California Bullet Train Breaks Ground

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I know that some sources are likely to give biased answers, but still my central point is "is what they say wrong?"

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

California High Speed Rail is a nice idea which isn't going to work.

It sometimes amazes me, this country was able to build the interstate system, but can now no longer maintain it properly. Something really has changed since then, and although I have my evaluation of what has changed that isn't the topic now. The point is, perhaps this could have been done at another time, but it really can't be done now. It reminds me of a scene very late in Atlas Shrugged where it is obvious to everyone that everything is falling apart, and new major government plans are being announced including a giant Particle Accelerator requested by the State Science Institute.

The program is already over budget without a single bit of rail being laid. The program is already deviating from the proposals by having only parts of it be genuinely high speed instead of all of it, with shared track on the parts that aren't high speed. There has been no analysis that shows there would be a sufficient number of passengers to justify the expense. There has been major political pull to put the track through certain districts that would not actually be necessary for the stated goal of linking the major cities of California. The first stretch of track is planned to be from nowhere to nowhere, and then it would go to the cities from there. As has been pointed out, had it started in San Diego going north, the first stretch of San Diego to Los Angeles would at least have some usefulness.

There have been shenanigans over the proposition that initially allowed it and authorized the issuance of bonds. The measure promised that the cost would be partially covered by private investors, but that promise has fizzled badly. There has been a court case over how the plans changed after the proposition was passed. Some studies suggest that even if all the public servants in Sacramento took that to work every day the number of passengers would still not justify the expense.

This could have been a good idea, but really it won't be a good idea. Every logistical aspect of it stinks, and most of the support is from people who might use it once a year. I wouldn't mind a quick and easy trip to San Fran, but I'm not going there every day.

And of course interstate highways were a perfect system at one time, never had any problems, never went over budget, never displaced people, etc. How I long for that august golden age.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

It's common knowledge that in general, most people's support or nonsupport for political initiatives

Why do you see HSR as a political initiative? It looks like an infrastructure project to me. It is only the rabid Tea Party opposition that has politicized it - it's not like HSR is a boondoggle "bridge to nowhere," dropping cash into a politician's home district for an unneeded project.

As to why I, personally support HSR - I see it as a superior alternative to widening freeways or increasing jet traffic. Riding in a train is a great way to travel, as anyone who has tried it knows. The biggest problem with train travel in the USA is that there are insufficient destinations. It's hard to get from point A to point B on Amtrack, which is why it's so under-utilized. If we were to construct a European-style light rail + HSR network on the East Coast, I have no doubt that it would be heavily used. The metro trains around D.C. are a good start.

On of the problems that AMTRAK experienced was lack of priority on certain tracks preventing their trains from running on a reliable schedule. Most of these problems have been fixed and some of their long distance trains have become profitable experiencing continuing increases in ridership.

- - - Updated - - -

I know that some sources are likely to give biased answers, but still my central point is "is what they say wrong?"

Yes. There are criticisms to be made, but they are assuming a foregone conclusion.

 

[maxparrish]

Here is, by the way, an exhaustive report on California's high speed rail. While it is published by reason, the primary author has been a well known advocate FOR high speed rail (wrote two books on it), as well as an AMTRAK spokesperson.

Yet, he finds California's HSR project deeply flawed.

http://reason.org/files/california_high_speed_rail_report.pdf

First off Reason is a free-market only group, so it is not surprising they oppose it.

Secondly, I'm not sure where you think Joseph Vranich has been a supporter of public rail since he has repeatedly called for the liquidation of all AMTRAK assets and I cannot find any actual citations or statements that he ever supported public high speed rail despite libertarians parroting this claim.

Okay, I found an article from 1998. It looks like he was advocating a full national system back then, which would be too costly and quite the folly.

He is the author of Supertrains (St. Martin’s Press, 1991), a book advocating construction of high-speed rail systems in the U.S. His second work, (St. Martin’s, 1997), recommended creation of public-private partnerships and competitive franchising. His most recent book, End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trains (AEI Press, 2004), outlined how Amtrak failed to comply with reform laws; it also detailed development of Amtrak’s high speed Acela trains and examined railway reforms in 55 nations. - See more at: http://reason.org/authors/show/joseph-vranich#sthash.xTYBwEQk.dpuf

Apparently the bloom is off the rose.

 

[Davka]

Why do you see HSR as a political initiative? It looks like an infrastructure project to me. It is only the rabid Tea Party opposition that has politicized it - it's not like HSR is a boondoggle "bridge to nowhere," dropping cash into a politician's home district for an unneeded project.

As to why I, personally support HSR - I see it as a superior alternative to widening freeways or increasing jet traffic. Riding in a train is a great way to travel, as anyone who has tried it knows. The biggest problem with train travel in the USA is that there are insufficient destinations. It's hard to get from point A to point B on Amtrack, which is why it's so under-utilized. If we were to construct a European-style light rail + HSR network on the East Coast, I have no doubt that it would be heavily used. The metro trains around D.C. are a good start.

On of the problems that AMTRAK experienced was lack of priority on certain tracks preventing their trains from running on a reliable schedule. Most of these problems have been fixed and some of their long distance trains have become profitable experiencing continuing increases in ridership.

Yeah, but now they have to overcome years of bad publicity. And it's still impossible to get to most of flyover country on Amtrack, which is IMO one of the areas that would have been easiest to service.

- - - Updated - - -

...still no answer as to why max thinks HSR is political.

 

[maxparrish]

It's common knowledge that in general, most people's support or nonsupport for political initiatives

Why do you see HSR as a political initiative? It looks like an infrastructure project to me. It is only the rabid Tea Party opposition that has politicized it - it's not like HSR is a boondoggle "bridge to nowhere," dropping cash into a politician's home district for an unneeded project.

As to why I, personally support HSR - I see it as a superior alternative to widening freeways or increasing jet traffic. Riding in a train is a great way to travel, as anyone who has tried it knows. The biggest problem with train travel in the USA is that there are insufficient destinations. It's hard to get from point A to point B on Amtrack, which is why it's so under-utilized. If we were to construct a European-style light rail + HSR network on the East Coast, I have no doubt that it would be heavily used. The metro trains around D.C. are a good start.

Read post 39 by Jason - of course it is political.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

On of the problems that AMTRAK experienced was lack of priority on certain tracks preventing their trains from running on a reliable schedule. Most of these problems have been fixed and some of their long distance trains have become profitable experiencing continuing increases in ridership.

Yeah, but now they have to overcome years of bad publicity. And it's still impossible to get to most of flyover country on Amtrack, which is IMO one of the areas that would have been easiest to service.
.

Unfortunately some of the problem is the actual infrastructure. For example a train from Chicago through the Black Hills, Yellowstone, and onto Portland looks great on paper, but nearly all the tracks from Minneapolis to Portland on this route need to be replaced (maximum speeds 10 mph - slower than bicycle).

 

[Davka]

Why do you see HSR as a political initiative? It looks like an infrastructure project to me. It is only the rabid Tea Party opposition that has politicized it - it's not like HSR is a boondoggle "bridge to nowhere," dropping cash into a politician's home district for an unneeded project.

As to why I, personally support HSR - I see it as a superior alternative to widening freeways or increasing jet traffic. Riding in a train is a great way to travel, as anyone who has tried it knows. The biggest problem with train travel in the USA is that there are insufficient destinations. It's hard to get from point A to point B on Amtrack, which is why it's so under-utilized. If we were to construct a European-style light rail + HSR network on the East Coast, I have no doubt that it would be heavily used. The metro trains around D.C. are a good start.

Read post 39 by Jason - of course it is political.

That post addresses problems with the California HSR project, which I freely admit is an ill-concieved boondoggle. That does not make HSR a political issue, it makes that one project politically influenced. As a bona-fide progressive atheist hippie, I think the CA project is a waste of time, money, and, yes, political effort. But HSA is an excellent idea for the more densely-populated east coast.

 

[Davka]

Yeah, but now they have to overcome years of bad publicity. And it's still impossible to get to most of flyover country on Amtrack, which is IMO one of the areas that would have been easiest to service.
.

Unfortunately some of the problem is the actual infrastructure. For example a train from Chicago through the Black Hills, Yellowstone, and onto Portland looks great on paper, but nearly all the tracks from Minneapolis to Portland on this route need to be replaced (maximum speeds 10 mph - slower than bicycle).

What I don't understand is why there are no stops in some of the more obvious places. For example, Amtrak trains could run right through Nashville, but there is no passenger station in Nashville. There's one in Memphis, and one in Atlanta, but nothing in Nashville or Louisville. Freight trains run from Louisville through Nashville to Chattanooga and Atlanta all the time, so the tracks are clearly capable of handling at least 50 MPH trains, so why can't they simply run some spurs and open a few more stations?

 

[funinspace]

California High Speed Rail is a nice idea which isn't going to work.

It sometimes amazes me, this country was able to build the interstate system, but can now no longer maintain it properly. Something really has changed since then, and although I have my evaluation of what has changed that isn't the topic now. The point is, perhaps this could have been done at another time, but it really can't be done now.

It really isn't hard to fathom what changed...

The US highway system construction consumed roughly $425 billion (in 2006 dollars):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

Construction was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, and the original portion was completed 35 years later. The network has since been extended, and as of 2012, it had a total length of 47,714 miles (76,788 km),[2] making it the world's second longest after China's. As of 2011, about one-quarter of all vehicle miles driven in the country use the Interstate system.[3] The cost of construction has been estimated at $425 billion (in 2006 dollars).

Maintenance:
http://heritageaction.com/2014/07/highway-trust-fund-qa/

Why is the HTF out of money?

The current law governing the federal highway and transit programs, set in effect by the last highway bill, is called MAP-21: Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century. MAP-21 authorizes annual spending well above the revenue the HTF will collect and funds a host of parochial projects that have no business being handled at the federal level. This practice has allowed HTF expenditures to far eclipse the amount of revenue collected from fuel taxes.

One example of a trust fund spending diversion is mass transit. Transit use, which is mainly concentrated in just six cities (the municipalities of Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco), received 17 percent of total federal user fees in 2010, even though its share of the nation’s surface travel amounted to roughly 1 percent and transit users pay nothing into the HTF. Other diversions included programs such as nature trails and landscaping, environmental study and mitigation efforts, community preservation, ferry boats, and bicycle paths.

The lack of spending prioritization, coupled with egregious federal intervention into local community projects, has drained the HTF to the point of insolvency. (Past transfers from the General Fund of the Treasury have totaled over $50 billion since 2008.).

China has been spending upwards of $50 billion per year on HSR:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ail-investment-9-to-70-billion-ndrc-says.html

China’s railway infrastructure investment may double in the second half of this year from the first six months, aiding efforts to reverse a slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy.

Full-year spending will be 448.3 billion yuan ($70.3 billion), according to a statement dated July 6 on the website of the National Development and Reform Commission’s Anhui branch. The document indicates a 9 percent increase from a previous plan of 411.3 billion yuan. Spending was 148.7 billion yuan in the first half.

It takes real money, by the national govt. to make HSR really work. But we'd (US corporately) rather play world domination...

 

[funinspace]

Unfortunately some of the problem is the actual infrastructure. For example a train from Chicago through the Black Hills, Yellowstone, and onto Portland looks great on paper, but nearly all the tracks from Minneapolis to Portland on this route need to be replaced (maximum speeds 10 mph - slower than bicycle).

What I don't understand is why there are no stops in some of the more obvious places. For example, Amtrak trains could run right through Nashville, but there is no passenger station in Nashville. There's one in Memphis, and one in Atlanta, but nothing in Nashville or Louisville. Freight trains run from Louisville through Nashville to Chattanooga and Atlanta all the time, so the tracks are clearly capable of handling at least 50 MPH trains, so why can't they simply run some spurs and open a few more stations?

What is wrong with you? Road and Air travel subsidies are good; and rail travel subsidies are bad. What is so hard to understand about that?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Unfortunately some of the problem is the actual infrastructure. For example a train from Chicago through the Black Hills, Yellowstone, and onto Portland looks great on paper, but nearly all the tracks from Minneapolis to Portland on this route need to be replaced (maximum speeds 10 mph - slower than bicycle).

What I don't understand is why there are no stops in some of the more obvious places. For example, Amtrak trains could run right through Nashville, but there is no passenger station in Nashville. There's one in Memphis, and one in Atlanta, but nothing in Nashville or Louisville. Freight trains run from Louisville through Nashville to Chattanooga and Atlanta all the time, so the tracks are clearly capable of handling at least 50 MPH trains, so why can't they simply run some spurs and open a few more stations?

Ahh I see. We just reopened a old station here and abandoned the crummy 1970s Amtrak one. It doesn't make sense not to stop in those cities. I mean if they stop in Wolf Creek, MT. They can stop in Nashville and Louisville.

- - - Updated - - -

But one has to wonder if we switched back to coal trains if the Republicans would jump on the idea...

Do the Koch bros own coal mines?

 

[Jarhyn]

For people who commute along the route on a regular basis, my assumption would be a desire to get to their destination about ten times faster than they can now.



For some, I suppose an argument regarding either economic feasibility, or safety has that potential. For others, there may not be any argument, reasonable or not, that would sway them.

Thanks for replying, but that is not exactly what I am seeking. I am asking how any poster who seriously supports HSR feels. Aside from the numbers, what inspires the enthusiasm? There are people who would support any technology project, simply because it sounds novel or challenging. There are others who just think it is just "retro neat". to have trains. Is this something like the space program, that it just sounds like a grand accomplishment?

I have never gotten the sense that anyone supports HSR solely because of some dry cost-benefit study.

currently I live in minneapolis. It is a nice metro area with a passing-decent public transit system, and developing LRT system. That said, there are no good options for connecting to any other major metro area other than by plane. I would LOVE to see a HSR option to chicago, Madison, or any other metropolitan area, especially given the current options of (expensive plane), (slow bus), or (expensive and not-very-fast Amtrak). It would also be nice if there was a high-speed low-price option to Fargo. All in all, low-price high-speed connectivity between metro areas could facillitate a lot of growth in many places.

All that starts with tackling domestic logistics and technology hurdles in an experimental project like the Cali HSR.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The report linked to in this thread does make one valid point... funding. There is no funding for this project. $3 billion from the Feds, tap will be cut off by Republicans to develop anything that isn't Status Quo, and $9 billion in bonds.

The funding simply doesn't exist to get this thing built unless a Federal mandate pops out of thin air. I think Republicans are more likely to pull back CAFE standards and require cars to run on coal than to fund HSR. It most certainly is political. The Republicans make everything political.

 

[Davka]

What I don't understand is why there are no stops in some of the more obvious places. For example, Amtrak trains could run right through Nashville, but there is no passenger station in Nashville. There's one in Memphis, and one in Atlanta, but nothing in Nashville or Louisville. Freight trains run from Louisville through Nashville to Chattanooga and Atlanta all the time, so the tracks are clearly capable of handling at least 50 MPH trains, so why can't they simply run some spurs and open a few more stations?

What is wrong with you? Road and Air travel subsidies are good; and rail travel subsidies are bad. What is so hard to understand about that?

The part where it makes some sort of sense, because...

oh, wait. Politics.

Fuck - if only a nuke had "accidentally" hit D.C. during the swearing-in yesterday.

 

[lpetrich]

In Fresno on January 6, the politicians have officially broken ground on the California High-Speed Rail system, though construction work started a few months earlier. The first major bit of construction will be a bridge over the Fresno River, something that will likely start in April or so.

Its Phase 1 will run San Francisco - San Jose - Gilroy - Merced - Fresno - Bakersfield - Palmdale - Burbank - Los Angeles - Anaheim

Phase 2 will have lines Merced - Stockton - Sacramento and LA - Riverside - San Diego

Its Initial Construction Segment (ICS) is what's being worked on now. It will extend Madera - Bakersfield and when it's done, Amtrak California's San Joaquin trains will use it. North of Madera, those trains run to Stockton, Sacramento, Martinez, Richmond, and Oakland. Date: 2019

Its Initial Operating Segment (IOS) will extend from Bakersfield over the Tehachapi Mountains to Palmdale in the Antelope Valley and onward to Burbank in the San Fernando Valley. It will start high-speed service with electric trains, at speeds as much as 350 km/h / 220 mph. Date: 2022

Next is Bay to Basin, with a Merced - San Jose segment using Pacheco Pass. Date: 2026

Completion of Phase 1, with SF - Anaheim service. Date: 2028

Not sure about completion of Phase 2.


Ca.High Speed Rail, a StoryMap has some maps of what will be built.

California High Speed Rail Blog » The End of the Beginning
noting
High-Speed Rail Official Groundbreaking Ceremony on Livestream -- including the participants signing a bit of railroad track
California High-Speed Rail: A Minor End, an Important Beginning - The Atlantic -- the final installment of James Fallows's series on that subject in The Atlantic

Groundbreaking at Fresno for California high-speed rail | The Sacramento Bee

While California’s project has been a long-standing source of controversy in Washington and Sacramento, nowhere more than in the Central Valley has its impact been so immediate – with years of quarreling over track routes and land acquisition on the farms and in small cities dotting the landscape. The rail authority began clearing parcels and demolishing buildings in the Valley last year.

While protesters jeered, Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, one of few prominent Republicans to support the project, congratulated the train’s proponents and said, “Now let’s get it done.”

High-speed rail, Swearengin said, will make Fresno “the essential connecting point for northern and southern California.”

Rail officials viewed the groundbreaking, which closed streets in downtown Fresno and drew hundreds of invited guests, as an opportunity to suggest the inevitability of a project whose completion remains uncertain.

California's high-speed rail matters | MSNBC -- on the broader politics, like Republicans' opposition to Obama's high-speed-rail plans

California breaks ground on bullet train as climate solution - SFGate

About a dozen protesters shouted "show me the money" during the groundbreaking, which was held in an industrial section of downtown Fresno, where the city's bullet train station will be located near old rail lines that still ship produce and other cargo. The system will initially share existing rails with freight trains, but eventually travel at higher speeds on dedicated rails, California High-Speed Rail Authority chairman Dan Richard said. ...

The initial work is on a 142-mile stretch north and south of Fresno. By 2029, planners hope to complete 520 miles of rails linking the San Francisco's downtown Transbay Terminal to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles.

James Fallows's reasons for building the system:

1) America is direly short on infrastructure; the financial and political resistance to remedying that is powerful (for reason Mancur Olson once laid out) and usually prevails. ...

2) The counties of the Central Valley of California, where the first stages of the construction will begin, are not just the poorest part of a rich state but also, taken on their own, would constitute the poorest state in the entire country. ...

3) The state’s population is growing, and so is the demand for intra-state travel. Any other way of getting California’s 30+ million people from north to south, via cars on new (or more crowded) freeways or planes to new (or more crowded) airports, will be more destructive of the state’s finances, its farmland, and its environment than a rail system. ...

4) There is an established track record of over-estimating the problems of big infrastructure projects, and short-sightedly under-envisioning their benefits. Here’s the crucial contrast with big military construction projects I’ve written about recently. Repeatedly, big military projects have come in over budget, past schedule, and below performance promises.

Repeatedly the opposite has been true of big national or regional infrastructure projects. Their drawbacks have been exaggerated before they’ve been started, and their potential benefit has been grossly under-imagined. Here’s a few of the projects that seemed impractical, quixotic, ruinously expensive, or not worth the bother when proposed:

• The Louisiana Purchase
• The Erie Canal
• “Seward’s Folly” of buying Alaska
• The transcontinental railroad
• The Panama Canal
• The Golden Gate Bridge, and the Bay Bridge
• The TVA, REA, and WPA, plus Boulder / Hoover Dam
• The expansion of a continental airport system
• The GI Bill
• The Interstate Highway system
• Washington DC’s Metro and San Francisco’s BART

Details on some of these in the first post in the series.

All of these projects have had their problems. But without any one of them, the United States would be in far worse shape than it is today.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

So it looks like phase 1 is more or less a preliminary development of a long stretch of track, but no HSR until completion of Phase 2

 

[Clivedurdle]

How dare you compare Bakersfield to nowhere! It is wonderful with oil derricks on the main road, and the Barnes and Noble bookshop was impressive - half its stock religious books!

 

[maxparrish]

In Fresno on January 6, the politicians have officially broken ground on the California High-Speed Rail system, though construction work started a few months earlier. The first major bit of construction will be a bridge over the Fresno River, something that will likely start in April or so.

Its Phase 1 will run San Francisco - San Jose - Gilroy - Merced - Fresno - Bakersfield - Palmdale - Burbank - Los Angeles - Anaheim

Phase 2 will have lines Merced - Stockton - Sacramento and LA - Riverside - San Diego

Its Initial Construction Segment (ICS) is what's being worked on now. It will extend Madera - Bakersfield and when it's done, Amtrak California's San Joaquin trains will use it. North of Madera, those trains run to Stockton, Sacramento, Martinez, Richmond, and Oakland. Date: 2019

Its Initial Operating Segment (IOS) will extend from Bakersfield over the Tehachapi Mountains to Palmdale in the Antelope Valley and onward to Burbank in the San Fernando Valley. It will start high-speed service with electric trains, at speeds as much as 350 km/h / 220 mph. Date: 2022

Next is Bay to Basin, with a Merced - San Jose segment using Pacheco Pass. Date: 2026

Completion of Phase 1, with SF - Anaheim service. Date: 2028

Not sure about completion of Phase 2.

I suppose many enjoy all the happy talk. Think of it, a grand state building project, ribbon cutted and praised by various grand poobahs, their campaign donors, and chortling special interests and land speculators! Romantics and choo-choo train enthusiasts gushing joy and wildly clapping at the prospect of whizzing trains, dirt cheap tickets, and relief from national progressive hive's embarrassment of not having a HSR, like those progressive Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese.

Why dampen the celebration with dour reminders that dreams are not reality, and air castles are not arguments? No, it is far better to pretend otherwise. That way, no matter how much it costs, how few use it, how corrupt it becomes it was THE INTENTION and THE DREAM that counted, so it will also be justified.

(For more great projects ribbon cutted on this basis see "The Big Dig", the NJ Tunnel, New London's "Redevelopment", the Missouri River's grand barge traffic scheme, and the entire history of urban renewal and western water projects).

(James Fallow quote)
1) America is direly short on infrastructure; the financial and political resistance to remedying that is powerful (for reason Mancur Olson once laid out) and usually prevails. ...

2) The counties of the Central Valley of California, where the first stages of the construction will begin, are not just the poorest part of a rich state but also, taken on their own, would constitute the poorest state in the entire country. ...

3) The state’s population is growing, and so is the demand for intra-state travel. Any other way of getting California’s 30+ million people from north to south, via cars on new (or more crowded) freeways or planes to new (or more crowded) airports, will be more destructive of the state’s finances, its farmland, and its environment than a rail system. ...

4) There is an established track record of over-estimating the problems of big infrastructure projects, and short-sightedly under-envisioning their benefits. Here’s the crucial contrast with big military construction projects I’ve written about recently. Repeatedly, big military projects have come in over budget, past schedule, and below performance promises.

Repeatedly the opposite has been true of big national or regional infrastructure projects. Their drawbacks have been exaggerated before they’ve been started, and their potential benefit has been grossly under-imagined. Here’s a few of the projects that seemed impractical, quixotic, ruinously expensive, or not worth the bother when proposed:

• The Louisiana Purchase
• The Erie Canal
• “Seward’s Folly” of buying Alaska
• The transcontinental railroad
• The Panama Canal
• The Golden Gate Bridge, and the Bay Bridge
• The TVA, REA, and WPA, plus Boulder / Hoover Dam
• The expansion of a continental airport system
• The GI Bill
• The Interstate Highway system
• Washington DC’s Metro and San Francisco’s BART

Details on some of these in the first post in the series.

All of these projects have had their problems. But without any one of them, the United States would be in far worse shape than it is today.

What a pinheaded list of reasons. Perhaps they read better in their complete form BUT apparently he is saying:


1. America needs more infrastructure, therefore ANY infrastructure is warranted regardless of specific needs, utility, benefits, or costs. Need a bridge? BUILD HSR!

2. America needs to take money for private investment to create jobs, and redirect it to build bad projects in poor areas (even if the poor areas don't want them).

3. The States population is growing, so rather than opposing more immigration and putting in the transportation choices most people prefer, let's make promises we cannot keep and put in my idea of a really neat choo-choo train.

4. Here is a list of claimed successful government expenditures on welfare, engineering, transportation - some of which were criticized. THEREFORE, anything criticized must be a good idea. Ergo, the environmentalist opposition to the Seattle Tunnel must be a good idea because lots of folk are criticizing it.

Compounding his lame and daffy stupidity, is his seeming ignorance that many of those "successes" were not, and that the many failures that were criticized WERE FAILURES.

Among them:

The Transcontinental Railroad
The TVA and REA
Bart
Scores of Urban Renewal Projects.
Hundreds of B. of Reclamation and Army Corp of Engineer Projects.

Its like the guy never heard of the Obamacare IT roll-out, blown up space shuttles, Boston's Urban Renewal gutting, the Tulsa-Red River canal system, bridges to nowhere, etc.

 

[lpetrich]

So it looks like phase 1 is more or less a preliminary development of a long stretch of track, but no HSR until completion of Phase 2

Actually, HSR service will start before Phase 1 is done -- it will start when the track is done between Merced and Burbank.

Here's where we are at now.

Amtrak Coast Starlight uses a coastal route, and it takes about 12h 30m between Oakland and downtown LA. It uses a largely coastal route, going west of US-101. It's a once-a-day long-distance train, going as far north as Seattle.

It does not go to SF directly because it would be hard to go north of San Francisco without first returning to San Jose, about 50 miles (80 km). Instead, passengers ride a bus across the Bay Bridge to and from downtown SF. There is a rail link across San Francisco Bay, but it's used by BART and it was designed for BART service.

Amtrak San Joaquin uses two routes: 4 trains per day using Oakland - Richmond - Martinez - Stockton - Merced - Fresno - Bakersfield (6h) and 2 trains per day using Sacramento - Stockton - rest of the way to Bakersfield (5h). Merced-Bakersfield is about 3h. Between Bakersfield and LA it uses a bus (2h 30m), since the tracks are terribly twisty in the Tehachapi Mountains and Soledad Canyon. That's a total of 9h between Oakland and LA, or 9h 30m between SF and LA.

The Altamont Commuter Express goes San Jose - Fremont - Pleasanton - Livermore - Tracy - Stockton (2h 10m).


Most US intercity rail lines have a speed limit of 79 mph (127 km/h), because anything faster than that has to use cab signals. Yes, trains have traffic lights. But this line will be equipped for cab signaling, broadcasting signal state to the trains and enabling them to go at their top speeds.

The Initial Construction Segment (ICS: Madera - Bakersfield: 130 mi, 210 km) will initially be used by the San Joaquins, going at about 110 - 120 mph (177 - 193 km/h). This will shave off at least a half hour of travel time, and the trains' having their own right of way will keep them from being delayed by freight trains, as it often is now.

The Initial Operating Segment (IOS: Merced - Burbank: 312 mi, 502 km) will be 2h at 155 mph, 250 km/h, as opposed to the San Joaquins' 5 h. A Metrolink shuttle train between Burbank and downtown LA will take about 15m. A bus between Merced and SF will travel about 131 mi, 211 km, and at 50 mph, 80 km/h, will take about 2h 30m. The SF - LA total is about 5h 30m.

Bay to Basin (San Jose - Burbank: 407 mi, 656 km) will be 2h 30m at full speed. A Caltrain shuttle train between SF and SJ will take about 1h. That gives a SF - LA total of about 4h 15m.

Phase 1 (SF - LA: 463 mi, 746 km) will be 3h at full speed. Imagine being able to get on a train at downtown SF or LA and then have a 3-hour one-seat ride right into the other one of those two.

What	Time
Now: San Joaquins	9h 30m
ICS: San Joaquins	9h
IOS w/ ML, bus	5h 30m
Bay to Basin w/ ML, CT	4h 15m
Phase 1	3h

I think that once the IOS gets high-speed service, that will put a *lot* of pressure on the politicians to complete the system and to start Phase 2.