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  #2481  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:02 AM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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People its not that depressing, The places where high speed rail is built are vastly more densely populated than the USA.

If you want express trains in specific metro areas that makes sense, a statewide Cali bullet train through the central valley and hundreds of miles of rural or even empty land.

Pop per square mile:

Japan 339
UK 650
Netherlands 491
China 142
Germany 235

USA: 84

Building a bullet train across hundreds of miles of rural California was a BAD IDEA from the get go.
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  #2482  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:03 AM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Yeah, everybody knows that.

The interstate highways were generally built in the open countryside first, with the city sections taking longer to build, and many gaps for 15+ years.

Guess we should have just given up since there were service gaps that took awhile to fill.
Highways are significantly less expensive to build and maintain and useful for far many more people and far more use (Cargo) than Trains.

I like trains, they are cool but unless its going to be from Boston-DC its useless in the USA.

And thats not even getting into how the USA is going to have low and stable gas prices for decades thanks to shale oil technology making the demand for trains even less than 10 years ago. Its a matter of straight economic and geographic reality
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  #2483  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 5:20 AM
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SIGSEGV SIGSEGV is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
People its not that depressing, The places where high speed rail is built are vastly more densely populated than the USA.

If you want express trains in specific metro areas that makes sense, a statewide Cali bullet train through the central valley and hundreds of miles of rural or even empty land.

Pop per square mile:

Japan 339
UK 650
Netherlands 491
China 142
Germany 235

USA: 84

Building a bullet train across hundreds of miles of rural California was a BAD IDEA from the get go.
California: 251
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  #2484  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 5:21 AM
BrownTown BrownTown is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
The interstate highways were generally built in the open countryside first, with the city sections taking longer to build, and many gaps for 15+ years.
It's a completely different dynamic. If a highway goes 80% of the way you need it to go it just means you have to take surface streets for the other 20% of the way. You can still drive from A to B. If a train only goes 80% of the way it's basically worthless because you have to switch transportation modes twice which means big delays and extra cost.
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  #2485  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 5:22 AM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by SIGSEGV View Post
California: 251
Well them I suppose the state of California is laughably incompetent.
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  #2486  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 5:24 AM
Car(e)-Free LA Car(e)-Free LA is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
People its not that depressing, The places where high speed rail is built are vastly more densely populated than the USA.

If you want express trains in specific metro areas that makes sense, a statewide Cali bullet train through the central valley and hundreds of miles of rural or even empty land.

Pop per square mile:

Japan
UK 650
Netherlands 491
China 142
Germany 235

USA: 84

Building a bullet train across hundreds of miles of rural California was a BAD IDEA from the get go.
This is a total fallacy because you're comparing different units.

PPSM
Japan: 865
Germany: 601
Italy: 518
Mid-Atlantic: 417
China: 375
Florida: 365
France: 319
California: 246
Spain 238
New England: 233
Piedmont-Atlantic States: 233
Great Lakes States: 192
Europe: 188
Texas: 101
USA: 87
Certainly, if you break the USA down into European country-sides chunks, there are areas which can warrant HSR. Not at Japan levels, but certainly like that of France and Spain.
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  #2487  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 5:42 AM
BrownTown BrownTown is offline
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
Well them I suppose the state of California is laughably incompetent.
They are, but that's beside the point here. When looking at whether HSR makes sense you can't just look at country wide density metrics. You have to look at the number of transit connected individual at each node and how far apart the nodes are. LA and SF are pretty far apart for HSR and neither has a very good transit network by the standards of the rest of the world. HSR could still work if done right since the whole Central Valley portion should be dirt cheap to build by HSR standards, but there is just not political will in California to actually build this project. People can post on this forum that people in SF support it heavily and they might be right on paper. However support on paper doesn't matter, what actually matters is whether they're willing to make the less politically correct decisions like talking a bunch of people who complain the trains might look ugly or spook their horses to shove off and doing the same to all the people refusing to sell their land. People keep bringing up the interstates, but back in the day nobody gave a flying fuck about the NIMBYs. They'd build a highway straight through a fucking neighborhood if they had to. That's the sort of political will that's needed.
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  #2488  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 6:12 AM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno View Post

Building a bullet train across hundreds of miles of rural California was a BAD IDEA from the get go.

Yeah, the Chunnel is useless because nobody lives in the English Channel.
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  #2489  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 6:22 AM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is online now
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Originally Posted by BrownTown View Post
It's a completely different dynamic.

The different dynamic is that nobody really cares when a road or bridge or highway or whatever is built piecemeal. Rail projects of any kind are held to an impossibly high standard while road boondoggles are shrugged off.
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  #2490  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 11:18 AM
BrownTown BrownTown is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
The different dynamic is that nobody really cares when a road or bridge or highway or whatever is built piecemeal. Rail projects of any kind are held to an impossibly high standard while road boondoggles are shrugged off.
1. No, road boondoggles are not overlooked. The Big Dig is probably the poster child for infrastructure boondoggles.

2. The problem isn't the piecemeal nature of the construction it's the order the pieces were to be constructed. If it had started in either LA or SF then each section opened would at least allow people to commute into and out of that city. But in the Central Valley all it does is connect a lot of small cities that presumably don't have much demand to take a train to the next town over.
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  #2491  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 12:25 PM
jtown,man jtown,man is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Yeah, the Chunnel is useless because nobody lives in the English Channel.
The tunnel going under the English Channel is around 30 miles long. Hardly a comparison to hundreds of miles.
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  #2492  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:00 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
Yeah, the Chunnel is useless because nobody lives in the English Channel.
Thats entirely different. And if you cannot see the benefit of connecting 60 million people to the continent across a historically major barrier up to and including WW2 then I suppose your confusion with the failure of HSR in America makes sense.
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  #2493  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:05 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by Car(e)-Free LA View Post
This is a total fallacy because you're comparing different units.

PPSM
Japan: 865
Germany: 601
Italy: 518
Mid-Atlantic: 417
China: 375
Florida: 365
France: 319
California: 246
Spain 238
New England: 233
Piedmont-Atlantic States: 233
Great Lakes States: 192
Europe: 188
Texas: 101
USA: 87
Certainly, if you break the USA down into European country-sides chunks, there are areas which can warrant HSR. Not at Japan levels, but certainly like that of France and Spain.
I didnt break down individual states but that still doesn't take into account where HSR makes sense.

It works in the Low Countries and Japan and parts of Germany, it would work between the Bay and Sac, or the Northeast, Maybe Seattle-Vancouver, Possibly Chicagoland and maybe (BIG MAYBE) Dallas-Houston or Florida.

But HSR between the Bay and LA doesn't work. Within the Bay or Socal it would but between the two through major mountain ranges and rural land? Nope.

No major country has built HSR across the kind of territory and low density areas that California attempted to do.

And this isn't even getting into the economics of the cost for people to drive cars int he USA vs take trains or planes. Unfortunately we are blessed with extremely inexpensive and abundant sources of energy, the majority of the country east of Denver is relatively flat and easy to get around on cheaply and efficiently and at densities a fraction of the territory HSR is built in Asia and Europe.

There is a myriad of reasons why HSR does not work in the USA, and why the Cal plan was foolish from the get go. Not that HSR is bad in general but it only makes sense to do in the right circumstances.
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  #2494  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:09 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by BrownTown View Post
They are, but that's beside the point here. When looking at whether HSR makes sense you can't just look at country wide density metrics. You have to look at the number of transit connected individual at each node and how far apart the nodes are. LA and SF are pretty far apart for HSR and neither has a very good transit network by the standards of the rest of the world. HSR could still work if done right since the whole Central Valley portion should be dirt cheap to build by HSR standards, but there is just not political will in California to actually build this project. People can post on this forum that people in SF support it heavily and they might be right on paper. However support on paper doesn't matter, what actually matters is whether they're willing to make the less politically correct decisions like talking a bunch of people who complain the trains might look ugly or spook their horses to shove off and doing the same to all the people refusing to sell their land. People keep bringing up the interstates, but back in the day nobody gave a flying fuck about the NIMBYs. They'd build a highway straight through a fucking neighborhood if they had to. That's the sort of political will that's needed.
And that sort of political will destroyed minority and poor neighborhoods and created massive barriers across our cities that we bitch about endlessly today .

Want to make the same mistake of urban renewal again because you are as into trains as they were into highways
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  #2495  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:38 PM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is online now
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Originally Posted by BrownTown View Post
2. The problem isn't the piecemeal nature of the construction it's the order the pieces were to be constructed. If it had started in either LA or SF then each section opened would at least allow people to commute into and out of that city. But in the Central Valley all it does is connect a lot of small cities that presumably don't have much demand to take a train to the next town over.

We just had pages of people claiming that nobody would commute via HSR. Now we're not capturing all of those commuters.
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  #2496  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:41 PM
jmecklenborg jmecklenborg is online now
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
Thats entirely different.

So High Speed Rail should only be built within cities? Like from one neighborhood to another? If there is a body of water or hills or farmland or desert in between them, it shouldn't be built?


The internet is an amazing place.
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  #2497  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:43 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
We just had pages of people claiming that nobody would commute via HSR. Now we're not capturing all of those commuters.
Why would anyone use HSR to go from bakersfied to Merced when its cheaper and not much slower and vastly more expensive?

why would you pay for a 5 hour trip between LA and san Fran via train when you can take a plane for under 100 dollars.

Take into account the infrastructure cost (77 billion dollars) / 40 million Cali citizens= $1925

You can pay for many tanks of gas and many plane tickets for every citizens to get them between LA and San Francsico.

The project was totally unfeasable.
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  #2498  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:52 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg View Post
So High Speed Rail should only be built within cities? Like from one neighborhood to another? If there is a body of water or hills or farmland or desert in between them, it shouldn't be built?


The internet is an amazing place.
No high speed rail should be built in places like this:



not this:





Do you have any concept of how much more compact, population dense and FLAT the netherlands is than the proposed system in california.

Do you have any idea how slow a train must go through mountains, how innificient they become when they hit grade in the track? Why do you think train routs through mountains TO THIS DAY are rare and slow?

You really have no idea what you are talking about do you?
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  #2499  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:55 PM
mt_climber13 mt_climber13 is offline
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It will be revived when a Democratic, hopefully “far left” (but centrist by international standards) president is elected along with majorities in the senate and House, next year.

I wasn’t a fan of Newsom but he’s growing on me. I admire his practicality at looking at the current major shortcomings of the current HSR plan and lack of funding (along with squandering of it).

If the dotard can waste billions on a useless monument, surely we can “waste” billions on an HSR system.
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  #2500  
Old Posted Feb 14, 2019, 4:57 PM
Car(e)-Free LA Car(e)-Free LA is offline
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
No high speed rail should be built in places like this:



not this:





Do you have any concept of how much more compact, population dense and FLAT the netherlands is than the proposed system in california.

Do you have any idea how slow a train must go through mountains, how innificient they become when they hit grade in the track? Why do you think train routs through mountains TO THIS DAY are rare and slow?

You really have no idea what you are talking about do you?
No, you don't. The HSR in the Netherlands isn't used for intra-Netherlands travel: it's used to get to places a few hundred miles away: like Paris. SF-LA is 2:40 HSR, 4:00 door to door. Plane door to door is something like 4:20, whereas driving is about 8:00 door to door. Obviously the train, with ~$60-$80 fares, is the best option. Also, electrified HSR trains have no problem going through mountains at >180MPH, it's just that there haven't been many opportunities to build HSR through mountains yet in the USA; hence, not many routes. It's done all the time in other countries.
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