Why would it be a lot cheaper? We’re talking about constructing an entire additional highway lane segregated from other traffic and dedicated to high-speed buses. It won’t be cheap. And unless it’s heavily subsidized by the government, the bus tickets will be expensive.
(Or to reduce cost, we could eliminate existing lanes on existing freeways and convert them to a bus lanes. This probably wouldn’t be a very popular option.)
Because someone else proposed a high speed bus, not me. I was talking about regular buses using regular lanes. Having buses drive at 100mph instead of 65 is not a big time saver and is a big fuel waster. There are private bus systems that actually manage to run with no government subsidy at all.
Passing a law legalizing robobuses would help, but I don’t see that happening in union dominated California. I already pointed out that the private bus from Orlando to Atlanta is only $29.
I don’t think that’s a given. It’s entirely possible that technological advances will mostly obsolete high speed rail. Or, at least, they’ll obsolete the current designs for high speed rail, at which point we’ve laid a bunch of track that we’ll never break even on. In fifty years we could easily have AI-driven mostly-electric cars that can link up into “highway trains”. There’s already road between LA and SF that can handle cars going 90mph. AI-driven cars can easily maintain that speed the whole way through (and probably faster), which gets you there in four and a half hours (with time for a bathroom break). That’s already competing on travel time pretty well with air travel and HSR, unless you happen to have endpoints that are very close to airports/train stations on both ends. And you get huge flexibility gains like being able to stop along the way wherever you want, setting your own schedule, and having your car with you when you get to your destination.
Infrastructure is expensive, and it’s true that we accept the expense of infrastructure for highways and airports. But we already have highways and airports, so we may be better off improving the use of the infrastructure we already have than we are adding a new one.
Well stated.
Regarding busses - I really wish there was a Megabus solution out west - but perhaps our cities are just too far apart to make it worthwhile. In concept, it would be wonderful to be able to get on one of those nice busses in one city center and be able to exit in another city center without stopping in every podunk town along the way. Busses can already leverage miles of existing carpool lanes in many of the major cities in CA, so once you reached the outskirts of, say L.A., a bus would be able to plug into that existing infrastructure. A network of a few CA cities could be feasible (SF, San Jose, Sacramento, L.A. Anaheim, San Diego).
Of course, a trip from SF to L.A. is long no matter how you slice it, and a bus ride would need to make at least one pit stop, but I think that is a reasonable trade-off.
My friend rides the Megabus from Orlando to Atlanta, which is further than SF to LA. Do you mean pitstops for fuel or bathroom breaks? They have bathrooms onboard.
Megabus does mention that some of their bathrooms are not handicap accessible and they can make special rest stops by prior arrangement.
http://us.megabus.com/passengers-with-disabilities.aspx
Am I reading the subway maps correctly? It looks like LAX and SFO have subway connections.
In terms of what is possible in the next 50 to 100 years, the best option would be evacuated subway tubes running maglev trains. Even in 50 years that will probably still be pretty expensive, so it would only be used on high volume routes.
For low volume routes is is hard to beat air travel. I once figured from Orlando that there are over 80 cities I can get to non-stop. For fuel usage, air travel is already better than a single passenger car on a passenger-mile basis.
For fuel savings, it is hard to beat robocars. We could build vehicles that could get over 200MPG and quadruple the passenger capacity of our existing roads.
I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to add an update - it appears the project is making enemies with the very people they originally said they were going to help:
Even with such opposition, it appears it is full-steam ahead with this project.
Good. Its about time high-speed rail came to California and the United States of America. My only regret is that Obama is not making a bold case for a national high-speed rail system as a centrepiece of his infrastructure plan.
I don’t think we really need it nationwide. I would enjoy having the chance to use high-speed rail in the parts of the country where it would be viable, and I wonder if those regional projects are being built to a common standard so that they could be integrated in the future.
This appears to be an expenditure that will be short-lived in usefulness. Computer controlled vehicular traffic will be widespread in a decade or two and even the small numbers who will ride the high speed rail in the interim will have a more enjoyable alternative.
Seriously. When we have our flying cars, personal jetpacks and hoverboards, all of this is going to be a huge waste!
Some people have mentioned less security compaired to airlines. The thing is, this will only be true until the first time some nutcase manages to sneak a gun or bomb onto one. After that, you’ll be taking off your shoes and standing in line for your full-body virtual stripsearch just like airline passengers are. And unlike airlines, with an HSR, there is the very real possability that terrorists might pry loose a rail, and send a train with hundreds of passengers into a 300-mph barrel roll. More infrastructure = more targets.
Sure, but a computer-controlled sedan isn’t going to hum along at 200 mph, and you still will have to stop to use the bathroom, etc…
Having ridden high speed rail in Europe a few times, I can say that it’s freaking awesome. Prices are on par with flying- maybe a hair cheaper, but you don’t have to deal with all the airport BS- you can just walk onto the train with your stuff, and get off with your stuff at the destination. No searches, no baggage claim, no size limits, etc…
Speed-wise, it’s still quite a bit faster than driving, although slower than flying, but the difference at the station/airport makes up for it IMO.
And fuck terrorists. Making decisions on whether or not to implement something like this based on terrorists is absurd. It just doesn’t happen often enough to worry about, except for those people who probably ought to live in bubbles because they’re paranoid.
Finally, it can be more environmentally sound- since it’s electric (or should be), they can take advantage of green sources and more efficient electrical production, which is something a gas car, diesel train or jet turbine powered airliner can’t do.
The problem is that this project has a huge budget, and is now well over what was advertised. I am not sure if everyone knows, but CA has financial problems. Also, they are scaling back on promises - it will not be 200 MPH the whole way - they are now saying it will use existing track structures near cities, which will require slower speeds. It will end up being a fancy-looking train that cannot at all compete with air travel.
The project has all the hallmarks of a project in red status - ballooning costs, scope decreasing, quality decreasing, behind schedule, potential customers not wanting it. What could possibly go wrong?
Those things are not very efficient and should not be compared to computer controlled traffic.
A few national long-distance lines would be viable alternatives to air travel, such as a Los Angeles to New York line or a San Diego to Seattle (or Vancouver) line.
Then why hasn’t it happened yet?
We’ve had terrorist attacks on trains before - Madrid, Tokyo (sarin gas), etc. They have improved security at train stations as a result, but nothing that impedes the flow of passengers.
High-speed rail is segregated, by definition. There are no level crossings, and most of the track is elevated. Most tracks I’ve seen had some kind of security fence around it. And even if you manage to get to the tracks, each rail is about a mile long, and bolted to a concrete plate.
I think a commuter rail would be a much easier target to attack, and just as crippling & psychologically devastating. Or highway bridges, for that matter.
I am not sure if everyone knows, but CA no longer has a budget deficit.
And there have been plenty of projects that went over budget and schedule, and still proved to be a valuable asset in the end.
Kind of.
Long-term, the state faces a shortfall of $127 billion, according to the State Auditor. Private estimates of its long term liabilities are even higher than that. It achieved its current ‘balanced budget’ through tax increases and drastic spending cuts in many areas, which doesn’t sound like setting the stage for long-term prosperity.
If the high speed rail project is completed, California will be spending huge sums on it for decades to come. Fiscal reality suggests that the state simply won’t have the money.
The US East Coast has the phenomenon of many big cities that are very close to one another, on the order of 2 hours. The so-called “Megalopolis” corridor consists of Boston, NYC, several smaller cities in NJ and CT, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC, and these cities have been observed to function in ways similar to a single metro area. It’s not hard to live in Baltimore and work in DC, or live in Philly and take a casual day trip to NYC or Baltimore. There are few, if any, rural areas remaining between these cities. I have taken the “back roads” from Baltimore to DC - it’s suburbia all the way! Suburban neighborhood developments, Motel 6, McDonalds, Exxon, Safeway, for miles and miles. There are a few other cities, including Richmond, VA and Lancaster, PA that relate to some extent to the Megalopolis but aren’t seen as forming a part of it, at least not yet.