Thread 2048587

California high speed rail doesn't make any sense, the money would be better spent on transport projects that people will actually use in their day to day lives like Caltrain, Metrolink, BART, Muni, LA Metro, SMART, or the Downtown SF rail extension.
The cruel part about all of this is that it's too late to reverse course for the Democratic party and this project will permanently stain the great State of California's reputation.

I somewhat agree with this mentality in the abstract, but are those even covered by the same budgets? Because if they aren't, it's a pointless observation and I would question whether you even want any of it to get better. It's like the people who go "reeee why are we funding USAID when we don't even fund health care at home" and then turn around and cancel health care at home to give handouts to billionaires.

>>2048587 (OP)
I somewhat agree, there just isn't enough commuter traffic from the LA area to the Bay Area for it to make much sense, both metropolitan areas are self-sufficient and pretty much exist inside of their own bubble. California isn't like Japans cancerous work culture where everyone has to commute a million miles from work to a different city each morning.

I do think the HSR from LA to Las Vegas along the I-15 makes sense though, there is quite a bit of commuting between the two cities, especially vacationers

they should update the pacific surfliner corridor between LA and SD first desu

>>2048588
CAHSR was funded by a proposition, which could have easily funded any other project. To reverse course now I think would need another proposition to repeal prop. 1A which originally funded CAHSR but I'm not sure
>>2048589
>>2048592
I think intracity transport should be prioritized before intercity transport, because super commuters are a minority.
I do think the Bay Area is pretty well served by public transport already, so if any expansions could be made they should be in the LA metropolitan area which has really bad traffic

>>2048597
The LA Metro area has the Metro Subway, Metro Light Rail, and MetroLink (which is mostly for intercity between Orange County and Riverside)

>>2048597
if they just make surfliner into a regular service, the line can serve as an intracity transport within LA and SD

If, for example, the proposition was instead about restoring the extent of service of the red cars in Los Angeles, it would be something really useful to millions of people, and would improve the perception of transit in the United States as a whole, but a boondoggle like CAHSR will only tarnish the idea
Not that flying or driving SFO LAX doesn't suck but there's substantially less people driving that way every day than the amount of people commuting inside of Los Angeles every day

1st rule about pork barrel (political) spending: The point is not to build something, but rather the process of building something where you waste nearly all of it for the people that you owe political favors to. They enrich themselves under the guise of "public works", if something gets built or not is purely due to luck and is a by-product at best

>>2048587 (OP)
haha I'm paying for this :^)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSoa1b-yBUY

>>2048599
if only there weren't so many grade crossings/street running
https://youtu.be/MqRyngrXlXw?si=1jyuEDFa1K2nP7Pl

The largest wildlife crossing on Earth was just recently finished over the 101 near Thousand Oaks. I think wildlife is a serious consideration when planning HSR through the LA foothills, which might explain why the enviornmental review took so long. The point is that HSR is not the only major infrastructure project that the state is in the middle of right now, and I have a strange feeling a lot of retards assume that it is and then wonder why these things take so long.

>>2048626
>an overpass with some dirt
>major infrastructure project

>>2048636
Most overpasses aren't 60 meters wide and 50 meters long and completely landscaped with dirt and folliage while also complying with Earthquake regulations

>>2048637
The most challenging part of building an overpass is getting it funded.

>>2048637
if eurolards can build a 40 mile hole under an 8000 foot mountain and japan can build a high speed rail tunnel under the ocean then surely the "greatest country in the world" can build one 50 meter bridge, what the hell happened to america, oh right, we committed ritual suicide because of twitter brainrot

Even just a Bakersfield to Palmdale would do wonders for the dozens of people who want to commute

>>2048587 (OP)
Holy shit that whole clusterfuck doesn't even reach LA just Bakersfield? Holy crap the whole thing is going to be pointless if it doesn't reach LA, and crossing the mountains is the toughest part.
Man that whole project is complete ass

>>2048733
>Holy crap the whole thing is going to be pointless if it doesn't reach LA
Why?
As other anons have already pointed out, there is virtually no commuting happening between the LA Metro area and the Bay Area, it would be hard to justify
The current construction makes sense, as it's connecting the Central Valley communities, where a lot of commuting actually is happening

>>2048733
it will that's just the initial operating segment

>>2048603
even san francisco hasn't restored the streetcar services that they had at the beginning of the last century

>>2048737
>there is virtually no commuting happening between the LA Metro area and the Bay Area
It's not a commuter train

>>2048764
ESL or autistic?

>>2048765
Autistic thus knowledgeable about trains

>>2048587 (OP)
>Be Sonoma County
>successfully convince your much richer neighbors in Marin County that a mutual rail project and multiuse path will be to everyone's benefit
>get project on the 2006 ballot
>fail because you didn't get the 2/3rds majority
>get project on the 2008 ballot
>succeed because Obama
>Great Recession tanks world economy
>use time to plan, negotiate, and raise funds
>2012 rehabilitate tunnels and bridges, replace 100 year old tracks and sleepers
>realize the project manager is only a political activist who got the ballot through
>promote the actual rail engineer to project manager
>2016 estimate of initial operating segment opening
>except not because testing takes a lot longer than expected
>June-July 2017 allow people to ride the initial operating segment for free for a month as show of good faith so people can ride what they paid for
>August 2017 actual initial operating segment opening
>December 2019 complete segment to Larkspur so people can get on the ferry to San Francisco
>January 2025 finish the Petaluma North station
>June 2025 finish the Windsor station

>SMART isn't even complete yet
>SMART was late and over budget
>SMART is somehow faster and cheaper than BART
>Receive accolades from other counties in California for the project you're still working on
>Several are interested in starting their own rail projects
>talks and plans are underway with Napa County and Mendocino County over potential line extension
>a county of dairy ranchers, chicken farmers, and vineyards owners has somehow emerged as the most competent (entry level) rail builders in the State of California

*rubs temples*

>https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/17/duffy-trump-california-high-speed-rail-termination.html
>Trump administration pulls $4 billion from California high-speed rail project

Says it all, really.

>>2048942
Good. Use the money elsewhere. CHSR is a such a fucking turd.

>>2048942
>>2048944
Well what's $4 billion in a project that may cost more than $100 billion

>>2048848
I live there and I recently found out that we used to have much better electric service all the way down to Sausalito before it was dismantled in the 1930s.
I'm not going to lie though I don't actually use SMART because the line is single tracked and trains only come every hour so until they double track it I think it's pretty much useless for anything other than commuting, it's not a metro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_3e_Bvv2lc

>>2048942
Because federal funding was already set aside and is under contractual obligation, what is likely going to happen is that California is just going to sue the Federal Government and a judge is going to order Trump to pay up like what happened with him trying to fuck over existing USAID contracts earlier this year. None of this has anything to do with the recent Rescissions vote, it's a completely seperate thing, the recent Rescissions vote only covered public broadcasting and USAID funding for the current fiscal year.

>>2048962
iirc the project was to have them cross the bridge similar to the Key System (+East Bay Electrtic +Sacramento Northern) but it never came to pass.
It really is amazing how much gread infrastructure the US has wasted in such a stupid way.

>>2048587 (OP)
>>2048589
I used to drive I-5 between LA and NorCal frequently. There's definitely a need for more capacity. The normally 5-6 hour drive can often turn into 8+, especially around holidays, and there's not really much ability to add more flights between the two cities, plus they both have notorious pain in the ass airports that are hard to get to from much of their cities. HSR makes a lot of sense given the distance and you also have to consider that its existence may induce a lot more travel between the two cities, especially by tourists.

The problem is that it's been completely, terminally fucked by politics. The route is retarded because every county wanted a piece of the funding, it's been fought over to a standstill repeatedly at the state level, CA's insane regulations and land values have caused endless delays and cost overruns, and so on. Japan managed to hammer HSR up their similarly hilly coastline more than half a century ago and in a sane world California would have done the same, not only would it have been more direct, it would've turned the HSR into a scenic tourist attraction, much of its route would've been through public land so way less acquisition fuckery, and it would've been a huge boon for numerous coastal communities between LA and SF.

>>2048587 (OP)

The worst part is that you could kinda sorta get the desired effects of HSR by just restoring the Southern Pacific's Coast Daylight on a 6-7 hour schedule (which is comparable to driving in duration). You might even be able to shave it down further by working with Union Pacific (and maybe arm-twisting it a bit) to sponsor track upgrades and even electrification so you can run a more conventional, but still quite fast service, like the Metroliner on the East Coast. All of this would be much cheaper and faster.

>>2048962

Sometimes I wonder if the problem with Amtrak wasn't that it was founded at all, but that it was founded several decades too late.

Imagine if passenger rail had been nationalized (even if only on the state level) in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression when it was at its peak instead of the 1970s when interurban giants like the Pacific Electric, Key System, and Sacramento Northern had already withered away.

Cities in California with former streetcar service that could've been upgraded to LRT, Oakland, Richmond, Sacramento, Eureka, Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton, Santa Barbara, most cities in the LA metropolitan area, San Diego, San Jose, Monterey
>>2049113
I was thinking about the same thing. Sometimes high speed rail isn't worth it compared to slow trains. Instead of spending all this money to build new high speed rail infrastructure why don't they promote and invest in slow rail as an alternative to driving and flying for non-urgent trips. A lot of people don't even know that passenger trains in the United States still exist, and a significant amount of people would rather take an overnight train to LA or SF instead of fly if it was easier

I remember seeing schizoposts back in the day about how wildfires are a way of clearing land to build this. Sometimes I wonder if they were right.

That highly coveted Bakersfield to Merced route.

>>2049126
>a significant amount of people would rather take an overnight train to LA or SF instead of fly if it was easier

There actually is a company attempting to do that and they're serious enough about it that Union Pacific already signed a memorandum of understanding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamstar_Lines

>>2049126
>Sometimes high speed rail isn't worth it compared to slow trains.

I'm not even saying you can't have a high speed rail route between LA and SF eventually, but there has to be a transition where you're operating conventional trains but on an accelerated schedule to build up the infrastructure and customer-base, rather than just building the entire HSR network at once.

Say Phase I is getting Union Pacific to upgrade its track so you can run trains at 100 mph over enough of the route that you can reliably shave the travel time down to six hours, sponsor a bill to co-finance the venture in cooperation with Union Pacific and once it's done, restart the Coast Daylight as a service hauled by fast diesels, they could even buy up the remaining RTL-III Turboliners (assuming they're still operable) have been sitting in New York unused for the past few decades to operate them in the interim while newer rolling stock is being built.

Then, once you've got a well-established working relationship with UP and a decent customer base, you can move on to Phase II, electrification, sponsor another bill to co-finance the electrification of Union Pacific's coastal route and its acquisition of electric freight locomotives. Boom, you're already arguably over halfway to HSR.

>>2049110
>it would've turned the HSR into a scenic tourist attraction

They should be resurrecting the Coast Daylight name for that very reason. It was one of the most famous and beautiful trains in the world and still carries that brand recognition nearly half a century after it was discontinued.

I think of CAHSR as a litmus test for intelligence. Some people just can’t see the importance of building high-speed rail in America because they’re not very bright. Or they’re just super biased against trains.

>>2049185
Problem is not many people would use a train that's slower than driving, so I don't think you'd really get that buildup. That said, what I DO think could make a ton of sense for CA is a car train, something like the channel tunnel, one that could average 80mph or more across the trip, that'd be way faster than driving (no traffic, no gas/food stops, etc.) and less of a pain in the ass, and I think people would be a lot more likely to take it if they could use their own car to get around at the other end.

>>2049197
>I think of CAHSR as a litmus test for intelligence. Should've stopped at the first sentence

>>2049210
Flying and driving from LA to SF is a major hassle. In my experience you have to nap or switch with someone else to stay awake. I wouldn't be surprised if there was significant demand for a better service.
A car train is interesting, there's a lot of car collectors in California, but I'm not sure it would be competitive with a car trailer

>>2049197
L take.
I'm all for trains, but you have to ask yourself if it's still worth it to go the HSR route in the US, considering that trains are a residual form of long-distance transportation, that public transit usage even in cities (esp. LA) is low anyway, which hurts the potential of HSR, and that the US has a hard time carrying out large public infrastructure works.

Long years ago the US decided to go the way of air travel, think of that what you will but that's how it is. Even though CAHSR as a project makes sense, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's a lone outlier with no larger rail system of modern capacities around it (the odd regional train and long distance boomer cruiser doesn't make a difference), nor is there any project to establish this in some way.

Maybe if the whole country had decided on a hybrid air-HSR system wherein you combine both forms of travel and see to it, that airports are connected to HSR and so on, then it could have made sense. But as it is? No chance. That's why the project isn't even getting off the ground, it doesn't really have a conceptual backing, it's just the pipe dream of a few politicians, lobbyists and rail aficionados; again, notwithstanding that it isn't in and of itself a reasonable project.

tl;dr CAHSR would of only made sense within a larger intercity transportation policy which included it, not by itself.

>>2049210
Such trains could possibly work rather well in the US since they simply replace a leg of your car journey, without making you entirely dependent on public transportation. I don't get why this isn't more common.

>>2049218
It's because loading and unloading cars at each end is a hassle that requires a physical plant to accomplish, plus more labor and more time than handling passengers only. It works well for the Channel Tunnel service because that was built in modern times with a gigantic loading gauge. That extra room allows regular drivers to roll on/off the train and they can step out of the vehicles and walk to the passenger compartment.

North American autoracks are narrower by several feet I believe. Unlike the former service, they weren't intended to give much room for anyone once you're outside of the car. There's barely enough room for an able-bodied person to get in or out of the vehicle once it's loaded, so Amtrak has its own employees drive vehicles into and out of the autoracks. They have to have mobile ramps and a paved apron to do this, and the cars have to be spotted correctly to load/unload consecutive units. After they're loaded the autoracks have to be gathered up and switched onto the passenger consist (opposite has to happen for unloading them at the other end of the line, too).

That extra width in the loading gauge ensures that Nigel can do the labor himself with just a handful of employees directing him, and there's no switching or spotting necessary. It's a great system, but could never be used in North America unless it was a new route designed with an equally large loading gauge. I don't think the idea was ever considered by CAHSR backers in the initial planning stages (not sure though).

>>2049224
Since you can have the car loading station anywhere and it needn't be at the central station, you can just build new facilities outside the city center. What I would do is this

>build new facilities in the outskirts for loading cars onto the train
>design new autoracks where you can "open" part of the the left side while the cars are loading
>have platforms at the same height for both (or all three) levels
>train leaves central station (if it's not purely an auto train) drives to auto loading station, hooks up auto racks, drives on

I don't think it would be all that big an investment would it?

california HSR should make sense but america has many retarded issues that have made it go massively overcost
>corruption
>lack of institutional knowledge
>overbearing environmental rules
>petty politics (small ass cities forcing the train to be rerouted to them and a stop added or they won't let the tracks through their land when any other country would simply just build it and not ask)
etc.
>>2048944
yeah we need 10 more billion to israel and 2 trillion to ICE.

>>2049217
>tl;dr CAHSR would of only made sense within a larger intercity transportation policy which included it, not by itself.
The biggest problem with CAHSR is that it's a money sink with billions spent, nothing usable, and no end in sight. Worse, it's such bad press that taxpayers aren't going to want to fund an HSR project if it's going to be a massive problem. The Trump administration audited the CASHR project months ago for compliance and found they weren't compliant with the agreements the grant stipulated. Meanwhile, Brightline West continues construction and a similar audit could potentially pass with flying colors.

>>2049314
Like I said
>the US has a hard time carrying out large public infrastructure works.
notice it says *public*. Sure a private company can do it better, but a private company can build a Brightline but not a CAHSR.

If the US had a general pro-rail policy the project would likely work out better, since there would be more public involvement, more pressure for compliance, better control of corruption, etc. Notice the US can still (more or less) build highways and airports, because those follow the overall transportation policy. Passenger trains don't.
Which is why I said what I said, and your reply is just saying the same thing but in a low-IQ way. Essentially we agree tho.

>>2049330
Americans are just very skeptical over public works in general. The United States actually has the largest rail network on Earth, but it's most for freight, and thus is largely built and maintained by private companies and investors. And as other have said, companies like Brightline West are more likely to lead the charge into HSR than the state is. The only real exceptions are Public Works Administration projects under FDR and the national highway system that was actually built during the Cold War to allow tanks to easily move cross-country in the event the cold war got hot (yes, this is in fact the justification for the highway system, although it was heavily inspired by the German Autobahn) and even then it's largely covered by gasoline tax and thus subsidized by big oil

>>2049330
>>2049336
The U.S. can do large public infrastructure works, but there needs to be results. The Interstate Highway System worked partially because there were immediate results. In the case of CASHR $15B have been spent with nothing substantial to show for it. It was also a massive improvement over what was there before.

>>2049214
It's only a 5-6 hour drive, I've done it dozens of times and it's nowhere near long enough to need a driver switch or nap or anything, you can leave LA at 10AM and be in SF in time for dinner. It'd still be a lot nicer to kick back and relax on a train instead of dealing with the drive though.

>>2049257
>2 trillion to ICE
To be fair, clearing out illegals WILL reduce traffic. We won't even need one more lane on the I-10.

>>2048962
Without a doubt the Northwestern Pacific Railroad was the most revolutionary project of its time in the State of California. Hydro-electric power had been pioneered in California using the Pelton wheels just two decades before. This built on the older gold rush hydraulic infrastructure which had already been built high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Only in the decade before were the innovations made to move electricity more than 20 miles without significant loss. For the project electricity was conducted over 130 miles from the hydro-electric plants in Rome, Yuba, and Colgate on the Yuba River to the powerhouse in Mill Valley.

This was combined with the rail lines which had been built by the great industrialist Peter Donahue, founder of Union Iron Works. So the existing rail lines were simply being electrified, not built.

When the project opened on August 21, 1903 it was the first electric rail line in all of California and the among the first ten in the entire United States. Their pioneering use of an alternating current signal system was so brilliant that the standards set in Marin County were adopted by the New York Subway which opened a year later.

As someone who grew up in Marin County living along the right of way of the old line I've always had a strange sense of wistfulness about how everything used to be. That we have less rail infrastructure now than we did 100 years ago. Or that most people you talk to about it have no idea there even was a railway system in the first place. Also the other railways like the Mount Tamalpais railway or the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad which was also electric and opened in December 1904. Marin County itself is named after Chief Marin, a native American who established the San Francisco Bay ferry system back in the 1830s before California was even part of the United States. For over 150 years we were state leaders in transportation innovation. Our only recent success is the SMART train. Please ride it.

>>2048587 (OP)
What doesn't make sense is the cost. How the fuck does it cost more then a never built before Japanese Magnetic Levitiaton Train that runs 90% underground in tunnels that had to be specifically made for it with fucking custom tunnel digging machines.
How in the fucking fuck does it cost more then that?
It's even a comparable length too!
How does this even make sense in terms of costs when compared to Bubble Era Japan with incredibly gigantic land prices and their other lines built in that era?!
How the fuck can China build quite literally 15 times cheaper?
How the fuck can Spain build quite literally 10 times cheaper?!

The only reason I can think of is. This was a project funded to bait people, it's investor and state money bait to make construction companies and landowner rich and laughing all the way to the bank while Californians pay for it.

>>2049686
Or
Hear me out for a second anon

California has a higher property value than Japan and China, and thus costs the government more money to aquire this land, and the United States as a whole no longer practices eminent domain, which would otherwise allow the government to just seize the necesarry property outright

If you think the US should return to eminent domain, then you're going to have to be willing to open another can of worms

>>2049688
Nope it's not that. Japan had higher prices in the 80 and still built more and longer routes. You can keep telling yourself that but the data does not back it up.

These parcels represent roughly 90% of the required right-of-way for that first section

CP 1 (Madera Fresno, ~32mi): ~$797 million

CP 2‑3 (Fresno Tulare‑Kern line): ~$531 million

CP 4 (Tulare‑Kern Shafter, ~22mi): ~$186 million

Where the fuck did the other thats only 1.7 billion dollars retard. Where the fuck did the other 10 billion dollars go?

And then given Phase 1 costs

We can assume say twice as much cost so let's say it's 4 bil for the Merced SF part and another 4 bil for the Bakersfiend Anaheim part.

So land acquisition is a total of higher round up 10 billion dollars.

Okay so faggot why will the entire project cost 120 billion dollars?

>>2049686
>This was a project funded to bait people
You might be on to something.

>>2049696
To be fair, they were right, it didn't require new taxes, and that's exactly why it was delayed, which counterintuitively actually lead to cost overrun in the long run as the project couldn't keep up with external economic factors

>>2049686
In China, if the government needs land, they just take it. It belongs to the people, and the state is the people, so shut up, you land-owning bourgoise!
In the US, the state needs to buy the land for close to what it's worth, and owners can go to court over it, dragging the process on indefinitely.

>>2049698
The US used to do the same thing, it's called Eminent Domain, and was widely controversial and heavily looked down on so the practice largely stopped

>>2049700
Silly anon, eminent domain is only for highways.

>>2048699
Silence /bag/got

HSR should be the final step to public transit after building local and regional infrastructure. Get trams built, have relatively dense and mixed neighborhoods, then frequent and convenient commuter rail. Only after all of that is in place does HSR make sense.
But HSR is fancy, simple and high tech so you can rouse excitement and get funding. Nobody gives a shit about trams.

>>2049694
>Okay so faggot why will the entire project cost 120 billion dollars?
Because there's a battalion of rich assholes in the way who are determined to use every trick in the legal book to stop the project, aided by a whole lot of bureaucracy that only feels empowered to say No to things. All because when the legislation was set up, nobody thought to make the costs of challenges be required to be borne by the objector.
Also a lot of asshole contractors charging far too much. Crooks. But this isn't on the same scale as the previous paragraph.

>>2048587 (OP)
HSR between LA ad SF makes sense in the abstract. But real California HSR got raped by the cancer that is Californian politics. To protect against this high-speed rail project should be private lead. Pic related

Realistically I just don't see how the West can even continue to compete with China. See they are Fucking smart, they took all the best parts of Communism and are managing it in a way that makes sense, using Authoritarianism to get stuff done.

We can't even Fucking complete a single section of a high speed rail project that was funded back in 2008, and here we are over 15 years later still holding our dicks in the wind. Because we have to study the three toed swamp rat, or we have to spend years negotiating with some Fucking backwoods MAGA country hick for a parcel of his previously worthless land in Nofuckwhere.

In 2008, for under $35 billion dollars China connected Beijing to Shanghai, 800+ miles of track, and finished construction of the entire project in 3 years! And the line is turning a profit. That would cover a railway line from the very northern edge of California to the Mexican border!

>>2050107
>We
Neither you, nor I, nor anyone here work in the bureaucratic mess that is Sacramento, California.
/n/ would have completed the thing by now.

>>2048587 (OP)
California is a shithole full of retards.
HSR would have been a nice alternative to flying, but the money for is just being embezzled instead.

>>2050128
>California high speed rail doesn't make any sense
Last time I went to San Fran the layover between flights in order to fly to San Fran from LA was so long I just rented a car and drove there before the plane was even going to land.

>>2050206
That's your own fault, don't book a flight with an overnight layover

>30 years of planning and $130 billion cost over runs projected to cost $200 billion and take another 10-20 years
>not a single mile of track laid

>>2050207
No, it was just an issue with that time of year.
LA to San Fran was only a 3-1/2 hour drive because I left LAX around lunch time. The LAX-SF flight wasn't going to be until 6pm.

LAX and JFK have long layover times. DFW and Ohare give you 40 minutes to get to the other end of the airport for your connecting flight if it were to arrive on time (but never does).

>>2048626
how much water does that absorb? Does it hold quite a bit of weight when it rains, or does most of it just matriculate down through about as quick as it pours down?

>>2050218
>Flying American
Lmao even

>>2049688
>out of all the bajillion regulations, red tape and bureaucratic inefficiency hobbling modern infrastructure projects, /n/ commie immediately turns to stealing land from people.

>>2050107
>Realistically I just don't see how the West can even continue to compete with China.
The only way we lose to china on shit that matters (ie not HSR) is if our leaders sell us out--which they have been doing for 20+ years, so we aren't in great shape--. It's not hopeless.