One issue with "CA HSR" is that it isn't even "high speed".
We may have happily referred to is as "high speed rail" 30 or 40 years ago but, given a possible completion date of 2035 (or whatever) the 2:40 travel time from SF <-> LA is unimpressive ... and even that will not be achieved:
"California legislative overseers do not expect the 2 hr 40 min target will be achieved."[1]
The simple fact is that the I-5 corridor is the spine of California and should be leveraged for all additional infrastructure build-out ... which would yield economies of scale and network effects for rail, network lines, water transmission, electrical distribution and (eventually) autonomous trucking.
Instead we're spending billions to build a slow, circuitous route to Fresno.
The operating speed on the fast stretch is actually one of the fastest in the world at 350 km/h, it's just that it has to waste half an hour on the Caltrain tracks from San Francisco to Gilroy and from Burbank to Anaheim. It's kinda like how the TGV from Paris to Nice goes from Paris to Marseille super fast but then has to spend hours to go from Marseille to Nice even though the latter part is a small fraction of the distance.
And yes, I agree that this "blended" design that has a lengthy slow section is very lame and bad. If only Caltrain could be quad tracked elevated viaducts.
This is actually a very common operating pattern, particularly for new services. It took years after initial service opened for the Korean KTX to run all the way from Seoul to Busan, and both France and Japan have a number of TGV/Shinkansen services where part of the line is regular track running at regular speed:
CA should've just bitten the bullet and built the whole SF-SJ section underground. It's about 50 miles, about the length of one mid-sized subway line in many part of the world, and it would've simplified the issue of acquiring prime suburban land.
Besides, I just don't see how HSR and Caltrain can share the same railway and avoid major service capacity issues. I think Caltrain is close to capacity as is, and at least a few years ago, major (an hour or more) delays were common.
South Korea built its second branch of HSR reaching Seoul almost entirely underground, with a single 31-mile tunnel [1]. I guess it was faster than trying to acquire land on top of it.
The geology of the Bay Area would make that difficult. The Peninsula flats are mostly loosely-consolidated sediment, and in some areas you have less than half a mile between the mountains and the Bay. And it's less than 2 miles from the San Andreas fault. You'd likely have significant problems with flooding [1], and all the difficulties that the Pacheco Pass segment is having tunneling through an active fault would be multiplied by the 4x as long, geologically varied segment from SJ-SF.
[1] This is a significant issue for the NYC subway, even though you don't really think of NYC as being on top of a bay.
(The part of BART that extends through the Peninsula runs aboveground from Daly City to Millbrae. For that matter, the part of BART that runs through the East Bay goes along the former Western Pacific right-of-way, aboveground. And the Transbay Tube was constructed with the "immersed tube" technique, built on land, towed out to sea, and submerged. Where BART runs underground and was built with TBMs, it's usually in bedrock under the cities of SF and Oakland.)
I mean, the Seikan tunnel was pretty difficult too:
> Following several decades of planning and construction, the tunnel opened on 13 March 1988.
> The construction cost of the tunnel itself was 538.4 billion yen at the planning stage, but it actually cost 745.5 billion yen. The construction cost of the strait line, including the attachment line, was 689 billion yen at the planning stage, but ended up costing 900 billion yen. During the construction, 34 workers were killed in the Seikan Tunnel, mostly in transportation accidents
> In addition, the tunnel faced criticism for its high maintenance costs, the need to pump a large amount of spring water even after completion, and that the large investment to build it is regarded as a sunk cost, and it is said that it is more economical to abandon it. It was ridiculed variously as "Showa's Three Idiots Assessment", "useless long things", and "quagmire tunnel".
We're complaining about CAHSR being decades in the making and billions over budget, but this does not seem to be unique to CAHSR. At least nobody's died during construction yet.
It's good evidence that all civil engineering projects are failures right up until they're done and everybody uses them, and then they just become critical infrastructure.
That's still something that wouldn't be that difficult to change in the future. Probably easier to fund once the initial system is operational and the case for the extra expenditure is clearly demonstrable.
Having it connect into Caltrain is probably something that is nice to have anyway (like if there's maintenance required in the hypothetical tunnel or whatever kind of direct bypass, so you can still run services on the slower route) so it's not a waste to have both.
The distance from LA to SF is about 665 km (following the planned HSR route). A travel time of 2:40 means the train has an average (not top) speed of 250 km/h, which is very competitive internationally. Even if we use the shorter I-5 route as the baseline, the average speed is still 230 km/h.
That's competitive with the fastest French TGV lines, and much faster than most European HSR lines. For reference, the fastest lines in the world run at an average speed of about 290 km/h (e.g., Beijing - Shanghai).
Calling this a "slow, circuitous route" is really not accurate at all. If CA HSR gets built as originally planned, it will be one of the faster systems in the world, and nearly as good as the best systems in Europe.
>Instead we're spending billions to build a slow, circuitous route to Fresno.
Because with a big project like this, everyone wants to claim some slice for themselves. The optimal route crosses counties like Fresno, which means they can veto the project (or at least delay it). They use that as leverage to extract benefits for themselves, like changing the route so it passes through their county seat.
It would be one thing if they were just going to Fresno. There are three major cities in the Central Valley: Bakersfield, Fresno and Sacramento. You get Bakersfield for free; Sacramento is north of SF and has existing commuter rail. Fresno is big enough to justify a stop; it has room to grow, too. You could put a stop that's ten miles outside of Fresno, and you don't have to cut through the city too much. That's what they do with airports. Throw in a LRT while you're at it.
But the plan also calls for Tulare and Madera to have stops. Now you're doing three times the work for a 20-40% increase in the population served. Then they want a line to Sacramento that goes through Merced and Visalia At this point it looks silly. Fresno is larger than Tulare, Madera, Merced and Visalia combined. Stockton already has the Altamont Commuter Express line to San Jose.
Having HSR stops inside cities is one of the things that make it far better than flying for certain distances. Put the station outside the city and you're killing a lot of your benefits...
Ten miles from Fresno might be too far. I just picked a distance out of thin air.
But when you have a minor stop, it's less important to build the perfect configuration. Even if you have to go outside of Fresno to get on the train, you're still in downtown SF or LA when you get off. And the traffic in Fresno is not as bad as the traffic in SF. And the flights from Fresno airport are probably not as cheap, since it's a lower-volume airport (capex per flight is larger), so you have more of a cost advantage.
So I'm pointing out a false dilemma. You don't have to choose between downtown Fresno and no Fresno. You can have a worse-is-better Fresno without sacrificing the goals of HSR for the really big cities.
Fresno / Central Valley is not the circuitous route, which is quite close to the I-5 near Bakersfield. The true circuitous detour is between Bakersfield and LA, where the route is planned to go East through the Antelope Valley with a station at Palmdale.
It's utterly asinine, and will result in "low speed rail". Which already exists... you can take the Coastal Starlight if you aren't in a hurry. There is no market (none) for rail service between LA and Bakersfield.
Once you count airport time, 2:40 is about on par with what it’d take to fly from SF to LA. It’s about half what it takes to drive between them, even without traffic.
> One issue with "CA HSR" is that it isn't even "high speed"
Not really an issue. The problem is first and foremost it hasn't been built. If it had been built, by now, it would have worked, even if that success were only measured in the Bay Area and greater LA area.
Article states that I-5 corridor skips all major towns in central valley which kinda kills the purpose of HSR connecting SF to central valley towns to LA
"... which kinda kills the purpose of HSR connecting SF to central valley towns to LA ..."
Yes, that's exactly right.
The original - and highest value - purpose was a high speed rail route between SF and LA.
The meandering route through Fresno (and the new, ex post facto "purpose" the article refers to) is the result of political machinations that happened after the fact and traded utility for brief, local (and trivial) political gains.
there is no need to connect SF to LA only, there are many airports in each town that connect these large metro areas.
the purpose of HSR is to transform large swatchs of land into a large megalopolis, like in China.
China's HSR connects large metro areas into one giant megalopolis with up to 250+ mln population that totally changes the ballgame in terms of economic output
You never been to LAX if you don't immediately act with a sigh of relief over a direct train route. It's an potential 90 minute+ commute and another 90 minute TSA process for a 90 minute flight. Dreadful.
>The purpose of HSR is to transform large swatchs of land into a large megalopolis, like in China.
Bakersfield has a dozen reasons ever preventing it from becoming another SF/LA/SD.
Besides, China didn't build its rail all at once. A direct route would prove value when making future splinter routes. Instead, we chase 2 rabbits and get none.
> You never been to LAX if you don't immediately act with a sigh of relief over a direct train route. It's an potential 90 minute+ commute and another 90 minute TSA process for a 90 minute flight. Dreadful.
So your estimate is 270 minutes.
Where's the train stop supposed to be in LA? Downtown, right? What's the commute for that like? Sure, no 90 minute TSA process (big doubt if that's typical) but now the 90 minute flight turns into 160 minutes (which is the target they're aiming for and it's not likely). Add on how long it takes to get downtown and... not much time savings, is there?
Depends on the stops and route. The secret to LAX is to not take LAX if you can avoid it. BUR has a lot of destinations and is a lot less of a toll on sanity. If it is truly a direct LA to SF with minimal stops, then sure. There's not too much lag removed.
A 90 minute commute to simply downtown instead of LAX becomes a 60-70 minute commute simply because you're not spending 20 minutes trying to navigate LAX. Not enter the airport, be stuck in its own brand of LAX traffic.
That will be a relief. Though if I may rant a bit to a bikeshed:
I really hate that thr naming scheme of "people mover" was probably part of the reason this project is coming next year and not 2035. The phrase itself just oozes this sentiment that no one politically involved was allowed to say "train" or "rail" so it doesn't scare off investors.
Actually a "people mover" is a term of art [1]. I had the same reaction when I heard the term (or thought it was some other political gloss to get the thing approved faster), but it's actually a somewhat well-defined term.
>The term 'people mover' was used by Walt Disney, when he and his Imagineers were working on the new 1967 Tomorrowland at Disneyland. The name was used as a working title for a new attraction, the PeopleMover. According to Imagineer Bob Gurr, "the name got stuck," and it was no longer a working title.
Huh. Thinking about it does sound like a very "Disney" term. Interesting to think it spread from a resort park to professional transportation. Never would have guessed.
The reasoning is all too relatable as well. "working names" no one works on and suddenly it's your final product name. Such anti-bikeshedding would be very rare these days.
It’s also less than that in travel time, since CAHSR goes at its full 350 km/h on the Central Valley vs just 130 km/h on the Caltrain corridor from SF to Gilroy. It adds about 10 minutes to non-stop travel time.
The real benefit is opening the Central Valley to commuter development. San Jose to Madeira on CAHSR is around 45 minutes, not much more than commuting from Palo Alto with current traffic on 101, and so it’d open vast tracts of land in the Central Valley to housing. It might actually be practical to work in the Bay Area on something non-tech, live in a SFH, and commute less than an hour again.
They are running multiple trains. SF to LA non-stop trains won't even stop at stations like Gilroy or Madeira. The all-stop trains will preference commute hours. The seats are non-rivalrous: Central Valley commuters aren't even going to be on the same train as a SF to LA business traveler. It seems reasonable that fares would differ, and that traveling just 1-2 stops from SJ to the Central Valley will be a lot cheaper than going from SF to LA.
This really depends on how it ends up being priced.
In Germany, you can pay for a year-long high-speed rail all-you-can-ride pass. It costs just under 5000 Euros, which is very reasonable if you're using it every workday.
This is a bit like AWS pricing. If you book an entire year of usage up-front, you get a much lower price. Casual users pay much more per use.
the opportunity cost isn't a 7% increase in length, it's the tens of billions in extra infrastructure to build 350km/h right of way straight through the middle of every town all the way down the central valley, and the massive hit to SF-LA run time that will come with that. beyond the stop penalty, HSR just doesn't run at full speed through city centers anywhere in the world. doesn't happen.
> HSR just doesn't run at full speed through city centers anywhere in the world. doesn't happen.
Wrong. It's most definitely a thing in quite a few mid-sized Japanese cities. Here's a compilation video taken at Fukushima Station (https://youtu.be/K-wkX3vFU_A?t=403) on the fastest 320 km/h line for example. You can check for yourself that the station is dead smack downtown in a city of 275,000.
At the world level it doesn't tend to happen because existing developments in cities usually strongly inhibit the construction of straight rail alignments that can support high-speed operations. But that's not a problem in the Central Valley – they're blessed with excellent existing rights-of-way.
As I wrote elsewhere, the average speed of CA HSR (as planned) is 250 km/h, which is very competitive, internationally. It's about as fast as the fastest French TGV routes. It only really lags behind the fastest Chinese routes, which run at average speeds of about 290 km/h.
If CA HSR can go through the cities in the Central Valley and still achieve an average speed of 250 km/h, that's well worth it.
SF-LA ~380mi is actually a real sweet spot for HSR.
Flight time of 90 minutes but the hassle of getting out to airport, check-in, boarding.. and then the opposite on the other end makes your all-in travel time about 4~5 hours. With HSR you are generally going city center to city center, and 380mi is achievable in 2~2.5 hours all-in.
I took a 700mi HSR in Japan that was probably on the very far end of being competitive time wise with flying and was still great. 5hr train vs 2hr plane segment, but all-in door-to-door travel times were comparable (5h45m vs 5hr).
Train 5hr45m door to door with majority of time sat in a comfy quiet train with big comfy seats and high speed internet. A flight which is 5hr door to door is mostly a ton of hurry-up-and-wait with small blocks of 30-90min here or there you can read a book.
I thunk it boils down to the fact that acquiring land near San Francisco or LA through imminent domain would be both hideously expensive and extremely unpopular.
Building "High Speed Rail to nowhere" in the Central Valley allowed them kick that can of political infighting down the road.
> I thunk it boils down to the fact that acquiring land near San Francisco or LA through imminent domain would be both hideously expensive and extremely unpopular.
“Eminent domain”, and the SF to SJ run for CA HSR uses almost entirely existing rail right-ot-way shared with Caltrain.
> Building "High Speed Rail to nowhere" in the Central Valley allowed them kick that can of political infighting down the road.
You are right that doing Central Valley first was political, but you have the wrong political motivation. The political motivation was (1) to mitigate partisan political resistance to the project by prividing the most immediate benefit to the Republican districts in the Central Valley, and (2) to secure federal funding under ARRA, which prioritized shovel-ready projects, because the issues that needed cleared to reach an approximation of that state for the termini were more time consuming.
Who's shedding a tear for some farmer getting paid above market rates (presumably) for their land? California is probably the last place I'd expect people to think using eminent domain in this case is a slipper slope to communism or whatever.
Eventually you will have to build out the rail line in densely populated areas (especially near San Francisco and LA). High speed rail requires that you to avoid unnecessary curves.
At that point, you're going to have to start using imminent domain.
Putting it off until after you have billions of dollars in sunk costs in the Central Valley doesn't change that.
That's why they went with the blended system with Caltrain. Caltrain already owns a suitable right-of-way; they just needed to electrify it. Which they've already done. The SF-to-SJ part of CAHSR is effectively done; they just need to built acquire the SJ-to-Gilroy right of way and tunnel under the Pacheco Pass to connect with the rest of CAHSR.
>Eventually you will have to build out the rail line in densely populated areas (especially near San Francisco and LA). High speed rail requires that you to avoid unnecessary curves.
why can't you have it run slowly in built up areas? As another commenter mentioned that's how it works in France.
The current plan actually accounts for this; the 2:40 includes the amount of time it takes to run on the current Caltrain tracks from San Jose to SF which will not be running at the highest speeds.
Said another way, that SF/San Jose stretch accounts for 25-30% of the total time. That’s similarly true for the last stretch of LA meaning a truly engineering driven design could have done it within ~1h50. And note that the 2h40 goal is admitted as a pipe dream by everyone involved, particularly because of the last mile issues and the circuitous route.
IIRC the last stretch in LA is actually planned to be new build with Palmdale to Los Angeles taking about twenty minutes.
Engineering is about optimizing and updating where you can. There aren't really high speed rail lines anywhere that go into the center of their major cities at full speed. In Europe and Japan the city-center sections are slower; China solved this problem mostly by having high speed trains skirt around built up areas.
> China solved this problem mostly by having high speed trains skirt around built up areas.
Which is what we should have done. Follow the 5 and build out high speed spokes to the other cities. And really unfuck the rail system in the Bay Area instead of travelling at Caltrain speeds for San Jose -> SF.
Upgraded signaling along the Caltrain ROW is in the works, but again you've got to balance the egos of the three big stakeholders. Caltrain is a far smaller problem to CAHSR than e..g Metro North is to Acela. The big issue is going to be the approach to downtown SF — which is still a ridiculous political football.
Disagree. Waiting for San Francisco to get its act together would potentially doom CAHSR. Building something now even if it means no downtown SF service could still reap benefits. Even Millbrae to LA would be very useful.
Giving operating HSR to the Valley first, even though this isn't historically the reason for it, is probably a very good way to motivate a solution to any political problems in the urban areas around the termini.
China would have likely just stopped the rail line at San Jose, the same way the Shanghai HSR stops at Hongqiao 50 minutes away from the actual city center.
Yeah, I don't think people in LA or SF are worried about competing with airlines over a few dozen city miles not being 200+ mph. Avoiding the LAX is reward in and of itself.
the state can manage that expense over time, for example by refusing to enforce laws, spiking crime rates, turning into dystopia and chaos, thus lowering property values.
after land is acquired, the property and law enforcement will bring up values
FWIW a train I've taken a few times in China (Hangzhou to Shanghai) would do San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than 2 hours (possibly 1 hour 45 minutes). This would be an express with no extra stops.
With a handful of stops and the corresponding loss of speed (I'm extrapolating as it hits speeds of 350/kph but still takes about 45+ minutes to go roughly 186km) it would probably realistically take more like 2.5 hours.
The CAHSR "peer group" which issued that quote is a political commission full of axe-grinding losers, specifically created by state politicians who want to kill the project. Nobody with a clue thinks that the 2h40m target is unattainable.
LOL I bet in 2010 if someone said that by 2025 the project would be grossly over budget and only have a short segment between nowhere and nowhere to show for 17 years of work you’d have called that propaganda by axe-grinding losers (paid off by big oil, naturally).
Just admit it, it’s a boondoggle just like everyone said it would be.
Unfortunately there simply isn't enough demand between SF and LA alone to justify the insanely long stretches of a direct rail project.
A better way would have been to build it out from the city into the suburbs first as a commuter rail project. There isn't a ton of intercity demand for this rail, but there is tons of traffic in and out of each singular city to justify even medium speed rail.
"Unfortunately there simply isn't enough demand between SF and LA alone to justify the insanely long stretches of a direct rail project."
I will stipulate that that is correct at this very moment.
However, it is my contention that a truly high speed rail link (sub two hour) between SF and LA would have manufactured demand as an entirely new set of trips, activities and lifestyles would have been enabled by the ability to step on a train in LA and step off at the salesforce tower 1:55 later ...
This could be absolutely true if people adapt to it, but that wouldn't happen overnight.
I would also strongly doubt that even after full adoption, Bakersfield to LA in 30 minutes is going to be much more useful and heavily trafficked on a daily basis than SF to LA in 2 hours would.
Even in Europe, their marquee city-to-city rail routes contribute a small share of overall rail traffic compared to their daily commuters.
Nothing happens overnight. Except governmental upheaval, I suppose.
And yes, SF to LA would be in much more demand. Not as a commuting option, but it'd make for some great weekend commerce. In a world of increasing work from home, I don't think many people would care for commuting to LA from Bakersfield.
LA to Bakersfield is 110 miles. That's about an hour, certainly plenty of people do that journey in the UK multiple times a week. Tamworth for example is exactly 110 miles from Euston. In peak times the fast trains stop there for the commuter traffic and it takes 67 minutes. Peterborough, Gratham, Newark (100-140 miles) are all common commuter places,
If we ever got HSR I'm not saying the is unviable. People commuting from suburbs to downtown LA have a 60-79 minute commute, a commute they can't sleep or be productive through. That's no issue.
I'm just saying the hubs are completely incompatible in both culture and market. Bakersfield is an energy/agriculture hub and LA is an entertainment hub. The utility here isn't exactly efficient if people are traveling that far every day to work as a cashier. Probably wouldn't stimulate much in that regsrd
Likewise, there's not going to be a lot of people in LA who willingly want to go to Bakersfield if given an option. At worst they are forced there as another suburban option if the city prices them out.
You don't need HSR, just a normal 125mph train line.
Imagine you are born in Bakersfield, your family is from Bakersfield, perhaps they are agricultural workers, but you don't want to be a farmer, you want a job in a big city, perhaps an accountant, or a civil engineer, or a whatever. It's a typical modern desk job, for whatever reason you need to be in an office a few times a week, maybe not 5 since covid, but certainly 2-3.
You can either move a long way from your home, family, support network and live near your work, or you can maintain that community and support network but have a limited access to jobs. Or you can do both - stay living close to family so you can pop round in 10 minutes for a chat, but also have an increased choice of jobs and careers that a large city provides.
Nobody is commuting 100 miles a day for a minimum wage job sure, but there's far more jobs than cashiers - I assume LA has decent jobs somewhere between the "Holywood A-Lister" and the "$10/hour cleaner" scale, and due to its size it likely has more opportunities than Bakersfield alone.
>You can either move a long way from your home, family, support network and live near your work, or you can maintain that community and support network but have a limited access to jobs.
Is there enough people with that mindset in Bakersfield?the population is 400k, and the opposite narrative of commuting out the city to work the oil rigs probably isn't as common.
From a political point of view, LA doesn't exactly in need of even more starry-eyed youth to compete with trying to make some career in the entertainment sector.
>I assume LA has decent jobs somewhere between the "Holywood A-Lister" and the "$10/hour cleaner" scale, and due to its size it likely has more opportunities than Bakersfield alone.
Definitely not in 2025. I guess we'll see if we're still in one piece in a decade.
It's not just speed that's critical, it's frequency. I believe that they're only proposing one train per hour, or 18 per day? Feels low for such a long piece of dedicated track.
In the UK the existing West Coast mainline has about 170 trains a day on the fast lines (between Milton Keynes and Rugby avoiding Northampton), the longest of which run about the same distance (London-Glasgow) as LA to San Francisco - albeit a 4.5 hour journey.
The original plans for HS2 were I think 18 per hour between London and Birmingham.
Fresno has a population of 500k, and is about 180 miles from LA from and 180 miles from San Francisco.
Liverpool has a similar population and is a similar distance from London and currently gets an hourly train, with arguments for 2 trains per hour. that's in addition to the more local services (Liverpool-Birmingham for example).
London frequencies on the fast non-stop trains are currently
Birmingham: 3tph
Manchester: 3tph
Glasgow: 1tph
Liverpool: 1tph
Trent Valley: 1tph (fast for the first 80 miles then local stopper at towns of upto 100k, like Tamworth, Lichfield, Rugeley
And typically
Lancashire (Blackpool): 1tph
North Wales: 1tph
Looking at cities like San Francisco an environms, Sacremento, Bakersfield, Fresno etc I don't see why you wouldn't send 2tph from LA to SF, and another 1tph to each of those locations, meaning 6-10tph heading north out of LA, and probably 3tph out of San Francisco, based on the population and distances. Not all services would stop at every station (you don't need a 3tph service from Bakersfield to Fresno, just 1tph would be fine)
I guess the lack of local public transport limits the benefit though, if you need a car to get to/from the station (especially if it's at both ends) then you might as well drive the whole way.
I'm not convinced. The train is not competing with driving to SF, the train is competing with flying to SF. LAX -> SFO is 1.25 hours. There's time to the airport, time to check in, time through security of course, but there's going to be similar issues at the train station so the customer has to be convinced that the train is a time savings.
Plus, of course, SWA has 4 direct flights to SFO, 6 to Oakland, 4 to San Jose. If you miss your flight you get on the next one. It is going to be really hard for a high speed train to complete with that.
Sounds like you've never taken a train. Time through security? There's basically no security in American train stations (or French TGV stations). I've only experienced Chinese train stations with security but with wait times far less than American airports. Time to the airport? Well yes because the airports are inconveniently located. Train stations are right there in the downtown.
International HSTs with passport required border crossings (ie Schengen-UK) have passport control and security - I think the security checks are to minimise the risk of terror attacks in the channel tunnel though.
But yeah, for intra-Schengen you just go to the platform a few minutes before departure, find where your carriage will be, and step in once the train comes to a stop.
So much less faff than air travel, and I’ve noticed better pubs at major stations meaning waiting for your train isn’t as boring as it used to be…
Security theatre. What's the point of metal detecting you on eurostar? You going to hijack the train with your knife?
Cars and vans in the tunnel don't go through metal detecters, and you can smuggle a far larger bomb that you can in a suitcase.
But eurostar is the exception to the rule with security. I tend to aim to arrive at my mainline station about 5 minutes before the train leaves incase I get delayed on-route, but that's because I live in a small town which only has 1 train per hour. When I take a route with 3tph I don't bother looking at the times, just go when I'm ready and accept on average I have to wait for 10 minutes.
I agree. But I just looked at Le Shuttle’s pages on security and they claim to put 100% of trucks through millimeter wavelength scanners (presumably to detect unauthorised travellers) and x-ray systems that are supposed to detect arms and explosives.
The SF one would apparently be near union square. Having been there, that seems easy enough to get to, insofar as anywhere is easy to get to in SF (it does not exactly have the greatest public transport in the world).
The train stations have connections to other transit - hard to see them as any less convenient than airports (LA's famously had no train connection until recently).
Station location of course plays a role (i.e. if it gets stuffed somewhere out of town with crappy transport links its no good, and rail links into the middle of an existing city are expensive), but I don't know a major airport where people would routinely trust less than 45 mins for checkin and passing security. Whereas for a train station its 10 mins.
> If you miss your flight you get on the next one. It is going to be really hard for a high speed train to complete with that.
Why would you bother to build a fancy new HSR line and then not run trains every hour, or more if demand is there? Running trains is not that expensive once you've got the infrastructure.
Forget security; I used SFO last week and just going from long term parking to where security is took 20 min, and the reverse (around midnight) took 30+ min. A train starting in downtown SF could as well be past San Jose at that point.
To be fair long-term parking at a train station would also be inconvenient (although at least in this case you'd not share facilities with all the international travelers), and honestly didn't even register as an option to me, so I was assuming local train/shuttle bus/cab/uber dropping off in a convenient central location.
I think the differentiating factor is that a rail station is more likely to be in the city center, where you can get to by other means (bus, BART, whatever), while going to SFO is much less convenient.
After a potential 30 minute commute (even if you live downtown already) and some 2 hours of checking, yes. Only 1.25 hours.
>there's going to be similar issues at the train station
I suppose it will vary on popularity, but train parking lots tend to be relatively empty compared to navigating LAX and the lag time of the worst case scenario of "buying a new train pass" was 10 minutes, after maybe a 5 minute walk from parking lot to station.
Airlines are simply too politically charged to ever be more efficient than a potential high speed rail. Even if it takes an extra hour, it's a time save taking the train.
> After a potential 30 minute commute (even if you live downtown already) and some 2 hours of checking, yes. Only 1.25 hours.
HSR stations are no different.
45-60 minute uber from Berkeley or Cupertino to the SF HSR station? Then another 45-90 minutes on the LA end?
You’d rather just fly SFO (or SJC, OAK) nonstop to Orange County or Ontario or Burbank or Palm Springs or Long Beach or …
Not to mention if you are an experienced flyer, it’s not unreasonable to arrive at the airport curbside 15-30 minutes before your flight boarding door closes and comfortably make the flight. Fuck the lounges.
I've been on multiple other kinds of subways and trains across the state, and I can't say there's ever been more than the 10 minute lag needed to purchase a tram pass (a one time act). I don't know how even the strictest HSR would compare to the TSA process and the sluggish seating process of a plane.
The commute may not be different in the long term, but as of now LAX's traffic is legendarily bad, even by LA traffic standards.
> There's time to the airport, time to check in, time through security of course, but there's going to be similar issues at the train station
... Eh? You get to the station (generally well-located), you walk through a turnstile or similar, you get on the train. There's no check-in or security on most intercity trains. Or walking for miles in sprawling airports, for that matter. In a big intercity station, you go in the door, there are some shops, there are a row of platforms, you go to your platform, you get on your train. That is it. Also, you probably get there on public transport which goes either into the station itself, outside the door, or to the local station beside the intercity station, depending on local taste (this really does seem to be a very regional thing).
I can't help feeling that a lot of the people who object to this concept have never actually been on an intercity train at all. Or, er, seen a film or TV show where someone goes on a train. It's kind of bizarre, really.
With Amtrak, you just show up at the train station a few minutes before departure time.
I took Amtrak from Richmond VA (well, Ashland, VA) to NYC once precisely to avoid the song and dance with getting around NYC airports. I showed up a few minutes before departure at the Ashland station (saving a drive to Richmond), relaxed on the train for 5 hours, arrived in Penn Station, and then took a short walk to the Roosevelt Hotel where my business meeting was.
High-speed rail can have multiple trains per day. If you miss one, you get on the next one.
I think it's actually the opposite. The latent demand is only present in LA and SF. Fresno and Bakersfield are not car-less cities. Taking a train between them makes no sense (you're gonna have to rent a car on either end).
While connecting the LA Metro and SF BART with a high speed rail line makes the most sense. Regardless of the construction inefficiencies this is really the original sin beating at the heart of this project.
It's hard to know for sure, but the majority of these flights are probably going to be transfers. I've never set foot in LA but I've taken that flight several times.
Even so, there are only ~20k daily seats between the two cities. The ridership on successful high speed rail lines elsewhere in the world are measured in the hundreds of thousands per day.
Why couldn't one part of the journey be by rail, and the other by air? There is a already a lot of shared planning to allow this to happen, with some railway stations even having IATA codes.
I agree this is the ideal situation, but as it stands CAHSR is planned to terminate at union station in LA, quite far from LAX. Ideally LA metro or metrolink would build a direct connection between union station and LAX, but that hasn't begun to be planned and unfortunately it's very difficult to get transit built in LA. For instance the Sepulveda line— one of the most important lines for LA— is at risk of being killed because ticket master's ex-CEO doesn't want a train line running under his house.
I don't agree. There are around 145 flights a day between metro LA airports and metro SF airports (based on a quick Google Flights search for a random Friday). Assuming there's 75 seats on each plane, that's 10,000 seats a day. That's a lot of trains. A typical TGV is 500 seats. (If I add San Diego to SF, that's another 50 flights or 3,700 seats...)
The market is there and exists, and that's with the gigantic hassle of having to get to and from the airports, as opposed to a convenient downtown train station
Commuter rail is also a good idea but it's not the same thing as high speed rail. And commuter rail already exists: COASTER in San Diego, MetroLink in LA.
Currently you either have an almost 11-hour trip on Amtrak, a 6 ½ hour drive, or a flight between LA and SF. The ridership is clearly there. (Believe it or not the Amtrak trains are often sold out.)
I mention it elsewhere, but it looks like about 20k people fly each way between the Bay Area and LA every day. That's enough, and if this thing actually existed very few people would fly.
This claim is unfounded based on the amount of direct flights alone, and then on top of that you have to add the car traffic going between the cities as well, and trips that now become viable when the travel time is faster and more convenient.
Outside of work reasons I don't know many people who actually travel between these cities on a regular basis. Maybe once or twice a year for that?
I would argue the east coast works much differently. The traffic patterns are not so much between NYC and DC, but most people moving in and out of dense areas. Much of the Acela is M-F commuter traffic.
If it actually worked like Japan (and China?) maybe? In Japan, if I want to go from Tokyo to Osaka, I just take a local train/subway to the station and buy a ticket for the next bullet train. I can get the tickets on my phone as I'm on the subway (or buy them at the machine at the station). There is always a train within 5-10 minutes. There are trains pretty much every 5 minutes, some are express (5 stops to Osaka), some less express (~12 stops), and some go all they way to Kyushu. The only time this isn't true is the 3-4 weeks a year when everyone travels and the trains are full. On those weeks you need to get tickets in advance.
The point being, it's so convienent I can decide to visit my friends for a picnic and come back the same day (yes I have done this) with no pre-planning. I have not pre-purchased a ticket in years.
I don't expect California to have trains every 5 to 10 minutes. I also expect they might fuck it up like Spain and require baggage inspection. I do expect that if they finish building it (I don't think they will) that by the time they do, Waymo and similar services will be ubiquitous and so it might actually be useful.
We may have happily referred to is as "high speed rail" 30 or 40 years ago but, given a possible completion date of 2035 (or whatever) the 2:40 travel time from SF <-> LA is unimpressive ... and even that will not be achieved:
"California legislative overseers do not expect the 2 hr 40 min target will be achieved."[1]
The simple fact is that the I-5 corridor is the spine of California and should be leveraged for all additional infrastructure build-out ... which would yield economies of scale and network effects for rail, network lines, water transmission, electrical distribution and (eventually) autonomous trucking.
Instead we're spending billions to build a slow, circuitous route to Fresno.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail