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There was a High Speed Rail Authority Community Open House last Tues, Sept 8 at the Commonwealth Club in SF.
I'm wondering if anyone went to the SF event and what they thought/learned.
What was the format? Posters, presentations, Q/A session?
Any info that you hadn't heard before?
I'm down in SJ and trying to decide if it's worth it to leave work a couple hours early to attend the event tomorrow in San Jose.
Improve and expand Metro Link. Merge Cal Train, BART, ACE, etc and expand that network. With expansion, these two networks would probably have only about a 150 mile gap between them. To connect the two networks together, upgrade and expand the existing Amtrack system (e.g. electrification) to be on par with the BOSWASH type of system (e.g. does not need to be a full on bullet train). For example, improve the existing Coast Starlight, reenstate passenger service down the San Joaquin Valley but an expanded version that goes all the way to LA. Use the Altamont easement to run a state of the art line between both Oakland and San Jose, merging with the San Joaquin Valley Tracks (this would also be a Bay Area - LA line).
You mentioned an HSR version of this last element and claimed it was less feasible than HSR's current planned alignment. You may not be aware, there are currently no rail lines over Pacheco Pass (or other Coast Range crossings south of the Bay Area for that matter). New tracks would need to be laid down there and it is steep. Either it would require expensive tunneling or a Tehachapi Loop type of solution. Talk about a massive engineering undertaking. It would be unreal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by andyadhi01
The HSR drama is still going on? When are they going kill this non-sensical rail-to-nowhere project?
The exchange here reminds me of Mr. Kipling's famous poem about the six blind men "introduced" to an elephant exclusively by touch. Everyone "saw" what he wanted to "see".
The breaking of ground at Fresno last year was a guarantee that some sort of rail system through Central California will be built. Even before that, work was underway on upgrading Amtrak's San Joaquin service (itself revived and upgraded since 1974) to the 110 MPH standards emerging in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois.
So it is a certainty that some sort of service will emerge; integrating it fully with existing services to gain entry to san Francisco and Los Angeles, and breaking the "Tehachapi bottleneck" (which few people unfamiliar with the constraints of rail operation -- and that includes virtually all politicians --understand) will be another matter entirely.
The development of the Boston-Washington "Northeast Corridor" has been underway for 51 years; or 58 if you go back to the famous ICC (Hosmer) report in 1957 that proclaimed the doom of the conventional rail passenger services of that day. What has evolved is an improvement, but it cannot match the French and Japanese systems held up as an unattainable standard by a technically-unfamiliar public. Any attempt at that would take several decades and tens of billions of dollars -- in the hands of the usual crew of political hacks equal to squander it.
So one more piece of California's mismatched infrastructure will emerge in the Central Valley -- to be slowly integrated into a hodgepodge of not-always-compatible systems which will survive -- but only because the state has so much congestion that further highway expansion is usually impractical.
The soap opera will go on -- but we will all be called to the great Union Station beyond before it plays out -- if ever.
The development of the Boston-Washington "Northeast Corridor" has been underway for 51 years; or 58 if you go back to the famous ICC (Hosmer) report in 1957 that proclaimed the doom of the conventional rail passenger services of that day. What has evolved is an improvement, but it cannot match the French and Japanese systems held up as an unattainable standard by a technically-unfamiliar public. Any attempt at that would take several decades and tens of billions of dollars -- in the hands of the usual crew of political hacks equal to squander it.
So one more piece of California's mismatched infrastructure will emerge in the Central Valley -- to be slowly integrated into a hodgepodge of not-always-compatible systems which will survive -- but only because the state has so much congestion that further highway expansion is usually impractical.
The Bos-Was corridor has about twice the population of entire state of CA and it is one of the most densely populated urban area in the world with large cities in relatively short distances. Inter-city HSR makes sense there...
There are no major urban areas between LA and SF.. It's farmland and desert wilderness and there is not much business travel between LA and SF. The whole CA HSR is a colossal waste of money and the money will be better spent of local rail transit in LA and bay area. The farmworkers in central valley don't have the money to take HSR for partying in LA and SF. They can barely afford to move around their towns with a old beatup pickup truck!
The Bos-Was corridor has about twice the population of entire state of CA and it is one of the most densely populated urban area in the world with large cities in relatively short distances. Inter-city HSR makes sense there...
There are no major urban areas between LA and SF.. It's farmland and desert wilderness and there is not much business travel between LA and SF. The whole CA HSR is a colossal waste of money and the money will be better spent of local rail transit in LA and bay area. The farmworkers in central valley don't have the money to take HSR for partying in LA and SF. They can barely afford to move around their towns with a old beatup pickup truck!
You're analysis is off.
The airline route between SF-LA is one of the busiest in the country. Although the proportion of people flying that are business travelers is irrelevant, there are a lot of business travelers on this route.
There is a significant population in the central valley, and the HSR system would definitely spur more people to live out there and use the HSR system for commuting. People are already commuting asinine distances to SF and LA, and are mainly doing it by car. So a better built rail infrastructure would really help, especially as this will only get worse in the future.
The SF-LA corridor is probably one of the best candidates for high-speed rail in the country, and if developed properly could develop into a system similar to what's seen along the Bos-Wash corridor.
Take a good look at past projects in throughout history. The building of bridges, roads, buildings, etc. throughout America. Look back 50 to 75 years. The projects on time and within budget, and if there was any variances they were minimal.
Thanks for the detailed explanation, I understand and agree. Two things stand out for me from the past to current day: much more attention is placed on workplace safety and the environment. I think those two items help contribute to soaring costs. How many people died building the original Bay Bridge compared to how many did so on the new replacement section? We are placing more value on life (and the environment) at the detriment of lower cost projects. But there are other areas too that are contributing to the overall costs. You are right, it's a broken system and rising costs don't seem to be slowing down.
Also, thanks for your leveled response, even after I took a shot at you. Sorry.
The Bos-Was corridor has about twice the population of entire state of CA and it is one of the most densely populated urban area in the world with large cities in relatively short distances. Inter-city HSR makes sense there...
There are no major urban areas between LA and SF.. It's farmland and desert wilderness and there is not much business travel between LA and SF. The whole CA HSR is a colossal waste of money and the money will be better spent of local rail transit in LA and bay area. The farmworkers in central valley don't have the money to take HSR for partying in LA and SF. They can barely afford to move around their towns with a old beatup pickup truck!
I disagree. HSR connecting metro regions is exactly where it belongs. The big draw of CA HSR is to provide an alternative to get people from Northern CA down to Southern CA and conversely. Factor in the Bay Area, Sacramento, all of Southern CA (LA - SD) and it is an adequate sized population for this project. If you factor in the costs to maintain and expand the highway system, expanding airport infrastructure, costs to the environment, healthcare (from additional pollution that alternative transportation methods result in) - The costs start equaling out - and there are efficiencies to be gained that you would not get from the Automobile, i.e. time, cleaner environment, etc.
Japan has HSR longer than the LA/SF segment- in both heavily and less populated areas. Look at the picture in the site below- HSR train going by a farm in rural Japan. Not much different than the Central Valley.
The Bos-Was corridor has about twice the population of entire state of CA and it is one of the most densely populated urban area in the world with large cities in relatively short distances. Inter-city HSR makes sense there...
There are no major urban areas between LA and SF.. It's farmland and desert wilderness and there is not much business travel between LA and SF. The whole CA HSR is a colossal waste of money and the money will be better spent of local rail transit in LA and bay area. The farmworkers in central valley don't have the money to take HSR for partying in LA and SF. They can barely afford to move around their towns with a old beatup pickup truck!
To answer this question, it's necessary to delve deeply into both the economics of transportation and the history of railroading in California.
Early development of rail transportation was entirely in the hands of the Central Pacific, founded and headed by the famous (or notorious) Big Four, When the transcontinental line was completed in 1869, the partners almost immediately turned their attention southward -- to a line to Los Angeles via Fresno and Bakersfield; that line was later extended all the way to El Paso and New Orleans. A second line to Los Angeles, via Salinas, San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara (known as the "Coast Route" and not as well-suited for use for either freight or passengers due to curvature and grades) was also built by the same (now-renamed) Southern Pacific.
The SP's monopoly on transcontinental freight traffic was soon threatened by potential competitors; both rival Santa Fe and a subsidiary of the St. Louis - San Francisco known as the Atlantic and Pacific began pushing their own expansion plans. In a manner similar to the "peace treaty" between several Eastern trunk lines at around the same time, the "Frisco" eventually abandoned its plans and turned its partially-complete main line via Flagstaff and Barstow over to the Santa Fe.
Santa Fe eventually built its own line into Los Angeles via Cajon Pass, but any route from Barstow to the Bay Area had to go via Tehachapi, where the SP already held the only practicable turf without the extensive use of expensive tunnels; so an arrangement for "trackage rights" eventually was reached, but with Santa Fe clearly in a subservient role.
That wasn't much of a problem until passenger traffic began to boom in the 1920's and SP made it clear to its tenant that additional passenger trains weren't going to be allowed over the critical Bakersfield-Mojave segment. So Santa Fe came up with the idea of servicing all the Southland with a network of feeder buses from a Bakersfield hub; it proved to be a near-instant success -- so much so that when the bureaucrats who designed Amtrak's bare-bones network in the early Seventies failed to recognize it, it had to be revived by public demand three years later. It has since been expanded, using the trackage Santa Fe built in its own right north of Mojave.
My principal point being; There is much more going on here contrary to the view held (until fairly recently) by the public that "traditional" railroading is a declining industry. Transcontinental rail freight traffic expanded all through the Forties and Fifties, then stagnated due to the completion of the Interstate highway network. Then it began to rebound around 1985, and has since expanded by another 60%.
Back in the Eighties, IBM ran a commercial on the Sunday-morning public interest shows emphasizing the low cost of land for doing E-commerce outside the major cities. That foresight played a part in the development of the post-industrial economy, and the string of modest-sized, but fast-growing communities in the Central Valley is an excellent example. Furthermore, a rail network would eventually draw more patrons from short- and intermediate-distance travel within the developing "Corridor", rather than simply end-to-end.
Some of the "regulars" here know that I hold to a strong suspicion of over-centralized "planning" done by isolated/insulated bureaucrats who hold a limited or distorted view of what goes on out there in the Real World. But there is a counterpoint that the nature of transportation infrastructure -- its fixed and very-expensive physical plant, and the very long time horizons -- make for a poor fit with proprietary capitalism. Hence, we end up with the strange collection of incomplete and often-corrupted projects which characterize transportation issues on both coasts.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-20-2015 at 12:26 PM..
The airline route between SF-LA is one of the busiest in the country. Although the proportion of people flying that are business travelers is irrelevant, there are a lot of business travelers on this route.
There is a significant population in the central valley, and the HSR system would definitely spur more people to live out there and use the HSR system for commuting. People are already commuting asinine distances to SF and LA, and are mainly doing it by car. So a better built rail infrastructure would really help, especially as this will only get worse in the future.
The SF-LA corridor is probably one of the best candidates for high-speed rail in the country, and if developed properly could develop into a system similar to what's seen along the Bos-Wash corridor.
And how exactly will HSR beat airline in price? Regardless the biggest infrastructure need are in urban areas of CA where both public transit and highway infrastructure is severely lacking. Spending money of HSR would have made sense if rest of infrastructure kept up with population growth. How about another tunnel under the bay? Or BART running through peninsula? How about making the bay area freeways like those in LA or Houston?
And how exactly will HSR beat airline in price? Regardless the biggest infrastructure need are in urban areas of CA where both public transit and highway infrastructure is severely lacking. Spending money of HSR would have made sense if rest of infrastructure kept up with population growth. How about another tunnel under the bay? Or BART running through peninsula? How about making the bay area freeways like those in LA or Houston?
In 20-30 years when "cheap oil" is on its way out, I don't see that being much of a challenge. This is the thing that people keep forgetting... This is being built for the future, not for now. It's meant to be supplementary (not meant to directly replace any mode of transit), sustainable, and expandable. And it will improve infrastructure in LA directly (Caltrain and Metrolink) and indirectly (incentivize development of transit that feeds into the HSR system).
And it doesn't have to beat it. Just get even, or close enough where the differences are minimal. If I can take a train to LA and not have to deal with tsa/arriving at the airport early (wasted time) and possibly avoid a rental car (hopefully LA's transit system comes along more in the coming decades), that's a good deal in my eyes.
And when you get there, youll be in downtown LA or SF, not at LAX or SFO (miles away from where you probably want to be).
Highways have their own budget, so not sure why you're even bringing it up (?).
Thanks for the detailed explanation, I understand and agree. Two things stand out for me from the past to current day: much more attention is placed on workplace safety and the environment. I think those two items help contribute to soaring costs. How many people died building the original Bay Bridge compared to how many did so on the new replacement section? We are placing more value on life (and the environment) at the detriment of lower cost projects. But there are other areas too that are contributing to the overall costs. You are right, it's a broken system and rising costs don't seem to be slowing down.
Also, thanks for your leveled response, even after I took a shot at you. Sorry.
Did they not gain any organizational process assets in the form of lessons learned from the first Bay Bridge project which they could then prevent the same mistakes made that caused injuries/death? Better equipment and technology but virtually the very same project, since the island didn't move location and the bay is still the same depth, etc. etc. etc. Yeah, they made it safer by floating prefabricated sections of bridge across the Pacific from China and they also had hundreds, if not thousands of more people involved on the current project compared to how many worked on it when it was first being built. With today's advanced technology and the organizational process assets in the form of lessons learned from the first Bay Bridge project, they should have been able to successfully complete it in less time then what it took to build it the first time around. And they were behind schedule, grossly over budget and the real icing on the cake is it's been one defect after the other in less then five years since completion. Cracked rods, rust, flooding, fires in expansion joints, etc. What's next? Shouldn't all of those defects been on the first project and not on the second one?
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