Only in America though. For example, the rest of the world is generally able to bore tunnel at about $2-300m per km. I think Spain does it for like $60m.

So can anyone explain why that is? There has to be a reason. Perhaps standards are higher here in the US? More environmental work has to be done here than there? I mean everyone keeps saying prices are higher here, but surely there is a reason. If someone is just pocketing the money and buying Ferrari's, I would think people would have caught that by now.

I think this is a good overview from Stephen Smith at Market Urbanism:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...-transit-costs

300 million/km = 483 million/mile

Fresno construction
 

I am going to re-post these photos since it seems like they got lost with the discussion above.

HIGH-SPEED RAIL PROJECT BRINGING BIG CHANGES TO FRESNO COUNTY AS CONSTRUCTION CONTINUES

By Dale Yurong
Tuesday, October 18, 2016

"FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Work is well underway on the two-mile long Fresno trench which will take High-Speed Rail trains 45 feet underground and then through a highway 180 passageway. Crews are shoring up shoulder support for the project which will require a significant lane shift on 180-- possibly within a month.

"Well, what you're going to notice is a reconfiguration of the traffic patterns. So we are shifting one lane of the west bound traffic to the east bound lane," said Diana Gomez, HSR Regional Director.

Gomez is the Central Valley Regional Director for the California High-Speed Rail Authority..."

http://abc30.com/society/high-speed-...inues/1561470/


One of my friends who works for Parsons Brinckerhoff took these photos of high speed rail construction in Fresno. This important investment in efficient, modern, infrastructure is creating good jobs an will help encourage infill development in cities like Fresno.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5603/3...3bbf47b7_b.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5813/3...a5372c28_b.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5601/3...53dee006_b.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8131/3...4bcd375e_b.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5565/3...960ac5b5_b.jpg

Proposed high-speed rail station would travel from Burbank to L.A. Union Station
 

Proposed high-speed rail station would travel from Burbank to L.A. Union Station

By Anthony Clark Carpio
LA Times
Dec. 5, 2016

"Representatives with the California High-Speed Rail Authority met with Burbank and Glendale residents last week and told them how the 800-mile bullet train state project would likely affect them.

During community meetings at the Buena Vista Branch Library in Burbank on Tuesday and the Adult Recreation Center in Glendale on Thursday, state officials briefed residents about the planned 12-mile section of the project, which spans from a proposed new railway station next to Hollywood Burbank Airport to Los Angeles Union Station.

Excluding some portions in Burbank, the authority is looking to connect the two stations by primarily using the railroad right-of-way currently used by Metro, Metrolink, Amtrak and freight operators...."

http://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank...202-story.html

My question is this: will using this route entail an electrified Metrolink sharing tracks with HSR, or dedicated HSR tracks?

The latest news article stated using a shared corridor, which may or may not mean shared tracks within that corridor. it also stated some, not all, of the tracks will need electrification - well every track the HSR trains will use will have to be electrified. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see a mix - some dedicated tracks and some shared tracks. But I don't believe CHSR is that far along with the design to determine that yet. Golly, they're just choosing the preferred alighnment, at which point they can start designing it in detail.

From the authority

http://i.imgur.com/6pQ7cBh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/VLn3bvd.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/a5Ii8Jl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/pkLs6S7.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/HiXDqNM.jpg

California's bullet train is hurtling toward a multibillion-dollar overrun, a confidential federal report warns


Wow! Already 7 years behind schedule on the easiest segment of the route through the flat and largely rural Central Valley.

$10 billion to build a train to and from nowhere. Merced to Shafter (Where TF is Shafter?!)

Nobody saw this coming, nope!

Read more: LA Times
:facepalm:

This is because more populated areas DID NOT WANT IT! How can they build it "somewhere important" if they can't start it in the first place? All the while these areas that are "nowhere" happen to also be desperate for ANYTHING to help the economy.
To be along the backbone of a large percentage of the state's agriculture is a terrible idea?

^ Yeah I though the original proposal had the line running pretty much along US 101 and then the politicians got all into it (sure seems they were trying to use this as an economic development engine for central valley cities but in a weird wrong way that ticked-off the farmers). Also I thought it was a bit silly that the I-5 Tejon Pass corridor wasn't considered (sure this would have required costly tunnels and bridges but this would have been much shorter by about 38 miles and thus allowing some time savings). When you folks passed this back in 2008 I was living in my old home state of Colorado, however I've followed this project from the get-go.

I thought I'd share this: California has several corridors that could be built as "higher speed rail" similar in scope of what was built between Chicago and St Louis and Florida has the private Bright Line higher speed rail which could also work here (heck the Bright Line train sets are built right here in Sacramento by Siemens).

Just another thing I read the trade magazines Railway Gazette and Railwayage and its kinda interesting but a lot of the high speed rail corridors in Europe were actually built by public-private partnerships. If we want rail to succeed then we should cut back on subsidies to auto travel and aviation which weaker politicians can't seem to let go of (big oil and the trucking industry wouldn't allow for this either)....

Allegedly SNCF offered to build it for $30 billion along the I-5 corridor but was turned down for political reasons.

^ Thanks ChargerCarl.

IMO this is how they should have done it. Incremental improvements instead of a highly risky megaproject starting in the location that least needs HSR.

This project could very well just fail and taxpayers get nothing. If it would have started around LA or SF it would maintain momentum regardless, and eventually get finished.
This is another problem in the U.S. We don't have the conditions for HSR. As long as driving is cheap, and airline connections cheap and plentiful, we will never have a Europe-style system.

I'm not convinced that HSR will work in the U.S., outside of the Northeast Corridor (and even there only really works because NYC is at the center of the route and so big, centralized and transit-oriented). I think CA's highly decentralized metros will make for tough conditions.

It's a viable route, and it's not like we didn't have private operators that wanted in, they just nope'd the fuck out of there once they found out it was gonna be a political shit show.

High-speed rail: Planners pitch ‘preferred’ route around Chowchilla
 

High-speed rail: Planners pitch ‘preferred’ route around Chowchilla

Fresno Bee
By Tim Sheehan
Jan. 17, 2017

http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/...18_hsr_for_web
Image courtesy of the Fresno Bee.

"A potential east-west bullet-train route along Highway 152 in Madera County is being pitched by high-speed rail planners and engineers as the best option for a Y-shaped junction for the train lines near Chowchilla.

At their meeting Wednesday in Sacramento, California High-Speed Rail Authority board members will be asked to approve Road 11 and Highway 152 as the “preferred alternative” that will go through a detailed environmental analysis in the coming months.

It is being recommended over three other options for the Central Valley Wye, a junction to link the rail authority’s main north-south line from Merced to Bakersfield with an east-west line toward Gilroy and San Jose..."

http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/...127087224.html

Wait - so construction already started before they even chose a partner?

The two decisions are mutually exclusive.

CA voters a long time ago passed a 10 billion $ bond issue to get the thing started but they obviously need more money to complete it. The funding all along was expected to come from a combination of the state (including the bond money), feds and private partners but, no, the private partners have not yet been selected. And in a way that's a good thing because the outlook for federal money is looking grimmer under Trump than it did under Obama (in spite of all the talk about building infrastucture including high speed rail) so the size and arrangement of the private involvement may have to be different today than it would have been a few years ago.

The private partner is only working with the agency to facilitate the eventual operation of a franchise - they've been soliciting feedback from interested private parties for several years, in any case.

It was always planned that the initial construction packages would be awarded, designed, and under construction before we ever saw bids for potential franchisees.

And "all the talk about building...high speed rail" wasn't just talk; it was backed up with concrete actions that Congress refused to act on.

I thought they got the money for that already?

edit: nvm, it wasn't the full amount.

They've got it now but hadn't when I posted that.

Who knew CA HSR construction had gotten to the point this was real?

http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/56/72/22.../7/920x920.jpg
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/articl...photo-12297368

This thread is for construction updates only. There is another thread about the merits of California's HSR.

No thanks. This is a small forum and we should alllow discussion to take place more or less freely wherever it arises.

Yes thanks. The purpose of this thread is so people who are interested in the status of CAHSR can track it. That purpose is largely impossible if the thread is overrun with endless debates on the merits of the project. That's very clear in the thread title.

The spin-off discussion from the past few days has been moved to its own thread. Feel free to continue there, but kindly leave any discussion on the merits of the project out of this thread.

New web site: https://buildhsr.com

Early train operator contract
 

Sehr gut. Sehr sehr gut...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...G-Logo.svg.png


DB recommended for Caifornia high-speed early operator contract

A consortium led by German Rail (DB) has emerged as the frontrunner in a tender to select an “early train operator” for the California high-speed rail network.

DB Engineering & Consulting USA, a consortium of DB International US, DB, Alternate Concepts, and HDR will be recommended to the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) board of directors for contract award on at their next meeting on October 19.

Four shortlisted bidders submitted proposals to CHSRA on September 6. DB Engineering achieved the highest ranking in the subsequent assessment, followed by Renfe in second place, FS First Rail Group in third, and China HSR ETO Consortium in fourth.

...

Other responsibilities include providing support on station design and operational planning, train interiors, fares integration and interoperability with connecting operators, security and safety, operations control systems and train dispatching, and opportunities to maximise revenue.

Rest of story

:haha: Christ, it still sounds rough, guttural and gothic... Doesn't it? The German cousins...

Siemens literally swallowed Alstom Transport lately. We just let it happen, but I guess it's only because we're good Catholic people who believe in unity.

Our hope here is to establish a Western giant to survive the formidable Chinese competition. Cause you know, the Chinese are not quite Christian enough yet...

Ha! That's a joke. But there's a bit of truth or actual facts behind that joke.

Loved my experiences on DB's rail services. If they can bring that to California, I am greatly in favor of it.

Yep, let the Germans run the trains. Hmm, seems like there's an old joke there somewhere...

^ Wasn't a similar proposal from SNCF derailed a few years back because some California snowflakes got offended at that railroad's connection to the Holocaust? Never mind that it was done under coercion.

I can't imagine DB will get very far if SNCF was deemed unacceptable...

I don't remember that but the fact is it's hard to think of a prominent national rail network without troubling historical connections. China (well Mao didn't kill THAT many, just probably more than the German guy). Japan (if not Germany, how can Japan be in the running?). Maybe Spain (but somebody would bring up Franco).

Here's reality: The "snowflakes" to whom you refer probably don't want HSR anyway. Gov. Brown has been single handidly pushing it and one wonders what will happen when he leaves office. Assuming Gavin Newsom is the replacement, I don't trust him to keep pushing HSR like Brown has done. He's a snowflake's snowflake.

Can we please agree to stop using that asinine word?

This seems like best case scenario to me. Those Germans run a good network.

Now that I look into it, it seems the bid was derailed because SNCF wanted to serve California along the I-5 alignment, which they believed would produce higher ridership at lower cost, but would put Fresno and Bakersfield on spurs instead of on the main line.

The Holocaust thing was more of a speed bump - Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill that Bob Blumenfield pushed, and SNCF issued an apology.

Still, I expect some hysterical anti-Nazi reactions to the selection of DB.

^^The hysteria seems to me to be among Central Valley conservatives who don't realize what a boon it would be to their constituents to have quick, frequent access to SF, LA and Sacramento even if the only reason they wanted to go there was to get to a major airport.

Here's the new timetable for CalTrain electrification. CalTrain is a commuter line from Gilroy (south of San Jose) into downtown San Francisco (though presently to a station in Mission Bay, not the almost completed new TransBay Terminal). CA HSR will use CalTrain right of way and, at least initially, tracks for the last part of its route to San Francisco--between that city and San Jose--and electrification of the route is critical for HSR as well as the commuter service. Heretofore CalTrain trains have used diesel equipment but that cannot go through a to-be-built tunnel from the present terminus into the TransBay.

CalTrain electrification time table:

http://www.socketsite.com/wp-content...ecast-9-17.png
http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2...k-to-2022.html

RSD = Revenue Service Date

Make sure to thank your local CA GOP Representative for delaying this project six months and adding $30m to the cost. Hooray for the party of personal responsibility and fiscal conservatism! :cheers:

A 13.5-mile tunnel will make or break California's bullet train
 

A 13.5-mile tunnel will make or break California's bullet train

By Ralph Vartabedian
LA Times
Oct. 21, 2017

http://www.trbimg.com/img-59db80c4/t...ge/750/750x422
Image courtesy of the LA Times.

"Whhen the first California bullet train pulls out of San Jose one day, a crucial part of the journey will be a 13.5-mile tunnel beneath the winding peaks and valleys of Pacheco Pass.

Trains will run at top speed along a straight and level route beneath the Diablo Range, shooting through the nation’s longest and most advanced transportation tunnel.

But the massive scope and complexity of the tunnel are at the heart of new concerns about the viability of the state project..."

http://www.latimes.com/local/califor...021-story.html

That's not what actually is going on I think. When people cause problems on projects like this they know they can't stop it forever so they are just hoping to drive the cost up so high that it gets abandoned.

From the article:

A 13.5 mile tunnel through a mountain with known seismic activity is going to easily exceed what is allocated for the entire 54 mile segment.

5.5 Billion for building a tunnel this long in California? Someone is living in a fantasy land.

http://www.latimes.com/local/califor...116-story.html

Cost of California bullet train jumps by $2.8 billion just in the Central Valley


The estimated cost of building 119 miles of bullet train track in the Central Valley has jumped to $10.6 billion, an increase of $2.8 billion from the current budget and up from about $6 billion originally.

The new calculation takes into account a number of extremely costly problems encountered by the state rail agency. It raises difficult questions about how the state will complete the massive effort, the largest national infrastructure project, with the existing funding sources.

The new estimate was presented Tuesday by Roy Hill, who leads the main consulting firm on the project, WSP (formerly Parson Brinckerhoff). Hill said the cost increases were mainly driven by problems including higher costs for land acquisition, issues in relocated utility systems, the need for safety barriers where the bullet trains would operate near freight lines and demands by stakeholders for mitigation of myriad issues.

“The worst case scenario has happened,” Hill said bluntly.

Who could have predicted this? Oh wait, just about everybody.

They need to figure out a better way to control costs but this expenditure is not that big in the context of the world's sixth largest economy stop saying that