Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
$600 million should fund, oh, about 200 ft. of rail. Maybe this will be done by AD 3000.
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This has a couple advantages over CAHSR, that collectively amount to billions of dollars in savings. Still very expensive compared to other countries, but maybe feasible for the cost-averse, anti-government political culture in this country.
1) The California section runs through empty desert except for a short section in Barstow. The line planners (first XpressWest, now Virgin) simply decided not to build an urban section, and will terminate the line in Apple Valley. I'm sure they want to build into the LA Basin or at least the Inland Empire, but if they proposed that it would open the project up to all sorts of opposition. This way, there is nobody to object or demand costly design mitigations. The Nevada section has a few miles through semi-urbanized Vegas, but Nevada doesn't have a NIMBY culture or the usual NIMBY tools like CEQA.
2) the line will closely follow I-15, either in the median or to the side. CAHSR couldn't use interstates because their right-of-way is neither straight enough nor level enough for sustained 220mph service, and the strict 2h40m travel time from LA-SF written into law prevented California from building slower-speed segments except at the highly urbanized ends. Virgin will have a top limit of 150mph and operate at lower speeds than that, when required by the limitations of the ROW like tight curves or steep grades. It will basically be a West Coast Acela, minus the creakiness of 1910s infrastructure.
It's still unclear what rolling stock Virgin will use, yesterday's press release confirmed the line will be all-electric. I could see them turning to Alstom to piggyback on Amtrak's order for the new Acelas. Other than that, I'm not sure what Buy America-compliant manufacturers could offer an EMU or push/pull electric train capable of 150mph. The good news is that this line will be isolated completely from the national freight network, so it should be easy to get waivers to run Euro-style or Asian-style trains with minimal modifications.