Quote:
Originally Posted by Car(e)-Free LA
That is true, and it is wonderful, but CAHSR only has a fraction of the properties needed phase one (Kern County-Merced) of phase one (SJ-Bakersfield) of phase one (SF-LA), with the projected opening date of SF-LA in the 2030s at the earliest. It also took CAHSR 6 years from when it was proposed to actually breaking ground. Texas Central is moving at a much faster pace than CAHSR and will likely be done a decade sooner (if it is serious, and since it has 1/3 of properties I think it is), though of course it doesn't have to traverse two major mountain ranges.
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To be clear, they only have the
options to exercise the purchase of the properties they need (e.g. they've reached agreements with land owners)...? I'm not sure they likely haven bought the parcels, yet, and I'm curious to know how long they have to exercise those options (the article above is behind a paywall, so I don't know if it's mentioned, there).
In any case, as I've said time-and-again, they will run into the same lawsuits in between Dallas and Houston that CAHSRA has in the Central Valley. Though, I wonder how strong the farming community is, in that part of Texas compared to their counterparts in the CV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I also think its an apples-oranges comparison given some big differences in the alignments of the two projects (one avoiding many populated/urban areas, the other trying to serve as many as possible). One wouldn't expect them to progress at the same speed.
The real advantage TXCentral has is having vendor locked-down for their technology-systems, rolling stock, signaling, etc - and a vendor who's an investor in the project, very keen/eager to gain market share, and thus probably 'under-bidding' compared to what it might do for other projects.
All the administrative stuff (ROW acquisition) is rather hard to compare, in my opinion...we haven't even had a clear update since the CAHSRA became more aggressive, since 2015, in getting all the properties they needed, but they must have, because the lawsuits have died down, considerably and they were able to catch up with their anticipated schedule for awarding/completing Construction Packages 1-4 (e.g. construction/design work & testing has begun).