Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
The advocacy for the I-5 route, a route so obviously illogical and inferior, has been one of the most peculiar aspects of the CaHSR saga. The project's goal is to operate trains at 200+ mph. At that speed the minor geographical diversion to serve most of the Central Valley population centers - centers that will likely prove to be huge ridership generators not to mention the economic impact - will be about as insignificant as a flight that is 1:35 versus one that is 1:15. No planning body in their right mind would choose to run an arrow straight western route that ignored several million people to save 20 minutes on an end to end express train schedule for the SF/LA business set. The thought is preposterous. The notion of fast modern branch line connections to CV cities from the I-5 route being the solution is also so myopic - those lines would likely never come to fruition. The obvious best plan is the plan that was chosen. The idea that this isn't obvious to everyone makes me wonder about people.
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I agree with you on the superiority of the Highway 99 alignment versus the I-5 alignment. Connecting those 6-7 million people is worth the relatively minor hit the train takes on trip distance and time. The diversion to the Antelope Valley, on the other hand, makes much less sense. To capture about 300,000 people in Palmdale and Lancaster, the train goes way out of its way. Is there really a massive demand by people in the Antelope Valley to take a train to the Bay Area? (The Antelope Valley already has decent rail access to LA via Metrolink). And I'm no expert on the topography of the area, but I wonder whether the more direct route along I-5 and through Tejon Pass might also have required less tunneling. A few years ago, there was talk of just tunneling directly from Burbank underneath the San Gabriel Mountains to eliminate part of the lengthy swing west to the North San Fernando Valley and then back east through Santa Clarita. That would have required a very long and expensive tunnel. Why not keep an alignment along I-5 and use tunnels when the freeway alignment is too twisted and steep?
But this discussion on alignment really is moot because the voter-approved referendum specifies the general route HSR must take including the diversion to the Antelope Valley and the alignment near Highway 99 through the Central Valley. Any major change in that alignment would probably require voter approval in another referendum. I imagine that the Highway 99 route helped get votes to pass the proposition in places like Fresno and Bakersfield. I also recall that the Antelope Valley route may have been influenced by LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich who was calling in political favors.
The original HSR proposition was deeply flawed. It only provided seed money for the project. Somehow the rest of the money was going to come from private investment and the federal government. Neither of those sources of money have materialized, apart from a few billion from the Obama stimulus program almost 15 years ago. The proposition stipulated that HSR could be built for $30 billion, which was obviously a gross underestimate, and the HSR authority was left with egg on its face when it almost immediately revised its estimates up to at least $70 billion.
The original decision to focus construction in the Central Valley made sense. The topography was less demanding and land acquisition costs in agricultural areas would be lower. But the HSR authority never made any progress in identifying funds to build to build the expensive and difficult parts of the route from Bakersfield to LA and from Merced to Gilroy. So what we have left with is a stranded 125-mile high speed line that connects Bakersfield to Merced. It will do what Amtrak's San Joaquins do, just a little faster.
I don't fault Newsom's decision to limit the scope of construction work to the already funded portion of the project in the Central Valley. It helped defuse some of the political opposition to the project and probably increased the chances that at least the Central Valley portion of the line would get built. The California GOP uses HSR as a rallying cry for all that is bad about rule by Democrats in California. I see his decision as an exercise in damage control.
As for using the temporary $100 billion state surplus to build HSR: that surplus is already gone. Some of it was banked in the state budget reserves for the inevitable rainy day. Some of it was returned to the tax payers. And some of it was used to fund extraordinary needs during the pandemic including homeless support. The state does have other priorities that most voters probably think take higher priority over HSR.
I really do hope California does find a way to finish the HSR project. I don't know what the way forward for doing that is. If the project ends without that happy conclusion, though, at least we got an electrified Caltrain out of the bargain. That is definitely a valuable thing.
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