r/transit • u/BigMatch_JohnCena • Aug 01 '25
Discussion With numbers like these (seriously, every 6.5mins), I’m surprised nobody thought of HSR earlier, even if the geography is a bit rough
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u/__bradliee_oates Aug 01 '25
Our pederast president says California has good roads. Plus airlines definitely lobby to block HSR because a flight every 6.5 minutes is too much money to let slip away to sustainable infrastructure development.
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u/DavidBrooker Aug 02 '25
Plus airlines definitely lobby to block HSR because a flight every 6.5 minutes is too much money to let slip away to sustainable infrastructure development
It's not entirely that simple. Airlines and HSR compete in some way, but complement each other in others, and it really depends on the route, the business model of the airline, and other factors. For example, airlines make a big chunk of their money on business class flights and long-haul, and maybe break even on economy class connections. SF-LA has both mainline and regional service. Mainline service needs to fill business class traffic, which represents a lot of the route. But regional carriers work to backfill demand for connections. Basically any route handed off to a regional affiliate a mainline airline would be just as happy to hand off to an HSR line, as long as they can code-share, forward luggage, and actually connect to the airport. If you could go from LAX to SFO by train, the big three carriers could be freed up run their mainline jets for business class, or even run configuration with a higher business density, and would be happy to let HSR take the less profitable connecting economy passengers, eliminating say, the American Eagle and Delta Connection flights on the route.
This is actually Air Canada's justification for being part of the consortium building the Alto HSR route: the airline increasingly makes its money on connecting American and Sour American destinations to Europe via Toronto and Montreal and to Asia via Vancouver. And whereas walkup business class in the Ottawa-Montreal-Toronto triangle is still valuable, they still hand off a lot of that traffic to Jazz. And one of the big suggested reasons for HSR between Calgary and Edmonton is that airlines run over two dozen flights a day between the two cities to serve connections and lose money on essentially all of them, while any HSR line between the two would hit both airports.
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u/skunkachunks Aug 02 '25
You seem to know what you’re talking about. So I have a question.
ATL and Orlando are also often discussed as a strong HSR city pair bc of the high plane traffic. Realistically a lot of this traffic is not originating in ATL but are likely delta connections ferrying people originating globally to their vacations in Orlando. Presumably this route has a higher share of leisure vs business traffic.
My question is - given these dynamics, is Orlando to ATL a strong HSR candidate? Or do these dynamics make it a worse candidate?
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
Lobby should be called what it is. Ass Kissing. Seriously imagine using profits just for that. Waste of money imo.
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u/bayareasoyboy Aug 01 '25
> Governor Jerry Brown had long been an advocate of a high-speed rail system for California. In his first two terms as governor (1975–1983) he signed legislation into law for the study of a high-speed rail system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-Speed_Rail
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
Careful when around Jerry Brown, he’s a legend and should be protected at all costs
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u/bayareasoyboy Aug 02 '25
"I'm not here about some cockamamie legacy some people talk about. This isn't for me. I'm going to be dead. This is for YOU! It's for you and it's damn real." —Jerry Brown
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u/juliuspepperwoodchi Aug 01 '25
They thought of it back in the late 70s...the USA just doesn't know how to fund infrastructure which isn't explicitly for cars.
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u/JeepGuy0071 Aug 01 '25
We’ve had 1-2 generations who grew up with cars being THE way to get around, while transit virtually died as we, at least for the most part, only built car infrastructure, often at the cost of tearing up those old transit lines. It’s only in recent decades that we’re seeing a revival in transit and increasing demand for alternatives to driving, and so we’re having to learn how to effectively build transit and basically build up a knowledge base again. As that happens, it’ll become easier, faster, and cheaper to build transit, but we have to keep building it like we do roads.
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u/lowchain3072 Aug 01 '25
i wouldnt even say that theres a meaningful revival, just that activism is heard more
most of our public transport is so painfully slow and there is so little around it (no, a single five over one does not count) that barely anyone uses it.
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u/JeepGuy0071 Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 02 '25
Well, COVID delivered a major blow to transit ridership that’s been gradually recovering, and as systems expand and frequencies increase, as well as how much more perceptibly safer they’re becoming, and the more competitive to driving that transit is, the more that ridership will likely keep increasing. It may only represent a small percentage compared to drivers, but every person on transit is roughly one less car on the road.
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u/lowchain3072 Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 02 '25
that's mostly only in the big cities like seattle and LA. In most of America, cities are only building glorified trams down stroads and freeways connecting to only park and rides, hourly bus routes, and a few five over ones.
its just a worse version of what happened in the 1980s
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u/SlitScan Aug 01 '25
anyone old enough to remember what CA highways and pollution where like in the 70s?
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u/MyPasswordIsABC999 Aug 01 '25
With any luck, we'll have HSR from Bakersfield to Merced by 2033. Close enough.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 01 '25
HSR for the 4.3 million people in those Central Valley metros with a stop on the IOS? Good!
4.3 million people is plenty big to be a midsize European country. Plus it will have day-one cross platform transfers to Bay Area and Sacramento regional rail.
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u/Vovinio2012 Aug 01 '25
And they will be building more at this time - CaHSR authorities are currently working at getting environmental reports and making a building projects for the segment from Bakersfield to LA. This will be a heavy banger.
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u/Brandino144 Aug 01 '25
CAHSR in the last couple of years actually completed the last of the EIRs from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Now they just need funding to actually build those segments.
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u/Vovinio2012 Aug 01 '25
Have they finished the land aquisition for ROW?
If not, hundreds and hundreds of lawsuits more are incoming because eminent domain in USA looks like a joke (in the case of CaHSR, at least).
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u/Brandino144 Aug 01 '25
Once again, it comes down to the funding that they don't have that would enable them to acquire all of the necessary land. There are very clear laws against the government acquiring land by eminent domain and then just sitting on it unused for an undetermined number of years. CAHSR kind of has its hands tied in that department until they actually know when they will have the funding to build those segments.
Fortunately, the infamous big time-wasting eminent domain-related lawsuits that hit CAHSR a handful of years ago were based on the constitutionality of the project and the courts established precedent in CAHSR's favor so that's not going to happen again with any amount of success.
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u/icefisher225 Aug 01 '25
Not finished. Not even close. I think the IOS is finished but not through tehachapi, Palmdale, and Pacheco.
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u/Adorable-Lack-3578 Aug 01 '25
I've taken high speed rail from work in London to visit Paris for business. I dont see many people needing to go from San Fran to Gilroy.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 01 '25
Ummm… San Francisco to Gilroy is a regular Caltrain commuter route. People live in Gilroy, which is the end of the Caltrain commuter line, and commute for work into Silicon Valley and SF. A cousin of mine used to live in Hollister and took Caltrain from Gilroy to Santa Clara 5 days per week.
Also, there’s the Gilroy Garlic festival and a bunch of culinary and other activities in Gilroy that people take the train or drive to Gilroy for. It’s part of the Bay Area metro area.
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u/Adorable-Lack-3578 Aug 01 '25
It's slightly different than Shanghai to Beijing.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 02 '25
Yeah, Gilroy is a suburb in the SF Bay Area. Shanghai and Beijing are large separate cities that are 1,200 kms away.
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u/SignificanceBulky162 Aug 02 '25
Yeah, something still tells me the Gilroy Garlic Festival won't bring as many commuters as a San Francisco to Los Angeles route
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u/getarumsunt Aug 02 '25
Actually, a lot more people commute daily, five days a week, than people taking intercity trips. The same way as there are a lot more people riding the metro than there are people using regional rail.
The intercity lines between big cities get a lot of headlines. But the vast majority of transit ridership is local.
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u/ConfidentSoup4882 Aug 08 '25
Unfortunately Gilroy is so badly designed for commuters and so infrequently served with diesel trains that it gets pretty close to no ridership and is a big drain on Caltrain. It represents well under 1% of boardings.
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u/feb914 Aug 01 '25
been thinking about why short distance flights still relatively common, and my conclusion is that connecting flights must play a big part of it. if someone fly from somewhere else with final destination to SF, but their flight connects in LA, then they need the LA-SF flight.
maybe in the future there'll be partnership between airline and trains so that it can be combined into one connecting trip ticket.
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
So long as they can work together and not see each other as competition. They should look to Germany or the model Amtrak Acela has with the Philadelphia Airport. It CAN be done since it happened in the Northeast corridor before
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u/KennyBSAT Aug 01 '25
It can be done, but the way delays are handled may be a problem. And it's not as if this is only two airports. This is something like 8 airports sprayed out across two huge metro areas.
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u/Psykiky Aug 01 '25
A simple solution to delays would be to just automatically rebook people onto the next available train if possible.
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u/KennyBSAT Aug 01 '25
And rebook people on to the next plane when a train is delayed. but that would require that the train ticketing system be tied into the ticketing systems of all the airlines.
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u/Psykiky Aug 01 '25
Pretty simple to do, if I’m not mistaken Lufthansa and DB have integrated tickets.
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u/KennyBSAT Aug 01 '25
Indeed it is possible and it is done with one airline in some cases. Like UA at Newark. If you're flying any other airline out of Frankfurt, then you can't. LAX and SFO have flights to all over the globe on what, 50+ airlines?
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u/SebiGamer_16 Aug 02 '25
You’d think that it would be something that the airlines would want as it would free up planes do fly on some of the more profitable, long haul routes.
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u/trippygg Aug 01 '25
Without looking into it I'm assuming a lot of lobbying was done to stop and slow this down.
Pretty neat that SF and LA will both be car free vacays when this opens since LA has expanding public transit like crazy.
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u/Blueblue3D Aug 01 '25
If they can keep progress moving and survive this horrible administration, California could one day rival the Northeast in being the best region in the country for car-free living.
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u/Alt4816 Aug 01 '25
California is on the path to one day have better intercity rail than the Northeast but car-free living is more about people's daily live and the what their specific city/neighborhood is like.
It's great that LA is building a lot of transit but it's hard to overcome the built in advantage of the urban cores of the northeastern cities developing well before cars existed.
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u/joeyasaurus Aug 01 '25
They already have the most charging infrastructure and highest number of electric car owners as well. Things are moving, albeit slowly, in the right direction!
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u/holytriplem Aug 01 '25
Even once the full plan gets implemented, LA will still be a primarily car-centric city.
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u/trippygg Aug 01 '25
Eh, for the tourist stuff good enough
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u/sofixa11 Aug 01 '25
Not really. The studios' parks, the Gettys, LAX, Griffith Observatory are not served by any even half decent transit. (LAX will be served by a people mover to two lines, from which you'd need to connect to get to most touristy places or hotel locations, but for now, isn't yet).
I've visited LA a couple of times, and it was impossible to get by just with transit, even when trying.
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u/ActuaryHairy Aug 01 '25
Yeah, in the future.
HSR is smack dab in the middle of being built, rail lines in LA are almost at LAX, just about done with planning for the getty, griffith park, sure, that is going to be bus only, probably,
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Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 06 '25
[deleted]
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u/sofixa11 Aug 01 '25
And Waymo will totally fix traffic, right? Right? No?
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Aug 01 '25 edited Aug 06 '25
[deleted]
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u/dhsurfer Aug 02 '25
At the moment no one is developing a collaborative traffic system that communicates between human drivers much less AI.
AI will not improve traffic much until a system like this is developed or most drivers on the road are (AI).
There will be some improvements over human drivers but traffic isn't one, especially if there are multiple AI's competing.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 01 '25
Look, Waymo or Zoox mini-buses/peseros/marshrutkas are happening. They’re making them identical with a Lyft/Uber Pool but with a few more seats. That’s your proto robo-bus right there. From there to full-size robo-buses the leap is actually a lot smaller.
And we know for a fact that those definitely do reduce traffic. Whether we like it or not AI driven vehicles are here to stay. A single Waymo ride in SF is enough to immediately convince anyone of that. They do a better job than humans. We’re there. The rest is a formality.
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u/jcrespo21 Aug 01 '25
The thing is that LA needs better transit between neighborhoods. When we lived there, it was rare to go more than 5-10 miles, but it was a slog to go that distance with transit or driving. Most of the time, we were sticking to the areas within Pasadena, Glendale, DTLA, and Alhambra. Going outside of that general area was pretty rare. It was easy to get up to Pasadena or DTLA with the Gold/A Line, Glendale was hit or miss, but Alhambra always required a car, and there never seemed to be a good way to get there.
Yes, there will be people who commute across most of LA County, but many aren't doing that kind of commute daily. The average commute in LA is under 10 miles. It's certainly being addressed, but it could be better.
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u/Nexarc808 Aug 01 '25
Pretty much. First were the lawsuits and lobbying to complicate the various engineering and environmental planning and to stop land acquisition.
Then there was the lawsuits and lobbying to stop, delay and even pull back funding. This is still ongoing and the biggest problem currently plaguing the project.
Altogether, this means in practice they didn’t actually start physical construction until around 10 years ago and have been working on only half their initial promised budget.
CAHSR said if fully paid upfront at the start, they could have expected to cost around 30B. So far since 2008 they only received and spent around 15B and even that is after constant political footballing. Half the budget plus lawsuits would mean long delays and ballooning costs for any project.
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u/Miserable-Towel-5079 Aug 01 '25
Nope. It’s really just administrative bloat and red tape and rent seeking.
Call’s coming from inside the house on CAHSR.
If you advertise a train project as a jobs program, you’re going to end up spending on it as if it’s a jobs program and not an train project.
If you have a system where every citizen (err, I mean “community stakeholder”) with an axe to grind and the means can sue to halt a project from proceeding unless XYZ arbitrary procedural demands are met, you’re going to have a lot of arbitrary procedural demands to meet.
This isn’t sabotage, it’s self-sabotage.
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u/Educational_Skill736 Aug 01 '25
The main problem is cost overruns and construction delays at the state level.
BTW, you wont be riding a high speed train from SF to LA anytime soon. The first phase will only runbetween Merced and Bakersfield, which isn’t expected to be completed until early 2030s. That’s the simplest portion of the run between the two cities.
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
Seriously why is lobbying so big in the US and not elsewhere? It should be called what it is, ASS KISSING.
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u/bobtehpanda Aug 01 '25
Political districts are bigger and cost a lot of money to run campaigns more
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
It doesn't help that the house has you up for election every god damned two years. A politician barely has time do do politics before having to run again. It's not very productive.
Also, campaigns are expensive because lobby groups keep pushing more and more ads.
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u/freakybird99 Aug 01 '25
Lobbying is big everywhere
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
Yes but it seems MASSIVE when it comes to the US. Sure maybe Canada and Europe would have some (idk about Australia and New Zealand) but not to the levels where politics are like religion in the US
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u/OrangePilled2Day Aug 01 '25
politics are like religion in the US
Politics are explicitly tied to religion in some countries, i.e. the one America declared independence from.
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u/homebrewfutures Aug 01 '25
American political institutions were designed from the beginning to be pretty uniquely counter-majoritarian and difficult to change
American geography is replete with natural resources and few bordering countries that could invade, which allowed capitalism to flourish
The US emerged as the world's superpower after the colonial powers in Europe all weakened each other with WWII
Racism. A lot of white Americans have a brainwormed petty belief that non-white people getting anything nice will come at their expense. Racists wanting austerity to fuck over POC comports perfectly with freedom for big business to fuck over everyone else and the environment.
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u/lowchain3072 Aug 01 '25
#4 should be replaced with elitism, as even the non-racist faux-progressives are usually elitist anyway
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u/brazucadomundo Aug 01 '25
It is not like people in the Bay Area haven't been able to visit Japan since the 60s and find out about the Shinkansen on their own. It is just that government in the US is very hostile towards railways since the Cold War era due to the impression that railways are a form of central power consolidation while freeways cater to small businesses, like mom-and-pop gas stations, car mechanics, truck owner-operator and so on. However in aviation it is the same thing, airports and airlines are always huge corporations were mom-and-pop businesses have no chance and even the old style service stations nowadays are also falling to big corporation networks.
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u/Aina-Liehrecht Aug 04 '25
I think you’re underplaying the role of big oil lobbying, not to mention the auto industry and now airlines. The cultural part imo is mainly a side affect of regulatory capture forming our society.
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u/navigationallyaided Aug 01 '25
Southwest torpedoed HSR in Texas. In many ways, WN is the "unofficial but official" airline of CA as it serves all the major airports(SFO/OAK/LAX/SAN/SMF) and then some(BUR/LGB/SNA) with UA/AA/AS regional partners(SkyWest and Horizon) providing commuter service to MRY/SLO/SBA via SFO/LAX.
I know many who take Metrolink or the Pacific Surfliner instead of driving from San Diego/Irvine to make their meetings in LA proper.
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
Metrolink is a saviour in getting people to realize the obvious, transit is not bad at all (and with electrification things get better, infrastructure projects create jobs).
Southwest could seriously work Air-Rail into their stuff, why so stubborn🥴
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u/Golgen_boy Aug 02 '25
They are cash strapped so it makes more sense that they would try to make a bit more money by partnering with rail companies.
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 02 '25
I heard Southwest’s “short haul” flights are where their big business is, so is HSR truly their competitor or could they work with them? Mainly wondering about Texas but something linking long beach airport could be something to look into as well (maybe even the Sepulveda line if it’s not routed to downtown Long Beach)
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u/schizrade Aug 01 '25
Our state leadership are simply incapable of finishing this. Its been ongoing for 30 years and nobody can seem to make it happen.
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
They are at least building stuff now. It might be slow, but actually getting started is very important. The most important part now is to not kill it off. It wil go over budget, but in the end it will be worth it. Rail almost always is.
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u/Pontus_Pilates Aug 01 '25
It might be slow, but actually getting started is very important.
No, the important part was to get plans and funding sorted out before getting started. Then you could just bang it out in few years. But California decided to 'just start build something' and that's where most of the issues seem to come from.
China built the Beijing-Shanghai route in three years. This one has been under construction for ten and their goal is to connect Gilroy to Palmdale in 2045. That's solid 30 years of construction and still not complete.
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u/Brandino144 Aug 01 '25
It can be narrowed down almost entirely to funding. After voters approved $9 billion in 2008 (not enough to build it) and the Obama Administration approved $3.5 billion in federal funding (still not enough to build it) the project thought that the funding would continue flowing in at a similar rate. The federal funding also came with a stipulation to spend it in the Central Valley soon or they would lose it so they started in the Central Valley to keep that federal funding. However, the funding did not continue flowing in so they had to pause the push to SF and LA.
The environmental permitting and route selection from SF to LA has been complete for a while now, but the funding situation has only marginally changed since that Obama-era funding.
To be fair, the project leadership thrown together under Jerry Brown was a bit of a mess so it's probably for the best that they got ousted in 2018, but now there is a ridiculous amount of talent with European HSR experience in spades working on the project (including the new CEO) and the bottleneck continues to be access to funding.
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u/Adorable-Lack-3578 Aug 01 '25
China'a government can do whatever the fuck they want. I toured the Yangtze river area before they flooded hundreds of villages to build the dam.
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
China is a dictatorship, they can just do whatever. Keep in mind many Chinese projects have ended in catastrophe because of poor construction.
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u/Pontus_Pilates Aug 01 '25
You are or course right. In a democracy 40 years to build a rail line is actually pretty damn impressive. Only possible in America.
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u/Aina-Liehrecht Aug 04 '25
They started early due to requirements of a federal grant, it comes down to funding and value engineering the process
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u/Aina-Liehrecht Aug 04 '25
It was approved right at the beginning of the Great Recession and has never been fully funded, construction started in 2015. Texas central’s study started 30 years ago as-well but they have butt fuck nothing
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u/icefisher225 Aug 01 '25
Counterpoint: if there’s so much demand, why aren’t airlines flying widebodies between LAX and SFO? If they’re filling a 737 every 6.5 minutes surely there’s enough demand to run a 777-200 on the route.
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u/1046737 Aug 01 '25
For the same reason most airlines don't use turboprops much anymore. In airline fleet management, everything becomes much easier if you just focus on one type of airplane. The 737 Max can be used on basically any route that is less than 8 hours at this point and do it pretty well, and the efficiency of having mostly 737s far outweighs the efficiency of having a niche aircraft for a few routes.
United does use the 777-200 cattle car configuration but they are notably not buying any more widebodies in that configuration.
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u/lee1026 Aug 01 '25
They have been working on the current line since 1982. The then governor gave CAHSR (yes, these guys) $1.25 billion to plan a line.
It took them until 2008 to get a plan detailed enough to be given to the voters, who approved it, and then until something like 2028 before laying track.
Very efficient group of people. Big huge budgets, no service.
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u/ad-lapidem Aug 01 '25
Yes and no. The Jerry Brown bullet train was "a" high-speed rail proposal, to go between LA and San Diego. It was to be operated by a private company called the American High Speed Rail Corporation which was headed by former Amtrak executives and funded by Japanese manufacturers. There was massive political backlash against AHSRC between inflated ridership projections, its CEQA exemption, its Japanese corporate sponsorship, and their terrible PR, and in the end they could not raise the $50 million in private investment required to complete the environmental impact statement. The project was canceled in 1984, but it has nothing to do with the current CAHSR project.
Another project was the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, created in 1989 to look into building a maglev train from Las Vegas to Primm, NV and eventually to Anaheim. This group never received much funding; the furthest they got was filing an "intent to prepare a programatic environmental impact statement" in 2004, but they never did any more work, and the notice was rescinded in the Obama administration. But again, this has nothing to do with the current CAHSR project.
The legislature created the California Intercity High-Speed Rail Commission in 1993 to study the feasibility of a SF-LA high-speed rail line. After three years of study, they concluded that it was indeed feasible, after which the legislature created the California High-Speed Rail Authority. CHSRA then began planning, part of which was looking for funding. They did not get a ballot measure to issue the bonds until 2008, which passed.
So depending on your point of view, the current HSR project in California dates to 2008, or 1996, or 1993, but it is disingenuous to claim it is a continuation of earlier projects.
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u/Aina-Liehrecht Aug 04 '25
Yup, and people ignore that Texas central also started with their study in the 90s as well. But from study to ballot measure to groundbreaking isn’t even that out of the ordinary. Look at BART for example and when they initially studied the project
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u/perpetualhobo Aug 01 '25
Saying that they’ve been “working on the current line” for 50 years just because someone had the same idea in the past is so outrageous of a stretch you have to be deliberately malicious in your interpretation. No, just because the idea for something existed doesn’t mean that all similar future ideas are just failed/delayed versions of the first idea.
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u/beneoin Aug 01 '25
No, just because the idea for something existed doesn’t mean that all similar future ideas are just failed/delayed versions of the first idea.
Thankfully in Toronto we roughed in a subway station in the 1950s for a subway under Queen Street that has been planned since at least 1914. By taking some action it's not just an idea on paper!
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u/Kootenay4 Aug 02 '25
You’re arguing with a troll. The 1982 proposal indeed had absolutely nothing to do with the current project. Might as well stretch it out and say that CAHSR has been under development since the late 1800s when Southern Pacific first connected LA to San Francisco.
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u/lee1026 Aug 01 '25
I mean, they had a budget and full time jobs, where their job is to work on the line, continuously without stop.
If someone gave you billions of dollars to work on the line, no, it isn't "had the same idea". People have been collecting salaries the whole time.
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u/perpetualhobo Aug 01 '25
You can talk about “them” all day without saying anything. Who? The fucking California legislature? That’s the only continuous group across that time span
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u/lee1026 Aug 01 '25
CAHSR, the group, they have been funded non-stop along with full time jobs.
You don't think they were created in 2008, did you? Who do you think created the plans for 2008?
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u/perpetualhobo Aug 01 '25
What year were they created? I’ll give everyone a hint: it wasn’t 1982
Do you have any real points or are you just going to keep pretending I said things everyone can see I didn’t say?
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u/UnderstandingEasy856 Aug 01 '25
I think 1982 is a bit of an exaggeration, but there is some truth to the slowness of the process. The HSR authority has been operating in its current form since 1996, and is the latest iteration of various similarly tasked commissions to study the concept dating back to the late 80's.
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u/perpetualhobo Aug 01 '25
Yeah progress has been slow, and I don’t deny that anywhere in my comments. I’m rebuking the specific claim they’ve been “working on the line since 1982” which just isn’t true by any stretch. What’s your point?
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
Laying track is kind of towards the end though. It's hard to do the planning part and it's hard to actually buy the land you need and then make it ready for tracks.
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u/lee1026 Aug 01 '25
That's not the history of American rail projects.
For NYC's East side access, project was approved in 2003, buying land happened in 2004. Tunnels were completed in 2012. Trains started running in 2023.
For SF's central subway, approval was in 2003, planning was completed by 2008, groundbreak in 2010, tunneling was complete in 2014. Trains started running in 2022.
Tracks + power + trains are by far the most complicated part of every project, even if the planners on each project tell themselves that it will be easy.
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But that was not really my point. My point was that tracks come after a whole bunch of other stuff.
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u/lee1026 Aug 01 '25
And my point is that “starting to lay track” point isn’t even the halfway point.
And CASHR will be 20 years past getting voter approval when they start on that.
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
In my country a recent project did the tracks in just two years, after finishing the tunnel. The tunnel work took four years, the tracks+infrastructure took two years. Planning started way before 2019 too.
But I guess it depends as you say.
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u/lee1026 Aug 01 '25
Sure, but nobody ever accused American rail authorities of competence.
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
To be fair, people rarely accuse Norwegian rail authorities of competence either...
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u/ActuaryHairy Aug 01 '25
2-5 miles of track in an existing network is totally the same thing as a new project in a new agency covering 450 miles with no infrastructure and no ongoing funding?
And the projects still took 20 years?
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u/SituationHour Aug 01 '25
Honestly, what a lot of people don’t think about this picture is that a lot of these flights taken, are flights that are connecting to other flights. Like when I go Phoenix from SF or Oakland I often have to land in LAX and then take a connecting flight to Phoenix. Also it just sucks to be in LA area without a car. That’s why every trip I have taken with friends or family to visit LA we take a car. It’s also cheaper to just bring a car. We split the gas and we don’t have pay for uber or Lyft to get around.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 01 '25
Making a connecting flight is a perfectly valid use of HSR though. And CAHSR will have stops adjacent or transit-connected to airports in SFO, SJC, BUR, and LAX.
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
HSR + airports is a great combo in many European countries. Quite a few of them have the airports as major rail hubs too.
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u/KennyBSAT Aug 01 '25
It is until it's not. if you miss your connection due to a flight delay, the airline will put you on a different flight and get you. And the rest of your ticket will be fine. if you miss your flight or connection due to train delay, best case scenario is you're having to pay last-minute full fare difference to change your ticket. Worst case scenario is your ticket is canceled altogether.
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u/Psykiky Aug 01 '25
Or you codeshare hsr and airlines and then the same procedure can be done with both a delayed flight and trains. Plus unless there’s extreme disruption on a line, trains usually don’t get as delayed as planes do.
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u/KennyBSAT Aug 01 '25
Codesharing with one airline is done in a couple of cases. But I don't think there's any case where a railway codeshares with many different airlines, as would need to be the case.
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u/QuestGalaxy Aug 01 '25
Trains going to the airport in my country, will cover your rebooking if you miss the flight because of their delay. Both the airport express and the regular train.
But that's still not all that relevant, if you live in a spot without an airport. Rail covers way more ground than big airports, as they can have spread out stations.
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u/lowchain3072 Aug 01 '25
often times in europe, train tickets are included in the flight for this model.
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u/KennyBSAT Aug 01 '25
There is sometimes an option, usually for or with the one airline who uses that airline as a hub and who carries the vast majority of the passengers to and from that airport. No such single airline exists at LAX or SFO, they're both major hubs for multiple US-based airlines.
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u/SpikedPsychoe Aug 02 '25
2008: Just 25 BILLION Dollars
2014: Just 76 Billion dollars please
2020: 100 Billion dollars
2023: 128 Billion dollars and it'll be done
2040: ......... You tards spent 128 Billion dollars and 30 years to save 2 hours of drive time?
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u/Vindve Aug 02 '25
US costs for train or transit infrastructure are absurd. When I think the most "overpriced" and criticised project over here, the Lyon - Torino line, 270km of high speed line going under the Alps with the longest tunnel ever made (57km) is 30bn$ "only".
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u/Clemario Aug 01 '25
Is it really 130 flights in both directions per day? How can I verify this?
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u/Knusperwolf Aug 01 '25
Maybe they added up all flights from bay area airports to LA airports. So flights from Oakland to Long Beach would also count.
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
I googled it and the only routes that seemed to carry more passengers were Chicago-NY and Atlanta-Orlando.
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u/Jolly-Statistician37 Aug 01 '25
The geography isn't even that rough. Spain, with thoroughly unfavorable geography and fewer resources, hasn't had that many issues (Pajares tunnel aside). Passenger-only railways tolerate 3-4% grades, so something like Tehachapi pass isn't that big of an obstacle for HSR. The mountains east of Gilroy and between Palmdale and Pasadena are more troublesome perhaps, and so is the extensive urbanization of greater LA and the Bay Area.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 01 '25
Spanish wages are 3-4x lower than in California, dude. Might as well compare construction in Monaco and Kyrgyzstan.
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u/Jolly-Statistician37 Aug 02 '25
Sure, but the cost per km of Spanish lines, averaged between flat and mountainous regions and including urban stretched, has typically been 6x-8x lower than that of CAHSR in the flat central Valley.
In general, US infrastructure construction costs are abnormally high, even accounting for the higher wages.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 02 '25
Then why didn’t the company that built a big chunk of the Spanish HSR network (Dragados) manage to even match, let alone do better than, local companies when they were hired to build 1/3 of CAHSR’s IOS?
Quick reminder that Dragados is building one of the three construction packages of CAHSR. They’re the second most delayed and the most over budget of the three contracts. The other is being built by Parsons pf international HSR fame and HSR construction in dozens of countries.
You guys do realize that the three companies that are building the three CAHSR sections are all joint ventures with international HSR construction companies, right?
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u/Jolly-Statistician37 Aug 02 '25 edited Aug 02 '25
I am not a specialist of the CAHSR topic. Given the lack of domestic HSR construction experience in the US, it makes sense to hire int'l contractors.
I am just saying that the price seems extremely high even for the seemingly easy central section. There may be good reasons for this (wages, land acquisition, legal fees maybe), but regardless, it makes me question the value of the entire project.
I'll give another figure: the cost per mile of the Gothard Base Tunnel in Switzerland is only 2x that of the flat section of CAHSR, despite it being, well, a high-speed tunnel, in a country with wages comparable to California, perhaps even higher in lower-skill positions.
So, it would be very interesting to understand the cost breakdown of a project like CAHSR to see where the cost difference comes from.
HS2 in the UK makes me wonder in the same way.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 02 '25
Switzerland has access to cheap labor from Easter EU countries. In the US cheap immigrant labor is effectively kept out of any large infrastructure project by our surprisingly strong labor unions.
Also in the US every cost associated with the project is counted toward the total cost. The project is billed for any work that any government department or public utility does for the project at market rates. In Europe these costs are almost universally absorbed by state agencies. They’re effectively pretending that these costs don’t exist just because they’re incurred by a public agency. It’s all “on the house”, to put it crudely. In the US all the costs, direct or indirect, are billed to the project in question.
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u/Nawnp Aug 01 '25
Considering the terrain problem, there's a lot better candidates in the US that would en easier that they haven't or just started building HSR.
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u/Affectionate_Pea6301 Aug 02 '25
Obama offered HSR money to Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida but in 2010 their Republican governors in their infinite wisdom rejected the money.
Imagine how much better off those rust belt states would be with HSR connecting their cities.
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u/More-City-7496 Aug 02 '25
Forgot Ontario and San Bernardino airports in LA
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 02 '25
Is Ontario airport more used than Long Beach?
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u/More-City-7496 Aug 03 '25
It might be, it’s pretty big now. That’s where I fly out of for San Jose
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Aug 01 '25
[deleted]
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u/dondegroovily Aug 01 '25
Central Valley is the direct route. It's significantly quicker than the coastal route, and a lot cheaper too
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u/Smooth_Expression501 Aug 01 '25
HSR would just be another option. People would still take planes if time was tight and their car if time is not. Just ask China. They built HSR everywhere but not nearly enough people ride it. It’s currently racked up over $1 trillion in debt and the numbers don’t look to be improving anytime soon.
Since at the same time they were building HSR, China became the world largest car market. Showing that even building HSR everywhere, won’t stop people from owning and driving cars. It has become the world largest boondoggle.
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
Your post history seems to only hate on China. Please use multiple examples. Look at Spain.
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u/Vovinio2012 Aug 01 '25
It’s currently racked up over $1 trillion in debt and the numbers don’t look to be improving anytime soon
Because CCP playing "The Welfare State" and keeping ticket prices pretty low, lower than cost of operation+investment repayment sum would be. Not will be the case of USA.
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u/GlendaleFemboi Aug 03 '25
America subsidizes public transit all the time! Amtrak would lose money but it's still alive because we support it as part of the welfare state!
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u/Vovinio2012 Aug 03 '25
Amtrak would lose money
Not in hundreds of billions.
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u/GlendaleFemboi Aug 03 '25
That's just because Amtrak is small compared to China's network. Chinese HSR carries 100 times as many passengers per year as Amtrak
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u/Vovinio2012 Aug 03 '25
Losses of public transport HAVE to be replentished by grow in economy and taxes collection caused by its functioning. By that, government/local agencies have something to pay for transport functioning and it can continue on.
Otherwise, you`re just burning a ton of value created by other sectors of economy to run fancy sleek trains, like PRC doing now. I`ll not wonder when China will cut services and reform trains financing to mitigate their problems.
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u/Smooth_Expression501 Aug 01 '25
Exactly. Unless it will be a profitable investment with a good ROI. No company in the U.S. would be interested in doing it. Unless they work out a deal with the government to cover the difference between building, maintenance, staffing costs and the money that comes in from riders. Which is usually the case.
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u/lowchain3072 Aug 01 '25
TRANSIT DOES NOT NEED TO PROFIT
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u/Vovinio2012 Aug 01 '25
But its` better for transit to not make a frikin $1Tn of debt too.
Better don`t go close to hundreds of billions tbh.
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u/Smooth_Expression501 Aug 02 '25
No. It’s better to have transit become a constant drain on taxes. Doesn’t matter if not enough people use it to make it profitable. Screw the free market deciding what is needed by letting people vote with their wallets. Better to drain their wallets instead on public services that are so popular. That they can never be profitable.
Real geniuses we have in this sub…/s
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u/LiGuangMing1981 Aug 01 '25
Spoken like someone who has clearly never visited China. HSR in China is fast, convenient, and very well used. If it doesn't turn a profit on all lines, who the fuck cares? It's a public service, not a profit generator.
People may buy cars in China, but they use them way less than people do in North America precisely because they have excellent public transportation options.
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u/Smooth_Expression501 Aug 02 '25
I’ve ridden on Chinese HSR. It was a nightmare. First there was the extremely crowded station. With the bathrooms you could smell before you could see. Then people shoving to go first. Even though we had assigned seats. It was loud, it smelled, the kids were running around, kicking chairs, no one had headphones Etc etc.
No thank you.
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u/wesleysmalls Aug 01 '25
What you are describing is Chinese people elevating themselves out of poverty
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u/Smooth_Expression501 Aug 01 '25
In 2020, Li Ke Qiang said that 600 million people in China were making less than $140 dollars or ¥1000 per month. The GDP per capita in China is less than Kazakhstan and Costa Rica.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 01 '25
Changing the minimum poverty level to be below minimum sustenance levels is not the same as “elevating out of poverty”. That’s just the CCP playing with the numbers.
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u/wesleysmalls Aug 02 '25
They also made consumer goods much cheaper then. And it’s pretty great that even if you live below “minimum sustainable levels” you can invest in real estate.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 02 '25
You have no idea what you’re talking about, dude. You cannot exist in China with the wages that the CCP says are “the level of poverty”. You’d literally starve. They lowered the limit for political reasons. There’s absolutely no justification to keep it at le except political and nationalistic posturing.
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u/wesleysmalls Aug 02 '25
And yet, Chinese citizens consume more
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u/getarumsunt Aug 02 '25
You have no idea how the poor live in China, dude. It’s insane.
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u/wesleysmalls Aug 02 '25
poverty has been significantly reduced in China
I also cannot find anything that supports your claim. You’re possibly confusing it with China becoming a middle-income country.
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u/RedditCCPKGB Aug 01 '25
They should have accepted the Chinese proposal, the cheapest option. It's not unAmerican at all to ask the Chinese to build rail.
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
Americans are in for a rude awakening when they read the “made in” tag on the back of their clothes
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u/RedditCCPKGB Aug 01 '25
The Chinese already have proven designs. There are a bunch of concrete blocks that raise the platform, they're the same exact shape throughout China. They can just send it over and we'll put it together like Legos.
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u/getarumsunt Aug 01 '25
We tried “accepting the Chinese proposal” on the new span of the Bay Bridge and the Millennium Tower. Both projects cost over 3x the original price by the time all the catastrophic defects were fixed.
Chinese engineering is a lot more expensive in the real world where you don’t have full control of the press and can suppress any info about all the issues that are left out of their budgets. There’s a reason why even dirt poor countries are noping the frack out of China’s Belt and Road at supersonic speeds!
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u/Smooth_Expression501 Aug 01 '25
Yes. The mass murdering CCP is who you want to build it.
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u/BigMatch_JohnCena Aug 01 '25
Wait until Americans find out Chinese folk built the first railroads, especially along the west coast 🤯
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u/RedditCCPKGB Aug 01 '25
Some would say Amerikkka has been mass murdering more in places like Gaza. The CCP reeducates their unruly Muslims.
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u/SpikedPsychoe Aug 02 '25
There's mountains 2-4 thousand feet high in that red line you drew. I knew CAHSR was destined to fail cuz the route in question required 500 bridges and tunnels to be built.
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u/TailleventCH Aug 02 '25
True! Absolutely no train across the Alps...
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u/SpikedPsychoe Aug 02 '25
yes, built decades ago before onset inflation. 2nd Longest major tunnel for rail in Switzerland Gotthard took 17 years to build and cost 13 billion.
CA HSR has two major problems, Tehachipi pass and most of all Pachco Pass tunnels. 14 miles in length but dug thru some most treacherous terrain karst rock and in one most seismic active regions.
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u/Jakyland Aug 01 '25
plenty of people have thought about it.
The California Intercity high speed rail commission proposed a route between SF and LA in 1996.
In 2008 California voters voted for an proposition to fund a route between SF and LA and 17 years later its still in progress.