/Randal O'Toole gibberish. Kept deflecting from the actual proposal to broad generalities. For example, we heard no mention of the complicated SF and LA approaches, or the tunnels.

The opponent also brought up the nonsense about city density. Thousands of people drive or take a cab to and from the SF and LA airports every day. Those same people wouldn't drive or take a cab to a train station?

I can't think of anything scarier than a German style autobahn with Californians and other American thrill seeking opportunists behind the wheels.

There are folks that frequently make that claim even right here on this forum. It's maddening.

As already mentioned in this thread there isn't sufficient parking around either station and they're both downtown which means bad traffic. LA Union Station isn't in too dense of an area so building more parking is possible, but it would be really hard to build at the Transbay Terminal (assuming it ever reopens) due to the surrounding density.

Whay would anyone drive and leave their car at Transbay Terminal? The entire premise is misguided.

Dude, you literally just said it in your last post..

Very true. Most TBT/LAUS users will use public transit, whereas drivers would gravitate towards stations like Millbrae and Burbank. See St. Pancras vs Ebbsfleet for a real world example.

When I said that I was not thinking along the lines of parking and storing your car in the densest busiest core of the city. Driving to the train station was interpreted by me to mean having a family memberor friend drop you off at the train station in lieu of Uber or public transportation. Of course it's ridiculous to be building 10,000 spot parking decks to "allow" someone to drive to the main downtown train station.

I think LA Union would definitely need a large parking garage added. Maybe in San Francisco you could get away with having all the parking at a different station though given how much small the actual city is that LA.

There's already a giant parking lot next to LAUS: https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0538...7i13312!8i6656

Contrary to belief the Autobahn does not have "no speed limit". Yes, there are portions with no posted limits, but you can be pulled over for driving too fast or reckless driving. And the fines are pretty punitive, possibly including automatic driving ban.

This gets to the whole point that HSR is doomed unless well integrated with heavily used transit. If you're trying to accomodate drivers you've already failed.

Yeah, nobody has ever driven to a park-and-ride. They've all taken transit.

New videos from CAHSR.

First is the blended service from San Francisco to San Jose:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7YHNpOj7sQ

Second is San Jose to Gilroy to the Pacheco Pass Tunnel to the Wye...lots of interesting stuff here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wn3ynHNZ5A

Is there an example, anywhere on the planet, of a successful auto-oriented HSR line? Because that's the CA plan.

Is there an example, anywhere on the planet, of a successful transit-only airport?

Can't drive to the airport. No taxi stand, no parking garage, no rental cars.

What is the point of this silly question?

Pointing out that rail doesn't work unless you have existing public transit passengers has nothing to do with whether or not people will fly in planes based on the availability of airport parking.

Billy Bishop?

You keep bringing this same argument up and its already been debunked multiple times. The whole advantage of HSR transit is being able to go downtown to downtown without having to drive to the outskirts of the city and back. If CAHSR doesn't have that and most riders have to drive to a commuter station then it loses its whole advantage.

https://giant.gfycat.com/YoungSingleEquine.gif
_

Yeah, they should have built a train station underneath Transbay when they rebuilt it. And if only LA's transit network centered around LA Union Station instead of Disneyland.

Another new video from the Fresno area:
https://youtu.be/eru1JF6zUUM

I know you're being sarcastic, but this is actually true. If SF had a real station in the CBD, and if LA were really oriented around downtown, and if HSR could be directed SF-LA (not SJ-LA via nowheresville) this project would have vastly better prospects.

???

The plan absolutely was to have HSR terminate at the Salesforce transit center (very much in the CBD) and LAs transportation system very much does center in downtown....

Guys, don't fight Brooklyn. Let them guys determine and run the transportation system for you dumb Californians!!!

J/k, Crawford and I agree on this topic most often.

Let's spend $100 Billion [that is an incredible amount of money] on things like local rail, busses and freeways. L.A. is not and will never be N.Y. [thank Gawd!], so let's not pretend here.

Yeah, LA's going to have true high speed rail, which the Northeast will never have.

Just to be clear there are only 6 tracks there. That's not enough to adequately serve both HSR and commuter rail. The transit center is a huge bottleneck and limits the entire system.

As a terminal station, certainly. As a thru-station, hardly.

If a standard gauge 2-track transbay tube is built, they will be able to operate 12-15 trains per hour per direction (a mix of commuter rail and HSR) through the station. All peninsula commuter rail will continue to the east bay and vice verse. HSR will detrain, be cleaned and restocked in 5 minutes (the Japanese do this in this amount of time), receive a fresh crew, and then head back to LA on the opposite side of the bay. The crew will take a 30-60 minute break in SF, then operate a later train back to LA.

There has been a lot of chatter re: a new 4-track transbay tube with 2 tracks for commuter rail & HSR and a second set for BART, but I suspect that we will see a 3-track or 4-track standard gauge tube built instead.

I suspect that the BART line to Pleasanton & Livermore will be converted into standard gauge commuter rail compatible with Caltrains and HSR. That will open up capacity in the old Transbay Tube for more service on the other three BART lines. It will also enable current blue line riders to skip 5 BART stops, so save 10~ minutes en route to DT San Francisco.

None of this is true.

Real HSR would terminate in SJ, not SF, and LA is not oriented around its core. It's probably the most multinodal major metro on earth.

Building 30 miles of the peninsula route as 200mph track as opposed to the planned 110 mph track would save 7-9 minutes.

7-9 minutes are the make/break in the mind of HSR haters, until it's something else. The goalposts always shift.

Bruh, I said TRANSIT was centered around downtown, which was the original point. People can take that transit to downtown to catch a train.

Also, the majority of HSR systems in Europe have blended operations within dense urban environments, and dedicated tracks outside the cities. This is very standard for HSR. Saying the HSR system would terminate in SJ is silly.