Quote:
Originally Posted by electricron
Distance is a major factor why, I will agree.
But I do not agree selling Valley residents with easier access to major airports. The main reason being that CHSR trains will not stop at stations at or near major airports. In the San Francisco Bay area, the three HSR train stations will be located in downtown San Francisco, San Jose, and Millbrae.
In the LA area, the five HSR stations will be located at Burbank, Downtown LA, Norwalk, Fullerton, and Anaheim. Burbank being located near Bob Hope Airport, but it is not a major airport with just 14 gates.
To put that into perspective, here are the gate numbers at various large California airports:
LAX 146 gates
SFO 115 gates
SAN 51 gates
SJC 41 gates
OAK 32 gates
SMF 32 gates
ONT 26 gates
SNA 22 gates
BUR 14 gates
BFL 8 gates
FAT 6 gates
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Gates don’t tell the entire picture. As of July 2021 SMF was the fourth busiest airport in California and has been in a close race with SJC and Oak the past few years. Like many airports, SMF is talking expansion even as it emerges from Covid flight disruptions. SMF obviously draws passengers from much of the area North of Sacramento, West into the outer East Bay (Walnut Creek), Fairfield and Napa; as far South as Merced and as far East as Stateline.
FAT in Fresno has 6 gates now, but with Southwest Airlines initiating service expect it to be a game changer for air travel in the Southern Central Valley.
Domestic travelers in the Central Valley really won’t need to rely on Bay Area airports for domestic travel as was the case in years past.
However, SFO is the main International airport in Northern California. But the question will be, do travelers want to drive or take the train to SFO to catch a flight to Paris or do they want to fly from their local airports and connect in Chicago, or further East? By the time Cal HSR reaches SFO Fresno’s FAT will likely expand capacity exponentially.
That said, HSR is growing on me in the sense that when it came to the vote, I was dead set against it because it was a poorly conceived plan, clearly underestimated construction costs, overestimated funding sources and being overseen by people who would be hard pressed to assemble a Lionel train set, to say nothing of a “high speed rail” system. My predictions rarely come to pass. When I make predictions I’m usually wrong. But even my predictions all came to pass with the HSR system.
I still question whether the entire system will be grossly obsolete by the time it’s complete. Maybe we should have considered maglev or hyper loop. (I’m not qualified in any case to speculate on the alternatives and I have no problem admitting that). But with climate change posing an existential threat to our one planet, we are going to have to invest heavily in transportation infrastructure and better urban planning in order to help reduce the impact of climate change. Maybe that includes new fuel sources or aviation advances for the airline industry as well? But we would be wise to not put all of our eggs in one basket and try to complete HSR to include the Sacramento and San Diego extensions (sadly not in my lifetime).
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