The more successful HSRs are the ones built on mostly flat land and occasional bridges. In order to have competitive HSR, you need nearly straight lines with little to no variation in topography to achieve top speed. This is why HSR from LA to SF is not going to be competitive. Bakersfield to Sacramento? Sure, if the numbers are there…that’s as flat as California gets, but that only serves a minority fraction of the state. But if you are actually going to have true HSR in California, you have to make some very high-cost tunneling in those mountain ranges to make it competitive…and that’s why HSR works in the Eastern U.S. as opposed to the Western U.S.
I disagree. Fully electric cars are still in the earliest stages of development. I’ve heard of a few very recent experiments running airplanes on biologically-derived fuels. Neither of those are proven technologies. They are theoretically possible, but haven’t been adopted by the market and proven in real-world use. All of the existing high-speed rail systems I’m aware of are already electric.
One of the best rail trips I ever took included a leg on the high-speed line from Brussels to Frankfurt. I was in the front car and could look through a glass partition and over the engineer’s shoulder and through the windshield. It was night, though, so not too much to see. But we must have been going through lots of very short tunnels; I could see the lights flashing very rapidly past the side windows. I think it was rolling-hill country, but to avoid the weightless, roller-coaster effect, they had tunneled just through the tops of the hills.
We must have been running late. The train was rated for 300 km/h, and we were doing a steady 296.
That’s the problem with all trains. In order to pick up people along the way they have to stop.
They haul freight and mail?
A high speed rail is only as green as the grid that feeds it. How green is the grid right now? And how many electric/hybrid cars could you buy/subsidize for the cost of this high speed rail system? It might be handy to zip along Cali at high speeds, but economically you are going to have crunch some numbers that the green aspect is even a positive compared to other ways to spend the money, much less how much of one.
Somebody with good search skills should go dig up poster Sam Stones? posts on subways and high speed rail systems and the economics and relative energy efficiencies of them from a year or three back. Lots of good meaty data in those.
For those trying to do a seach IIRC it had to do with Florida’s flirtation with such a financial black hole.
I don’t have any exact figures, but high-speed rail stops don’t take very long. You can walk around while the train’s in motion, so you get your stuff and wait by the door. There are doors at both ends of every car, instead of just one like on an airliner. The train probably stops for less than a minute, and electric motors have gobs of torque so it gets back up to speed pretty quickly.
That said, if you stopped at every town with a traffic light and a diner, high-speed rail wouldn’t be worth the trouble. But a few stops in the en route cities don’t slow it down too much.
I’m not against high speed rail, but building it in the name of creating jobs is a joke. If California wants to create jobs, maybe they should start by getting rid of all these asinine laws they have passed.
I live halfway across the country and I’m getting tired of seeing 4-5 warning labels on everything I buy explaining that the Republic of Kalifornia has determined that it causes cancer. My vehicle is a dog because it had the misfortune of being born in that state and is filled with emissions control junk which cuts the horsepower. Firearms sites have to maintain a separate list for California approved firearms and magazines. Try to buy a lawn mower online without seeing the word California in every freaking product description.
SHEESH make it STOP!
They tried to outlaw porn movie production and in the process unwittingly became the porn capital of the country. Bright people out there.
I assume it’s different in different parts of the country, but I don’t really know the details. I was just backing up scr4’s post that said high-speed rail can operate without generating ongoing CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions. In theory, it can. In practice, the required technologies are in a more mature state for HSR than for other common forms of transportation.
That’s all.
I concur with this. Countries with HSR (Japan, France, Germany, China) have well-developed or developing nuclear energy sources that can support vast electric train systems. We do not have that, and more nuclear power plants in CA are not in the realm of reality for the forseeable future. For those of us living out here, it was only a few years ago that the term “rolling blackout” came into being - sometimes I think the state is held together by duct tape and baling wire.
But hey, the “drill baby drill” crowd around Bakersfield may support a train if it was powered, directly or indirectly, by oil!
I support rail but selfishly. I hope everyone else uses it and leave the roads to me.
Right, and we’re going to get people to flock to the downtown L.A. Greyhound station, or to stand on a street corner, which is what happens with many of the newer niche bus companies. Do you plan to ride the bus from L.A to San Francisco yourself? Incidentally, L.A.'s transit agency the largest LEV bus fleet in the country, but we also have rail lines, with more to be added.
HSR may be the most expensive ground transportation option, but I don’t think the intention is to compete with other ground transportation modes. It would compete with air travel, and unless they can figure out a way to make kerosene out of fracked natural gas, I don’t think the overall trend of airfares is headed anywhere but up.
Moreover, even if the electricity supply comes from “dirty” plants, at least there’s the possibility of eventual conversion to cleaner technology, and in the case of remediation there’s an economy of scale.
How is your Amtrak experience relevant at all to the new high-speed rail? “High-Speed Rail” is generally taken to mean a rail line dedicated to passenger rail, with no level crossings. Comparing it to Amtrak is like comparing a modern car to a Model-T.
Airline travel has the same limitation and people use it all the time, even between LA and San Francisco.
The max speed on the major high-speed rail in China and France are 350 km/h (217 mph) an 320 km/h (199 mph) respectively. The Japanese and German trains max out at 186 mph on scheduled runs.
They all run on electricity, so obviously they don’t produce any pollution in cities. They are as clean as the grid that feeds them, and at least in France it’s mostly fed by nuclear power (i.e. no CO2).
Contrast that to hybrid cars and buses which still burn fossil fuel onboard, and therefore still contribute to smog in cities. And of course, no car or bus can legally travel between cities at 200 mph.
Also, car travel kills 32,000 Americans each year. Reducing inter-city car travel will save a lot of lives.
Fresno Resident here,
This corridor is heavily traveled but I would seriously question if there would be sufficent infrastructure to move those folks around once they hit the stations. Perhaps taxi services would see a boost.
As others have mentioned, there is no rail service between bakersfield(BK) and LA, this is IMHO a key point. Fast rail options to LA from the central valley would draw tons of traffic, high end shopping and specialy services in LA would become far more easily reached and used. Not to mention how much nicer it would be to be able to hop on a train for an hour or so as opposed to a 5 hour drive each way to disneyland with 3 kids in the back seat.
Another line I would think to be quite promising especially if competitive with airlines would be a LA - Las Vegas line or BK to Las vegas assuming that the LA-BK line was there.
Train service between L.A. and S.F. is horrible for just the reason you mention here–it doesn’t really exist in a practical form. The Coast Starlight does take a different route that does run all the way from the Bay Area to L.A., but it’s slow. One of those improvements I’d rather see than the HSR project would be improving the capacity and speed allowances along the Coast route. For that to happen they’d need to provide more double tracking and improve crossings, among other things.
And the airlines let you pack your car now, do they? Granted, that doesn’t apply to you if you never fly, but if you do fly you generally need to rent a car, particularly if you live up north and you’re visiting L.A.
Ahh…I found it…the interview on Science Friday on NPR last week which is exactly what this thread is about.
Living not too far from the Victorville station on the planned LA to Vegas run, I would definitely consider it over driving the 170 miles which can be a 4-6 hour ordeal on the weekends.
Hopefully they will upgrade the Tehachapi Loop or it will be a one way trip of a lifetime…literally.
From that link…the niche that HSR could fill…
The routes in California are short enough that they could run the planes directly on CNG if they wanted to. There are LNG planes already on the market, but we don’t need that much range just for commuting in California and converting NG to LNG has some penalties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu-204
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/03/boeing-freezes-design-with-liquid-natural-gas-powerd-airliner/
CNG and LNG are still fossil fuels with their associated problems. And their prices will rise as they will probably be more widely used in automobiles first. Also, they are still fossil fuels and emit CO2 (and other pollutants).
Patently absurd and grossly irresponsible (just like the governor and the legislature).