Prop 1a: Fastrack to Financial Hell (San Diego, San Francisco: construction jobs, construction, subsidized)

[EscapeCalifornia]

You want traffic in the middle of nowhere to move better? Add a couple of lanes. How expensive could it be to widen I-5 between the 580 and the 99? Certainly cheaper than building a rail line over the same distance. If rail is SUCH a no brainer, why aren't private investors lining up to risk their own money for the jackpot? Why does the taxpayer have to fund it? Oh, that's right. Because the taxpayer is the only one dumb enough to keep writing checks and throw good money after bad.

[sav858]

Originally Posted by EscapeCalifornia

You want traffic in the middle of nowhere to move better? Add a couple of lanes. How expensive could it be to widen I-5 between the 580 and the 99? Certainly cheaper than building a rail line over the same distance. If rail is SUCH a no brainer, why aren't private investors lining up to risk their own money for the jackpot? Why does the taxpayer have to fund it? Oh, that's right. Because the taxpayer is the only one dumb enough to keep writing checks and throw good money after bad.

Adding lanes won't solve congestion in the long run. It never has and it never will and you will not find one example of that anywhere on earth. If Ca stopped growing then it might work, but it won't. As long as we keep growing adding lanes to freeways will never solve or reduce congestion in the long run.

If widening freeways make so much sense then why aren't investors lining up to build a toll road? You think freeways are free and that we actually pay the full cost for them, even with the gas tax?

High speed railways have by far the highest capacity per unit land they use. A high speed rail needs just a double track railway, one rail for trains in each direction. These have a capacity for 16 trains per hour, each train with a capacity of 800 passengers. This means a high speed rail has a maximum capacity of 12,800 passengers per hour, which clearly is enough to satisfy the highest of demand, only one railway line is needed. This is unlike motorways which take up a very large amount of space and often cannot satisfy demand fully at peak times."

Adding airport and highway capacity to full meet future demand will cost more than HSR.

[EscapeCalifornia]

If this passes, I just hope I'm not here when they raise the sales tax to 12% to cover this boondoggle.

[bhcompy]

sav858: the problem is that the state is enormous and there is no easy way to build high speed rail that is accessible to every community. it will suffer the same problems LA county only Measure R suffers from. it only benefits certain people and its unfair for most people to cover it.

[robertpolyglot]

My earlier post shows my viewpoint is mixed, with this having the most pronounced pros and cons of all the state ballot measures.

But, remember that, somewhere between 2030 and 2050, there will be 60 to 70 million people in the Golden State, and not 37 million. Extra freeway lanes is not the solution.

[EscapeCalifornia]

Does this high speed rail sales job remind anyone of the monorail episode on The Simpsons? Comit your money to this and everything will be roses! All they need its a catchy song. Monorail, monorail, monorai!

[sav858]

Originally Posted by bhcompy

sav858: the problem is that the state is enormous and there is no easy way to build high speed rail that is accessible to every community. it will suffer the same problems LA county only Measure R suffers from. it only benefits certain people and its unfair for most people to cover it.

It's connecting LA, Fresno, Bakersfield, the Bay Area, Sacramento, and San Diego, all of the major population centers of CA.

The combined population of those metro areas with the most recent estimates is about 32,229,000 out of a state with about 36,553,000. That is 88% of the states population. The Central Valley, which is where most of the route is located, is currently and is predicted to be the fastest growing region in the state for a while.

How is this unfair when 88% of the population currently live in a metro area that will have a HSR stop eventually???? Are we suppose to sacrafice our future mobility because someone in Redding or Eureka doesn't have an HSR stop outside their doorstep? The first leg of the project will cover one of the busiest air routes in the nation, LA-SF.

If this gets approved and built, by the time it begins service CA will have about the same population as France did when the TGV went into service and will have a higher population density as well.

So bhcompy please answer this, do you really think it's fair to not build this system b/c 12% of the population will be in the exact same situation they are in now?

[ZhugeLiang]

I can't believe that there are those who think merely adding more lanes is a practical solution. How has that worked out on the Santa Monica freeway? If anything, CA provides the perfect example that adding more lanes is a little more than a 5-10 year band-aid at best.

[edwardius]

This proposition deserves to die.

The major issues with congestion are inside the big cities, not between them. If they want to expand the rail network, expand bart in the bay area to the south bay, add another tunnel under the bay quadruple track the lines so you can run express trains between further out Bart stations so that people in place like freemont can more quickly get to SF, expand the frequency and service of Caltrain and the Capitols, quadruple track those lines and run express trains down the middle.

In Southern California, expand the SD trolley and the MTA light rail network, increase the frequency of the surfliner trains between SD and Santa Barbara. Expand Metrolink.

High speed rail even if its going really fast the entire way (220 mph) is still going to make several stops along the line between SF and LA in order to pick up votes for the project as well as passengers for the trains. This means the trains are going to still effectively be much slower than planes flying point to point between socal and the bay area which are also flying 600+ mph. Moreover its pretty likely that trains will slow down as they go through the mountains in both crossing the tehachappis and the coastal mountains. So the effective speeds are probably much slower.

Land aquisition costs on this project are going to be through the roof. The reason the project needs state funding is because Southwest Airlines can get people pretty cheap between the two regions. Right now where Amtrak loses its most money are on these long distance routes between places like LA and Chicago, but those routes pass through so many senate and congressional districts that they keep enough votes in congress to keep supporting Amtrak.

Passanger rail is a good idea for short distances within urban areas, but the economics of it break down the further out the train runs.

[krudmonk]

Prop 1A should suck money from freeway widenings and suburban street repavings. It should not come from schools.