1 more reason the "high speed rail" needs to be axed (Los Angeles: taxi, costs)

[NyWriterdude]

High speed rail could increase commerce and travel between cities on a reason basis. Say LA, SF, SD, and Sacramento.

It needs an infusion of major money from the federal government. Let's hope this goes through.

[Big-Bucks]

Originally Posted by NyWriterdude

High speed rail could increase commerce and travel between cities on a reason basis. Say LA, SF, SD, and Sacramento.

It needs an infusion of major money from the federal government. Let's hope this goes through.

200 billion. There are much more important projects if we want to spend that kind of money. More dams, expanding freeways within cities, etc.

Not to mention that this rail project was fraudulently pushed on the voters. They lied about the cost, lied about the speed, etc.

[2nd trick op]

I've been following this story for several years as a transportation studies graduate, a former railroader, a lifelong railroad buff, and a fiscal conservative. A couple of points:

The project can't be scuttled completely; the Central Valley's "conventional" rail passenger service was withdrawn with the coming of a "lean-and-mean" Amtrak service in 1971, but restored within three years, and additional schedules added. The Bakersfield-Merced segment was in the process of an upgrade to the 110-MPH top speeds now in use in New York State, Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania even before construction on the projected 200-MPH top speed Merced-Stockton segment got underway. So you will see a considerable improvement in speeds and travel times for most of the intermediate cities; it's the end-to-end travel times for a complete San Diego-Sacramento service which were deliberately oversold by the political hacks.

And getting that service over the San Gabriels and into the L. A. Basin is going to be an expensive proposition; but Warren Buffet's Burlington Northern Santa Fe System, a conventional railroad, currently has to share trackage over the "Tehachapi bottleneck" with arch-competitor Union Pacific, and can probably be talked into picking up part of the tab if it gets a break on a second, parallel tunnel through the mountains exclusively for freight.

The only point I really want to underscore here is that the nature of rail and other "heavy" infrastructural projects, combined with an unstable political climate, renders them unworkable for the private sector alone. Recent, and likely longer-horizon improvements in the fuel picture also inveigh against extensive growth in the rail freight market when compared to the last thirty years.

So I expect that, as with the Boston-New York-Washington service on the East Coast -- which has been slowly improving ever since its inception back in the Sixties, but cannot, for basic technical reasons, match the over-hyped French and Japanese "true" HSR's, some form of intercity rail service is here to stay, and it will represent an improvement. But it's going to cost more, and deliver less, and over a longer time frame, than what was promised to his groupies when Mr. Obama took his one-and-only train ride back in 2009.

[Tribes]

Originally Posted by Big-Bucks

The Hyperloop is about to be built

Hyperloop is faster & better than maglev??

[V8 Vega]

I agree with Big Bucks 200 billion.
Calif. is full of mountains, trains don't climb mountains worth a hoot.
It has to compete with airline travel which is faster and cheaper, why on earth would anyone take the train?

[Tribes]

Originally Posted by V8 Vega

It has to compete with airline travel which is faster and cheaper, why on earth would anyone take the train?

it may have like a bar or dining and you can go up and down the train..


Something you can't obviously do with the other

[I Love Buildings]

Because it's nice to look out the window and watch the landscape change?

[HarryKerryJr]

Originally Posted by CCbaxter

I thought Hyper Loop Rail was being tested here, in CA, by Elon Musk.

Hyper Loop is Hyper Vaporware. Elon just wants the public money to prop up his dying business.

[SpaceMonkyPunks]

Originally Posted by Big-Bucks

No. Don't build a 200 billion dollar rail that is going to be antiquated. By the way people have been using planes to fly long distances for years now. We don't need a 200 billion dollar high speed rail now.

Well then Mr. Richy McRichman, please kindly send me a check for 300 dollars whenever I feel the need to fly somewhere.

Originally Posted by V8 Vega

I agree with Big Bucks 200 billion.
It has to compete with airline travel which is faster and cheaper, why on earth would anyone take the train?

No, the goal of high-speed rail is to allow people to travel for cheaper than flying - it doesn't have to match service/time. The same people who rely on public transit can't fork out cash for place tickets on a regularly or even occasional basis. Currently, regional rail (ie amtrak) is so insanely overpriced b/c it's systems/trains are beyond antiquated (and they're desperate for cash). A modern high-speed rail would aim to be much lower cost to operate.

[2nd trick op]

You can forget about both maglev and hyperloop. Like monorail, both are expensive and basically unproven technologies. And they require an expensive, fixed right of way that can't easily be moved or adapted if, and more likely, when business conditions and land-use patterns change. But the kiddies always fall for the most expensive plaything in the store window.

When the Merced-Stockton segment is completed, you'll have a service with considerably higher speed, easier access to a lot of places that both count for the present, and have the potential to grow in the not-very-far future; an improvement over the former Santa Fe/Amtrak San Juaquin service which was already in place and serving a proven market, augmented by a bus hub at Bakersfield. That can be expanded into the L. A. Basin if and when whoever succeeds Buffet at BNSF decides to cooperate in breaking the bottleneck at Tehachapi once and for all.

The entire thing is a not-always-easy demonstration of how permanent improvements fall into place when funding of major public infrastructure issues become a problem, and I can't offer any hope for a quicker or less-expensive method.