California High Speed Rail Thread

[Busy Bee]

edale, I understand your frustration. The timeline and process has been aggravating and disappointing. It is very important to stay positive though and not get too down over this. The future could just as easily see an acceleration of progress and significant federal dollars that will enable the beginning of serious work beyond IOS. I do ask you please site that quote by Kelly... I find that very surprising he would say those exact words.

[numble]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

edale, I understand your frustration. The timeline and process has been aggravating and disappointing. It is very important to stay positive though and not get too down over this. The future could just as easily see an acceleration of progress and significant federal dollars that will enable the beginning of serious work beyond IOS. I do ask you please site that quote by Kelly... I find that very surprising he would say those exact words.

Here's the video and the transcript of the March 12 California Senate Transportation Committee Meeting:

https://www.senate.ca.gov/media/sena...20240312/video
https://vod.senate.ca.gov/videos/202...nsprtation.vtt

01:28:49.257 --> 01:28:50.958
WE ARE IN A

01:28:51.025 --> 01:28:52.260
BETTER PATH TODAY ON IT THEN

01:28:52.326 --> 01:28:54.062
WHEN I STARTED AND I BELIEVE IT

01:28:54.128 --> 01:28:56.297
WILL GET DONE, AND THEN I HOPE

01:28:56.364 --> 01:28:57.632
WE HAVE THE WHEREWITHAL TO DO

01:28:57.699 --> 01:28:59.233
SAN FRANCISCO TO L A AND THREE

01:28:59.300 --> 01:29:00.201
HOURS BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THIS

01:29:00.268 --> 01:29:02.136
PROJECT CAN DO, AND I THINK

01:29:02.203 --> 01:29:03.037
THAT'S REALLY IMPORTANT.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

edale, I understand your frustration. The timeline and process has been aggravating and disappointing. It is very important to stay positive though and not get too down over this. The future could just as easily see an acceleration of progress and significant federal dollars that will enable the beginning of serious work beyond IOS. I do ask you please site that quote by Kelly... I find that very surprising he would say those exact words.

The quote is from the video included with this article: https://www.kcra.com/article/califor...geles/60181448

I am still supportive of the project and don't want it cancelled or anything, but I am very frustrated and I think several critical errors have been made so far that seriously jeopardize the likelihood that this project ever sees full completion in my lifetime.

[Busy Bee]

Hmm, he seems to be emphasizing the time aspect more than whether the actual SF-LA route will see completion. Which is odd since the Measure language has a legal requirement of 2:40 station to station which the entirety of all engineering and specifications for the entire program is based off of.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by edale

I live in California, and have been a big supporter of CAHSR since it was announced. I'm incredibly disheartened by the pace of construction, massive cost increases, and the horrible mismanagement of this project. The CAHSR CEO even said "I hope we have the wherewithal to do San Francisco to LA in 3 hours" after completing the initial segment. Hoping to get the project done, with $100+ billion more added, at this stage is really shitty to hear.

A lot of this has to do to the lawsuits that were intended to derail or stall the project, and it sure looks like it working in the minds of Californians. As long as construction is continuous, then it's ok and they have already started testing trains on the Caltrain part. Costs are going to rise with everything else and there's no way a contractor is gonna be paid in 2008 or 2018 money for something being built last year.

None of the mistakes have really been explained and a lot of it can be answered just by looking at the initial bond (like the speed complaints). I'd like to know about the mismanagement, specifically since it's an entire Authority.

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Hmm, he seems to be emphasizing the time aspect more than whether the actual SF-LA route will see completion. Which is odd since the Measure language has a legal requirement of 2:40 station to station which the entirety of all engineering and specifications for the entire program is based off of.

Yup, and that includes the "not HSR!" travel time that was part of the OG proposition.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by homebucket

https://www.kcra.com/article/califor...geles/60181448

Who cares at this point.

The supporters would still support it if it were 10 trillion, they don't care.

Even though this money could have been used in a MASSIVE way to build bikeways and improve local transit throughout California.

But no, they are getting a massively overbudget rail line that competes with the airlines (aka most poor people won't use it).

[MAC123]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Who cares at this point.

The supporters would still support it if it were 10 trillion, they don't care.

Even though this money could have been used in a MASSIVE way to build bikeways and improve local transit throughout California.

But no, they are getting a massively overbudget rail line that competes with the airlines (aka most poor people won't use it).

It is going to break your mind when you find out that California can build more than 1 thing at a time, and in fact does that constantly.

Like if you even taken a second to think before typing that you never would have. California is constantly improving local transit, and while it has its shortcomings, has come a long way from even the 1990s

[TWAK]

CA suburbs, cities and towns have bike lanes on the streets...even the worst offending suburban areas will have bike lanes on some streets.
non-Californians still furious at us; don't worry about state funds, just federal funding for it. That allows us to be equally furious at any projects within a state somebody is posting from, especially if it is using federal funds.

[homebucket]

To be clear, I am still in full support of this project despite its cost overruns and delays. But yes, I understand the frustrations as well. In a perfect world, all segments would be under construction at once, meeting deadlines, and without going over budget.

I also agree that the end cities that this project will be connecting in the first phase at least (ie SF and LA) are already making local transit improvements as well, although again, it would be nice if they could happen faster and within original budget. The Transbay Downtown Rail Extension is on the FTA list of FY 2025 transit grants with $500 million. And as TWAK alluded to, Caltrain electrification is part of the project as well.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by edale

I live in California, and have been a big supporter of CAHSR since it was announced.

I guess I'm seeing a disconnect between the claim that you're a "big supporter" of a project that you called "a mess and an embarrassment" that is "failing spectacularly," especially when you "highly doubt we'll ever see more than the CV line."

I mean, I get the frustration. I get the desire to see more progress faster and cheaper. But I don't get why you would be a big supporter of anything like what you describe above. If decades of work costing tens of billions of dollars only gets us a Central Valley route, I won't be a supporter at all. Luckily, I still expect CAHSR to eventually link the Bay Area and Southern California, where I currently live.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by edale

Brightline is proposed to stop right off the Vegas strip, so I don't know what you're talking about.

The station is going to be 5-6 miles south of downtown. That means it isn't serving the public purpose that CAHSR is, which is spending a ton of money building its stations in not just the downtowns of its major cities but also its minor ones. CAHSR will interchange directly with local public transportation in many places.

On the other end, Brightline will be stopping in Rancho Cucamonga. While it's obviously not as good as it coming to DTLA (which I believe it eventually will)

Brightline will be "HSR" in name but won't travel quickly in it's slow-ass approach to a random spot 35 miles west of DTLA.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by edale

What a mess and an embarrassment. So the estimate is now $135 billion for the whole project? And complete by when...2060? If this project was supposed to provide an example of the viability of HSR in the US, I'd say it's failing spectacularly. I highly doubt we'll ever see more than the CV line. $35 billion to connect f***ing Merced to Bakersfield...what a joke.

The voter-approved Proposition 1A set up California HSR for failure. The circuitous routing through the Antelope Valley and along Highway 99; the ambitious requirement of a 2:40 run time from LA to SF; the stipulation that the Ca HSR would need to operate without public subsidy; the unrealistically low estimated completion cost of $30 billion or so--all these conflicting and unrealistic requirements and promises set the stage for inevitable disappointment. It wasn't long after Prop. 1A passed that new estimates doubled the expected construction costs. And the promises of private investor funding--to pay costs beyond the modest $10 billion that 1A authorized--never panned out. No shock there.

But construction of Ca HSR hasn't failed spectacularly. It's done pretty well with the resources allocated to it. What can you expect for $10 billion dollars, plus a pitiful annual allocation from the state cap-and-trade fund, plus the very infrequent gift of federal funds? It's not going to build the system overnight. And since the state has been so stingy releasing funds, construction progress has by necessity been slow, which results in overruns due to inflation. The only major construction misstep I've heard about was the authority's failure to complete land acquisitions before it awarded construction contracts. Partly this was due to the need to make the project eligible for the Obama stimulus grants that were supposed to favor shovel-ready projects. That added some costs, but probably minor ones in the bigger scheme of things.

What has the state spent so far on the IOS? Certainly less than $20 billion. To put this in perspective, Caltrans spent $1.5 billion just to add a single northbound lane for 10 miles of the northbound San Diego Freeway in LA. Orange County spent over $2 billion to add 2 lanes to each side of the same freeway between Long Beach and Costa Mesa. Any congestion relief provided by those additional freeway lanes will have evaporated long before the IOS of Ca HSR opens for service.

[Busy Bee]

It's also incredibly important to remember that the multi-year financing of this thing in one of the wealthiest economies on earth is the equivalent of a handful of tech corp margin calls.

California's YEARLY state budget is a quarter of trillion dollars. Plus the feds will ultimately wind up paying a significant portion of the cost.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by FromSD

The voter-approved Proposition 1A set up California HSR for failure. The circuitous routing through the Antelope Valley and along Highway 99; the ambitious requirement of a 2:40 run time from LA to SF; the stipulation that the Ca HSR would need to operate without public subsidy; the unrealistically low estimated completion cost of $30 billion or so--all these conflicting and unrealistic requirements and promises set the stage for inevitable disappointment. It wasn't long after Prop. 1A passed that new estimates doubled the expected construction costs. And the promises of private investor funding--to pay costs beyond the modest $10 billion that 1A authorized--never panned out. No shock there.
.

The proposition limiting how funds can be raised was incredibly dumb (they had to since CA was even more anti-tax back then), but going along 99 instead of another route is great because it serves a lot of people (6 million +) along the route. Ridership will be a lot higher if it goes along populated corridors and I can't really speak on the So Cal route since I know more about the project for nor cal.

My county doesn't even have a regular rail line but I still like the project, because trains are cool and that means no spending limits!

[electricron]

Originally Posted by TWAK

The proposition limiting how funds can be raised was incredibly dumb (they had to since CA was even more anti-tax back then), but going along 99 instead of another route is great because it serves a lot of people (6 million +) along the route. Ridership will be a lot higher if it goes along populated corridors and I can't really speak on the So Cal route since I know more about the project for nor cal.

My county doesn't even have a regular rail line but I still like the project, because trains are cool and that means no spending limits!

The existing Amtrak San Joaquins parallel SH99, and what is its' average daily ridership? It even reaches San Jose with a one seat ride, which the initial operating segment will not do.
Per Wiki, the yearly ridership was 847,364 (FY23).
Some math follows: 847,364 / 365 = 2,321.5
Wiki also reports just 14 trains a day.
More math follows:
2321/5 / 14 = 165.8 riders per train.

[TWAK]

What does that mean though, that the CV will not use HSR?
There's no service to compare the I-5 route with because there's basically nothing after the Stockton metro.

[tech12]

Originally Posted by electricron

The existing Amtrak San Joaquins parallel SH99, and what is its' average daily ridership? It even reaches San Jose with a one seat ride, which the initial operating segment will not do.
Per Wiki, the yearly ridership was 847,364 (FY23).
Some math follows: 847,364 / 365 = 2,321.5
Wiki also reports just 14 trains a day.
More math follows:
2321/5 / 14 = 165.8 riders per train.

It's the 7th busiest Amtrak route in the US. By American standards, it has plenty of riders. And for the record, the 6th busiest Amtrak route (Capitol Corridor) also serves the Central Valley.

The reason ridership is relatively low compared to better systems, is because it's a passenger train, in America, outside of the northeast corridor. It not only has to share rail with freight, but it's also not had the investment/improvements that say, Acela has. If rail transit is improved, more riders will follow.

[numble]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

It's also incredibly important to remember that the multi-year financing of this thing in one of the wealthiest economies on earth is the equivalent of a handful of tech corp margin calls.

California's YEARLY state budget is a quarter of trillion dollars. Plus the feds will ultimately wind up paying a significant portion of the cost.

There is no indication that there are votes in the California legislature to allocate funding to this project. Before this year's deficit, there were 2 years of surpluses and $0 of these surpluses were spent on this project. The next transportation focus for the legislature will be to somehow find a stable source of funding to provide operating dollars to the state's ailing transit agencies.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law does not have the funding needed for the non-CV portion of this project. The authority is hoping that they can get more funding from that law to complete the Central Valley portion. I don't expect the next presidential term to focus on more infrastructure funding (and we don't see that in their campaign platforms either). If Biden wins, I think the focus will be on social services, child care, housing and perhaps immigration.

[TWAK]

It's been a while since I read the proposition, but there are restrictions to how HSR is funded. Can the legislature even transfer funds or use a surplus for it? There's also rules for how much the state has to give back to taxpayers if there is a surplus.

[numble]

Originally Posted by TWAK

It's been a while since I read the proposition, but there are restrictions to how HSR is funded. Can the legislature even transfer funds to it?

It obviously can. It is mostly funded from CA's cap-and-trade which was not in existence during Prop 1A and the legislature has not changed Brown's allocation of 25% of it to high-speed rail. CAHSR's semi-annual business plans always asks the legislature for funding as well:

The General Fund does not currently provide direct funding support to the Authority. In times of budget surpluses, the State Constitution suggests infrastructure investments are an appropriate expenditure of one-time, or limited-term, state funds. For instance, in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 budgets, General Fund dollars were directed to transit operations and capital, as well as other transportation purposes, but none of this funding was directed to the Authority.

Another thing indicating lack of support is that the legislature passed SB1 in 2017 to raise a lot of taxes for transportation funding, and $0 of that went to the high-speed rail project.