Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy
HSR is only successful if it has the connecting transit services to the stations on each end and these cities have pathetic transit ridership and frequencies. We also know that outside the big US cities, Americans are loath to take transit and especially the bus which they would have to as these cities have no rail. They could take Uber to get to the station and/or getting from the station to your final destination but that would wipe out a lot of the cost savings of taking the train in the first place. This is why Acela works in the NEC...........you have connecting transit so you don't need a car to get to where you are going.
Also, due to also not having near the ridership if it served SF and/or LA, the frequencies of the trains will not be very high taking the high speed out of high speed rail. You see this all over the US where cities build expensive rapid transit but with their low frequencies, their ridership levels are pathetic.
I appreciate your optimism and I hope you are correct but if the completion of the line depends upon the success of this section.........careful what you ask for.
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Yes, to all this. I've mentioned this in the past, and hope I'm wrong, but the entire CAHSR process is ass-backwards. You need service to SF and LA, not Bakersfield. The future of HSR in North America is dependent on getting some of the most transit-hostile geographies in existence to start taking transit at Euro- or Japan-levels. I have no idea how this will work. I imagine the vast majority of initial service will be people taking it like a Disney ride, not as actual functional urban-to-urban transit. These are metros with transit shares of 1-2%, and almost no choice riders.
If initial phase ridership sucks, will voters and bureaucrats have the patience to push forward? I hope so, bc this will work in the end. But I'm worried most voters are stupid and have no long-term vision, and we're gonna get nothing past the initial phase (which can still be spun as a dramatic improvement in service quality).