California High Speed Rail Thread

[Will O' Wisp]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

This project is a piece of cake from an engineering point of view, given that the United States has led the planet in military aviation, navy, space, computers - everything with the exception of high speed trains - for the past 70 years. Hell, we have the greatest freight railroad network on the planet and nearly 100% of its equipment is manufactured domestically.

The United States is, by far, the wealthiest country in the world. The S&P is worth 10X in 2021 as compared to 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. California alone has the cash on hand to build this thing, even without the help of the federal government.

So why aren't we farther along? Politics.

Politics, priorities, and culture to be more precise.

Three days ago CA approved $15 billion in wildfire defense, drought protection, and other climate change funding. That's more than the entire cost of the IOS, spend in just one year. The money is there, the government prefers to spend it on other things.

But even in CA, HSR rolls against the culture. Americans always look at government in terms of taxes raised and money spent, not on societal benefit. Transportation infrastructure is money loosing. From that perspective, roads are a better investment, they cost much less to build and maintain than HSR. I wouldn't be surprised if HSR cost more than an equivalent road system even after you accounted for HSR's income from ticket fees. So you get a lower tax bill with freeways.

But that math doesn't take into account the cost of a car, gasoline, heath effects from an auto based society, and lowered productivity from time spent in traffic. All that doesn't go on a tax bill, even though it can add up to far more per person than the cost of HSR and public transit. So even if they have a lower taxes, your average American probably spends more in total for the ability to get from place to place than people do Japan or western Europe.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Will O' Wisp

Politics, priorities, and culture to be more precise.

But that math doesn't take into account the cost of a car, gasoline, heath effects from an auto based society, and lowered productivity from time spent in traffic. All that doesn't go on a tax bill, even though it can add up to far more per person than the cost of HSR and public transit. So even if they have a lower tax bill, your average American probably spends more in total for the ability to get from place to place than people do Japan or western Europe.

Probably? That is an all inclusive verb. What is the reality?
% of Americans owning cars? 75.5%
% of Europeans owning cars?
Portugal 77.8%
Luxembourg 72.7%
Iceland 71.9%
Italy 66.6%
Slovenia 59.8%
France 59.5%
% of Japanese owning cars? 61.2%
https://www.forbes.com/2008/07/30/en...h=12433a92185a

https://www.travelmath.com/cost-of-driving/
USA $127.97 for 100 miles
Europe E119.01 for 1609 kilometers (100 miles)
E119.01 = $139.45
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=11...&ei=UTF-8&fp=1

Hmmm. Almost as many Europeans owns cars as Americans, and they have to pay to license and insure their cars as well, and pay more in fuel to drive 100 miles. How can their cost of transport be cheaper? Environmental affects will be more dependent upon miles traveled than anything else. There is nothing keeping Americans from buying their homes closer their place of work if they so choose. But I will admit most American cities are spread out less dense than European cities so Americans travel further.

13,476 miles by the averaged American
https://www.google.com/search?q=amer...hrome&ie=UTF-8
12,000 km/year by the averaged European
https://www.google.com/search?
q=europeans+distance+travel+in+cars+per+year&rlz=1C1ASUM_enUS903US903&ei=_t1OYc7zOYP1-gST8IeAAQ&oq=europeans+distance+travel+in+cars+per+year&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EANKBAhBGABQ9ZAGWOSpBmCEsgZoAHACeACAAVyIAZQFkgECMTCYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwjO6o3X2pnzAhWDup4KHRP4ARAQ4dUDCA8&uact=5
FYI, 12,000 km = 7456.4 miles
Looks like I thought correctly about miles driven.

London Underground fares are based on zones traveled.
New York Subway fares are not based on zones, you can ride anywhere on a single trip for $2.75. Make a transfer, add another $2.75. Most buy fares by the month (30-Day) $121.00 or by the week (7 days) $32.00.
How the math works for commuters, 2 trips x 5 days a week = 10 trips.
$32 / 10 trips = $3.20 per trip. Make 4 trips every day, 28 trips in a week, your cost per trip is now just $1.14 per trip. The more you ride the subway, the cheaper it gets.
Hence, transit is cheaper in New York than in London.

So, is it really cheaper to travel in Europe than in America? Not probable.

It is so easy to express a wrong opinion without backing it up with data.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Will O' Wisp

But that math doesn't take into account the cost of a car

This goes for rail transit projects along with intercity rail. The trains themselves are very expensive and need to be staffed. But the trains last much longer - often 30+ years - and travel many more miles than any private vehicle or city or charter bus.

The counter-argument is that owning a car carries a fixed daily cost, and so it only costs incrementally more for someone to drive the car to Point B as opposed to take a bus or ride a train. But that argument - always coming from the Tea Party types - disappears when the matter of air travel comes up. Oddly, they don't disband the argument when the matter of high speed rail comes up, even though the Northeast Corridor and CAHSR are time-competitive door-to-door with jet flight.

[Busy Bee]

The cars per household number is more striking. Go fetch that for us Electricron.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

The cars per household number is more striking. Go fetch that for us Electricron.

That can be done. You could have done it but decided not to.
Per https://www.cars.com/articles/how-ma...1420694459157/
1.927 cars per USA household

Per https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig2_341399861

That graph is about the best I could find, it seems the European Union likes to list everything separately by country and avoids a general European average.
Booooooo!

Never-the-less, not as high as America. Considering almost half the homes in Europe are townhouses without garages, there's not a lot of parking spots by most homes.

[Busy Bee]

It's also becuase they don't NEED two or more cars per household since compact living and sensible urban planning with alternative transportation abounding is the norm. Also teenagers/Y.A.s don't view having their own car as a "right of passage" far far less than N.A. culture does, and even that is diminishing here.

[Busy Bee]

Streetsblog Visits Under Construction CHSR Structures

[SFBruin]

It seems to me that good transit in many mid-sized cities prevents people from needing to own a second car.

You might be able to get around without a car at all in these types of places, but the second car definitely is an easy sacrifice.

[curt-pdx]

NEXT BIT has dropped: Drone footage of CP2-3 from John at The Four Foot:

• Video Link

Originally Posted by curt-pdx

More goodness from John at The Four Foot - a drone flyover of CP1:

• Video Link

My thanks to him for his impressive commitment of time to keep us informed. There will be two more drone flyover videos of the other construction packages coming soon.

[Busy Bee]

It bothers me tremendously that essentially top-notch marketing materials like these fan videos are not being produced by the Authority to maintain and further sell the public on a political commitment to the project, but instead produced by a random enthusiast doing it for no other reason but their passion and interest for little to no money outside of peripheral Patreon contributions. Why the CHSRA hasn't hired John is beyond me.

Furthermore, the CHSR project isn't like a HS2 or a new TGV line scheme where you produce a video showing how pre-existing rail service will be drastically improved by a HSR bypass. Essenitally for all intents and purposes the California project doesn't have a pre-existing service its improving upon. The existing Amtrak services are not only subpar in most ways, it's not a reality that most citizens can relate to as something they are familiar with and therefore something they can see will be dramatically improved by HSR implementation. In the case of California, this isn't "an improvement" this is a paradigm shift or at least has the potential to be. From day one the Authority should have been producing marketing materials that didn't just show 2.5 seconds of a scene with a train and a tunnel in the desert or speeding through the Fresno trench, thats fine an all, but what they should be doing is showing the average Californian how the system can be used. Show the transition between sitting in freeway traffic or hours behind the wheel through the central valley, fighting parking in cities, etc etc. Show instead a rider leaving their front door, catching a short bus ride or having a friend drop them at the front door of an ultramodern HSR station. Show them using a laptop or playing cards or talking with friends/family or even snoozing while the suckers over on the highway are falling asleep at the wheel LOL. Show them arrival in the center of town, in several cities, walking just a few hundred feet to their destination or catching public transportation or an easy pre-coordinated rideshare to a more suburban destination. There's so many things the CHSRA shoudl and could be doing to keep the public engaged and "on board" with the promise of this project. Instead most of their videos, other than the animations 10+ years old and un-updated, seem to be random flyovers of routes no longer in contention or about ironworkers and how many jobs have been created. That's fine, I'm just not sure if that's enough to keep the public excited about the big picture potential of the project and how it could transform how Californians travel.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

It bothers me tremendously that essentially top-notch marketing materials like these fan videos are not being produced by the Authority to maintain and further sell the public on a political commitment to the project, but instead produced by a random enthusiast doing it for no other reason but their passion and interest for little to no money outside of peripheral Patreon contributions. Why the CHSRA hasn't hired John is beyond me.

Furthermore, the CHSR project isn't like a HS2 or a new TGV line scheme where you produce a video showing how pre-existing rail service will be drastically improved by a HSR bypass. Essenitally for all intents and purposes the California project doesn't have a pre-existing service its improving upon. The existing Amtrak services are not only subpar in most ways, it's not a reality that most citizens can relate to as something they are familiar with and therefore something they can see will be dramatically improved by HSR implementation. In the case of California, this isn't "an improvement" this is a paradigm shift or at least has the potential to be. From day one the Authority should have been producing marketing materials that didn't just show 2.5 seconds of a scene with a train and a tunnel in the desert or speeding through the Fresno trench, thats fine an all, but what they should be doing is showing the average Californian how the system can be used. Show the transition between sitting in freeway traffic or hours behind the wheel through the central valley, fighting parking in cities, etc etc. Show instead a rider leaving their front door, catching a short bus ride or having a friend drop them at the front door of an ultramodern HSR station. Show them using a laptop or playing cards or talking with friends/family or even snoozing while the suckers over on the highway are falling asleep at the wheel LOL. Show them arrival in the center of town, in several cities, walking just a few hundred feet to their destination or catching public transportation or an easy pre-coordinated rideshare to a more suburban destination. There's so many things the CHSRA shoudl and could be doing to keep the public engaged and "on board" with the promise of this project. Instead most of their videos, other than the animations 10+ years old and un-updated, seem to be random flyovers of routes no longer in contention or about ironworkers and how many jobs have been created. That's fine, I'm just not sure if that's enough to keep the public excited about the big picture potential of the project and how it could transform how Californians travel.

All great points. But if you really need more publicity on their web site advocating CHSR, I suggest starting a petition to have a new referendum to raise more money or kill it - your choice! For some reasons, the only encouragement for CHSR Authority to do spend a lot of money for outreaches to the public is to have a referendum! They need a political challenge to spend that money.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by electricron

outreaches to the public

CAHSR and fan videos are no match for that carnival barker Elon Musk and his hyperloop/boring company scams. He has single-handedly done more to muddy the conversation than anyone else, and no amount of money will get him to shut up and go back to rescuing soccer teams from caves.

[tech12]

Yeah, we could definitely use some better HSR marketing.

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

and no amount of money will get him to shut up and go back to rescuing soccer teams from caves.

He didn't even rescue anyone lol

But he did call the actual rescuer a pedophile, after the guy declined to use Elon's untested child-sized submersible to rescue the kids.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

CAHSR and fan videos are no match for that carnival barker Elon Musk and his hyperloop/boring company scams. He has single-handedly done more to muddy the conversation than anyone else, and no amount of money will get him to shut up and go back to rescuing soccer teams from caves.

Well that and people from other states telling CA that it won't get built or it's too much money. PR would cost more money for them though, and people from outside the state are complaining about the costs as well.
I think it's just because it's a project in California, if it was in Texas everybody would just say "that's really cool".
I suspect some salt is from the feds giving CA money. Electricon wants it for his state.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by TWAK

if it was in Texas

Everyone here knows that the Texas project is small-time compared to CAHSR. 20~ fewer stations and 20~ fewer tunnels. No integration with other rail activities (Caltrains, Metrorail, Las Vegas rail). The Texas stations won't be in downtown Dallas or Houston or integrated with their respective existing public transportation systems.

Everything's bigger in Texas, except high speed rail.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Everyone here knows that the Texas project is small-time compared to CAHSR. 20~ fewer stations and 20~ fewer tunnels. No integration with other rail activities (Caltrains, Metrorail, Las Vegas rail). The Texas stations won't be in downtown Dallas or Houston or integrated with their respective existing public transportation systems.

Everything's bigger in Texas, except high speed rail.

Wont get built!!
Sorry, just had to try. That's cool Texas is getting a HSR project though, which is the proper response for transportation fans!

[electricron]

Originally Posted by TWAK

Wont get built!!
Sorry, just had to try. That's cool Texas is getting a HSR project though, which is the proper response for transportation fans!

I'm not sure anyone in the USA will ever raise enough money to build a HSR line. But let's take a bird's eye view on how California and Texas HSR projects have proceeded to date.
1) Both California and Texas projects were initiated as HSR projects, no other means of transportation were seriously considered as alternatives.
2) The California Legislature established a government Commission or Authority to finance, study, design, build, and run a HSR system.
3) Texas Central established a private company to do the same things.
4) The California Authority broke the planned HSR line into many parts or sections. California is studying, designing, building, and financing its project one section at a time.
5) Texas Central has not, keeping the whole Dallas to Houston into one project, it's an all or nothing project.
6) California started construction before finishing all the IOS environmental reviews, and without the money in hand to finish the IOS.
7) Texas Central has completed all its environmental reviews, but has not started construction yet, getting all its ducks in a row before actually moving dirt.
8) Both have had difficulties in the court systems over eminent domain property purchases.

IMHO, one project has proceeded in a sound economic and engineering way, and the other has not. Guess which one I think has been more responsible.

Again I repeat, I have no idea whether either project will ever be completed.

[TWAK]

^So you're angry at another HSR system located a thousand miles away? I'm not mad at Texas at all for having HSR. That's cool, like I said, it's neat. Say the same for CAHSR or I will claim it's hypocritical.
This is how people used to respond to projects, back in my day!

[electricron]

Originally Posted by TWAK

^So you're angry at another HSR system located a thousand miles away? I'm not mad at Texas at all for having HSR. That's cool, like I said, it's neat. Say the same for CAHSR or I will claim it's hypocritical.
This is how people used to respond to projects, back in my day!

I'm not mad that California wants a HSR system. I just think they are doing it wrong!

The number one thing they are doing wrong is starting construction of it in the Valley vs in the mountain passes. Mountain passes take the longest time to build because tunnels take longer to dig, the tunnels should have been where they started building first!
If you were not aware, the existing gap in intercity Amtrak passenger train services in California is between Bakersfield and Los Angeles. Today, Amtrak runs buses along this gap. Yes, the US national and State subsidized passenger train service provider is running buses. And they will be far into the future because CHSR has not even finished the environment studies for the Palmdale to Los Angeles sector.

CHSR is presently scheduled to complete the IOS between Merced and Bakersfield until 2029, another 7 to 8 years into the future. It will be at least another 10 years, at a minimum, to dig the tunnels in the mountain passes assuming they immediately start digging after completing the environmental studies and receiving the FRA Record of Decision. At a minimum another 10 years, more probably another 20 years, hence CHSR present projection of competing Phase I (SF to LA) in 2049.

Good luck!

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by electricron

I'm not mad that California wants a HSR system. I just think they are doing it wrong!

The number one thing they are doing wrong is starting construction of it in the Valley vs in the mountain passes. Mountain passes take the longest time to build because tunnels take longer to dig, the tunnels should have been where they started building first!

The Valley route is best because it can be built quicker and it's the cheapest to build. People from outside of state want us to spend less of our own money and want construction. So far you are getting what you wanted.

If you were not aware, the existing gap in intercity Amtrak passenger train services in California is between Bakersfield and Los Angeles. Today, Amtrak runs buses along this gap. Yes, the US national and State subsidized passenger train service provider running buses.

You might not be aware that there's a train you can take down to LA but it takes about 13 hours. It goes along the coast and is a great ride. In addition to HSR, local services like metrolink would be enhanced. If there are no plans to increase DART or something, I'll get very angry at the Texas plan. Is there?

CHSR is presently scheduled to complete the IOS between Merced and Bakersfield until 2029, another 7 to 8 years into the future.
Good luck!

Interesting, because they are going to be testing trains in 2023.
You don't mean good luck, you want us to change the whole plan!