Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
Where in the world do you have successful HSR in a transit-hostile environment?
And if it doesn't matter, why are we even bothering with SF and LA? You could build 90% of the system at half the cost. The airports are nowhere near downtown either. Forget the tunnels and in-town construction and just end it short of the passes.
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Well, so far every country rich enough to build HSR is also not pathologically opposed to public transportation. America is unique in this respect.
The reason California is "bothering" with LA and SF is because the law requires them to link those two destinations, and CA has a lot of political power vested in its inner cities. On the other hand, Brightline West and Texas Central are both stopping short of major downtowns, because it is very expensive and difficult to build those segments. As private companies they have decided the juice ain't worth the squeeze, especially when the downtown is weak and will not actually generate much ridership; an inner or mid suburban station is good enough.
I think they're right in a pure business sense; they can get the ridership they need even if they don't go all the way downtown. So for those of us who want to see HSR investment benefit inner cities, we need to grapple with this reality. Orlando actually is an interesting case here; Brightline was set to take a freeway alignment south of the airport, and the city/county agreed to share the costs with Brightline to do a better and more costly alignment that served the convention center, Universal, etc.
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