California High Speed Rail Thread

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Check out Four Foot's drone updates to really appreciate the magnitude of the project.

His videos illustrate the ridiculous delays in buying small strips of land, which has added expense to the IOS. Eminent domain was created for railroads. It was arguably abused in the urban renewal/highway era. We're building a railroad - this thing is nothing at all like what occurred in the 1960s.

[MAC123]

Wait, you're telling me this entire time they haven't been using eminent domain!?!?!?

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

His videos illustrate the ridiculous delays in buying small strips of land, which has added expense to the IOS. Eminent domain was created for railroads. It was arguably abused in the urban renewal/highway era. We're building a railroad - this thing is nothing at all like what occurred in the 1960s.

There's a lot of nitty gritty details the public doesn't get to know regarding the land acquisition process. I suspect the negotiated land sales in some cases involved prolonged back and forth with the authority and land owner attorneys over sale price as well as vacancy deadlines. The fact that many CV landowners are indifferent, ambivalent and/or downright hostile towards the states HSR plans has undoubtedly played into the delays. So much of this is really out of the authorities hands.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by MAC123

Wait, you're telling me this entire time they haven't been using eminent domain!?!?!?

Very limited use, apparently. They definitely did not draw a line on a map, approve it on a Friday, then send the letters out the next Monday morning with a 30-day notice to vacate. They tried to negotiate with everyone, individually, which wasted a ton of time and money.

It's farmland so it seems reasonable to have given owners 24 months (two seasons) to vacate. Instead, we're like 10+ years into this and they still don't own every last piece of land.

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by MAC123

Wait, you're telling me this entire time they haven't been using eminent domain!?!?!?

The authority isn't seizing properties "for the public good" as in the traditional sense of eminent domain. The land acquisition process is one of negotiated sale with in many cases landowners being compensated above and beyond fair market value. This is not uncommon. It's how the sausage is made. I grew up in a neighborhood where barely any houses regularly sold over 100K. When a local institution wanted to build a parking deck, with the blessing of the city the institution paid my friends parents a half million dollars for their house. They moved up and on and the institution got a four story parking garage.


It's also important to remember the requirements of a HSR trackway especially in regards to curve radii naturally has led to many more impacted properties than would normally be the case with a highway or even the original railroads 120+ years ago.The CaHSR route passes through the grid valley essentially diagonally meaning many clipped corners and slivers here and there. Each one of those is a seperate complicated negotiated sale between the state and the landowner.

[Crawford]

Why couldn't they have just built an elevated structure along I-5?

I-5 mostly goes through nothing. It has a big, empty median. And it connects SoCal to Bay Area. There has to be some sticking point that prevented this, right?

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Why couldn't they have just built an elevated structure along I-5?

I-5 mostly goes through nothing. It has a big, empty median. And it connects SoCal to Bay Area. There has to be some sticking point that prevented this, right?

Do you understand the concept of catchment area? An arrow straight I-5 route serving no interior population centers is not in the interest of all Californians and is frankly no way to build a railroad. If SF was Osaka and LA was Tokyo the concept of a super-express arrow strait connection would likely to justifiable, but that would work off the assumption the CV was already well served by an existing HSR link to both ends.

[Busy Bee]

Another thing that many are overlooking with the volume of needed properties and the delays in acquiring those properties is a geographic feature of the CV. The valley is layed out as a grid for as far as the eye can see. A HSR r.o.w. requires extremely long curve radii which leads to many clipped corners and little slivers all along the route that have to be acquired since the r.o.w. essentially travels diagonally across an east-west-north-south grid of private property. This exponentially increases the amount of parties that need to go through the acquisition process. Along the entire route there are buildings and homes as well that are unavoidable with the engineering performed to maintain the required top speed and station locations. Again, these are much smaller issues when building a highway where curving or chicaning around structural obstacles is much easier for a 70mph design speed.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Do you understand the concept of catchment area? An arrow straight I-5 route serving no interior population centers is not in the interest of all Californians and is frankly no way to build a railroad. If SF was Osaka and LA was Tokyo the concept of a super-express arrow strait connection would likely to justifiable, but that would work off the assumption the CV was already well served by an existing HSR link to both ends.

After this thing gets running they could always go back and build the I-5 section, plus a 20-mile tunnel through the mountains, plus 10 miles in the San Fernando Valley to save...15 minutes.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Do you understand the concept of catchment area? An arrow straight I-5 route serving no interior population centers is not in the interest of all Californians and is frankly no way to build a railroad.

On the contrary, that's exactly how it should have been built. There should have been no regard for anything but connecting Bay Area and SoCal. Those are the only West Coast nodes that make any remote sense for real HSR.

Again, Fresno and Bakersfield are completely irrelevant. It's like connecting Tulsa and OKC. And speak to this project operating as a 2009-era recession make-work project. Plus the interior investment helps politicians who love to talk about reducing inequality and sticking it to the coastal elitists. No doubt there are happy images of Mexican migrant workers commuting to lettuce farms via bullet train.

[Busy Bee]

How can you be so obtuse? Is it deliberate?


You are so misguided in your perceptions I'm not sure where to begin, or if it's worth it to. Anyone who repeatadly refers to this as a make-work project even though it's been an aspiration of California leaders since the early 1990s or disregards the importance to connect millions of people in the Central Valley with the more prosperous economy of the coast clearly isn't open to have their mind changed.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

How can you be so obtuse? Is it deliberate?

You are so misguided in your perceptions I'm not sure where to begin, or if it's worth it to.

Show me a HSR system, anywhere on the planet, that operates as CA is intending It's absurd. Certainly nothing in Europe or Japan. The NE Corridor doesn't operate like this.

Imagine if the Acela were primarily conceptualized as a make-work project to reduce inequality, and investments were targeted around poverty-stricken agricultural lands. And those investments would then justify later connections to NYC-DC and NYC-Boston. Completely absurd. The only reason Acela makes sense is bc it's centered around NYC. And has as few stops as possible, and only in really urban, transit-oriented geographies.

[Busy Bee]

Your entire opinion is built around an incorrect, bad faith assumption.

Imagine if the Acela were primarily conceptualized as a make-work project to reduce inequality, and investments were targeted around poverty-stricken agricultural lands.

Any government making an investment of this scale would make a priority out of hitting as many population centers as is possible to generate ridership and spread the economic benefit. The thought you don't understand this, and in fact you seem to believe the exact opposite, is bewildering.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

On the contrary, that's exactly how it should have been built. There should have been no regard for anything but connecting Bay Area and SoCal. Those are the only West Coast nodes that make any remote sense for real HSR.

Again, Fresno and Bakersfield are completely irrelevant. It's like connecting Tulsa and OKC. And speak to this project operating as a 2009-era recession make-work project. Plus the interior investment helps politicians who love to talk about reducing inequality and sticking it to the coastal elitists. No doubt there are happy images of Mexican migrant workers commuting to lettuce farms via bullet train.

Not to mention, the 5 is not that far from Bakersfield or Fresno. So the people of those cities, as well as all the other towns around the eastern side of the CV would still have access to the HSR on a route that followed the 5. Bakersfield is 20 mins off the 5, Fresno is an hour. Imagine driving from either town, parking your car and taking a fast, one seat ride into downtown SF or LA. Still a huge amenity! The stations did not have to be in downtown Bakersfield or Fresno to be beneficial to those communities-- especially Bakersfield.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Your entire opinion is built around an incorrect, bad faith assumption.

Well then you should tell CASHR leadership.

Here's the CASHR Authority CFO, just a few days ago:

“The new analysis shows the continued progress of the nation’s first high-speed rail project as a strong economic driver,” said Authority CFO Brian Annis. “We’re proud of the work this project is doing to help disadvantaged communities, put men and women to work statewide and create opportunities for small businesses.”

https://hsr.ca.gov/2022/02/16/invest...rnias-economy/

So CASHR seems to value three things:
1. Help disadvantaged communities
2. Put people to work
3. Create opportunities for small businesses

None of these things have any relevance to HSR.

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Any government making an investment of this scale would make a priority out of hitting as many population centers as is possible to generate ridership and spread the economic benefit.

Yet no government has. None in Europe, none in Japan. Incredibly, they seem to view HSR as a fast, direct route between major transit-oriented metropolitan centers, with the in-between geographies largely irrelevant. Imagine that. It's like Paris-Frankfurt is intended to serve Paris and Frankfurt, and not the millions of people living between the two. Weird.

[Crawford]

The most heavily used stretch of HSR in Germany is the Cologne-Frankfurt route. It's textbook HSR best practices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologn...peed_rail_line

It follows the autobahn for the entire high-speed, non-urban stretch, and the thru-stations are all minor, highway-oriented stops. The route takes the most direct path, and ignores the "in-between". Because they don't really matter for HSR. It's much more important to give origin-destination travelers the fastest and most direct route, than to serve random communities along the way.

[Busy Bee]

Touting the economic benefits does not make it a "make-work" program. They would be stupid not to publicize the positive economic impact. Marketing 101. Claiming that's the point of the entire endeavor makes you sound ridiculous and like your gaslighting us.

The problem with the European and Japanese examples you sight is that those places already have outstanding rail services to every major and in many cases minor cities. If you are honestly saying you think it would have been better to completely "ignore" every major population center in California other than the Bay Area and LA to save the coastal traveler 30 minutes, well I don't really know how to change you're mind. I guess that's just your, you know, opinion man.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Another thing that many are overlooking with the volume of needed properties and the delays in acquiring those properties is a geographic feature of the CV. The valley is layed out as a grid for as far as the eye can see. A HSR r.o.w. requires extremely long curve radii which leads to many clipped corners and little slivers all along the route that have to be acquired since the r.o.w. essentially travels diagonally across an east-west-north-south grid of private property. This exponentially increases the amount of parties that need to go through the acquisition process. Along the entire route there are buildings and homes as well that are unavoidable with the engineering performed to maintain the required top speed and station locations. Again, these are much smaller issues when building a highway where curving or chicaning around structural obstacles is much easier for a 70mph design speed.

I don't necessarily know that the grid platting of the Central Valley is any tougher than the randomized platting of Euro countrysides. Might even be easier, since in the CV land is held in larger parcels by fewer owners.

What made it tough is the 2h40m travel time from LA to SF that is written into law by Prop 1A (and other travel time benchmarks). To satisfy those benchmarks, the project needs to push the limits of HSR technology and basically operate at 220mph top speed for virtually the entire route, especially since the SF Peninsula/Caltrain section will be capped at 110mph. So of course, CAHSR is way overbuilt even compared to French or Japanese HSR, let alone German HSR. China might have comparable lines, but that's about it.

CAHSR designers and engineers are legally prohibited from making any decisions that reduce cost or improve constructability if it affects the average speed even slightly. If that means negotiating with 20 landowners along a wide curve instead of 5 landowners along a slightly tighter curve, too bad. Also, the travel time benchmarks have already been the grounds for a lawsuit so CHSRA was definitely put on notice that they need to meet the goal.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by ardecila

basically operate at 220mph top speed for virtually the entire route, especially since the SF Peninsula/Caltrain section will be capped at 110mph.

On one hand we have people complaining about CAHSR trains traveling too slow. Then on the other, the problem is that it's too fast.

On one hand people are upset that it "connects nowhere to nowhere". But then they complain about the somewheres it does connect.

CAHSR designers and engineers are legally prohibited from making any decisions that reduce cost or improve constructability if it affects the average speed even slightly.

Right. Because there would have been immense pressure to water it down.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by edale

Not to mention, the 5 is not that far from Bakersfield or Fresno.

Downtown Fresno is a full 40 miles from I-5. There is no direct expressway connecting Fresno with I-5. So it's like a 60-minute drive. In those same 60 minutes, a HSR train travels 200~ miles.

So a Fresno resident could travel from DT Fresno to I-5 or from DT Fresno to San Jose in the same amount of time.