Is High-Speed Rail a good idea for California?

In My Humble Opinion
21

It’s worth looking at why high-speed rail works in those places. I don’t have cites to back this up, but I believe they have higher population densities (meaning more people taking shorter journeys than our spread-out cities), better public transportation in cities (meaning less reason to drive someplace if you can get around effectively without a car once you’re there), and more people living near city centers (meaning it’s easier to get to a central, downtown train station and harder to get to an airport in the boonies). I suspect California is not yet to the point where this project would be cost effective.

However, The U.S. is headed in that direction. We’d be foolish not to look into HSR and prepare for the time when it will be an effective transportation solution. While looking for some data on Acela ridership, I found this description of Amtrak’s ideas for the Northeast Corridor; cutting travel times in half by 2040.

22

You mean how the “true cost” is always included in airline tickets? :rolleyes:

I wonder if there’d be much of a market for a night train between SF & LA? Arrive at train station in one of those cities in the evening, board train, have dinner, retire to a private compartment or roomette (or even a berth), sleep, wand wake up at your destination early in the morning.

23

I advocate the bullet train as opposed to nothing, but I think the money would be far better spent in upgrading the state’s conventional rail system. Just providing double tracking along the many routes that lack it, and even quad tracking along heavily used routes, would do a world of good. If you’ve ever gone anywhere by train in SoCal, you know you spend a lot of time stalled on sidings, making way for freight trains.

Another badly needed upgrade is the Run Through Tracks project at Los Angeles Union Station. The station was designed, in the 1930s, as a terminus, with three major intercity routes ending there, but it would work far better today as a run-through station, where trains could stop and then continue on in the direction of travel without having to back up and turn around. (The LRT Gold Line already does this on its own run-through tracks.)

24

The San Joaquin Valley is probably the most ideal site you could ask for for maglev. Build that and feed into it with Talgo technology using existing track. But they won’t do it that way.

As cool as the idea sounds, and as much as I love trains, it’s be money down a rat hole or so expensive that it will never be finished.

It probably will not proceed. Lawsuits are going to tie it up. For one thing, the project is not what was promised the voters in the original prop. That alone could put the kibosh on the whole deal.

25

As a European who travels on high speed - and not so high speed - rail often enough; and has had the pleasure of negotiating LA on public transport: this probably isn’t going to work as well as you would hope.

Assuming the goal is for people to leave there car at home and take a train instead, you need good public transport once you arrive at your destination as well. Let’s just say this might be problematic in a city the size of LA; maybe you can put a Herz in the trainstation, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

26

It has improved a lot and is about to go hell’s bells in the next ten years with many new rail lines and extensions going to be completed ahead of schedule because the feds decided to loan us the money against future sales taxes.

By the time (if ever) HSR gets here, we’ll be ready.

One thing about the system in LA is that it is very complicated to navigate. If you don’t know what you are doing, you are screwed, if you know, you can get about anywhere pretty easily.

27

I don’t know if it’s good for California, but it’s good for me personally. I have to travel to SF fairly frequently on business and I’d much rather take the train than deal with the hassle of flying. It’s a particularly attractive option since the Expo line extension will be coming through my neighborhood in a couple of years, giving me an easy way to get to Union Station.

28

Yes, the valley is ideal for any HSR, however, if you look at the typical drive from SF to LA going the route they are proposing, more than half is within urban/suburban corridors, or thru mountains, where no HSR technologies can come to full speed.

Additionally, I doubt any rail will be able to do a 185 mile run from Los Banos to the bottom of the Grapevine at top speed, with stops planned in Fresno and Bakersfield.

And, as pointed out, once you got to downtown LA, then what? You are still going to need a car (most people). SF would probably be OK without a car, but I daresay none of the other cities along the HSR proposed route are set up as well as SF with public transport once you arrived.

Any seismic event will probably close down the tracks for inspections for days.

I like trains as well, but I would much rather see re-inforcement to the current system as described above.

29

High speed rail will happen at some point or another. It may be now, it may be fifty years from now. But the US cannot be a modern country without doing the things that modern countries do, and that includes building high-speed rail systems. So if it is going to happen, why put it off? The costs are going to happen one way or another. Gas isn’t getting any cheaper and airplanes are not getting any faster, and we will need a real mass transit solution. So why not just build the damn thing and start getting the benefits now rather than waiting until we absolutely cannot wait any more?

Yes, high speed rail is expensive. Transportation is inherently expensive. Our highway system is expensive, and if we paid for it on a fee-per-use basis rather than burying those costs in various taxes, it’d be obscenely expensive (and in countries where tolls finance the highway system, it’s easy to drop $100 bucks or more on a day trip.) Who is complaining that the highways don’t turn a profit? Air travel is expensive, and even with subsidies and bailouts, airlines generally totter on the edge of bankruptcy. Subway and bus systems are expensive. It’s just damn expensive to move people around. Transportation just isn’t a cost-efficient thing to do.

But it is absolutely essential for our economy, not to mention our standard of living. Transportation is what makes business happen. Teleconferencing is great, but businesses still create wealth by bringing people together. Creativity comes from people coming together. The things that give our life value- our family and friends- rely on transportation. The Romans did what they did because they figured that out. Mao wrote that to build a city, you must first build a road. NGOs working in developing countries are obsessed with transportation, because transportation is what makes economic growth. Two of the most seminal developments in our nation- the transcontinental railroad and the highway system- are transportation related. Transportation is one of the foundations that makes a nation work.

California should have had high speed rail decades ago. It works, and CA is a good candidate. Yeah, it only takes an hour by plane. But once you get out to SFO, clear security, wait at the gate, board, and then get to wherever in LA you are going from whichever airport you happen to land it, it’s quite an ordeal. I grew up in Sacramento, and we usually drove because flying is just such a PITA (Sacramento’s airport is also ridiculously far from the city itself.) A train, however, can transport people directly to and from the densely populated areas where people live and work. And in trains, you can get work done and move around as you like. An executive leaving her office at 9 AM for the trainstation down the street, working for a few hours until she gets to LA in time for her lunch meeting is a lot more effcient than her having to get the hell out to SFO, spending hours in lines, not having wi-fi or cell service for an hour, and then having to figure out how to get where she is going to from on of the LA airports is less effcient, and ultimately worse for our economy.

30

I’ve been on the night train between Chicago and Washington, DC and lots of people ride it. It also makes late and wee-hours stops in Pittsburgh and Cleveland for people who think those places are cool.

31

California is just about the last place where Obama needs votes.

People who live in the LA area and need to attend a meeting in SF and be back at the office the next day. Yes, you can fly, but until somebody develops the solar-powered airplane that can carry hundreds of people at a time, there will always be people looking for a “cleaner” alternative to jets.

However, there is another problem with the plan: you need a branch line to get to San Francisco itself - it’s on a peninsula, so you can’t go “through” the city. (One possibility is to go to San Jose, then take the existing commuter rail service. Another could be to extend the subway to San Jose, but either you have to go through Oakland or open up a can of political worms trying to extend it through a county that hasn’t been paying taxes into the system for 50 years like other counties have.)

Meanwhile, there’s another route that nobody seems to be mentioning; connecting LA to Las Vegas.

32

This is what your argument seems to boil down to: rail is costly, and therefore it is good. But what could CA accomplish if it used those hundreds of billions of dollars (of Federal and state money) for other transportation needs? How about more clean busses (hybrid, whatever), either inter-city or intra-city?

Just because rail is the most expensive ground transportation option (hell it might even cost more than planes depending on ridership) does not make it a good use of money. Basically, in cost-benefit terms, there is no worse use of money imaginable than to choose the path California is pursuing, especially in a state that’s almost completely bankrupt already.

33

Trains can travel at 200 mph without producing any CO2 or other pollution. There’s no way a hybrid bus (or an airplane) could match that.

Also, high-speed rail is virtually immune from delays, and safer too. The Japanese bullet train system hasn’t killed a single passenger, and average delay is about 20 seconds.

34

Have you ever lived in a country that has high speed rail?

It changes everything. I was in Chengdu, China, when they opened the Chengdu-Chongqing bullet train. What had once been an unpleasant and unpredictable 4 hour bus ride (hoping you didn’t hit traffic) is now a comfortable two hour jaunt that leaves and arrives every hour like clockwork. Soon, it will be down to under one hour. Traveling between these cities went from something you plan your day around, into something you do on a whim. I lived a four hour drive from both Chengdu and Chongqing, so it used to be that I’d have to chose one or the other to spend my weekend in. After the rail line, I bus or drive into Chengdu on Friday night, spend Saturday at the office in Chengdu, hop an afternoon train and meet with coworkers in Chongqing, and be home in time for Sunday dinner.

This is just one individual story of increased collaboration, but multiply that by hundreds and you start to see the full impact. A drummer in one city can join with a guitarist in another. A CEO no longer loses half her day in airport security lines to get to a meeting. A Grandmother is able to see her grandchild every other weekend, despite living a few hundred miles away. A college student is able to attend a conference on another campus and not miss any classes. All of this trade and collaboration increases wealth and happiness.

There is nothing absurd about the projects you posted for. Developing and middle-income countries are great candidates for high-speed rail, because they are quickly urbanzing, and connecting urban centers multiplies that power of that urbanizaiton,

35

Generally and statisically speaking? Uhh, no.

36

The whole project really makes me wonder whether Governor Brown has lost his marbles. California has been in financial crisis for the past five years and shows no signs of getting out of it, the state faces a half trillion dollars is unfunded pension liabilities, businesses and workers are fleeing the state as a result, and what does Brown want to do? Go for a public works project with a pricetag of one hundred billion dollars. Where is the money going to come from? Well, he’s got the first ten billion covered by bonds (which future Californians will have to pay back) and federal subsidies cover a little bit more. What about the remaining 80+ billion dollars? Is the Tooth Fairy going to provide it?

Just consider: when politicians first sold voters on the plan four years ago, they promised a pricetag of 65 billion dollars, a ride time of less than 3 hours, and a minimum of 29.6 million trips per year. Now that they’ve got the money, they’ve changed their tune. Higher prices, longer times, and fewer trips per year. This is how government boondoggles always work. Make the promise, pocket the money, and break the promise.

37

Check for comprehension.

All forms of transportation are expensive, but it’s a price we pay for living in useful societies. By a pure income-in vs. income-out analysis, nobody would ever dream of building the New York subway system. But those subways have been essential to making NYC one of the richest, most creative, most dynamic cities in the world.

Again, by looking at income-in vs. income out, highways don’t make sense. Airlines don’t make sense. City transportation systems don’t make sense. No transport more expensive than a dirtbike (to go over the unpaved (free!) roads, makes financial sense. But we as a society probably don’t want to live in a situation where our transportation system resembles Somalia’s, and indeed if we did, our economy would take an enormous hit. So we invest in infrastructure. Again, this isn’t some absurd thing to do. Pretty much every developed country and many developing countries have built or are building high speed rail. Yeah, it sucks in the short term, but when you are looking in the long term, it makes a lot of sense. And other countries are indeed looking in the long term. China is figuring out how it can build infrastructure that will serve them into the next century. If we keep making our decisions based on short-term outcomes, we are quickly going to find ourselves left behind.

The problem with busses is that they are inherently slower than driving and inherently unpredictable (you can’t ever county on a bus to be enitrely on schedule.). Unless there is massive infrastructure investment in express lanes, etc., (which I’m gonna guess you disapprove of), busses are tied to traffic, and have the additional need to stop. Busses are a stopgap transportation method, not a long term solution.

38

This will be a huge waste of money. I doubt that many people will use it. I live in Northern california, while my wife’s family is from SoCal, so I make the trip down to LA several times a year. Once I took the AMtrak because I was sick of driving, and it was actually worse. The train does not go over the mountain range north of LA, so the train drops you off, and then you have to move your luggage out and ride a bus for another hour or two before it drops you off at another train station and ride a new train into LA. Even if the new rail overcomes this problem and connects directly to LA, I don’t think that I will ride it because once I get to LA, I will have to pay for the added expense of a rental car. If they include a rail car which can also transport my car along, I might consider it, but the time savings is likely only to be on the order of 1-2 hours, depending on traffic.

39

It depends on how you generate the electricity. Get it from hydroelectric, wind, or solar and there’s no CO[sub]2[/sub] directly produced. There are other environmental issues, and probably CO[sub]2[/sub] released during construction of the powerplant (and the rail line itself), but that depends on how you parse scr4’s claim.

40

That can be applied to pretty much any mode of transportation so its a mostly meaningless claim.