Are they used for freight, or passengers only?
The trains between NYC and DC are not fast by European or Japanese standards, but they still are the fastest way to travel between midtown Manhattan and downtown Washington DC (bearing in mind travel to and from airports, plus having to get to airports earlier than you have to get to a train station).
There is still a lot to be done, but in my mind I just cannot see how California can continue without a solution to the population and traffic issues. HSR seems to me like it HAS to be part of our future. If not now, when? I know this isn’t a sophisticated argument, but seriously, the interstate system was costly, but necessary. Airports are built all the time to aid public transport. The question for me is “What will the future look like 10, 20 years from now?”
Yup. And if we wait until we need it to start building it, we’re screwed for the several years or decades it’ll take to build the infrastructure. I’m very pleased the light rail in Phoenix is being built now, because by the time the rail expands into most of the city (expansions are being built from now into 2020), we’re going to need it pretty badly.
Yup. People keep moving in, and they have to live somewhere, and they have to get around. Population densities now might make rail look a bit odd, but the people are coming and it probably will be much more expensive to build rail systems later than now.
I voted yes on 1A even though it will have limited use for me. The thing about flying out of LAX is that it really takes a lot of planning. The terminals are packed, the parking is expensive and far from the airport, and the traffic is about as bad as you can imagine. For some ridiculous reason, they did not build the subway to the airport, although they are planning an extension. A great deal of the public transportation system (including convention railroad, Metrorail, the subway and buses) connects at Union Station. To go from Union Station to LAX, it takes 3 separate subways which takes forever. It seems to me that for a lot of people, the Bullet train could be a viable time effective solution.
Nevertheless, I anticipate major cost overruns and much slower transit times than claimed.
And can we talk about the 5-minute headway they’re claiming (2704.09 .c)? I lurves me some trains, but lets get realistic here.
I don’t think that means trains will run every five minutes. “Achievable operating headway” means that the infrastructure can reset in that time (the tracks will cool down, turbulence dissipates, etc.)
Indeed, I have ridden the European networks, I am sure more time than any American commentators here. I am a great fan, but neither do I have an idealised vision of their utility either.
Given everything I have read about Californian distribution and the population distribution maps, California appears to be one of the worst places to launch an American high speed rail experiment.
One would think launching the experiment in a region where population densities and urban patterns are rather better suited would be more intelligent. The East Coast of the US being immediately an example that comes to mind.
Merely asserting it is more “green” as such strikes me as hard Left-Green naiveté and magical wishful thinking, to begin with a grandiose white elephant project. The sort of “don’t build nuclear, let’s build a magical super desert solar complex” thinking. Now, if as cited above the air corridor traffic between the cited urban areas is high enough, and the end arrangement allows for transport solutions that are user friendly then it may work and not be a waste of capital. Without the car friendly solutions, it will be a waste, see Bearflag supra.
However, I would rather suspect that much uncritical thinking is going on.
One advantage California has over the the Northeast is that it is a single state. The middle portions of the high-speed route is generally unpopulated so it’ll be easy (er) to acquire the right-of-way and such.
Might the taxicab lobby have something to do with that?
How is high-speed rail any more communalist than government-planned, -funded, and -maintained highways or government-planned, -funded, and -maintained airports and air traffic control?
Well, California is the subject up for discussion. And, more generally I suppose, inter-city passenger rail in the United States.
I’m gonna guess that you don’t have children. When I travel with my kids, the ability to simply leave half an hour later and arrive a half hour later, rather than being forced to race to a train station or airport, is absolutely wonderful. I think most parents would agree with me.
Similarly, the option to just throw a few extra items into the car and sort them out later is absolutely wonderful.
I remember a few months ago, my spouse and children went on a trip by train. When it was time to return, (with just an hour until the train left) their suitcase broke and would not close. Needless to say, it was a stressful PITA. With a car, it would have been no problem at all.
Depends how you define “civilized world.” From what I hear, the train station in Johannesburg isn’t such a great place to hang out.
Obviously I disagree with you about the negative consequences of American CO2 emissions. I do agree that dependence on petroleum is a problem.
But the bigger problem I see is the implicit argument that a high speed rail link will take a significant number of cars off the highway. The fact is that cars are extremely convenient compared to rail and the marginal cost of driving is often quite a bit cheaper than taking the train. Moreover, for people who are in a hurry, it’s not ridiculously expensive to fly from LAX to SFO.
I’m very skeptical that a high speed rail link between northern and southern california is even a remotely cost effective way to reduce oil consumption.
Public works projects are lucrative contracts. They create jobs and boost the economies in the locales where they are occurring. This will reduce dependence on foreign oil in the most efficient way possible. If Californians start using this high-speed rail a lot they’ll stop driving so much. It’ll create jobs to maintain and service it for it’s entire life cycle.
It also isn’t significantly faster and is a hell of a lot less convinient. My sisters in law both live in SF and we pick them up from the airport. The last time one of them flew in (about a month ago) it took us 2 hours to get them home with us after we picked them up. They were in the air for 90 minutes, on the runway for 30 minutes on either end of the flight and had to show up to the airport an hour early to get through security. This is without them checking luggage.
It takes me the same time to drive up the 5 to my SIL’s apartment, door to door.
Driving is the sensible option most of the time.
I am not sold on rail yet, but if it works half as well as it is supposed to I would pick it over air travel every time. And it it was less expensive than air travel, I would probably use it to go to SF a lot for weekend trips and the like.
It seems to me that a high speed rail link would have many of the same problems. For example, if you are traveling from Woodland Hills to Haywood, you would still need to take extra time to get from Woodland Hills to the Los Angeles train station; and then from the San Francisco train station to Haywood. This problem could be alleviated a bit by including more local stops on the high speed line, but that undermines the high speed of the high speed line. And also makes it less efficient.
Not only that, but rails get congested or develop signal problems on a regular basis. Both of these things can add to delays.
Fair enough. Like I said, I am not totally sold on rail. I do know that I see no reason to fly unless I had to arrive at a specific hour. But I would like to not have to drive if I had an alternative. If I could get to SF in less than 6 hours so much the better. Is rail the solution? Is builing better rail lines between LAX and the rest of the city? I don’t know. My SILs fly because, living in SF, neither of them own a car. I would love to have that sort of option within LA. But that is another issue.
And just wait until the first terrorist act the blows up a train. From then on you’ll have the same security checks that you do now at airports, but none of the transport speed to make up for it.
The Acela service in the northeast has its share of drawbacks and compromises, but there is one thing they did well on the Boston end. The train starts at South Station (easy to reach by public transit) and stops again at a station on Rte. 128 (the ring highway that circles Boston about 10 miles out) that’s a very easy drive from lots of the suburbs. Imagine how convenient an airport would be if it only had one airline, two gates, and no TSA. And since there are doors all along the train, it barely stops for a minute to let everybody on board. The next stop is all the way to Providence, Rhode Island.
I don’t know the geography of Los Angeles very well, but one stop in the center of the city and another in the burbs with freeway access and parking might be all it needs. I’d also expect that the people who have researched this proposal have planned for this already.