New Bullet Train Plans Delayed

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According to the Los Angeles Times, California’s $64 billion bullet train has been delayed by three years. Could this mean that Elon Musk's Hyperloop might end up beating the bullet train to market?

California will need to double down on support of the bullet train by digging deeper into the state's wallet and accepting a three-year delay in completing the project's initial leg, a new business plan for the 220-mph system shows. Rail planners have turned their construction plans upside down, attempting to fit the mega-project within the state's limited budget.

 
Not a Californian, but would really like to see this train happen and roll out smoothly. Set a precedent and hope for mass adoption countrywide. We have too many vehicles on the roads IMO. Long live the trains ;-)
 
Zigmorph said:
Not a Californian, but would really like to see this train happen and roll out smoothly. Set a precedent and hope for mass adoption countrywide. We have too many vehicles on the roads IMO. Long live the trains ;-)
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I am a Californian, and this will never happen.
It's more about funneling money to political insiders and their supporters than it is about building a high speed train.
The end result will be billions spent, some track being ran from nowhere to nowhere (just so they can say they built it), and nobody will end up riding it.

As much as I hate flying (TSA, cramped seats, etc), and would love to see an alternative, this is not it.
A few years ago I took the train from Southern California to Seattle. 33 hours.
I could have driven 8 hours, spent the night in a hotel, drove another 8 hours and been there faster, even if I stop several times to eat and stretch my legs.
Plus, by the time you include food, the train ride costs more than an airplane ticket.
 
nutzo said:
A few years ago I took the train from Southern California to Seattle. 33 hours.
I could have driven 8 hours, spent the night in a hotel, drove another 8 hours and been there faster, even if I stop several times to eat and stretch my legs.
Plus, by the time you include food, the train ride costs more than an airplane ticket.
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When I say train I mean Bullet train. I'd like to see a day when every city in the country was connected with stops along the way. We have the need and the technology. A modern, fast, efficient bullet train is possible. With the improvements of alternative energies and energy storage going forward, the skys the limit with the scope of these trains. A great American project. We need more of these. Trains should never have been abandoned, they should have been improved. Look at aerospace. Always improving. Always innovating. If we treated trains as we did with aerospace we'd be much better off.
 
How is 64 BILLION dollars a limited budget? I bet you could pay uber to drive anyone who wanted to go anywhere in California where ever they want for that.
 
Big problem with mass transit, is that we all want somebody else to ride on it to open up the highway for US to drive on. Other than the Acela first class car, every train I've been in is uncomfortable, and I'm squeezed into a seat made for a 12 year old. Which is what they will do to the new train, and then wonder why nobody wants to ride in it.
 
Zigmorph said:
Not a Californian, but would really like to see this train happen and roll out smoothly. Set a precedent and hope for mass adoption countrywide. We have too many vehicles on the roads IMO. Long live the trains ;-)
Click to expand...

I am a Californian, and I would like to see sensible high speed rail too. It's just... that isn't what California is trying to build. They are connecting cities that see more freight traffic than commuter traffic. Bakersfield to Merced isn't exactly bustling with commuter traffic, and the biggest city on that route is Fresno, with the majority of the traffic being ag-related. It will only connect to the Bay several years after the first leg (which they are trying to use the revenue from to fund), and apparently they have dropped entirely connecting up to Los Angles.

Bay to LA would be a great route - and that's how it was sold. That isn't what is being built though.
 
Yes "sensible" high speed rail, I think when voters approved a 9 BILLION dollar bond the idea was that's about how much it would cost, or some amount over it. But nope, that just ends up paying all the people who would research how much it would really cost, plus you have all those whiny bitchy farmers along I-5 who have had the same "Congress Created Dustbowl" signs up for decades who are just waiting for a big payday due to the state buying their worthless land for a king's ransom

That said this was doomed in the planning stages, the idea that Fresno should be a main hub, no one wants to go to Fresno, and no one wants people from Fresno to have "easy" access to their city. Then they started talking about a Merced station? Jesus Christ, do these planners have any fucking clue what the people wanted? They want high speed rain from major metropolitan areas to each other, with MAYBE a few stops along the way, that means Sacramento & San Jose, to LA and possibly Las Vegas. But yeah, I'm sorry it's a train, plane tickets are cheaper, faster, and they aren't as subsidized.
 
sfsuphysics said:
That said this was doomed in the planning stages, the idea that Fresno should be a main hub, no one wants to go to Fresno, and no one wants people from Fresno to have "easy" access to their city. Then they started talking about a Merced station? Jesus Christ, do these planners have any fucking clue what the people wanted? They want high speed rain from major metropolitan areas to each other, with MAYBE a few stops along the way, that means Sacramento & San Jose, to LA and possibly Las Vegas. But yeah, I'm sorry it's a train, plane tickets are cheaper, faster, and they aren't as subsidized.
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I live in Fresno, and I agree with you 100%.

The current "plan" is to run rail from Merced to Bakserfield, with only 3 terminals (from North to South): Fresno, Tulare/Kings Area, and Bakersfield.

Merced is like.... 60 miles of track north of Fresno, so there's track that is completely F'n useless until some other stage comes along and hooks it up to Sacramento (which isn't until the last stage, like 50 years later).

And the Tulare/Kings station is out in the middle of a corn field, it isn't even in a city, let alone a major city.

The drive from Fresno to Bakersfield is only about 2 hours - they are connected directly via a highway (99). That highway is pretty busy - I think it gets more traffic than the I-5. And a lot of that traffic along the 99 is freight. Definitely not commuters from Fresno to a corn field. And while the Bakersfield to Fresno connection may be crazy fast at 220MPH... yeah. And using revenue from Stage 1 to pay for the later stages - who the hell is going to ride it. Sure, people will ride it once for the novelty... and then.. once you get to Fresno, or Bakersfield, or the corn field, and there's F'n nothing to do, and no way to get out of the station (it's not like any of those areas have bustling mass transit options)... then what?

If they were talking something that would actually benefit the Central Valley (from Sacramento to Bakersfield), this would have been much better off as an optimized freight line, but that isn't as sexy as high-speed rail. Or if the HSR actually connected the major population centers (Bay, Sacramento, LA, San Diego).
 
It's all bullshit politics. The transcontinental railroad was built in 3 years and with much less money/resources.
 
bloodypulp said:
we'll have humans on Mars before the CA high speed rail is up.
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And those humans will be dead. And frankly the money spent getting them there wasted.

cia1413 said:
How is 64 BILLION dollars a limited budget? I bet you could pay uber to drive anyone who wanted to go anywhere in California where ever they want for that.
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Remember that corporate bailout to Northrop with those B-2 bombers that cost a "mere" $1billion USD each? Further you're dealing with an infrastructure project in a very-expensive-land-value part of the country to start with.
 
nightfly said:
Big problem with mass transit, is that we all want somebody else to ride on it to open up the highway for US to drive on. Other than the Acela first class car, every train I've been in is uncomfortable, and I'm squeezed into a seat made for a 12 year old. Which is what they will do to the new train, and then wonder why nobody wants to ride in it.
Click to expand...

Speak for yourself, I would ride a 220-mph bullet train instead of driving and I'm sure there are lots of people who would value the time saved more than the minor inconvenience of having to share a train car with other people. People are constantly talking about self-driving cars, which are the most pointless thing ever because they're so inefficient, if public transit were better very few people would need self-driving cars and everyone would get everywhere faster.
 
w4ffles said:
It's all bullshit politics. The transcontinental railroad was built in 3 years and with much less money/resources.
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A) That railroad needed $100,000,000 in capital bonds from the federal government to be built....which present day is billions of USD.

2) Building a railroad back then was far simpler grunt work than now. Further LOTS of people died on that railroad not only making it but riding it as it was very unsafe in engineering terms.
 
Brian_B said:
The current "plan" is to run rail from Merced to Bakserfield, with only 3 terminals (from North to South): Fresno, Tulare/Kings Area, and Bakersfield.
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Yeah, it's a fucking disgrace, then when it is up and running in those areas they'll claim no one wants to ride it, and they're shutting it all down.
 
I live in the midwest - no public transportation near me at all. No subways or trains, When I visit places that have it, I am jealous.
I was in Europe for a few weeks - their train system is a-ok. They are not bullet trains, but they work and get you around cost effectively. I'd personally love to see a real transit system in this country. However, I know politics are going to prevent it.
 
Quix said:
Speak for yourself, I would ride a 220-mph bullet train instead of driving and I'm sure there are lots of people who would value the time saved more than the minor inconvenience of having to share a train car with other people. People are constantly talking about self-driving cars, which are the most pointless thing ever because they're so inefficient, if public transit were better very few people would need self-driving cars and everyone would get everywhere faster.
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I would too, if

a) It goes between two locations I need to get between
b) There is readily available and affordable transportation at the destination station to get me to where I'm wanting to go

The Bay area has great mass transit. Sacramento, LA and San Fran do as well. All those places where they are building the high speed rail at currently in California - not so much. The Central Valley in CA is about as developed as the Midwest. Speaking for myself, CA HSR doesn't accomplish either a or b.

A flight from San Fran to LA takes just as long as driving, by the time you add in all the TSA BS, the delays in the terminals, the boarding and unloading time, etc. Jets fly a lot faster than the HSR will. I just don't see how HSR will be any better than that
 
Brian_B said:
I would too, if

a) It goes between two locations I need to get between
b) There is readily available and affordable transportation at the destination station to get me to where I'm wanting to go

The Bay area has great mass transit. Sacramento, LA and San Fran do as well. All those places where they are building the high speed rail at currently in California - not so much. The Central Valley in CA is about as developed as the Midwest. Speaking for myself, CA HSR doesn't accomplish either a or b.

A flight from San Fran to LA takes just as long as driving, by the time you add in all the TSA BS, the delays in the terminals, the boarding and unloading time, etc. Jets fly a lot faster than the HSR will. I just don't see how HSR will be any better than that
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Definitely, it has to make sense. Well, the biggest difference between HSR and jets is that there is none of the airport junk, you just show up at the station and jump on the train, get there 5 minutes before the scheduled time and you're set. As for the supporting infrastructure, sure it definitely needs some work but you have to start somewhere.
 
The California HSR authority has utterly failed to market the project and help people understand why it's necessary. This has opened a vacuum for critics to say that it's a waste of $64 billion that won't be any cheaper / faster / better than traveling by air or by car.

The reality is that by the time the train is up and running, the state's population will have increased so dramatically beyond the capacity of the highway and airline systems that both will resemble third-world transit systems if the HSR is not built. The best estimates for expansion of the highway system necessary to accommodate the state's projected 2040 population are around $400 billion, or 7 times the cost of HSR for the luxury of moving along at 60-70 MPH vs 180+. Estimates for expanding our airports to handle the capacity would be similar if it weren't impossible to do so. Our cities have grown around the airports that were originally built on the outskirts of town and there is simply no room to expand them or build new ones in places that would be remotely convenient to reach. The SF->LA corridor is also so congested that it cannot safely handle more air traffic. Additionally, airplanes are unable to take advantage of a cleaner, cheaper electric grid and must continue to use jet fuel regardless of whether it is still cost competitive or environmentally viable in 20-30 years.

Unless the Hyperloop pans out (which, exciting as it may be, is completely unproven even as a prototype), there are no other options that don't involve spending vastly greater sums of money, and the longer we wait, the worse the situation will be. No one likes ponying up for large projects as taxpayers, but remember that the Bay and Golden Gate bridges were both called unnecessary boondoggles in their day and I doubt that anyone would look back and say that we should not have spent the money.
 
You want to make a viable HSR route, you do Murrieta to Vegas as Phase 1. Phase 2 is LA to Murrieta and San Diego to Murrieta. Phase 1 would pay for phase 2, which then fund expanding the system to the rest of the state. Allow for private party cars to be rented and you would be profitable the first 3 day weekend its running
 
arthur_tuxedo said:
The reality is that by the time the train is up and running, the state's population will have increased so dramatically beyond the capacity of the highway and airline systems that both will resemble third-world transit systems if the HSR is not built. The best estimates for expansion of the highway system necessary to accommodate the state's projected 2040 population are around $400 billion, or 7 times the cost of HSR for the luxury of moving along at 60-70 MPH vs 180+.
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The problem with this logic is there is no highway problems between the Bay Area and the Greater LA area, that's a vacation drive not a commute drive, the highway issues are in those particular regions by themselves and having a high speed rail system between two locations does fuck all to help deal with traffic. Creating more lanes of traffic for high capacity/car pool (or self driving so there's no human factor to fuck it up) will got a lot further in the long run, basically you put the number of lanes of traffic so few for single drivers that you make it so no one wants to do it.
 
This won't go anywhere because the stations for the train won't be in a convenient location. The bullet train can't use existing railroads and people won't vote to have a train track put into their backyard no matter what the benefit is.

This type of system works in Japan because the population density is so high and because the rail company will just put the tracks there without asking everyone's permission.
 
The last thing I heard is that they now want to use existing track. The build estimate was becoming way over budget. Nobody knows what this thing is, I don't even think it is a maglev. Putting this at ground level is really stupid, Amtrak is center punching vehicles all the time. Let alone the bug spots on the front of the cow catcher from individuals stepping out and taking a walk on the track. They don't let you hose it down anymore you have to have hazmat clean it up. Can you imagine hitting a village idiot at 200mph with a locomotive.

Our illustrious POS goobernor now is crying that CA needs more money. He wants to raise 31 billion dollars by raising the gas tax. Gotta fix those roads. Like Barry he lies about everything including his proclamation that we have a balance budget.
 
Brian_B said:
I am a Californian, and I would like to see sensible high speed rail too. It's just... that isn't what California is trying to build. They are connecting cities that see more freight traffic than commuter traffic. Bakersfield to Merced isn't exactly bustling with commuter traffic, and the biggest city on that route is Fresno, with the majority of the traffic being Ag-related. It will only connect to the Bay several years after the first leg (which they are trying to use the revenue from to fund), and apparently they have dropped entirely connecting up to Los Angles.

Bay to LA would be a great route - and that's how it was sold. That isn't what is being built though.
Click to expand...

Total BS, HSR was not sold as being built all at once or even starting at one end or another, even Prop1a/AB3034 does not say that, even the courts said that...

The IOS from SF to just outside Bakersfield will be built, there is money for that, especially from SJ to Merced(CP6, via Pacheco Pass in a Tunnel) and to CP1(29 miles), CP2-3(60 miles), CP4(22 miles) or 111 miles total so far, CP = Construction Package, yep Construction on HSR is going on now, though some would rather HSR stay on paper(the GOP was for HSR, until Construction became a possibility, then Big Oil said kill it), the CHSRA has not asked for Private money so far, money isn't being wasted, but then suspicious narrow minded Losers on the outside like to make up stuff, the CHSRA is peer reviewed, there is oversight by the state legislature and there is oversight at the Federal level too. Oh I'm a Californian too, born in 1960 in Los Angeles, HSR will be built.

Some have said that SD and Sac were chopped off, this is simply not true, Prop1a never allocated funding to Phase2 of HSR, Phase 2 would go from Merced to Sacramento and from Los Angeles to San Diego, plus there was an attempt to kill HSR in 2012 and in 2014, the last was by Sen Huff and former Sen Runner(Huff and Puff, aka the Big Bad Wolves), the 1st by Doug LaMalfa.

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1A,_High-Speed_Rail_Act_(2008)
 
whiz187 said:
The last thing I heard is that they now want to use existing track. The build estimate was becoming way over budget. Nobody knows what this thing is, I don't even think it is a maglev. Putting this at ground level is really stupid, Amtrak is center punching vehicles all the time. Let alone the bug spots on the front of the cow catcher from individuals stepping out and taking a walk on the track. They don't let you hose it down anymore you have to have hazmat clean it up. Can you imagine hitting a village idiot at 200mph with a locomotive.

Our illustrious POS goobernor now is crying that CA needs more money. He wants to raise 31 billion dollars by raising the gas tax. Gotta fix those roads. Like Barry he lies about everything including his proclamation that we have a balance budget.
Click to expand...
Lies, like you? STFU, you do not know what you whine about.
 
Xrave said:
This won't go anywhere because the stations for the train won't be in a convenient location. The bullet train can't use existing railroads and people won't vote to have a train track put into their backyard no matter what the benefit is.

This type of system works in Japan because the population density is so high and because the rail company will just put the tracks there without asking everyone's permission.
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Density is a myth, HSR operates in Europe, there is either less or the same there as there is here.
Sunday Train: Breaking Free of the Population Density Myth (2) | Voices on the Square
 
sfsuphysics said:
The problem with this logic is there is no highway problems between the Bay Area and the Greater LA area, that's a vacation drive not a commute drive, the highway issues are in those particular regions by themselves and having a high speed rail system between two locations does fuck all to help deal with traffic. Creating more lanes of traffic for high capacity/car pool (or self driving so there's no human factor to fuck it up) will got a lot further in the long run, basically you put the number of lanes of traffic so few for single drivers that you make it so no one wants to do it.
Click to expand...
It's an 8 hour drive, a slog, that hasn't changed in decades, even when the i5 was completed, before that, it took longer. Add more lanes and they fill up, I watched as fwys were built and snaked across the land and later were added to, you do not know what you are talking about.
 
Brian_B said:
I live in Fresno, and I agree with you 100%.

The current "plan" is to run rail from Merced to Bakserfield, with only 3 terminals (from North to South): Fresno, Tulare/Kings Area, and Bakersfield.

Merced is like.... 60 miles of track north of Fresno, so there's track that is completely F'n useless until some other stage comes along and hooks it up to Sacramento (which isn't until the last stage, like 50 years later).

And the Tulare/Kings station is out in the middle of a corn field, it isn't even in a city, let alone a major city.

The drive from Fresno to Bakersfield is only about 2 hours - they are connected directly via a highway (99). That highway is pretty busy - I think it gets more traffic than the I-5. And a lot of that traffic along the 99 is freight. Definitely not commuters from Fresno to a corn field. And while the Bakersfield to Fresno connection may be crazy fast at 220MPH... yeah. And using revenue from Stage 1 to pay for the later stages - who the hell is going to ride it. Sure, people will ride it once for the novelty... and then.. once you get to Fresno, or Bakersfield, or the corn field, and there's F'n nothing to do, and no way to get out of the station (it's not like any of those areas have bustling mass transit options)... then what?

If they were talking something that would actually benefit the Central Valley (from Sacramento to Bakersfield), this would have been much better off as an optimized freight line, but that isn't as sexy as high-speed rail. Or if the HSR actually connected the major population centers (Bay, Sacramento, LA, San Diego).
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Once connected to SF via SJ and a Pacheco Pass Tunnel, then there will be some changes, fwys when added to just clog up with cars, endless cars, why? Cause fwys can't handle the volume of traffic, fwys are obsolete, it's past time to bring the Central Valley into the 21st Century, and out from the caves, Bakersfield used to have street cars, 5 lines of street cars, it's time for that to return, this time in the form of light rail.

Bakersfield and Kern Electric Railway - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
cia1413 said:
How is 64 BILLION dollars a limited budget? I bet you could pay uber to drive anyone who wanted to go anywhere in California where ever they want for that.
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Uber doesn't even operate in some areas of CA(Lyft is worse, I looked that up once out of curiosity), the Central Valley is one area, one of the other areas is San Bernardino County, they are mainly along the coast.
 
JokerCPoC said:
It's an 8 hour drive, a slog, that hasn't changed in decades, even when the i5 was completed, before that, it took longer. Add more lanes and they fill up, I watched as fwys were built and snaked across the land and later were added to, you do not know what you are talking about.
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Excuse me? I know exactly what I'm talking about, the majority of that drive is on a simple 2 lane highway which for the most part does not have much in the way of traffic it's only when you go over the Grapevine into the heart of LA county that there is traffic with multi-lanes of mismash going all over the place or when you get to about Tracy, however the 300 or so miles in between isn't an issue. SF to LA takes 8 hours only if you hit either area when traffic hits, which unfortunately for the LA side of things is most of the time. Considering it's nearly 400 miles from SF to LA 8 hours isn't really that horrible, sure throw in a high speed rail and it'll get you there quicker I'm not arguing that at all, but what I am arguing is that a high speed rail is not going to help traffic in either location for the simple fact that the traffic in each location is not due to connectivity with each other, it's connectivity within each location which HSR does not address that's going to be your BART/CalTran/buses or whatever the LA equiv of that is.
 
JokerCPoC said:
Total BS, HSR was not sold as being built all at once or even starting at one end or another, even Prop1a/AB3034 does not say that, even the courts said that...

The IOS from SF to just outside Bakersfield will be built, there is money for that, especially from SJ to Merced(CP6, via Pacheco Pass in a Tunnel) and to CP1(29 miles), CP2-3(60 miles), CP4(22 miles) or 111 miles total so far, CP = Construction Package, yep Construction on HSR is going on now, though some would rather HSR stay on paper(the GOP was for HSR, until Construction became a possibility, then Big Oil said kill it), the CHSRA has not asked for Private money so far, money isn't being wasted, but then suspicious narrow minded Losers on the outside like to make up stuff, the CHSRA is peer reviewed, there is oversight by the state legislature and there is oversight at the Federal level too. Oh I'm a Californian too, born in 1960 in Los Angeles, HSR will be built.

Some have said that SD and Sac were chopped off, this is simply not true, Prop1a never allocated funding to Phase2 of HSR, Phase 2 would go from Merced to Sacramento and from Los Angeles to San Diego, plus there was an attempt to kill HSR in 2012 and in 2014, the last was by Sen Huff and former Sen Runner(Huff and Puff, aka the Big Bad Wolves), the 1st by Doug LaMalfa.

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1A,_High-Speed_Rail_Act_(2008)
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Here's all I have to say about that.

Here's the map for Phase 1 construction that went out to bid. Let's see if it matches up with what you're describing...

http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/newsroom/maps/CP1_5_Map.pdf
 
I support the HSR project but it's become so convoluted it's hard to keep track of. I know the Fresno/Bakersfield line was chosen to be built first because, simply, it could be built faster with less right of way issues; further, certain federal funds had to be allocated by X date, which LA to SF simply couldn't happen in time for.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Excuse me? I know exactly what I'm talking about, the majority of that drive is on a simple 2 lane highway which for the most part does not have much in the way of traffic it's only when you go over the Grapevine into the heart of LA county that there is traffic with multi-lanes of mismash going all over the place or when you get to about Tracy, however the 300 or so miles in between isn't an issue. SF to LA takes 8 hours only if you hit either area when traffic hits, which unfortunately for the LA side of things is most of the time. Considering it's nearly 400 miles from SF to LA 8 hours isn't really that horrible, sure throw in a high speed rail and it'll get you there quicker I'm not arguing that at all, but what I am arguing is that a high speed rail is not going to help traffic in either location for the simple fact that the traffic in each location is not due to connectivity with each other, it's connectivity within each location which HSR does not address that's going to be your BART/CalTran/buses or whatever the LA equiv of that is.
Click to expand...

This guy knows how it is. I do that drive at least 7-8 times a year. Once you are out of the Bay Area you are good until you get over the top of the grapevine unless and accident has happened or trucks are passing slowly.

Also the idea that the rail will be faster than taking a plane is funny. Also aren't planes cheaper than the proposed fare? Building phases that don't take anyone from anywhere to any place they want to go will hurt the public face of this project. I also voted to approve it years ago.
 
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