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its classic American corruption: these train makers lobby lawmakers and lawmakers eat up their money and delay the project. My old state legislator did it and she was really good about public transit which made me confused.
It might sound weird, but that's the car lobby at work. Conventional electrification is a mature technology with knowledgeable and settled incumbent industries, which aren't the ones involved with cars. In the other hand, car manufacturers are heavily investing into making batteries, and oil companies into making hydrogen, so they both see this as their chance to hold into their preferential economic positions, and to enter a market that they haven't had the chance to. In other countries, particularly in Asia, the way big companies are structured, this wasn't an issue; Mitsubishi or Hyundai (to name examples) don't really care if the next big public works investment is in electric trains or gas cars, they still will be the ones making the vehicles (and probably also building the railways or highways as well). China, being a planned economy, is even more so, but even France, by virtue of having their Dirigist economic model, could command their preferred corporations to do the job without much debate.
The thing is that most rail road tracks in the US are owned by the private freight companies. They gain almost nothing in electrifying their tracks (at great expense). So, unless somebody else is paying for the bill, they ain't gonna do it.
@@matieyzaguirre Trains with batteries are a mature technology, with a knowledgeable and settled incumbent industry. Stadler was building battery-electric trains from day 1. Alstrom and Siemens were making batteries before they were making trains. And electric-battery trains make the case for electrification better - lowering the costs (as the difficult/expensive bits can be postponed.) and increasing the benefits of initial electrification (as you can run more electric trains earlier as you don't need to confine electric services to the bits wired up).
I would make the argument that the Central Valley section is actually the second hardest section to construct, largely because: 1. It's the highest speed section 2. It goes through the areas that are most likely to oppose it 3. It's establishing the technology and signaling systems for the rest of the system The most difficult section will be the tunneled pass sections at Pacheo and especially Tehachapi passes. All that being said, I never understood why the IOS did not include the extension to Palmadale, and why Calmod never included the extension to Gilroy.
Politically, I’d argue that the type of opposition referenced in #2 is not the type that causes delays- the wealthy liberals of the Bay Area and LA are more likely to file CEQA lawsuits than the conservatives in the Central Valley, on the whole, from my experience.
@@conorreynolds9739 While true, most of the corridors served within LA and the greater Bay Area are pre-existing rail corridors, so the risk of a lawsuit I would argue is far less likely and far easier to settle than with a brand new corridor like what is the case in the Central Valley.
The thing is CAHSR does not need to be reinventing the wheel, this stuff has all been done! But they appear to be and it appears to be the source of a lot of problems.
The Gilroy Extension was not part of Calmod because until recently plans had CAHSR and Caltrain using separate lines between SJ and Gilroy. This is because Caltrain has 4-5 stations between SJ and Gilroy when CAHSR is trying to operate speeds at 150+ mph and 10 tph in that section. I think that CAHSR and Calmod should have focused on obvious projects like passing tracks and the SF DTX + transbay tube 2.
My take is that if this project actually finishes, it may spread a vast network of high speed network across the United States and if it performs successfully, it and many more projects may get green lit and more funding, so I’m looking forward to it.
@@no_name4796 On top of that, I think it will allow the next projects to look back at what went right/wrong with CaliHSR (like the cost issue) and learn from it to not make the same mistakes, potentially
It's crazy how much all the critics who don't live in CA still hate on the Central Valley portion. It's going to be INSANELY helpful and valuable for us here
I'm a daily Caltrain commuter from San Francisco. Seeing the electrification process take place has been fascinating. I think once Caltrain can run the new rolling stock on the commuter service we'll hopefully see more public support for CAHSR.
In summary the problem with high speed rail is the same problem of building any public works project. High land costs compounded with a lengthy environmental review that adds 10 years to a project.
Being public or private isn't the problem. A privately funded project would run into the same land acquisition costs and environmental reviews. It's just that states that are more likely to have full government support for publicly funded rail projects, are also likely to have (necessary) environmental protection laws and review processes. That doesn't fully explain the time added to this project either. The environmental review for "Initial Operating Segment" in the central valley has been completed for quite some time. But HSR in California is a new thing and right now the current long standing environmental regulations haven't been designed to accommodate such a project. This project is really showing where things need to be shifted. Much like wearing in a shoe. Alterations need the public to be aware of the benefits and for the public to support them before anything can change. What extends project like these is the (understandable) push to try to get the best possible outcomes out of every arrangement and an (absolutely subjective) balance between what is "ideal" and what would get the project done sooner than later. Every push takes time. I can't deny California HSR probably should have picked where its going to put it's primary efforts a bit better, and been more selective for the sake of a little bit more of an expedited project time. But who knows what the project would look like without everything so far? This is is a tick in the 'private' tally because there is a much shorter internal approvals and review process before it goes out to get government planning approval (which it still would need). But that's because the private internal reviews process can literally be just the higher ups saying how they want things with no regard to if its a good, or beneficial, or logical idea or not. Private still needs a lot of points on their side to beat public in my opinion. It might be painfully slow in the lengthy short run, but in the actual long run having it as a publicly owned asset is key to make sure such a vital link is being operated to fully maximise the benefits to the public.
@@Theswedishfoamer haha, i mean, i will say, i actually live in the state of California and have been following this project for years, watching it get delayed and underfunded routinely. i'm pretty sure we can have opinions before Reese gives them to us, especially ones so generally uncontroversial in transit circles :P
I keep hearing about environmental issues, yes they should be safe guarded but I think a lot of Americans are hipocrits when all they want to do is drive & fly everywhere which must be the biggest threat to our enviroment & our way of life that needs to be sorted
Here's some positive California transit news: San Diego's latest APM plan, phase one, will directly connect airport to the Downtown train terminal and civic center with two minute frequencies. 19K riders over 2.9 miles. Phase two may extend to Midway Rising and NAVWAR, two TODs with over 10,000 units and several million sq ft of office space combined.
I think the people mover is a good project, but hopefully they future proof it by using steel rail trains instead of rubber tires. This way, it would open the opportunity for a one seat ride through another rail service. The trolley would be inadequate for this, but I think what would be perfect is if it were designed to the same standards as the purple line which would hopefully be automated metro, since the long term plan is to have it extended to downtown via uptown and having the two projects be compatible would allow direct airport service from across the region, eliminating the transfer for a lot of trips.
I saw something a while ago that one reason for the high cost is that many parts of the project were bid too early in order to meet federal grant requirements. In order to meet those goals, the authority used an experimental design approach that ultimately didn't work and resulted in lots of contract renegotiations. Ditching this approach for the other sections should lower the costs substantially.
@@RMTransit Obama gave CA $$ with their stimulus package to build but CA wasn't ready. It was more about getting thru the lawsuits and land that took so long
iirc that's also one of the reasons they had to start in the Central Valley. Some of the grants had expiration dates, so they had to start building where they could (ie the Central Valley) in order to not lose that money
@@Chario_ In my experience in local government, silly or confounding federal grant requirements are one of the biggest sources of problems with projects. In my own town, we're having to relocate the food pantry because the existing location is no longer viable due to a wastewater treatment plant expansion. The problem? The other locations that have been found to work for the new pantry all need extensive renovations which can only really be paid for by grant money, and grant money can't be awarded for locations already inhabited by the pantry. And there's not enough time between now and the move date to make those modifications. So now we're looking at buying two properties, one to move in to short term and the other to be the long term location, all because of arbitrary clauses in the grants. It's maddening, and an example of why government money should trickle up and not down.
I think what a lot of people forget is that in order to make the HSR possible, it took a lot of dealings specifically from Central Valley reps putting pressure on their inclusion for it to be passed. Like yea the delays suck but I understand the why (+ normal delays ofc)
I think you missed a bit on this one, to be honest. A lot of the issues you're mentioning are endlessly frustrating to many Californians, but the solutions are harder than you're implying in the video. As far as routing goes, the routing chosen is basically the most direct route that complies with the text of Proposition 1A, the 2008 referendum that created the HSR project in the first place. Trying to send the train on a more "direct route" wouldn't comply with that as article 2, 2704.04 specifically refers to building high speed links, so you can't just use a shuttle between valley cities unless those shuttles would also be HSR. The geography also really wouldn't make it easier to try and build a more direct line anyway, and where would you even put such hypothetical stations to shuttle from? The way the line is drawn in video implies that it'd be easier to build a train entirely along the length of a mountain range with feeder lines from cities in the central valley, but that really makes no sense at all. The "bird flies" route between SF and LA involves going more or less nonstop through the coastal ranges, which have prominences as high as 2000m. And if you're going to dip into the central valley, it's better to just pick up those towns rather than avoid them and connect them later with further lines. Particularly when the train can then travel along existing freeway corridors like I-5 and avoid having to go 12 rounds of eminent domain boxing with central valley farmers or trying to get land belonging to the federal BLM or worse, the forest service. Starting with it in LA or SF and going to the central valley you did touch on, but the tactics there are real. The central valley is quite against the project overall, and if a line from SF or LA to somewhere in the middle was built and had no traffic, that'd be all the cudgel they'd need to mount a campaign to kill the project off halfway. With it being completed first in the central valley, it's then left to the parts of the state that are most supportive to make sure the rest gets done. And in the case of the bay area, Caltrain electrification is enough of a fight when it goes through places like Atherton and Palo Alto that it'll take many, many years to actually happen due to legal obstructions. It's also unfortunately nowhere near as straightforward as implied in the video to fix major governmental and political issues. CA's body of state law has been hamstringing projects left and right for 50 years or more. The ballot proposition system has long since been weaponized in the state to block construction in general, as have things like the state's environmental regulations (as good-intentioned as they are). Fixing NIMBYs abusing CEQA, and the ease of local obstruction from city governments are much, MUCH bigger battles, but they're a lot of what's jamming up HSR and its related projects. Attempts to fix those issues have gone effectively nowhere. To make matters worse, any major reform on many of those issues would be referendums, either because they'd need to change the results of earlier referendums, or because they'd go to a citizens veto measure the instant the state assembly passed them. That ratchets the cost of "winning" that particular fight into the multiple billions of dollars just in advertising. Assuming it doesn't end up being a tax issue, because as seen by attempts to merely *reform* Prop 13, those usually don't go well. That may be where some of that inevitability you sense comes from: Californians that are familiar with the system they're working with. We'd all love to wave a magic wand and fix it, but actually reforming it is excruciatingly slow. If it were as easy as implied, BART would have covered all of the bay area 20+ years ago instead of taking a decade to move like 10km south into San Jose. And that's without even touching on the many years of people like Melon Husk directing the state's attention at useless sideshows like Hyperloop, or actual mismanagement at the state government level as far as the project management is concerned. The project probably lost 5-6 years of time just to that alone. Anyway, most of these issues with CA HSR are uniquely Californian. There's of course the technical issues with crossing two mountain passes and building through built up areas. But those challenges are made so much harder when the voters gave specific instructions as to how this needed to be done, using law that can't be changed without popular referendum, with regulations affecting the build that likewise can't be changed easily, and those regulations empower residents in areas along the way to fight tooth and nail against any development in their area, using legal weapons unlike those found in pretty much anywhere else on earth. Unless you've lived in the state and seen it first-hand, and participated in the political process there, you're not likely to understand just how much of a quagmire the project has to work through. I love the state, I really do. But there's aspects of its political system that are a basket case and many of those are at the root of HSR's poor showing.
“Shuttles” are not really what I am suggesting, just branches and they would be “high speed”. I certainly concur that the issues are probably mostly political and regulatory, but every place has major political and regulatory problems, not suggesting a magic wand but people in countries around the world have also had to do the extremely hard work of getting reforms done
I would add that California has undergone a kind of "institutional turnover" in more recent years. At the outset of HSR, California was still demographically and politically aligned with sprawl development - the Boomer generation was the biggest group voting, and they voted for continuation of the Prop 13/CEQA regime, which is what HSR as-designed fit into and was made to survive. And...it took forever, but it survived! California is substantially different now in a way that, short of some apocalyptic event, will guarantee that the project is going to make it to the end. At the state level, sprawl is tempered by wildfire fears and an increasing desire to solve the housing shortage. The younger generations vote now, and for the most part, they still don't have housing assets, or are only coming into them by inheritance. Car ownership enables California's "supercommuters", but it doesn't reward them - the time and cost of longer and longer car commutes has become unviable for most people. The population is therefore now aligned towards urbanism by default, and HSR continues to remain the only project that will concretely address the mobility issues; it's said that the Shinkansen made all of Japan a suburb of Tokyo, and the same could be said of what California's project is aiming to accomplish. As well, some tangible rewards are now shovels-in-ground. Caltrain's electrification is happening, the Central Valley is getting its bridges.
@@RMTransit But such branches would essentially be detours, increasing travel time between those cities. Also it's very likely that those branches would see less trains, thereby decreasing the quality of service for the connected cities even more. It just makes the network more cumbersome and frustrating to use for everybody who is not on the main line. Such an approach is for example the main drawback of the French TGV network. There they also put transfer stations in the middle of nowhere to serve the nearby cities, and now it's often just extremely tedious to reach those cities despite officially being connected to the TGV. So better build a line that's just a little longer, but directly serves all major cities along the route. It doesn't increase the overall travel time too much, but greatly benefits travelers along the line. E.g. a more direct line running along I-5 would be just 30-35mi shorter - that's only about 10-20 minutes less travel time from LA to SF, which is negligible. Plus the "spokes" from the main line to Fresno, Tulare, Bakesfield, etc. would add an additional 10-35mi each. Running directly through all population centers also makes a consistent and frequent service much more feasible. E.g. you could still run direct express services connecting LA and SF non-stop, semi-fast services stopping at the major cities along the line (e.g. Bakesfield & Fresno), and local services stopping everywhere. That might still require changing trains to reach your destination, but at least it wouldn't add an additional 35 miles to go from a line near I-5 to e.g. Fresno to the trip (or 35 + 10 additional miles to go from e.g. Fresno to Bakersfield). Conclusion: a slightly longer line through all the population centers just makes much more sense. The one branch to Merced will be problematic enough (that one will basically only start making sense with the future extension to Modesto-Stockton-Sacramento).
I think that California needs to change some laws too in order to get these projects built. Most laws are environmental laws that hold the project back like you said. The problem is, those laws aren’t just holding back HSR, but also the Giant 8 lane highways that the United States is so accustomed to. Changing environmental specifications for public works projects can unleash a massive amount of negative side affects. If the law were to change, it would have to be specifically for zero emissions transportation. My main problem is your idea that the specifications on Prop 1A can just change or be updated. This would be great, if every Californian wouldn’t have to re-vote for the proposition that is keeping this project on life support. The project barely got passed in the first place 52%. Doing this would be a great way of sending this project to a early grave. With all the negative propaganda of this project floating around the internet (while some Californians forgot that this project is still a thing) this project would certainly not make it in the polls. ps. If I were to change it, I’d definitely change the time specifications to 3+ hours between LA and SF.
Agreed. Newsom’s proposed changes to CEQA this year are a step in the right direction, and it’s too risky right now to change Prop 1A. I think it’s also important for the legislature to introduce a price floor to the carbon credits in the cap and trade system, stabilizing funding for some time. It’s unfortunate that the Obama administration and Congress didn’t have the foresight to pass a long-term reconciliation followup to the Recovery Act that would’ve helped CAHSR build the Bay Area sooner. Been loving the videos, by the way. They’re quite fast-paced, informative, and funny.
Well said. Lots of hand waiving away the political realities in this video and assuming convincing the tiny subset of the population that gets into the technical details of a project is enough to get anything done politically. There were a lot of mistakes made early on this project, but they were made. There should be more focus on decisions being made right now and what should be done going forward. If that is to revisit bad decisions made 10 years ago fine, but you need to accept the costs associated with it. I think Reece has a bit of a disconnect wanting to change routing or phasing of the CV and lower costs. Those don’t go together anymore Thanks for putting out your videos Banks, I’m really enjoying them. I hope you get more recognition.
Agreeded 100% if we sent 1A back it would get shot down. CA def needs to change CEQA not only for CAHSR but also for every other project. At the end of the day, the US is terrible at building large infrastructure projects & we don't have funding for public transit. Its gonna cost so much money to dig those tunnels and I'm scared we won't get it. But NGL CA is doing a bad job managing this, no one is taking any leadership and its being done at such a fragmented, peicemeal situation. Look at the grade seperations on Caltrain, Palo Alto got funding but they cant get out of their own way to complete the projects, its localism at its worst. Daddy Brandon needs to step up and cut us a check.
Agree with everything except decreasing the speed requirements. While it should be allowed to thru-run on existing slower tracks for faster immediate service, I think it's a good thing that it is guaranteed to be designed to the highest standards around. While this may have increased costs a bit (though I don't really see much evidence that constructing a slower track speed would've significantly lowered costs) the future-proofed design is worth it IMO.
Exactly - I feel like CAHSR has a deep cut on its hand, and while bandaids aren't going to fix that, full on surgery is a relatively ineffective and excessively risky way to fix it. Prop 1A isn't detrimental enough to the project to constitute being revoted on, especially because of how risky that is given that more than half of Californians need to approve it this long after we originally did.
Edit: Starting in the Central Valley is a logical political decision. If it started in the coast then there would be a fight that could stop the project When its done it'll probably be less efficent than we want it to be, but at least we will have something ffs. I just want some kind of inter-city rail network. If that happens hopefully it encourages more public transporation and transit-oriented development in California. That alone would be a miracle
But that’s the thing, if it doesn’t connect to the coast it won’t see most of its value. You might avoid the battles but you need to have those battles.
@@RMTransit Value where? Aside from the LOSSAN coast area, the coast between LA and SF, aside from areas like Monterrey or Santa Barbara, is much MUCH more sparsely populated than the Central Valley. Bakersfield alone has a bigger population than Tampa, I’m so tired of the notion that the cities in Central Valley are some tiny little farm communities, they aren’t, and they deserve high speed rail as much as LA and San Francisco do.
But the point of high speed rail is to connect Californians. I get that it might have been done faster if we didn't go through the central valley cities, but that's missing the bigger picture. Plus these medium-sized cities are the most likely to benefit from hsr and actually update their infrastructure. With a huge infrastructure project, I think it's more important to show the value of transit-oriented development rather than undermining it's value for brevity.
I always forget that the segment north of NYC was not electrified until the 90s. Although, I'd argue that Amtrak's most cost-effective and efficient project was probably the Keystone Modernization in the early 2000s when they re-electrified the corridor and increased the speed to 110. I can only hope the S-Line project (the SEHSR project, not the SLC streetcar) is that good.
I'm going to keep cheerleading for the high speed rail authority, since I don't believe that the problems that the project has encountered are their fault. Being a government agency, I don't think they're allowed to lobby for the kind of systemic changes that would fix the problems that the project has. I'm frustrated with the state and federal governments for treating this project so badly, but I don't know what to do other than calling my rep and begging them to give more funding to the FRA and to reform CEQA.
There’s 2 points of this I’d like to address. The alignment through the CV cities aren’t really a major hinderance. It avoids the coastal mountain ranges and any more direct routing would only be marginally more direct, not really constituting a huge difference in terms of travel time. Connecting them up is really all win and no lose. Second point is, Fresno is really the centerpiece of the entire project. Construction was always going to start from there no matter what, as a huge focal point of the project is to bring investment and combat pollution in historically underinvested CV. I do agree that it should have probably been connected to a coastal city first, even from Fresno, connecting to either the Bay or LA would have involved prohibitively expensive long tunnels (Pacheco and Tehachapi). I do think that a Sacramento connection should have been built phase 1 as part of the IOS though, as it is by far the least challenging semi-major city to get to. CAHSR is set to replace Amtrak San Joaquins service in the Central Valley, and trains will terminate at Merced for a linear transfer for onwards connections to the Bay and Sac, with Thruway buses connecting at Bakersfield for onwards connections to LA and SoCal. Management, cost reduction, and changing laws should have been a larger focus though, I agree 100%.
Fresno would be the biggest HSR hub in the state as HSR gets built out and extended beyond Phase 2. It's about as close to being at the geographic center of the state as you could get.
@@seanj4119 How would Fresno be a hub however? There are really just three major destinations reachable from Fresno: 1&2) SF and Sacramento, which would share a LOT of alignment northbound, or 3) LA Southbound, which has to be via Bakersfield realistically (and if there was a #4 on the list, Bakersfield would be it). Anywhere else you might possibly want to get to is either almost directly along that line (Stockton, Bakersfield, Merced), is better reached from the destinations listed above (i.e. Vegas, better reached from either Bakersfield or LA, as you need to pass thru the Sierras - or San Diego, which would be via LA anyway), or is too small a destination to justify a dedicated HSR line (i.e. Paso Robles, San Luis Obisbo or Mariposa). Fresno might be the core, but it is not a hub.
I'd like say that the conventional rail shouldn't be replaced just cos the HSR is up and running. Plus it will be bound to be cheaper than the HSR... and service areas HSR don't...
@@pharmesq Fresno is about as close to geographic center of California as you can get. Beyond Phase 2, there is potential for extensions further north to Redding or east to Reno and Lake Tahoe or Yosemite National Park. If you're going from one end of the state to the other by HSR, you'd be passing through Fresno.
The state started in the central valley because thats the easiest segment to build, and they want to build up expertise befor working on the more technically challenging sections. the other 'easy' parts (sf-sj and la-anaheim) will also be ready long before the mountain sections. Your idea about the state changing its mandate honestly made me chuckle. The project requirements were set by a ballot proposition (Prop 1A specifically) that barely passed, and most of us only voted for it because we knew it was our only shot at getting something built. Props are almost impossible to change or remove once they're passed, the only way is to pass another prop. I also would have liked if you had mentioned that not bypassing the central valley cities was partially a political decision to gain their support for the proposition, without that, it probably wouldn't have passed.
As you said a proposition can be passed to overturn a previous proposition. For instance, the prohibition amendment was overturned. A proposition (1B) to the voters for completing the project with $3.5 billion annual federal funding plus the State's $1.5 billion annual funding for 20 years vs. staying with $1 billion annual funding for 80 years would pass.
California high speed rail is great, the media is making it seem crazier. They go over extreme with these things. My only regret is that it’s going to take forever to finish it.
I really really do not agree with you that a spine and shuttle model would be a good idea. You'd more than likely end up with exurbs right outside HSR park and ride stations in the middle of nowhere in the valley oil fields. Doubly so if this project got off the ground sooner because of it, we weren't nearly as disillusioned at the park and ride concept when CAHSR was penciling out. It'd completely gut the towns in the valley and destroy any chance at their further economic development. Not to mention that it would create immense sprawl throughout already shrinking Central Valley farmland, rather than mitigating it with densification of existing cities. But I do agree that a Central Valley mid-sized city to major city would be a good idea. Phase 1 San Fran-San Jose-Fresno would be extremely strong, as would a San Diego-Los Angeles-Bakersfield because of the potential in the conventional rail connection via the San Joaquins. When one major connection is made, the next one would follow, and then the state would work towards making the San Joaquins high speed. The trip between Fresno and Bakersfield for instance is much less taken than the trips between San Fran/San Jose and Fresno or Los Angeles and Bakersfield. But considering how far along we are already, it's not productive to debate what could have been. I hope CAHSR takes this opportunity to build a snowballing effect in HSR infrastructure projects across the Western US rather than calling it quits when all is said and done, wrap things together, and we'd have to reinvest in any additional future HSR projects for something like a Cascadia connection or a Tucson-Los Angeles line.
The idea is not shuttles at least not entirely, just not mainline service, you have a high speed service which gets off the mainline onto a fast conventional line to serve parts of the central valley
@@RMTransit Connecting the cities of the Central Valley via rail service is the entire point of the project, not just linking SF to LA. Building a bunch of spur lines completely undermines the actual goal here, which you seem to be missing.
Like, we want to directly link Merced to Bakersfield. The current plan accomplishes this. Your plan would "link" Merced to Bakersfield via three different train lines with two transfers. THAT IS NOT A DIRECT LINK.
@@RMTransitI find it genuinely so offensive that you consider Fresno and Bakersfield too unimportant to be on the "main line". Fresno is the fifth largest city in the state, and Bakersfield is the ninth.
I too disagree with that, spur lines are silly when it’s basically a straight line from Bakersfield to Sacramento already. It wouldn’t save that much really (most the alignment is through farmland in the cv or on existing rail right of way, the cost savings wouldn’t match the loss of utility) and it would cause the sprawl issues you talked about. In fact one of my biggest disappointments is that the “Kings/Tulare” station is in Hanford. That’s still a 30 minute drive to Tulare/Visalia so there isn’t much incentive to ride and not drive when I’m going there to see my friends. In a traffic free high speed environment highway 99 is better to travel on than I5, there are much more things along the way.
Re 6:10, high-speed rail from Fresno to San Francisco Airport (SFO) would be very valuable to people in the Central Valley. SFO is already easily accessible from the Cal Train station in Millbrae, as is downtown San Francisco via BART.
Agreed. As a NorCal native, I’d especially love a second Transbay Tube with capacity for some joint Capitol Corridor/Caltrain service so that I wouldn’t have to transfer from the Corridor to BART in Richmond
If they had started with incremental improvements in both greater Los Angeles and the Bay Area, the chances of the entire project being built would probably be close to zero. By building the semi-useless middle section first, the chances of it being finished are much higher. Plus, the Federal funding they got during the Obama years specified that it could be used in the Central Valley. Yes, you mentioned the first bit but I think it's worth repeating.
@@RMTransit I always thought the reason they started in the middle was to keep it going to the finish. We already built this much, so now we have to finish it to LA and SF. I've followed the entire construction route on other channels. My biggest beef is all the earthworks and existing infrastructure that needs revision for the new tracks. All of this could have been so much easier if most of the Valley route had been elevated. It should have been elevated, but cynically, I believe they did it the other way to show how many different jobs the construction would create. The construction headaches and costs only just increase. I'm not happy with the route choice either, but that too is probably too late to change now. I support high-speed rail regardless.
@@RMTransit one factor that might be making people upset about this take is our private vs public takes on the project. Privately we might have a lot of issues with the project. I mean for God's sake it's decades late and tens of billions of dollars over budget. Publicly it's pretty hard to generate any political momentum for any third option that's more complex than build it vs don't build it. More often than not, once a project as large as CAHSR is reevaluated and the costs rehashed it just gets cancelled altogether. Politically the only feasible option might be "just finish the damn thing"
@@RMTransit Almost all of your complaints are about legal issues that simply can't be changed easily. Maybe you being a foreigner you don't understand American and Californian politics, because you think that the laws that are some of the problems with this project can be changed easily. They cannot. As a practical matter, the project has to work around them, yes, at a much higher cost. The US is not like, say, China where laws can be ignored when they are inconvenient.
@@Geotpf I think he gets that. In my experience Americans don't change laws exactly because of this mentality. If you stop pursuing a solution before you start, you definitely won't get there. Hence the sense of inevitability.
If we could make the political changes proposed in this video, we would achieve peace on Earth. As a San Francisco resident of over a decade, I say that the project as it is today is a political miracle. The forces arrayed against the project are intensely powerful. I recommend that you wade deeply into the nitty gritty of Californian politics over the last fifty years to really get a handle on why this project is the way it is. There is nothing technical about the slow and expensive progress of CalHSR. The problems are entirely political. I can’t emphasize this enough. The problems are entirely political, and changing the politics requires a time scale that makes that of CalHSR seem veritably instantaneous.
The biggest issue: having to cross the Coastal Range low mountains between Los Banos, CA and Gilroy, CA and the Tehachapi Mountains from Bakersfield to the San Fernando Valley. Not only a lot of very expensive tunneling, but also even more expensive earthquake mitigation, going through the potentially dangerous San Andreas Fault.
Japan is very mountainous and remains one of the most earthquake-prone nations in the world. If they can figure it out, so can the US. Just a matter of willingness and money I think, at least in terms of the engineering of it.
Don’t forget the third range of mountains CAHSR must to tunnel through to get from Lancaster to LA’s San Fernando Valley - the San Gabriels. This is a third engineering and cost challenge. But by all means, let’s get it done!
Considering there are several 35 mile base tunnels under the Alps tunneling should not be a major consideration. And the Chinese are building a new line to Tibet through the Himalayas with over 500 miles of tunnels. And I saw a proposal to go direct from Bakersfield to I-5 and over Tejon pass rather than the Palmdale route. That would be about a quarter the cost.
Re: the Central Valley alignment, have you actually bothered to study the lengths of the various alignments? Go to Google Maps and take out the measurement tool to get a decent idea. And you'll see that the "detour" through the population centers of the Valley doesn't increase the route length by all that much (by the Pythagorean theorem the alignment is actually quite efficient), in fact less than the length of just one of the spurs that you proposed, never mind *three* of them. It's hard to see how the alternative would save much money at all, especially with you saying in a comment that the you want the spurs to be "high speed".
An issue I'd have with the branch line option is the HSR would be skipping a lot of the big central valley cities entirely. You'd get maybe one stop in Bakersfield along I5? Branches are common around the world but it's usually from smaller cities to bigger ones not bigger ones to smaller ones.
I agree. The route-as-chosen makes sense. Hit the biggest cities to you can that are not way out of the way. This is exactly what railways excel at! Branch lines only make sense when you can't do that.
High Speed Rail Alliance, an advocacy group based in Chicago, proposes a blended approach for US HSR, connecting upgraded existing lines with new dedicated HSR tracks. CAHSR already plans to do that in the Bay Area, sharing the Caltrain line from SF to Gilroy, with two electrified tracks next to a non-electrified one between San Jose and Gilroy. Lately I’ve been making the case that CAHSR could take a similar approach in SoCal, hypothetically sharing an electrified Metrolink AV Line between Palmdale and LA as an interim route until their own tracks are completed. It would get direct HSR service to LA sooner, and given the funding struggles CAHSR has had could be its only realistic chance to do so for the foreseeable future. That would be a huge compromise, and make the promised 2:39 nonstop SF-LA travel time impossible. I’ve estimated it would take 90 minutes to get between Palmdale and LA (current train takes 2 hours with 9 stops but express trains with 3 stops were 18 minutes faster, thus each stop adds 3 minutes, so nonstop would be 1:33 and electrification to allow a faster average speed should shave off a few more minutes, just as it will for Caltrain with 7 minutes off their current SJ-SF travel time). If CAHSR’s other travel time estimates are accurate, that would make the nonstop LA-SF time 3 hours 45 minutes, on par with or slightly slower than total flight time (downtown to downtown) but still over 2 hours faster than the typical drive time. The idea behind such a compromise would be to save costs and get SF-LA high speed rail done sooner, which needs to be the ultimate goal of this project. Connect SF and LA but also their transit systems, in this case Caltrain and Metrolink. The connection at Palmdale is crucial to closing the passenger rail gap between the Central Valley and SoCal, but the current 2 hour trip time from LA plus an estimated 23-25 minute HSR ride to Bakersfield and time to transfer at Palmdale, would make it about as fast as the current 2 1/2 hour Amtrak bus ride over Grapevine on I-5. By having HSR share those tracks, it eliminates a transfer and makes the LA-Bakersfield trip time about 2 hours, faster than the bus and about as fast as driving, while also improving Metrolink AV Line service with electrified trains. They’re already planning to double-track more of the AV Line in the San Fernando Valley and Santa Clarita, to allow more frequent service, every 30 minutes to Santa Clarita and every hour to Lancaster. Unlike the Bay Area, CAHSR doesn’t have plans to help electrify SoCal passenger rail, and given how poor our air quality is, and need for better rail service to encourage more people to opt for the train over their car, it’s imperative that we start and electrification is a proven way to do that. Not only does it allow faster and more frequent service, but also quieter and cleaner, just as is being done with Caltrain. It would also be a catalyst for more electrified Metrolink routes, like the SB Line, OC Line and VC Line to Moorpark. Nothing for CAHSR beyond the Central Valley is set in stone, with no funding identified for that as of now. By sharing Caltrain, CAHSR only has to get as far as Gilroy. Similarly, sharing Metrolink as an interim route means it would only have to get to Palmdale. Reaching SF has a stronger case than LA, because linking Silicon Valley and the Central Valley unlocks most of HSR’s promised benefits, not just a significantly faster connection between those regions but also faster statewide travel than driving, even with the bus bridge over Grapevine. Reaching Palmdale closes the passenger rail gap and once it reaches LA makes HSR travel faster than flying. CAHSR cannot end in the Central Valley, and the case remains strong to get it to SF and LA, with SF having the stronger case. Pacheco Pass is therefore the most crucial segment of the entire project, as once that’s done and links up to Caltrain, it’ll make CAHSR not just a viable but competitive travel option, and set it up to get to LA. But the longer things take, the more that support can wane and opposition gets chances to shut the project down. Every election cycle gives them a chance to delay or block any more funding, and there’ll be at least two or three before the first CAHSR trains are expected to roll. My biggest fear remains that’s what’ll happen. Opposition will win out and succeed in getting HSR stopped, leaving just the Merced-Bakersfield route. Right now only the 119 miles are 100% guaranteed, with Merced and Bakersfield most likely. To say this project will be completed because it’s already past the ‘point of no return’ is just misguided. Nothing beyond the Central Valley is guaranteed right now, and the fact that segment alone will take 15 years from groundbreaking to the start of revenue service, for an estimated cost of up to $35 billion, should be upsetting even for the strongest of HSR advocates. Yes things should have gone better early on, and things have gotten better since then with some considerable progress in recent years, but the fact it’s still at least seven years away can be disheartening, especially when opposition are not giving up their fight. Support is strong, but the side of the aisle it’s coming from has collectively been fairly lukewarm, especially at the federal level where it’s needed most since that support and the substantial funding with it is what will get CAHSR done anytime soon. There has to be an urgency to get CAHSR done faster, getting Merced to Bakersfield done by 2028 and start work on the extensions to SF and LA before the 2030s. The case is still strong to have LA to SF HSR, but the longer things take, the more the cost increases and the more our lifestyles may change, that case can wither. Something like sharing the AV Line, to get HSR to LA sooner and possibly at all should funding dry up once it reaches Palmdale, can help keep the case strong if it means bringing HSR’s benefits to SoCal sooner with electrified regional rail service, plus it’ll give HSR a path to LA should that scenario happen. I 100% support CAHSR, always have always will, but where I once was a total optimist I now find myself more of a realist. I still believe in what it’s aiming to accomplish, and want to see it completed, but I’m more comprehending the reality of its situation, and that it still faces uncertainty about getting beyond the Central Valley. Hopefully by the end of this decade that changes for the better, and its path to SF and LA is secured with funding to make it happen. This should be not just a California project but a national one, the first dedicated high speed rail line in the country and first big step to finally bringing 21st century intercity travel to the US. It just hasn’t been though, and there are no current signs politically that it will be. CAHSR needs to keep improving its public image and increase public awareness of what exactly is happening, to break through all the misconceptions and false narratives about it and show why we all should still be excited about HSR, even for those who’ll never ride. Maintaining a positive public image will ultimately be what keeps CAHSR going, and eventually get it to SF and LA.
Can't do it as that would violate prop 1A. You can only change the terms of a proposition by passing another proposition, but there is zero chance of doing that by passing a new one that says the system will be slower than previously advertised.
I feel the CAHSR should be doing outreach on other planned parts to increase transit in those areas, if the line owners reactivate the passenger service but at similar speeds as the UK ECML it'd be a god send to increase support for a HSR to interlink to provide similar services... (and eventually the CV line can just be it's express line)
@@ChrisJones-gx7fcFor expediency sake forget a tunnel to Palmdale. It is not worth it. Just traverse the Tejon Pass and forget the Tehachapi Pass and more importantly forget the San Gabriels. Electrifying the AV line and reducing the travel time from two hours to one hour makes perfectly better sense. Once SF-LA is connected with an upgraded Altamont Pass route then tunnels throught the three mountain passes can be undertaken to marginally improve the system's service.
The United Kingdom hi-speed rail line HS2 currently under construction also has also faced massive cost increases and significant delays as well as scale backs. A major reason has been that the UK hadn’t built any new mainline railway in several decades. There are similarities with two new nuclear power plants that had been under construction for well over a decade in France and Finland. If haven’t done something for a long time, you are not good anymore doing it. It takes you significantly longer and you are having to reinvent the wheel in many ways because you have forgotten how to do it, making things more expensive.
Californians used nearly 14 billion gallons of gas in 2021. Prices were $4/gallon that year. That's $56 billion dollars on fuel alone lol. Car insurance also doubled for many people. Car parts are extremely scarce. Road/highway maintenance costs are also astronomical. Cars are just unsustainably expensive to be the only mode of transport, and it will only get worse. HSR construction costs isn't nearly as bad when you compare it to the cost of cars. And you only have to build the HSR once and then reap the benefits of faster, more efficient travel.
2:13 - "Not criticizing projects which are going badly is the wrong kind of balance." Literally no one is saying it can't be criticized though. In fact most advocates are actually open to legit criticism, compared to the "biggest waste of time and money" FB comment that has zero explanatory context. 11:12 - "Saying the cost of a major infrastructure project doesn't matter is bad." Not even Alan Fisher has said this. In fact everyone from WSJ to CNBC, WaPo, Vox, Top Luxury, and of course RealLifeLore are among the first to seize upon the cost of this project, either making it look worse than it already is or omitting certain details such as NIMBY lawsuits, contractors, and politics which contribute to its increase. (Speaking of politics, you forgot to mention that Rep. Ron Wright joined NIMBYs opposed to Texas Central in your other video.) 13:00 - "All of this should make us want to dive deep... learn from other countries and progressively build high speed rail construction knowledge in the United States. The brute force, 'just spend more money until the project gets done' approach isn't what made countries like Korea and Italy so effective at building high speed rail." Alan Fisher already explained this, but you do know the consultants you were deriding in the sentence prior were from countries with HSR, right? Germany, Italy, Spain... even China was under consideration when it came to HSR consultants. In that regard, hardly anyone was calling for the brute force approach.
exactly, people don't understand the niche issues and politics surrounding this project At this point the current direction is set in stone and it is going this way because it was voted upon this way. There was no other way to get this dream into reality without difficulty and policy sacrifice, we should be happy it is even happening and be glad that there's still a cost benefit to it even after a pandemic and stagnant population growth
German approach is to have trains that can use both the new and old tracks, and high speed segments e.g. Central Valley can be added progressively, reducing the overall time for longer journeys e.g LA-SF.
At absolute worst, it's a good make work project to develop the expertise locally, and boosts the local economy in some areas that are struggling. At best, this irons out a ton of issues building HSR in the cheapest place they could do it in Cali, making it a lot easier to plan routes like Fresno to LA, or Vancouver to Portland, where things are gonna be way more expensive . If they'd started running through LA or San Fran, the ballooning costs probably would have been exponentially worse.
Calling these cities "mid-size" is not correct in my opinion. Bakersfield and Fresno have over half a million people each. These are big cities, not mid-size by any means.
Starting in the Central Valley is a politically savvy decision. Easiest section (allows CHSRA to learn how to do it) and utilizes people’s natural sunk cost fallacy for eventually getting the political will to get the connections to SF and LA paid for.
This practice is called "stake-driving" and it's how Robert Moses built an entire network of highways in New York, including those which eliminated buses and trains. So yeah, turnabout is fair play AKA payback's a mofo.
Major misstep on your part is not realizing that starting in central valley, where housing is cheaper can also be a quicker way to solving Housing crisis in CA. Live in central valley, HSR to where your working. As housing zone issues by cities slows down our housing production. Also central valley is expanding as some industries in the "salton sea" may have a booming lithium extraction in the future. Also Im not hearing an alternative plan to what CAHSR is doing. Dont forget to add that the Democratic party, and Biden administration are putting a lot of money and political will on this project. Its going to get done.
Federal government money was contingent on the segment in the central valley being built first. So while I share the frustration that SF and LA are not included in the initial construction, it can't be helped. Other than that, yes the HSR is incredibly expensive compared to most HSR projects, but thats not unique to CAHSR. For whatever reason, project cost is a major issue in USA, Canada and the UK. Seems the cost to translate projects into English is double or triple Spanish, French, Japanese or Mandarin.
CalMod was also slowed down because of the Trump Administration, when California's GOP Congressional delegation got Elaine Chao to cancel funding shortly before the contracts were set to begin. It was reversed but it got the project off to a rocky start.
What insane timing regarding this video: I was literallly just looking at their site seeing the progress on all of the different sites. Thanks for all of your incredible videos!
In this video, I hear a lot of complaints, with no solutions. It cost too much, what could be done? It takes too long, what could be done to bring that in? Easy to say it cost too much and is taking too long. The Caltrain HSR Compatibility blog complains plenty about similar things, but it has many excellent views on how to do things differently. The CAHSR project has a lot of flaws, but I see improvement in the project that bodes well.
@@RMTransit Most were around what could have been done in the past. At this point, I agree a connection to SF or LA should be the first priority after IOS is in testing.
Yes, nearly all of the problems have a root cause of politics, rather than engineering or technical constraints. But, just "solve politics" so you can make common sense changes to legislation isn't really a solution. It's just eliding the underlying problems and structural causes that produced our current equilibrium point. NEPA exists the way it does and is resistant to reform in part because without it poor and minority communities will be a dumping ground for NIMBY and LULU projects that places with more political power want to avoid even more than they already are. Segregation by design and forcing more places to be on the 'wrong side of the tracks' is not a good trade-off for more high speed trackage compared to blown out budgets and time-frames for investments that will endure centuries, like transportation right of ways
Most of those other countries are more comparable between themselves as Parliamentary and/or Civil Law nations than they are to our Common Law Presidential system. Which doesn't really even elect a single government, but rather three governments and tells them to play nicely. At both the Federal and State level. Something like a government shutdown isn't even possible elsewhere, because that would constitute a VONC and prompt a snap election, while it is becoming a common occurrence in the US thanks to narrow election results swinging between vastly different visions of the future. With very little consensus on even basic things, like infrastructure week, even before you get to more politicized forms of infrastructure which trains inexplicably are. Not having such a dysfunctional public sector would solve a lot of the problems that impact large public works of all kinds. Including transit projects which are always more scrutinized than boondoggles like I-69. It would free up a lot of resources that are basically just used to work around or through anticipated dysfunction and vengeful budget cuts. But, have you seen our politics lately? No excuse not to put in the work and propose improvements that might actually get implemented, but... yeah
I do believe they didnt do a costal city to central vally because the other costal city would cry wolf that they didnt have the first HSR. I swear it like highways in texas with E and W. We all know which Interstate is the bypass.
On behalf of the military industrial complex, please don’t lump us in with CAHSR. The USA actually enjoys a substantial competitive advantage in production of advanced military systems. We produce a lot of very high capability systems for fairly low costs for the capabilities delivered. There’s a reason that most of NATO bought the F-35 instead of developing their own 5th generation fighter. It’s also worth noting that if a defense project is ridiculously expensive and not working (like the Zumwalt class), it actually can and will get cancelled.
You know it's going to be an interesting video when there's 5 minutes of disclaimer before the video even starts. In all seriousness, there's a lot of high-level issues that you commented on, a few things that I would point out that you didn't touch on was how the proposition system works in California, the refusal of SNCF's plan and how Californian politics work. The CAHSR project was commissioned by the voters of California by proposition. The proposition system was put in place after decades of control by the railroads led to inefficient government. One of the rules that a proposition has is that if the state wishes to amend it, the amendments must be put to another statewide vote. Back in the mid 2010s, SNCF offered a plan that you did go over in your last video on the subject and you touched upon here. However, the state refused the plan as it saw the plan as infeasible politically. The project eventually got so bogged down that SNCF withdrew its plans. Lastly, California has an odd relationship with the rest of the United States, we're one of the few administrative regions of a country to have been invited to major diplomatic conferences not as a representative of our nation. Because of this, Californians would rather go their own way of settling things than adopting what other countries have done. See: homelessness, drug and just anti-social crimes, resource management, etc.
Honestly, I couldn’t have said it better myself. To discuss CAHSR without going in depth on the history, politics, intra state regionalism of California and inter state relationship of ÇA to the broader US just feels like a half measure. For example In all of the CAHSR videos, I’ve never seen one mention of how the interstate system skipped the Central Valley cities and how that project influenced the current routing today. Or how super politically connected San Jose politicians like diridon brute forced the Pacheco pass over the altamont. Etc Maybe it’s too in depth for a TH-cam video designed to maximize views, but IMO you can’t fully discuss the project without knowing what led up to it
@@RMTransit Reforming the proposition system in CA will be very difficult politically, though not impossible. Californians and the rest of the US are very risk averse when it comes to changes that they would perceive as limiting their voting power.
Oh goodness, hydrogen. Alright, theoretically I love hydrogen. I love using excess renewable electricity to create a fuel we can use for industrial, transportation, or energy resilience purposes, among others. Love it. Practically I am beginning to hate hydrogen. I hate hydrogen being used as a way to increase demand for gas electricity, I hate it because used to stall electrification of transport because maybe instead of what we know works now, we could use something that maybe works in five years (and has maybe worked in five years for decades prior too). In a clean energy society hydrogen will be a very useful fuel. Right now it’s a very dangerous tool.
Bakersfield to Fresno connects two cities roughly the same size as Orlando and Miami or St. Louis to Cincinnati, so that's not nothing. These are smaller cities than LA or Chicago or even SF and I agree that ridership would be smaller by comparison if CAHSR just stopped there, but these are also cities that basically don't have interstate access, so more transit can make a big difference. I'll be disappointed if it stops there ( i don't want to drive 90 minutes to Bakersfield to get on the high speed rail), but there's still value there for Californians
There is some value, but at the same time, what can you do in Bakersfield that you can't do in Fresno, or vice versa? They are both places the rail should go to, absolutely, if the goal is to connect LA and SF. They are the two largest points of interest between the two major urban areas. But they are not really destinations in the same way Orlando and Miami are. Bakersfield and Fresno are just too similar in ways other than population to make either truly distinct from the other - as a native Californian now living in the CV area nearish to Fresno, I have zero interest in Bakersfield because Fresno is closer, and if I have to go beyond Fresno I might as well go to The Bay, Sacramento or Los Angeles. To me Bakersfield is just a place to stop for gas on the way to someplace more interesting. And for someone from near Bakersfield, Fresno is probably the same exact thing to them.
@@pharmesqYes I agree. I do not see any tangible synergy between those two towns. They are pass through points for further destinations. To compare a valley town to South Florida in population and desirability is absurd.
When it comes to over-budget/delayed military programs, it's more likely to happen than not. It happened with the F-14, F-15, B-2, F-22, and F-35. Ultimately, despite their insane budget overruns and delays, all proved to be extremely capable and effective combat platforms. the same logic can be applied to CAHSR: the time and budget may be points of contention, but they had been purposefully designed to fill a specific role and do it well.
Great video! I can only imagine how far they’d be behind if anyone had take hyperloop seriously. Are you going to be covering the new hydrogen powered train in Charlevoix?
You're great but bitching on this one is NOT HELPFUL. And yes, as a Californian I will say - the execution has sucked and is beyond the pale on our HSR - but like it or not it really could NOT have started any where else. Yup, I just said that, You may understand the psychology of the "Pat Jerry Brown California" a bit - but you don't seem to get the USA outside of the northeast or oil politics in the context of 2008 - IN 2008ish (whenever the ballot measure passed) there was simply no other way ANYTHING could have happened without starting in the central valley. None. zero. Zilch. It's quaint revisionism to insist otherwise. We can learn from it but they'd be no CA HSR without that demarcation. See the current Speaker of the US House versus the last Speaker of the US house for a flashcard understanding of California politics. The train had to start in the middle because the conservatives had to be bought off....and they were. And comparing train politics here to any other nation is just unskilled., whining and mean spirited. (And there's a compulsive bashing of California at this pop cultural moment you should avoid - the San Diego to Seattle string and the Acela corridor are keeping this nation from dying at this point..the thing in the middle -before Biden at least- would drown Canada in 2 years if unchecked) The version of California that is building HSR dates essentially to 1960. It's not an ancient culture , shaped by war and recent trauma. It's an optimistic arrogant "American" culture not unlike Texas but quieter and less self aware. But the sense that we're not a state but a country within in a country is just as real. (BTW: See the Texas power grid for the Texas version of CA HSR.) Adolescent chaos comes with the California turf right now as the West Coast (and Vegas) sort of breaks away from the "West" and moves toward a more Canadian style social democracy....not unlike Vancouver actually ...The tension between very early social democracy on the west coast and American conservatism - which is much more mythologized and ritualized in the USA than Canada - has also screwed this project up. That does not exist in France or Korea.... There's no "car equals freedom, drill baby drill" voting block in Korea. CA HSR will continue and won't fail: Here's why: Brightline West and Texas Central project which will both unfold more smoothly. ...cold blooded but true...Competitive shame will find the money and the will to see CA HSR through. BTW: A mini version of this shame as policy driver will play out in Los Angeles soon - L.A. will continue to lollygag on any number of issues until it watches the Paris Olympics next summer... then watch how quickly projects unfolds and a city scrub down begins... it won't all get done by 2028 but things like subways to Artesia and under the Sepulveda pass etc ... will start to move much more quickly, We'll prolly have flying taxis in Los Angeles by the Paris closing ceremonies.
Happy for the coverage. I am a huge proponent of HSR, especially of the California project. Born and raised in CA and now live in the Midwest. I hope to be around long enough to see it completed. California is often at the forefront of new things. Its a bold move that will be praised in the future. 40 years from now other states are going to be wishing that they did something like this.
So your idea of providing service to Fresno and Bakersfield and Merced is to have a main line along the western edge of the Central Valley and spur lines to the cities. If you want to travel from Bakersfield to Fresno you would then take a spur train to the main line, travel up to the spur to Fresno and then travel that spur line to Fresno. Ridiculous! The spur trains would be infrequent and add costs of construction of the track and trainsets as well as additional railroad engineers to drive the trains. What is accomplished would be inferior service for additional cost to speed trains between the endpoints. California High-Speed Rail is designed to economically benefit the over 6 million people of the Central Valley, which is one of the areas of the state gaining population, and not only the major population centers of the Bay Area and Southern California. The population of the Central Valley is larger than that of British Columbia for a Canadian perspective and larger than the population of 30 of the 50 U.S. states. The California Central Valley deserves good transit service and not inadequate spur line service
I’m not sure the “rest of the world is looking to the US” when it comes to high speed rail, most of Western Europe, South Korea and Japan already have well built integrated high speed rail networks.
@@RMTransitI understand but Railways and HST is not an US invention nor are the US the best at it. I would argue the US needs outside help for this, I don’t know the project details and who is designing the route or rolling stock but relevant major project experience with getting lines intercity and also connecting other transport links such as Airports and Ports are important too.
So I think a big part of the challenge that's pointed to in the whole environmental assessment question is something that runs parallel to the planning and supply chain capacity issues and that is regulatory and approval capacity issues. Environmental regulation may or may not be appropriate but what's definitely not appropriate is the staffing needed to processes things against the new array of environmental tests created for the environmental regulation as this sort of thing tends to be the much hated 'bureaucracy' that gets cut whenever the government gets bit by the austerity bug. The starving of the public sector has made it steadily more expensive and time-consuming to interact with them and with any large project like this you're necessarily going to have a lot of engagement between the public sector and whatever private concern ( or other government arm ) is trying to get stuff built. You can see this in the Oakridge ( Cambie & 41st Ave, Vancouver ) redevelopment taking a decade to plan but only expecting to take 4 years to build, there's a lot of slow interactions with the city going on in all that planning.
The first phase of the California HSR project feels to me like a big project that has been designed to fail. Once the segment between Fresno and Bakersfield is online, and nobody is riding the trains because the demand between those two cities is low (they are close together, and neither have extensive public transport, so driving between them is sensible,) then the politicians that are against the project can get on their soapboxes and say "Look! We tried HSR and it doesn't work for California! Let's cut this economic white elephant down before it sucks up too much money and resources in the big cities!" Thanks for another great transport video, Reece!
That's why upgrading the speed of the Altamont Pass route to connect SF to Merced makes sense because it would immediately promote more demand. Also, traversing the Tejon Pass to LA would complete the "improved and shorter redesigned" Phase One route.
Too Long Didn’t Read: Great video Reese, what I take from this is that the Authority made some mistakes, but we are where we are and we as citizens of this great country should get behind the revolutionary project and fully fund it! (Comment keeps being deleted for some reason) The Long Response: This program needs to be fully funded and spread across the country. California is doing the best it can, and we (supporters and citizens) need to help them succeed. The federal government needs to step in and assist in getting the entire project done before the 2028 LA Olympics! It would be an amazing way for the USA to show the world we can get things done and can make a world-class high-speed rail system in the country. Just like you Reese I wrote that during the preamble and will be commenting as I listen to your video. Side note, have you heard of the Rio Grande Plan here in SLC Utah? I feel like it would be up your alley since it’s a regional rail hub plan. Christian Lenhart, here on TH-cam has some great videos on it. I have to say I completely agree that the biggest issue with the Central Valley would be that people are going to still be dependent on their cars. Without building out a streetcar network or light rail in Fresno, Merced, and Bakersfield to move people from the station to their places of business/residence would be an issue. Now a branch system would solve that issue if they had moved the mainline line SNCF suggested. It would’ve hit many outlying suburbs along the way and could’ve been used to be the start of a rail network in the Central Valley. That being said we are where we are and need to allow the Authority to push forward with more funding and support. Reese, you are right that it would be hard to translate our highway building ability into rail. BUT if we took 10 billion dollars a year out of the highway budget and allocated it to rail, I bet we could figure it out and get a really nice network out of it. The High Speed Rail Alliance makes some really good points in regards to this. Again, thank you for a great video and sharing your opinion. We need to continue to get the word out about this project to get it the proper funding for the construction of this high speed rail project!!
Reallocating budget is maybe ok, but the last thing you want to do when you have a cost project is starting spending more and incentivizing further overruns
@@RMTransitDo you seriously think the Authority's Board of Directors would allow the extra funding to go to waste? Have you watched any of their meetings? They understand that if they waste money now they are under real threat to lose funding entirely. I watch every single board meeting and they are hyper vigilant in making sure that programs and projects within the larger HSR project are as efficient with funds as possible.
As long as the House is controlled by Republicans, don't expect any significant Federal funding for CAHSR. Remember that Trump tried to take back funding for it that Obama had previously allocated for it.
In an ideal world, starting in the major cities would have been best but starting in the central valley was the right move given the reality on the ground. Imagine a "first of its kind in North America" trying to succeed in two of the largest metropolitan areas in the country with no track record of success. The project probably would've gotten killed in the cradle and any infrastructure built probably would've went to Metrolink without even electric trains. The central valley was the best option given the conditions on the ground. Also, when if CAHSR didn't like the central valley condition federal money placed on them, kicking and screaming likely isn't going to change the laws in the time window funds are available especially with polarization and money in politics.
The mindset that republicans have saying that high speed rail is outdated is just wrong. We just need to find a better way of financing the project. Maybe it would've been better if the amount of time was about 3 and a half hours to get between the 2 cities. Also I feel like the tunnels are huge factors to the insane cost. I know it became too ambitious but I have hope for it.
I just wanted to put in a little Fun-Fact, since you mentioned CalTrain should use ETCS: ETCS has a maximum train length of 4km, which is an issue because in the US there are freight trains longer than that. But obviously that shouldn't be too hard to fix.
It does not matter how much it costs. Genuinely. It could cost 10x as much and I wouldn't care. It needs to be finished, and this penny pinching is so counterproductive, Reese. The budget overruns were caused primarily by landowners and lawsuits. Blame them, not the Authority. As it stands, half of my high school alumni in Fresno are now employed as unionized, well paid railroad workers to build the HSR. It has already reaped dividends.
To me, the amortization is over 20 or 30 years. Someways it looks like they are overbuilding the stations but those stations are going to be there for 50 to 100 years. There is probably a lot of cost in earthquake design and the problems with buildings in the middle of nowhere. There is a high cost of living for skilled tradespeople. (Also, after Covid, a lot of older tradespeople are retired.) There will be a return as those areas along the track will start to build up and also take the pressure of development off the coast. Yes, there is a lot of pork. There isn't a Robert Moses overseeing the project which may be a good thing; if you want efficiency that guy could do it but for a lot of other costs. Yes, it is f---king expensive but once it is done and the trains are moving at every 20 minutes, people will forget flying or driving or the original cost.
The best frequency CAHSR can hope for is one hour on the NorCal route. Perhaps a few trains every 30 minutes, during peak times, when SoCal is connected. The project will not be completed by 2050 unless consistent annual funding is increased from the present $1.5 billion to $5 billion.
It should be worth mentioning that Caltrain made a outrageous move recently ordering prototype, untested battery-multiple units for its San Jose to Gilroy section for $80 million... rather than investing $80 million into extending electrification to Gilroy, it is instead ordering a SINGLE trainset (that costs $80 million!) based on a unproven technology. Right now, there's a concerning trend in North America where politicians and transit departments are disillusioned with the assumption that battery and hydrogen trains will somehow become immediately available, affordable, and work flawlessly which is a notion that entirely fabricated and baseless. Battery and hydrogen trains are utilized in niche services for infrequent (usually rural) branch routes or for terminal switching in other countries, NOT for mainline services (not to mention battery and hydro trains are more expensive to procure and maintain than EMUs). Some North American agencies such as the LIRR and Metra have already dropped plans for battery electrification due to the fact they discovered the technology was costly and unreliable. North American isn't just disillusioned regarding electrification, it is outright ignorant and combative against proven century-old electrification technology, which sets a concerning precedent.
10% dilusion 90% Lobyists from these hydrogen and battery companies paying off politicians to purchase these new technologies for these public funded projects...
As a native of Merced, I'd like to point out something that you may not have considered, especially as a native of Canada. There is a cultural and political component to it, that can't be ignored; simply presenting economic or technical arguments will not get infrastructure built in America generally, and California is not only a microcosm of this facet of America in miniature, it also has a unique cultural makeup of it's own. This has reared it's head many times and resulted in many abortive attempts at trying to build great projects that would serve the public and the economy of the state. Unlike many other parts of the developed world, and despite it's vast wealth, America generally (and California specifically) have great disparities in wealth, and span diverse sectors of economic activity, which informs the political interests of the stakeholders. PolySci 101 description aside, California (as part of the Southwest) also has the legacy of Spanish settler culture as well, meaning you really do have to come hat-in-hand to certain local caudillos' parlours and be prepared to accommodate them or it just doesn't happen. California is actually really sharp in some respects for going for the route that it has, because in time the homogenising affect that it will have will blur some of the hard edges between the liberal cities and the conservative agricultural centre. To future leaders in Sacramento, this ability to make the state more governable in a future where things like water rights are going to need to be navigated for survival, is well worth the extra money spent. In short: it's a feature not a bug, but only visible when viewed from a political and cultural lens and not a technical or pecuniary one.
If familiar with this line of thought but, I disagree with it, thus why I mention that I think connecting the Central Valley to the coast is where you see most of the benefit for the central valley
@@RMTransit We have the Pacheco Pass now. Listen, I understand it may seem like pork-barrel spending, but if you want it built, these are their terms. Merced was supposed to get a UC Campus: land was set aside, it was all ready to go, but the politics got in the way, and we ended-up demolishing our only golf course to get it built on that site instead. Multiple projects in the Bay Area have been scrapped right before groundbreaking could begin because rich folks in Marin County didn't want it passing through their territory; SoCal has the same sort of problem routinely. The Central Valley is under-developed but holds the keys to some things that will be important to the state in the future, so not appeasing them isn't an option. By building the span outside of the rich major cities first, they can do an end-run around the NIMBYs who would also oppose it for different reasons and get the spine of the project built. Also, with regards to the Central Valley itself: the history of this region should inform the future. Cities like Merced only came into existence as a result of the original railroad built through California. The post Civil War government gave lots of money to (rather sketchy) developers and speculators to build that railroad, and those developers purposely built a windy, snaking railroad because they were getting paid by the square mile of track and Congress wasn't paying close attention. It was the peak of inefficiency and waste but it's just history now, and we have Merced as the direct result of that project. Compared to that, we're doing much better this time around :)
Hey Reece, this was such a thorough video at challenging some of the common arguments in defense of how CAHSR has been going, while still indicating your support for high speed rail in CA. I appreciate how thoughtful and well-researched you were, and I thought you made a lot of good points. It’s too bad to see so many comments that almost sound like people didn’t even watch the video. What I took away most is that America really needs to take its systemic high-cost infrastructure problem as a top priority before attempting more big projects, and better learn from the rest of the world.
Ive gone in circles a lot on this as someone from the UK and fundamentally the issues of cost come down to weak leaders, generally politicians and governments. Projects that are started by a governing body on a weak footing near always end up over budget and late because the governments that started them lack the ability to commit to them long term.
I hope the stations connect to existing metro lines like metro rail in LA or BART. If it just takes you to a parking lot I'm still going to need to rent a car or Uber to go anywhere. If it gets too expensive, I might as well drive
They indeed will connect to metro lines. At LA and SF you will have about a block of walking in tunnel to make the connection. Better than at airports.
i think the reason californians, especially central valley residents are so defensive about hsr is because our state is the literal punching bag of the country and everytime we want to do something good, we just get bombarded with negative press that threatens those good things. honestly, you’re right about basically everything in this video. it just makes me depressed that we give so much importance to nimbys and fake environmentalists. seeing that the state government also thinks hydrogen trains are the future makes me want to slam my head into a wall. we need massive deregulation when it comes to transit projects in california. even if cahsr kills 1 million baby turtles, it would still be more environmentally friendly than one more day of traffic on the 5 and planes between LA and SF. we also need to quit it with the american exceptionalism and xenophobia. just adopt foreign regulations for christ’s sake. great video reece. i just wish there was some way to communicate these issues with transit normies without them advocating for the immediate end of high speed rail in california.
Engineering around the politics may be a very Californian way of doing things. Tackling the politics directly, however, is a very Cascadian way of doing things. We’ve seen how far this gets us in places like Portland and Seattle, I’m not convinced however the Cascadian way is getting any more done than in California.
good video but it doesn't address the root cause of all the problems: Californias ridiculous red tape. 10 billion dollars have gone to just environmental review. also, they should have done LA - San Diego
As an American, I've noticed that Americans tend not to like imitating other countries that much. So for nearly every project or issue, rather than just copy things known to work elsewhere we have to do our own thing.
Supporting HS2 in the UK has become more and more frowned upon... the project is so mismanaged that costs and times go up and up, and the whole thing loses support, when in theory it's still a really good idea!
Great video- I loved it. A similar video about HS2 might be cool aswell, it's quite a controversial project and it would be interesting to see the opinion from an expert on a project which I'm sure many British citizens are conflicted by. Very glad that California Rail has had a deep dive video- it was very informative.
Writing as a Brit, I would strongly support Reece doing a video on HS2. But be warned. HS2 is already experiencing huge cost overrun. Many Brits think that the line will be limited to London to Birmingham, with the rest abandoned. But (unlike in the California central valley) the truncated line would link two indisputably major cities.
@@chromebomb It's mostly controversial because of the cost- with the Leeds extension (which has beem cancelled) the project would cost an estimated 106 billion pounds.
GO is having trouble electrifying because the shed at Union Station is just about too low, and they can’t remove it because “it’s heritage”. And as CN still owns the air, 6m over the right of way, they also have slowed down the electrification. “Thou shalt not build electric track within 10ft as we don’t want to evolve our maintenance to accommodate the added risk” How to add billions in complexity: make all trains battery-fueled to withstand the non-electrified USRC. I’m baffled this would even be considered as an option, just because a wooden outdated shed is “heritage”. Any takes on the sensible paths to take?
How about a video about HS2 in Great Britain? I think there are some similarities with Highspeedrail California. HS2 is also a lot overbudget and behind the schedule. Plus while Great Britain has already a lot of upgraded 200km/h (125mph) lines, the highspeed route to continental europe is the only new highspeed line with higher speeds than 200km/h. So while I think Great Britain has more experience with true highspeed rail than the US, both countries seem unexperienced compared with many european countries that have whole highspeed networks.
I think a lot of issues come down to politics and America's insistence to do things their own way (which is also politics). California is uniquly difficult with their public referendum system which has done a lot to handcuff the state government. I also think the geography was always going to be challenging to connect LA and SF, while trying to not repeat the mistakes of building I-5. Also, while I get you excitement about Texas HSR, ignoring the politics of it is kinda short-sighted. Politically it is going to be tough when the state government is at open war with their cities.
@@davidjackson7281 "Mistake" is probably overstated, but it does go through the middle of nowhere. It is why the argument that HSR follow I-5 is a bad idea. You don't want it to just connect the major cities.
@@jbirzerAgreed. The Central Valley Hwy 99 alignment makes sense and I support it 100%. However it should pivot from Bakersfield to the Tejon Pass rather than the Tehachapi Pass and then ridiculously going through the San Gabriel Mountains.
If we are talking about serving cities branch lines and bringing up metro area populations for the other cities then I think you should state the metro area populations for the Central Valley cities too. For example say Fresno has over a million people instead of half a million.
I thought that they can have trains on existing routes from San Francisco to the central valley, right? Like that is where part of the budget go, which is to electrify and speed up the main lines
One factor you don't mention however is just how vociferous the opposition is, and why that is. It all comes down to high cost of living. In the SF Bay region mostly (which the HSR project would reach well before LA, because the mountain approaches and right of way issues are easier there), housing is astronomical. There is a lot of fear within the Central Valley that they will all become exurbs of San Francisco and San Jose because HSR would make, say, living in Merced and working in San Jose quite feasible. That would cause rents in Merced to go way up, as the effective distance to San Jose would be shrunk by a lot. Similar happened during the Covid crisis when working from home meant high paid Silicon Valley workerbees could work from home in Merced or Tulare, where rents are cheap (relatively speaking), bidding locals out of the housing market. For me, I live about an hours drive from where an HSR station will someday be, and I would love to be able to hop on it, and ride to go to SF for urban amenities, or to SD to visit family, rather than driving 5+ hours as the situation is currently. I want to see the project built as quickly and safely as possible, personally.
Are you interested in doing a video or a section of a video on the delays we have had in Seattle with out line out to the east side? It seems like its about a three year delay because the track ties they spent years installing proved defective.
13:31 This is a good point, but it would be better to overspend on HSR that is needed than overspend on highways and the military industrial complex that isn’t needed.
We are having the same debate in the UK. Why costs for HS2 are so high Why we cannot electrify at reasonable costs, why new power stations take so long Why infra in the UK takes so long to deliver, why it costs so much. I am a civil engineer and much of the issues are similar between the UK and US .. we have structural problems that until are addressed mean it really isn't going to get any better. Say for HS2 the project was started in 2008. The London terminus at euaton, the gov has changed the scope 3 times. 15 years in. Don't have a final design yet. You can deliver infra with govs behaving like this
I’m a resident of a phase 2 city, I think everyone (except people with land on the alignment) would love the project when finished however, with current lack of funding? no one takes it seriously. We are still 7 years out from a Merced to Bakersfield line and that is simply unacceptable. I get why they wanted to construct the most likely to be defunded portion first but connecting Bakersfield to Union Station first would allow rail connections (unfortunately through Amtrak) to be made through out the state and make the biggest impact first. A big issue I think is that people that don’t work in infrastructure don’t know how trivial a billion dollars is at this scale. Just fund and finish the thing so we can get return on all the money we’ve already spent.
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My Texas Central Railway video, if you haven't seen it yet: th-cam.com/video/xPczVsuIlsE/w-d-xo.html
The relentless focus on hydrogen/battery instead of JUST BLOODY WELL ELECTRIFYING is the thing that drives me up the wall the most.
its classic American corruption: these train makers lobby lawmakers and lawmakers eat up their money and delay the project. My old state legislator did it and she was really good about public transit which made me confused.
Blame the Class one railroads and the AAR
It might sound weird, but that's the car lobby at work. Conventional electrification is a mature technology with knowledgeable and settled incumbent industries, which aren't the ones involved with cars.
In the other hand, car manufacturers are heavily investing into making batteries, and oil companies into making hydrogen, so they both see this as their chance to hold into their preferential economic positions, and to enter a market that they haven't had the chance to.
In other countries, particularly in Asia, the way big companies are structured, this wasn't an issue; Mitsubishi or Hyundai (to name examples) don't really care if the next big public works investment is in electric trains or gas cars, they still will be the ones making the vehicles (and probably also building the railways or highways as well). China, being a planned economy, is even more so, but even France, by virtue of having their Dirigist economic model, could command their preferred corporations to do the job without much debate.
The thing is that most rail road tracks in the US are owned by the private freight companies. They gain almost nothing in electrifying their tracks (at great expense). So, unless somebody else is paying for the bill, they ain't gonna do it.
@@matieyzaguirre Trains with batteries are a mature technology, with a knowledgeable and settled incumbent industry. Stadler was building battery-electric trains from day 1. Alstrom and Siemens were making batteries before they were making trains.
And electric-battery trains make the case for electrification better - lowering the costs (as the difficult/expensive bits can be postponed.) and increasing the benefits of initial electrification (as you can run more electric trains earlier as you don't need to confine electric services to the bits wired up).
I would make the argument that the Central Valley section is actually the second hardest section to construct, largely because:
1. It's the highest speed section
2. It goes through the areas that are most likely to oppose it
3. It's establishing the technology and signaling systems for the rest of the system
The most difficult section will be the tunneled pass sections at Pacheo and especially Tehachapi passes.
All that being said, I never understood why the IOS did not include the extension to Palmadale, and why Calmod never included the extension to Gilroy.
Politically, I’d argue that the type of opposition referenced in #2 is not the type that causes delays- the wealthy liberals of the Bay Area and LA are more likely to file CEQA lawsuits than the conservatives in the Central Valley, on the whole, from my experience.
@@conorreynolds9739 While true, most of the corridors served within LA and the greater Bay Area are pre-existing rail corridors, so the risk of a lawsuit I would argue is far less likely and far easier to settle than with a brand new corridor like what is the case in the Central Valley.
The thing is CAHSR does not need to be reinventing the wheel, this stuff has all been done! But they appear to be and it appears to be the source of a lot of problems.
The Gilroy Extension was not part of Calmod because until recently plans had CAHSR and Caltrain using separate lines between SJ and Gilroy. This is because Caltrain has 4-5 stations between SJ and Gilroy when CAHSR is trying to operate speeds at 150+ mph and 10 tph in that section. I think that CAHSR and Calmod should have focused on obvious projects like passing tracks and the SF DTX + transbay tube 2.
Caltrain has ordered a battery train to extend service to Gilroy on electric power without catenary. Yes, it is an experiment.
My take is that if this project actually finishes, it may spread a vast network of high speed network across the United States and if it performs successfully, it and many more projects may get green lit and more funding, so I’m looking forward to it.
Yeah. Once you build one HST succesfully and the service is decent enough, it will make it WAAAAAY easier to build 2nd one
@@no_name4796 On top of that, I think it will allow the next projects to look back at what went right/wrong with CaliHSR (like the cost issue) and learn from it to not make the same mistakes, potentially
Of course, but to “finish” it needs to get to a major city! So we need to reform the project so that is possible!
don't work politicians will make sure that it will not be finished in the next decades so that they and their friends can milk taxpayers
@@leg690I’m sure they’re already looking at that, starting with Brightline West.
It's crazy how much all the critics who don't live in CA still hate on the Central Valley portion. It's going to be INSANELY helpful and valuable for us here
I'm a daily Caltrain commuter from San Francisco. Seeing the electrification process take place has been fascinating. I think once Caltrain can run the new rolling stock on the commuter service we'll hopefully see more public support for CAHSR.
In summary the problem with high speed rail is the same problem of building any public works project. High land costs compounded with a lengthy environmental review that adds 10 years to a project.
At absolute worst, it's a good make work project to develop the expertise locally, and boosts the local economy in some areas that are struggling.
Being public or private isn't the problem. A privately funded project would run into the same land acquisition costs and environmental reviews.
It's just that states that are more likely to have full government support for publicly funded rail projects, are also likely to have (necessary) environmental protection laws and review processes.
That doesn't fully explain the time added to this project either. The environmental review for "Initial Operating Segment" in the central valley has been completed for quite some time. But HSR in California is a new thing and right now the current long standing environmental regulations haven't been designed to accommodate such a project. This project is really showing where things need to be shifted. Much like wearing in a shoe. Alterations need the public to be aware of the benefits and for the public to support them before anything can change.
What extends project like these is the (understandable) push to try to get the best possible outcomes out of every arrangement and an (absolutely subjective) balance between what is "ideal" and what would get the project done sooner than later. Every push takes time. I can't deny California HSR probably should have picked where its going to put it's primary efforts a bit better, and been more selective for the sake of a little bit more of an expedited project time. But who knows what the project would look like without everything so far?
This is is a tick in the 'private' tally because there is a much shorter internal approvals and review process before it goes out to get government planning approval (which it still would need). But that's because the private internal reviews process can literally be just the higher ups saying how they want things with no regard to if its a good, or beneficial, or logical idea or not.
Private still needs a lot of points on their side to beat public in my opinion. It might be painfully slow in the lengthy short run, but in the actual long run having it as a publicly owned asset is key to make sure such a vital link is being operated to fully maximise the benefits to the public.
my take is that it just needs to be funded and finished ASAP!
Jesus, finish the video first leh!
Then you can make an opinion.
@@Theswedishfoamer haha, i mean, i will say, i actually live in the state of California and have been following this project for years, watching it get delayed and underfunded routinely. i'm pretty sure we can have opinions before Reese gives them to us, especially ones so generally uncontroversial in transit circles :P
@@GlitchUnpatched Fair enough
I keep hearing about environmental issues, yes they should be safe guarded but I think a lot of Americans are hipocrits when all they want to do is drive & fly everywhere which must be the biggest threat to our enviroment & our way of life that needs to be sorted
Here's some positive California transit news: San Diego's latest APM plan, phase one, will directly connect airport to the Downtown train terminal and civic center with two minute frequencies. 19K riders over 2.9 miles. Phase two may extend to Midway Rising and NAVWAR, two TODs with over 10,000 units and several million sq ft of office space combined.
That’s very exciting! San Diego is quietly doing a lot of good stuff
Can you link any article that has info on this, I tried to search it but can’t find anything
I think the people mover is a good project, but hopefully they future proof it by using steel rail trains instead of rubber tires. This way, it would open the opportunity for a one seat ride through another rail service. The trolley would be inadequate for this, but I think what would be perfect is if it were designed to the same standards as the purple line which would hopefully be automated metro, since the long term plan is to have it extended to downtown via uptown and having the two projects be compatible would allow direct airport service from across the region, eliminating the transfer for a lot of trips.
Yes a light metro. Finally some city and airport are doing the obvious
I saw something a while ago that one reason for the high cost is that many parts of the project were bid too early in order to meet federal grant requirements. In order to meet those goals, the authority used an experimental design approach that ultimately didn't work and resulted in lots of contract renegotiations. Ditching this approach for the other sections should lower the costs substantially.
Experimenting with something that has been built at scale around the world is not a good idea
@@RMTransit Obama gave CA $$ with their stimulus package to build but CA wasn't ready. It was more about getting thru the lawsuits and land that took so long
iirc that's also one of the reasons they had to start in the Central Valley. Some of the grants had expiration dates, so they had to start building where they could (ie the Central Valley) in order to not lose that money
@@Chario_ In my experience in local government, silly or confounding federal grant requirements are one of the biggest sources of problems with projects. In my own town, we're having to relocate the food pantry because the existing location is no longer viable due to a wastewater treatment plant expansion. The problem? The other locations that have been found to work for the new pantry all need extensive renovations which can only really be paid for by grant money, and grant money can't be awarded for locations already inhabited by the pantry. And there's not enough time between now and the move date to make those modifications. So now we're looking at buying two properties, one to move in to short term and the other to be the long term location, all because of arbitrary clauses in the grants. It's maddening, and an example of why government money should trickle up and not down.
I think what a lot of people forget is that in order to make the HSR possible, it took a lot of dealings specifically from Central Valley reps putting pressure on their inclusion for it to be passed. Like yea the delays suck but I understand the why (+ normal delays ofc)
I think you missed a bit on this one, to be honest. A lot of the issues you're mentioning are endlessly frustrating to many Californians, but the solutions are harder than you're implying in the video.
As far as routing goes, the routing chosen is basically the most direct route that complies with the text of Proposition 1A, the 2008 referendum that created the HSR project in the first place. Trying to send the train on a more "direct route" wouldn't comply with that as article 2, 2704.04 specifically refers to building high speed links, so you can't just use a shuttle between valley cities unless those shuttles would also be HSR. The geography also really wouldn't make it easier to try and build a more direct line anyway, and where would you even put such hypothetical stations to shuttle from? The way the line is drawn in video implies that it'd be easier to build a train entirely along the length of a mountain range with feeder lines from cities in the central valley, but that really makes no sense at all. The "bird flies" route between SF and LA involves going more or less nonstop through the coastal ranges, which have prominences as high as 2000m. And if you're going to dip into the central valley, it's better to just pick up those towns rather than avoid them and connect them later with further lines. Particularly when the train can then travel along existing freeway corridors like I-5 and avoid having to go 12 rounds of eminent domain boxing with central valley farmers or trying to get land belonging to the federal BLM or worse, the forest service.
Starting with it in LA or SF and going to the central valley you did touch on, but the tactics there are real. The central valley is quite against the project overall, and if a line from SF or LA to somewhere in the middle was built and had no traffic, that'd be all the cudgel they'd need to mount a campaign to kill the project off halfway. With it being completed first in the central valley, it's then left to the parts of the state that are most supportive to make sure the rest gets done. And in the case of the bay area, Caltrain electrification is enough of a fight when it goes through places like Atherton and Palo Alto that it'll take many, many years to actually happen due to legal obstructions.
It's also unfortunately nowhere near as straightforward as implied in the video to fix major governmental and political issues. CA's body of state law has been hamstringing projects left and right for 50 years or more. The ballot proposition system has long since been weaponized in the state to block construction in general, as have things like the state's environmental regulations (as good-intentioned as they are). Fixing NIMBYs abusing CEQA, and the ease of local obstruction from city governments are much, MUCH bigger battles, but they're a lot of what's jamming up HSR and its related projects. Attempts to fix those issues have gone effectively nowhere. To make matters worse, any major reform on many of those issues would be referendums, either because they'd need to change the results of earlier referendums, or because they'd go to a citizens veto measure the instant the state assembly passed them. That ratchets the cost of "winning" that particular fight into the multiple billions of dollars just in advertising. Assuming it doesn't end up being a tax issue, because as seen by attempts to merely *reform* Prop 13, those usually don't go well.
That may be where some of that inevitability you sense comes from: Californians that are familiar with the system they're working with. We'd all love to wave a magic wand and fix it, but actually reforming it is excruciatingly slow. If it were as easy as implied, BART would have covered all of the bay area 20+ years ago instead of taking a decade to move like 10km south into San Jose.
And that's without even touching on the many years of people like Melon Husk directing the state's attention at useless sideshows like Hyperloop, or actual mismanagement at the state government level as far as the project management is concerned. The project probably lost 5-6 years of time just to that alone.
Anyway, most of these issues with CA HSR are uniquely Californian. There's of course the technical issues with crossing two mountain passes and building through built up areas. But those challenges are made so much harder when the voters gave specific instructions as to how this needed to be done, using law that can't be changed without popular referendum, with regulations affecting the build that likewise can't be changed easily, and those regulations empower residents in areas along the way to fight tooth and nail against any development in their area, using legal weapons unlike those found in pretty much anywhere else on earth. Unless you've lived in the state and seen it first-hand, and participated in the political process there, you're not likely to understand just how much of a quagmire the project has to work through.
I love the state, I really do. But there's aspects of its political system that are a basket case and many of those are at the root of HSR's poor showing.
“Shuttles” are not really what I am suggesting, just branches and they would be “high speed”.
I certainly concur that the issues are probably mostly political and regulatory, but every place has major political and regulatory problems, not suggesting a magic wand but people in countries around the world have also had to do the extremely hard work of getting reforms done
I would add that California has undergone a kind of "institutional turnover" in more recent years. At the outset of HSR, California was still demographically and politically aligned with sprawl development - the Boomer generation was the biggest group voting, and they voted for continuation of the Prop 13/CEQA regime, which is what HSR as-designed fit into and was made to survive.
And...it took forever, but it survived! California is substantially different now in a way that, short of some apocalyptic event, will guarantee that the project is going to make it to the end. At the state level, sprawl is tempered by wildfire fears and an increasing desire to solve the housing shortage. The younger generations vote now, and for the most part, they still don't have housing assets, or are only coming into them by inheritance. Car ownership enables California's "supercommuters", but it doesn't reward them - the time and cost of longer and longer car commutes has become unviable for most people. The population is therefore now aligned towards urbanism by default, and HSR continues to remain the only project that will concretely address the mobility issues; it's said that the Shinkansen made all of Japan a suburb of Tokyo, and the same could be said of what California's project is aiming to accomplish. As well, some tangible rewards are now shovels-in-ground. Caltrain's electrification is happening, the Central Valley is getting its bridges.
@@RMTransit But such branches would essentially be detours, increasing travel time between those cities. Also it's very likely that those branches would see less trains, thereby decreasing the quality of service for the connected cities even more. It just makes the network more cumbersome and frustrating to use for everybody who is not on the main line.
Such an approach is for example the main drawback of the French TGV network. There they also put transfer stations in the middle of nowhere to serve the nearby cities, and now it's often just extremely tedious to reach those cities despite officially being connected to the TGV.
So better build a line that's just a little longer, but directly serves all major cities along the route. It doesn't increase the overall travel time too much, but greatly benefits travelers along the line. E.g. a more direct line running along I-5 would be just 30-35mi shorter - that's only about 10-20 minutes less travel time from LA to SF, which is negligible. Plus the "spokes" from the main line to Fresno, Tulare, Bakesfield, etc. would add an additional 10-35mi each.
Running directly through all population centers also makes a consistent and frequent service much more feasible. E.g. you could still run direct express services connecting LA and SF non-stop, semi-fast services stopping at the major cities along the line (e.g. Bakesfield & Fresno), and local services stopping everywhere. That might still require changing trains to reach your destination, but at least it wouldn't add an additional 35 miles to go from a line near I-5 to e.g. Fresno to the trip (or 35 + 10 additional miles to go from e.g. Fresno to Bakersfield).
Conclusion: a slightly longer line through all the population centers just makes much more sense. The one branch to Merced will be problematic enough (that one will basically only start making sense with the future extension to Modesto-Stockton-Sacramento).
@@JH-pe3roWe got rid of sprawl, but at the expense of unaffordable housing costs. Sprawl was how we made cheap housing. :/
@@JH-pe3roHow and when 55 miles of tunnels are built and at what cost will be interesting to see decades from now.
I think that California needs to change some laws too in order to get these projects built. Most laws are environmental laws that hold the project back like you said. The problem is, those laws aren’t just holding back HSR, but also the Giant 8 lane highways that the United States is so accustomed to. Changing environmental specifications for public works projects can unleash a massive amount of negative side affects. If the law were to change, it would have to be specifically for zero emissions transportation.
My main problem is your idea that the specifications on Prop 1A can just change or be updated. This would be great, if every Californian wouldn’t have to re-vote for the proposition that is keeping this project on life support. The project barely got passed in the first place 52%. Doing this would be a great way of sending this project to a early grave. With all the negative propaganda of this project floating around the internet (while some Californians forgot that this project is still a thing) this project would certainly not make it in the polls.
ps. If I were to change it, I’d definitely change the time specifications to 3+ hours between LA and SF.
Agreed. Newsom’s proposed changes to CEQA this year are a step in the right direction, and it’s too risky right now to change Prop 1A. I think it’s also important for the legislature to introduce a price floor to the carbon credits in the cap and trade system, stabilizing funding for some time. It’s unfortunate that the Obama administration and Congress didn’t have the foresight to pass a long-term reconciliation followup to the Recovery Act that would’ve helped CAHSR build the Bay Area sooner.
Been loving the videos, by the way. They’re quite fast-paced, informative, and funny.
Well said. Lots of hand waiving away the political realities in this video and assuming convincing the tiny subset of the population that gets into the technical details of a project is enough to get anything done politically. There were a lot of mistakes made early on this project, but they were made. There should be more focus on decisions being made right now and what should be done going forward. If that is to revisit bad decisions made 10 years ago fine, but you need to accept the costs associated with it. I think Reece has a bit of a disconnect wanting to change routing or phasing of the CV and lower costs. Those don’t go together anymore
Thanks for putting out your videos Banks, I’m really enjoying them. I hope you get more recognition.
Agreeded 100% if we sent 1A back it would get shot down. CA def needs to change CEQA not only for CAHSR but also for every other project. At the end of the day, the US is terrible at building large infrastructure projects & we don't have funding for public transit. Its gonna cost so much money to dig those tunnels and I'm scared we won't get it. But NGL CA is doing a bad job managing this, no one is taking any leadership and its being done at such a fragmented, peicemeal situation. Look at the grade seperations on Caltrain, Palo Alto got funding but they cant get out of their own way to complete the projects, its localism at its worst. Daddy Brandon needs to step up and cut us a check.
Agree with everything except decreasing the speed requirements. While it should be allowed to thru-run on existing slower tracks for faster immediate service, I think it's a good thing that it is guaranteed to be designed to the highest standards around. While this may have increased costs a bit (though I don't really see much evidence that constructing a slower track speed would've significantly lowered costs) the future-proofed design is worth it IMO.
Exactly - I feel like CAHSR has a deep cut on its hand, and while bandaids aren't going to fix that, full on surgery is a relatively ineffective and excessively risky way to fix it. Prop 1A isn't detrimental enough to the project to constitute being revoted on, especially because of how risky that is given that more than half of Californians need to approve it this long after we originally did.
Edit: Starting in the Central Valley is a logical political decision. If it started in the coast then there would be a fight that could stop the project
When its done it'll probably be less efficent than we want it to be, but at least we will have something ffs. I just want some kind of inter-city rail network. If that happens hopefully it encourages more public transporation and transit-oriented development in California. That alone would be a miracle
But that’s the thing, if it doesn’t connect to the coast it won’t see most of its value. You might avoid the battles but you need to have those battles.
@@RMTransit Value where? Aside from the LOSSAN coast area, the coast between LA and SF, aside from areas like Monterrey or Santa Barbara, is much MUCH more sparsely populated than the Central Valley. Bakersfield alone has a bigger population than Tampa, I’m so tired of the notion that the cities in Central Valley are some tiny little farm communities, they aren’t, and they deserve high speed rail as much as LA and San Francisco do.
But the point of high speed rail is to connect Californians. I get that it might have been done faster if we didn't go through the central valley cities, but that's missing the bigger picture. Plus these medium-sized cities are the most likely to benefit from hsr and actually update their infrastructure. With a huge infrastructure project, I think it's more important to show the value of transit-oriented development rather than undermining it's value for brevity.
I always forget that the segment north of NYC was not electrified until the 90s. Although, I'd argue that Amtrak's most cost-effective and efficient project was probably the Keystone Modernization in the early 2000s when they re-electrified the corridor and increased the speed to 110. I can only hope the S-Line project (the SEHSR project, not the SLC streetcar) is that good.
isnt part of the reason amtrak can upgrade the north east lines so effectively is because they already own the tracks
@@coreydavis6868 there might be still limited section not under Amtrak tho...
I'm going to keep cheerleading for the high speed rail authority, since I don't believe that the problems that the project has encountered are their fault. Being a government agency, I don't think they're allowed to lobby for the kind of systemic changes that would fix the problems that the project has. I'm frustrated with the state and federal governments for treating this project so badly, but I don't know what to do other than calling my rep and begging them to give more funding to the FRA and to reform CEQA.
There’s 2 points of this I’d like to address.
The alignment through the CV cities aren’t really a major hinderance. It avoids the coastal mountain ranges and any more direct routing would only be marginally more direct, not really constituting a huge difference in terms of travel time. Connecting them up is really all win and no lose.
Second point is, Fresno is really the centerpiece of the entire project. Construction was always going to start from there no matter what, as a huge focal point of the project is to bring investment and combat pollution in historically underinvested CV. I do agree that it should have probably been connected to a coastal city first, even from Fresno, connecting to either the Bay or LA would have involved prohibitively expensive long tunnels (Pacheco and Tehachapi). I do think that a Sacramento connection should have been built phase 1 as part of the IOS though, as it is by far the least challenging semi-major city to get to. CAHSR is set to replace Amtrak San Joaquins service in the Central Valley, and trains will terminate at Merced for a linear transfer for onwards connections to the Bay and Sac, with Thruway buses connecting at Bakersfield for onwards connections to LA and SoCal. Management, cost reduction, and changing laws should have been a larger focus though, I agree 100%.
Fresno would be the biggest HSR hub in the state as HSR gets built out and extended beyond Phase 2. It's about as close to being at the geographic center of the state as you could get.
@@seanj4119 How would Fresno be a hub however? There are really just three major destinations reachable from Fresno: 1&2) SF and Sacramento, which would share a LOT of alignment northbound, or 3) LA Southbound, which has to be via Bakersfield realistically (and if there was a #4 on the list, Bakersfield would be it).
Anywhere else you might possibly want to get to is either almost directly along that line (Stockton, Bakersfield, Merced), is better reached from the destinations listed above (i.e. Vegas, better reached from either Bakersfield or LA, as you need to pass thru the Sierras - or San Diego, which would be via LA anyway), or is too small a destination to justify a dedicated HSR line (i.e. Paso Robles, San Luis Obisbo or Mariposa). Fresno might be the core, but it is not a hub.
I'd like say that the conventional rail shouldn't be replaced just cos the HSR is up and running.
Plus it will be bound to be cheaper than the HSR... and service areas HSR don't...
@@pharmesq Fresno is about as close to geographic center of California as you can get. Beyond Phase 2, there is potential for extensions further north to Redding or east to Reno and Lake Tahoe or Yosemite National Park. If you're going from one end of the state to the other by HSR, you'd be passing through Fresno.
The state started in the central valley because thats the easiest segment to build, and they want to build up expertise befor working on the more technically challenging sections. the other 'easy' parts (sf-sj and la-anaheim) will also be ready long before the mountain sections.
Your idea about the state changing its mandate honestly made me chuckle. The project requirements were set by a ballot proposition (Prop 1A specifically) that barely passed, and most of us only voted for it because we knew it was our only shot at getting something built. Props are almost impossible to change or remove once they're passed, the only way is to pass another prop.
I also would have liked if you had mentioned that not bypassing the central valley cities was partially a political decision to gain their support for the proposition, without that, it probably wouldn't have passed.
As you said a proposition can be passed to overturn a previous proposition. For instance, the prohibition amendment was overturned. A proposition (1B) to the voters for completing the project with $3.5 billion annual federal funding plus the State's $1.5 billion annual funding for 20 years vs. staying with $1 billion annual funding for 80 years would pass.
California high speed rail is great, the media is making it seem crazier. They go over extreme with these things. My only regret is that it’s going to take forever to finish it.
I really really do not agree with you that a spine and shuttle model would be a good idea. You'd more than likely end up with exurbs right outside HSR park and ride stations in the middle of nowhere in the valley oil fields. Doubly so if this project got off the ground sooner because of it, we weren't nearly as disillusioned at the park and ride concept when CAHSR was penciling out. It'd completely gut the towns in the valley and destroy any chance at their further economic development. Not to mention that it would create immense sprawl throughout already shrinking Central Valley farmland, rather than mitigating it with densification of existing cities.
But I do agree that a Central Valley mid-sized city to major city would be a good idea. Phase 1 San Fran-San Jose-Fresno would be extremely strong, as would a San Diego-Los Angeles-Bakersfield because of the potential in the conventional rail connection via the San Joaquins. When one major connection is made, the next one would follow, and then the state would work towards making the San Joaquins high speed. The trip between Fresno and Bakersfield for instance is much less taken than the trips between San Fran/San Jose and Fresno or Los Angeles and Bakersfield.
But considering how far along we are already, it's not productive to debate what could have been. I hope CAHSR takes this opportunity to build a snowballing effect in HSR infrastructure projects across the Western US rather than calling it quits when all is said and done, wrap things together, and we'd have to reinvest in any additional future HSR projects for something like a Cascadia connection or a Tucson-Los Angeles line.
The idea is not shuttles at least not entirely, just not mainline service, you have a high speed service which gets off the mainline onto a fast conventional line to serve parts of the central valley
@@RMTransit Connecting the cities of the Central Valley via rail service is the entire point of the project, not just linking SF to LA. Building a bunch of spur lines completely undermines the actual goal here, which you seem to be missing.
Like, we want to directly link Merced to Bakersfield. The current plan accomplishes this. Your plan would "link" Merced to Bakersfield via three different train lines with two transfers. THAT IS NOT A DIRECT LINK.
@@RMTransitI find it genuinely so offensive that you consider Fresno and Bakersfield too unimportant to be on the "main line". Fresno is the fifth largest city in the state, and Bakersfield is the ninth.
I too disagree with that, spur lines are silly when it’s basically a straight line from Bakersfield to Sacramento already. It wouldn’t save that much really (most the alignment is through farmland in the cv or on existing rail right of way, the cost savings wouldn’t match the loss of utility) and it would cause the sprawl issues you talked about. In fact one of my biggest disappointments is that the “Kings/Tulare” station is in Hanford. That’s still a 30 minute drive to Tulare/Visalia so there isn’t much incentive to ride and not drive when I’m going there to see my friends. In a traffic free high speed environment highway 99 is better to travel on than I5, there are much more things along the way.
Re 6:10, high-speed rail from Fresno to San Francisco Airport (SFO) would be very valuable to people in the Central Valley. SFO is already easily accessible from the Cal Train station in Millbrae, as is downtown San Francisco via BART.
Agreed. As a NorCal native, I’d especially love a second Transbay Tube with capacity for some joint Capitol Corridor/Caltrain service so that I wouldn’t have to transfer from the Corridor to BART in Richmond
If they had started with incremental improvements in both greater Los Angeles and the Bay Area, the chances of the entire project being built would probably be close to zero. By building the semi-useless middle section first, the chances of it being finished are much higher. Plus, the Federal funding they got during the Obama years specified that it could be used in the Central Valley. Yes, you mentioned the first bit but I think it's worth repeating.
Thank you Reece for covering my state. It’s an honour to have you cover it. I support CAHSR and you should to.
As I said in the video, support high speed rail in California, very skeptical of the execution we have seen so far.
@@RMTransit I always thought the reason they started in the middle was to keep it going to the finish. We already built this much, so now we have to finish it to LA and SF. I've followed the entire construction route on other channels. My biggest beef is all the earthworks and existing infrastructure that needs revision for the new tracks. All of this could have been so much easier if most of the Valley route had been elevated. It should have been elevated, but cynically, I believe they did it the other way to show how many different jobs the construction would create. The construction headaches and costs only just increase. I'm not happy with the route choice either, but that too is probably too late to change now.
I support high-speed rail regardless.
@@RMTransit one factor that might be making people upset about this take is our private vs public takes on the project. Privately we might have a lot of issues with the project. I mean for God's sake it's decades late and tens of billions of dollars over budget. Publicly it's pretty hard to generate any political momentum for any third option that's more complex than build it vs don't build it. More often than not, once a project as large as CAHSR is reevaluated and the costs rehashed it just gets cancelled altogether. Politically the only feasible option might be "just finish the damn thing"
@@RMTransit Almost all of your complaints are about legal issues that simply can't be changed easily. Maybe you being a foreigner you don't understand American and Californian politics, because you think that the laws that are some of the problems with this project can be changed easily. They cannot. As a practical matter, the project has to work around them, yes, at a much higher cost. The US is not like, say, China where laws can be ignored when they are inconvenient.
@@Geotpf I think he gets that. In my experience Americans don't change laws exactly because of this mentality. If you stop pursuing a solution before you start, you definitely won't get there. Hence the sense of inevitability.
If we could make the political changes proposed in this video, we would achieve peace on Earth. As a San Francisco resident of over a decade, I say that the project as it is today is a political miracle. The forces arrayed against the project are intensely powerful. I recommend that you wade deeply into the nitty gritty of Californian politics over the last fifty years to really get a handle on why this project is the way it is. There is nothing technical about the slow and expensive progress of CalHSR. The problems are entirely political. I can’t emphasize this enough. The problems are entirely political, and changing the politics requires a time scale that makes that of CalHSR seem veritably instantaneous.
The biggest issue: having to cross the Coastal Range low mountains between Los Banos, CA and Gilroy, CA and the Tehachapi Mountains from Bakersfield to the San Fernando Valley. Not only a lot of very expensive tunneling, but also even more expensive earthquake mitigation, going through the potentially dangerous San Andreas Fault.
its not impossible but also it will be the gnarliest engineering project in US history
Japan is very mountainous and remains one of the most earthquake-prone nations in the world. If they can figure it out, so can the US. Just a matter of willingness and money I think, at least in terms of the engineering of it.
Don’t forget the third range of mountains CAHSR must to tunnel through to get from Lancaster to LA’s San Fernando Valley - the San Gabriels. This is a third engineering and cost challenge. But by all means, let’s get it done!
@@notisac3149 that maybe so, they also don't have the fault line running through the line... (I believe)
Considering there are several 35 mile base tunnels under the Alps tunneling should not be a major consideration. And the Chinese are building a new line to Tibet through the Himalayas with over 500 miles of tunnels.
And I saw a proposal to go direct from Bakersfield to I-5 and over Tejon pass rather than the Palmdale route. That would be about a quarter the cost.
Re: the Central Valley alignment, have you actually bothered to study the lengths of the various alignments? Go to Google Maps and take out the measurement tool to get a decent idea. And you'll see that the "detour" through the population centers of the Valley doesn't increase the route length by all that much (by the Pythagorean theorem the alignment is actually quite efficient), in fact less than the length of just one of the spurs that you proposed, never mind *three* of them. It's hard to see how the alternative would save much money at all, especially with you saying in a comment that the you want the spurs to be "high speed".
An issue I'd have with the branch line option is the HSR would be skipping a lot of the big central valley cities entirely. You'd get maybe one stop in Bakersfield along I5? Branches are common around the world but it's usually from smaller cities to bigger ones not bigger ones to smaller ones.
I agree. The route-as-chosen makes sense. Hit the biggest cities to you can that are not way out of the way. This is exactly what railways excel at! Branch lines only make sense when you can't do that.
High Speed Rail Alliance, an advocacy group based in Chicago, proposes a blended approach for US HSR, connecting upgraded existing lines with new dedicated HSR tracks.
CAHSR already plans to do that in the Bay Area, sharing the Caltrain line from SF to Gilroy, with two electrified tracks next to a non-electrified one between San Jose and Gilroy.
Lately I’ve been making the case that CAHSR could take a similar approach in SoCal, hypothetically sharing an electrified Metrolink AV Line between Palmdale and LA as an interim route until their own tracks are completed. It would get direct HSR service to LA sooner, and given the funding struggles CAHSR has had could be its only realistic chance to do so for the foreseeable future.
That would be a huge compromise, and make the promised 2:39 nonstop SF-LA travel time impossible. I’ve estimated it would take 90 minutes to get between Palmdale and LA (current train takes 2 hours with 9 stops but express trains with 3 stops were 18 minutes faster, thus each stop adds 3 minutes, so nonstop would be 1:33 and electrification to allow a faster average speed should shave off a few more minutes, just as it will for Caltrain with 7 minutes off their current SJ-SF travel time). If CAHSR’s other travel time estimates are accurate, that would make the nonstop LA-SF time 3 hours 45 minutes, on par with or slightly slower than total flight time (downtown to downtown) but still over 2 hours faster than the typical drive time.
The idea behind such a compromise would be to save costs and get SF-LA high speed rail done sooner, which needs to be the ultimate goal of this project. Connect SF and LA but also their transit systems, in this case Caltrain and Metrolink. The connection at Palmdale is crucial to closing the passenger rail gap between the Central Valley and SoCal, but the current 2 hour trip time from LA plus an estimated 23-25 minute HSR ride to Bakersfield and time to transfer at Palmdale, would make it about as fast as the current 2 1/2 hour Amtrak bus ride over Grapevine on I-5. By having HSR share those tracks, it eliminates a transfer and makes the LA-Bakersfield trip time about 2 hours, faster than the bus and about as fast as driving, while also improving Metrolink AV Line service with electrified trains. They’re already planning to double-track more of the AV Line in the San Fernando Valley and Santa Clarita, to allow more frequent service, every 30 minutes to Santa Clarita and every hour to Lancaster.
Unlike the Bay Area, CAHSR doesn’t have plans to help electrify SoCal passenger rail, and given how poor our air quality is, and need for better rail service to encourage more people to opt for the train over their car, it’s imperative that we start and electrification is a proven way to do that. Not only does it allow faster and more frequent service, but also quieter and cleaner, just as is being done with Caltrain. It would also be a catalyst for more electrified Metrolink routes, like the SB Line, OC Line and VC Line to Moorpark.
Nothing for CAHSR beyond the Central Valley is set in stone, with no funding identified for that as of now. By sharing Caltrain, CAHSR only has to get as far as Gilroy. Similarly, sharing Metrolink as an interim route means it would only have to get to Palmdale. Reaching SF has a stronger case than LA, because linking Silicon Valley and the Central Valley unlocks most of HSR’s promised benefits, not just a significantly faster connection between those regions but also faster statewide travel than driving, even with the bus bridge over Grapevine. Reaching Palmdale closes the passenger rail gap and once it reaches LA makes HSR travel faster than flying.
CAHSR cannot end in the Central Valley, and the case remains strong to get it to SF and LA, with SF having the stronger case. Pacheco Pass is therefore the most crucial segment of the entire project, as once that’s done and links up to Caltrain, it’ll make CAHSR not just a viable but competitive travel option, and set it up to get to LA. But the longer things take, the more that support can wane and opposition gets chances to shut the project down. Every election cycle gives them a chance to delay or block any more funding, and there’ll be at least two or three before the first CAHSR trains are expected to roll.
My biggest fear remains that’s what’ll happen. Opposition will win out and succeed in getting HSR stopped, leaving just the Merced-Bakersfield route. Right now only the 119 miles are 100% guaranteed, with Merced and Bakersfield most likely. To say this project will be completed because it’s already past the ‘point of no return’ is just misguided. Nothing beyond the Central Valley is guaranteed right now, and the fact that segment alone will take 15 years from groundbreaking to the start of revenue service, for an estimated cost of up to $35 billion, should be upsetting even for the strongest of HSR advocates.
Yes things should have gone better early on, and things have gotten better since then with some considerable progress in recent years, but the fact it’s still at least seven years away can be disheartening, especially when opposition are not giving up their fight. Support is strong, but the side of the aisle it’s coming from has collectively been fairly lukewarm, especially at the federal level where it’s needed most since that support and the substantial funding with it is what will get CAHSR done anytime soon.
There has to be an urgency to get CAHSR done faster, getting Merced to Bakersfield done by 2028 and start work on the extensions to SF and LA before the 2030s. The case is still strong to have LA to SF HSR, but the longer things take, the more the cost increases and the more our lifestyles may change, that case can wither. Something like sharing the AV Line, to get HSR to LA sooner and possibly at all should funding dry up once it reaches Palmdale, can help keep the case strong if it means bringing HSR’s benefits to SoCal sooner with electrified regional rail service, plus it’ll give HSR a path to LA should that scenario happen.
I 100% support CAHSR, always have always will, but where I once was a total optimist I now find myself more of a realist. I still believe in what it’s aiming to accomplish, and want to see it completed, but I’m more comprehending the reality of its situation, and that it still faces uncertainty about getting beyond the Central Valley. Hopefully by the end of this decade that changes for the better, and its path to SF and LA is secured with funding to make it happen. This should be not just a California project but a national one, the first dedicated high speed rail line in the country and first big step to finally bringing 21st century intercity travel to the US. It just hasn’t been though, and there are no current signs politically that it will be.
CAHSR needs to keep improving its public image and increase public awareness of what exactly is happening, to break through all the misconceptions and false narratives about it and show why we all should still be excited about HSR, even for those who’ll never ride. Maintaining a positive public image will ultimately be what keeps CAHSR going, and eventually get it to SF and LA.
Can't do it as that would violate prop 1A. You can only change the terms of a proposition by passing another proposition, but there is zero chance of doing that by passing a new one that says the system will be slower than previously advertised.
I feel the CAHSR should be doing outreach on other planned parts to increase transit in those areas, if the line owners reactivate the passenger service but at similar speeds as the UK ECML it'd be a god send to increase support for a HSR to interlink to provide similar services... (and eventually the CV line can just be it's express line)
@@ChrisJones-gx7fcFor expediency sake forget a tunnel to Palmdale. It is not worth it. Just traverse the Tejon Pass and forget the Tehachapi Pass and more importantly forget the San Gabriels. Electrifying the AV line and reducing the travel time from two hours to one hour makes perfectly better sense. Once SF-LA is connected with an upgraded Altamont Pass route then tunnels throught the three mountain passes can be undertaken to marginally improve the system's service.
The United Kingdom hi-speed rail line HS2 currently under construction also has also faced massive cost increases and significant delays as well as scale backs. A major reason has been that the UK hadn’t built any new mainline railway in several decades. There are similarities with two new nuclear power plants that had been under construction for well over a decade in France and Finland.
If haven’t done something for a long time, you are not good anymore doing it. It takes you significantly longer and you are having to reinvent the wheel in many ways because you have forgotten how to do it, making things more expensive.
Yes sir.
Californians used nearly 14 billion gallons of gas in 2021. Prices were $4/gallon that year. That's $56 billion dollars on fuel alone lol. Car insurance also doubled for many people. Car parts are extremely scarce. Road/highway maintenance costs are also astronomical.
Cars are just unsustainably expensive to be the only mode of transport, and it will only get worse. HSR construction costs isn't nearly as bad when you compare it to the cost of cars. And you only have to build the HSR once and then reap the benefits of faster, more efficient travel.
2:13 - "Not criticizing projects which are going badly is the wrong kind of balance." Literally no one is saying it can't be criticized though. In fact most advocates are actually open to legit criticism, compared to the "biggest waste of time and money" FB comment that has zero explanatory context.
11:12 - "Saying the cost of a major infrastructure project doesn't matter is bad." Not even Alan Fisher has said this. In fact everyone from WSJ to CNBC, WaPo, Vox, Top Luxury, and of course RealLifeLore are among the first to seize upon the cost of this project, either making it look worse than it already is or omitting certain details such as NIMBY lawsuits, contractors, and politics which contribute to its increase. (Speaking of politics, you forgot to mention that Rep. Ron Wright joined NIMBYs opposed to Texas Central in your other video.)
13:00 - "All of this should make us want to dive deep... learn from other countries and progressively build high speed rail construction knowledge in the United States. The brute force, 'just spend more money until the project gets done' approach isn't what made countries like Korea and Italy so effective at building high speed rail." Alan Fisher already explained this, but you do know the consultants you were deriding in the sentence prior were from countries with HSR, right? Germany, Italy, Spain... even China was under consideration when it came to HSR consultants. In that regard, hardly anyone was calling for the brute force approach.
exactly, people don't understand the niche issues and politics surrounding this project At this point the current direction is set in stone and it is going this way because it was voted upon this way. There was no other way to get this dream into reality without difficulty and policy sacrifice, we should be happy it is even happening and be glad that there's still a cost benefit to it even after a pandemic and stagnant population growth
German approach is to have trains that can use both the new and old tracks, and high speed segments e.g. Central Valley can be added progressively, reducing the overall time for longer journeys e.g LA-SF.
Despite its problems, I still have a lot of hope in California HSR
At absolute worst, it's a good make work project to develop the expertise locally, and boosts the local economy in some areas that are struggling. At best, this irons out a ton of issues building HSR in the cheapest place they could do it in Cali, making it a lot easier to plan routes like Fresno to LA, or Vancouver to Portland, where things are gonna be way more expensive . If they'd started running through LA or San Fran, the ballooning costs probably would have been exponentially worse.
Calling these cities "mid-size" is not correct in my opinion. Bakersfield and Fresno have over half a million people each. These are big cities, not mid-size by any means.
There are tons of million plus urban areas in the US so that’s why, but it’s doesn’t materially change my conclusions
Starting in the Central Valley is a politically savvy decision. Easiest section (allows CHSRA to learn how to do it) and utilizes people’s natural sunk cost fallacy for eventually getting the political will to get the connections to SF and LA paid for.
This practice is called "stake-driving" and it's how Robert Moses built an entire network of highways in New York, including those which eliminated buses and trains. So yeah, turnabout is fair play AKA payback's a mofo.
I mean I address it in the video, I don’t agree. And the results seem to have shown that CAHSR didn’t learn to do it very effectively
It's the easiest section, yet the project is already in development hell. That doesn't inspire optimism.
And it's still not even close to being done, and costs are still out of control. Oh and there are sections of it at grade.
HART took a similar strategy by building the Ewa Plain section of Skyline first
Major misstep on your part is not realizing that starting in central valley, where housing is cheaper can also be a quicker way to solving Housing crisis in CA. Live in central valley, HSR to where your working. As housing zone issues by cities slows down our housing production. Also central valley is expanding as some industries in the "salton sea" may have a booming lithium extraction in the future. Also Im not hearing an alternative plan to what CAHSR is doing. Dont forget to add that the Democratic party, and Biden administration are putting a lot of money and political will on this project. Its going to get done.
Federal government money was contingent on the segment in the central valley being built first. So while I share the frustration that SF and LA are not included in the initial construction, it can't be helped. Other than that, yes the HSR is incredibly expensive compared to most HSR projects, but thats not unique to CAHSR. For whatever reason, project cost is a major issue in USA, Canada and the UK. Seems the cost to translate projects into English is double or triple Spanish, French, Japanese or Mandarin.
CalMod was also slowed down because of the Trump Administration, when California's GOP Congressional delegation got Elaine Chao to cancel funding shortly before the contracts were set to begin. It was reversed but it got the project off to a rocky start.
What insane timing regarding this video: I was literallly just looking at their site seeing the progress on all of the different sites. Thanks for all of your incredible videos!
Thanks for watching and the kind comment
In this video, I hear a lot of complaints, with no solutions. It cost too much, what could be done? It takes too long, what could be done to bring that in? Easy to say it cost too much and is taking too long. The Caltrain HSR Compatibility blog complains plenty about similar things, but it has many excellent views on how to do things differently. The CAHSR project has a lot of flaws, but I see improvement in the project that bodes well.
I mentioned several things, building in house capacity etx
@@RMTransit Most were around what could have been done in the past. At this point, I agree a connection to SF or LA should be the first priority after IOS is in testing.
Yes, nearly all of the problems have a root cause of politics, rather than engineering or technical constraints. But, just "solve politics" so you can make common sense changes to legislation isn't really a solution. It's just eliding the underlying problems and structural causes that produced our current equilibrium point.
NEPA exists the way it does and is resistant to reform in part because without it poor and minority communities will be a dumping ground for NIMBY and LULU projects that places with more political power want to avoid even more than they already are. Segregation by design and forcing more places to be on the 'wrong side of the tracks' is not a good trade-off for more high speed trackage compared to blown out budgets and time-frames for investments that will endure centuries, like transportation right of ways
I didn’t say solve politics, but yeah a lot of the problems are there, other countries have faced the same stuff
Most of those other countries are more comparable between themselves as Parliamentary and/or Civil Law nations than they are to our Common Law Presidential system. Which doesn't really even elect a single government, but rather three governments and tells them to play nicely. At both the Federal and State level. Something like a government shutdown isn't even possible elsewhere, because that would constitute a VONC and prompt a snap election, while it is becoming a common occurrence in the US thanks to narrow election results swinging between vastly different visions of the future. With very little consensus on even basic things, like infrastructure week, even before you get to more politicized forms of infrastructure which trains inexplicably are.
Not having such a dysfunctional public sector would solve a lot of the problems that impact large public works of all kinds. Including transit projects which are always more scrutinized than boondoggles like I-69. It would free up a lot of resources that are basically just used to work around or through anticipated dysfunction and vengeful budget cuts. But, have you seen our politics lately? No excuse not to put in the work and propose improvements that might actually get implemented, but... yeah
I do believe they didnt do a costal city to central vally because the other costal city would cry wolf that they didnt have the first HSR. I swear it like highways in texas with E and W. We all know which Interstate is the bypass.
Could have done both at once (or at least progressed both at once)
With sufficient money, no problem. But from where? :) @@RMTransit
I’d be happy with ANY rail connecting Texas towns and cities, like there was in the 1950s.
On behalf of the military industrial complex, please don’t lump us in with CAHSR. The USA actually enjoys a substantial competitive advantage in production of advanced military systems. We produce a lot of very high capability systems for fairly low costs for the capabilities delivered. There’s a reason that most of NATO bought the F-35 instead of developing their own 5th generation fighter. It’s also worth noting that if a defense project is ridiculously expensive and not working (like the Zumwalt class), it actually can and will get cancelled.
You know it's going to be an interesting video when there's 5 minutes of disclaimer before the video even starts. In all seriousness, there's a lot of high-level issues that you commented on, a few things that I would point out that you didn't touch on was how the proposition system works in California, the refusal of SNCF's plan and how Californian politics work.
The CAHSR project was commissioned by the voters of California by proposition. The proposition system was put in place after decades of control by the railroads led to inefficient government. One of the rules that a proposition has is that if the state wishes to amend it, the amendments must be put to another statewide vote.
Back in the mid 2010s, SNCF offered a plan that you did go over in your last video on the subject and you touched upon here. However, the state refused the plan as it saw the plan as infeasible politically. The project eventually got so bogged down that SNCF withdrew its plans.
Lastly, California has an odd relationship with the rest of the United States, we're one of the few administrative regions of a country to have been invited to major diplomatic conferences not as a representative of our nation. Because of this, Californians would rather go their own way of settling things than adopting what other countries have done. See: homelessness, drug and just anti-social crimes, resource management, etc.
Honestly, I couldn’t have said it better myself. To discuss CAHSR without going in depth on the history, politics, intra state regionalism of California and inter state relationship of ÇA to the broader US just feels like a half measure. For example In all of the CAHSR videos, I’ve never seen one mention of how the interstate system skipped the Central Valley cities and how that project influenced the current routing today. Or how super politically connected San Jose politicians like diridon brute forced the Pacheco pass over the altamont. Etc
Maybe it’s too in depth for a TH-cam video designed to maximize views, but IMO you can’t fully discuss the project without knowing what led up to it
I think amending the proposition thing is the type of political change that you need to seriously look at to get a project like this done effectively
@@roystreet1395 SR99 through the Central Valley is being gradually upgraded to interstate standards to ultimately become I-9.
@@RMTransit Reforming the proposition system in CA will be very difficult politically, though not impossible. Californians and the rest of the US are very risk averse when it comes to changes that they would perceive as limiting their voting power.
Oh goodness, hydrogen. Alright, theoretically I love hydrogen. I love using excess renewable electricity to create a fuel we can use for industrial, transportation, or energy resilience purposes, among others. Love it. Practically I am beginning to hate hydrogen. I hate hydrogen being used as a way to increase demand for gas electricity, I hate it because used to stall electrification of transport because maybe instead of what we know works now, we could use something that maybe works in five years (and has maybe worked in five years for decades prior too). In a clean energy society hydrogen will be a very useful fuel. Right now it’s a very dangerous tool.
It's called California High Speed Rail, not LA to SF or whatever other city pair high speed rail.
Well you know what they say in Denmark ; "Passenger trains are 80% political and 20% transportation" .
Bakersfield to Fresno connects two cities roughly the same size as Orlando and Miami or St. Louis to Cincinnati, so that's not nothing. These are smaller cities than LA or Chicago or even SF and I agree that ridership would be smaller by comparison if CAHSR just stopped there, but these are also cities that basically don't have interstate access, so more transit can make a big difference.
I'll be disappointed if it stops there ( i don't want to drive 90 minutes to Bakersfield to get on the high speed rail), but there's still value there for Californians
There is some value, but at the same time, what can you do in Bakersfield that you can't do in Fresno, or vice versa? They are both places the rail should go to, absolutely, if the goal is to connect LA and SF. They are the two largest points of interest between the two major urban areas. But they are not really destinations in the same way Orlando and Miami are. Bakersfield and Fresno are just too similar in ways other than population to make either truly distinct from the other - as a native Californian now living in the CV area nearish to Fresno, I have zero interest in Bakersfield because Fresno is closer, and if I have to go beyond Fresno I might as well go to The Bay, Sacramento or Los Angeles. To me Bakersfield is just a place to stop for gas on the way to someplace more interesting. And for someone from near Bakersfield, Fresno is probably the same exact thing to them.
@@pharmesqYes I agree. I do not see any tangible synergy between those two towns. They are pass through points for further destinations. To compare a valley town to South Florida in population and desirability is absurd.
When it comes to over-budget/delayed military programs, it's more likely to happen than not. It happened with the F-14, F-15, B-2, F-22, and F-35. Ultimately, despite their insane budget overruns and delays, all proved to be extremely capable and effective combat platforms. the same logic can be applied to CAHSR: the time and budget may be points of contention, but they had been purposefully designed to fill a specific role and do it well.
Great video! I can only imagine how far they’d be behind if anyone had take hyperloop seriously.
Are you going to be covering the new hydrogen powered train in Charlevoix?
I might cover it, I might not, depends how my schedule looks!
You're great but bitching on this one is NOT HELPFUL. And yes, as a Californian I will say - the execution has sucked and is beyond the pale on our HSR - but like it or not it really could NOT have started any where else. Yup, I just said that,
You may understand the psychology of the "Pat Jerry Brown California" a bit - but you don't seem to get the USA outside of the northeast or oil politics in the context of 2008 - IN 2008ish (whenever the ballot measure passed) there was simply no other way ANYTHING could have happened without starting in the central valley. None. zero. Zilch. It's quaint revisionism to insist otherwise. We can learn from it but they'd be no CA HSR without that demarcation. See the current Speaker of the US House versus the last Speaker of the US house for a flashcard understanding of California politics. The train had to start in the middle because the conservatives had to be bought off....and they were.
And comparing train politics here to any other nation is just unskilled., whining and mean spirited. (And there's a compulsive bashing of California at this pop cultural moment you should avoid - the San Diego to Seattle string and the Acela corridor are keeping this nation from dying at this point..the thing in the middle -before Biden at least- would drown Canada in 2 years if unchecked) The version of California that is building HSR dates essentially to 1960. It's not an ancient culture , shaped by war and recent trauma. It's an optimistic arrogant "American" culture not unlike Texas but quieter and less self aware. But the sense that we're not a state but a country within in a country is just as real. (BTW: See the Texas power grid for the Texas version of CA HSR.)
Adolescent chaos comes with the California turf right now as the West Coast (and Vegas) sort of breaks away from the "West" and moves toward a more Canadian style social democracy....not unlike Vancouver actually ...The tension between very early social democracy on the west coast and American conservatism - which is much more mythologized and ritualized in the USA than Canada - has also screwed this project up. That does not exist in France or Korea.... There's no "car equals freedom, drill baby drill" voting block in Korea.
CA HSR will continue and won't fail: Here's why: Brightline West and Texas Central project which will both unfold more smoothly. ...cold blooded but true...Competitive shame will find the money and the will to see CA HSR through.
BTW: A mini version of this shame as policy driver will play out in Los Angeles soon - L.A. will continue to lollygag on any number of issues until it watches the Paris Olympics next summer... then watch how quickly projects unfolds and a city scrub down begins... it won't all get done by 2028 but things like subways to Artesia and under the Sepulveda pass etc ... will start to move much more quickly, We'll prolly have flying taxis in Los Angeles by the Paris closing ceremonies.
Love this comment 👍
Happy for the coverage. I am a huge proponent of HSR, especially of the California project. Born and raised in CA and now live in the Midwest. I hope to be around long enough to see it completed. California is often at the forefront of new things. Its a bold move that will be praised in the future. 40 years from now other states are going to be wishing that they did something like this.
So your idea of providing service to Fresno and Bakersfield and Merced is to have a main line along the western edge of the Central Valley and spur lines to the cities. If you want to travel from Bakersfield to Fresno you would then take a spur train to the main line, travel up to the spur to Fresno and then travel that spur line to Fresno. Ridiculous! The spur trains would be infrequent and add costs of construction of the track and trainsets as well as additional railroad engineers to drive the trains. What is accomplished would be inferior service for additional cost to speed trains between the endpoints. California High-Speed Rail is designed to economically benefit the over 6 million people of the Central Valley, which is one of the areas of the state gaining population, and not only the major population centers of the Bay Area and Southern California. The population of the Central Valley is larger than that of British Columbia for a Canadian perspective and larger than the population of 30 of the 50 U.S. states. The California Central Valley deserves good transit service and not inadequate spur line service
I’m not sure the “rest of the world is looking to the US” when it comes to high speed rail, most of Western Europe, South Korea and Japan already have well built integrated high speed rail networks.
I don’t think I said rest of the world, but the Americas certainly are. And the rest of the world “notices”
@@RMTransitI understand but Railways and HST is not an US invention nor are the US the best at it. I would argue the US needs outside help for this, I don’t know the project details and who is designing the route or rolling stock but relevant major project experience with getting lines intercity and also connecting other transport links such as Airports and Ports are important too.
@@thomasfy4I think I made all of that pretty clear in the video! HSR is a mature tech!
I believe that lots of countries noticed “ignorance” has stalled HSR development in US. This is actually a positive contribution by US. 😊
Good thing you said most, since Iceland doesn't have any trains at all.
So I think a big part of the challenge that's pointed to in the whole environmental assessment question is something that runs parallel to the planning and supply chain capacity issues and that is regulatory and approval capacity issues. Environmental regulation may or may not be appropriate but what's definitely not appropriate is the staffing needed to processes things against the new array of environmental tests created for the environmental regulation as this sort of thing tends to be the much hated 'bureaucracy' that gets cut whenever the government gets bit by the austerity bug. The starving of the public sector has made it steadily more expensive and time-consuming to interact with them and with any large project like this you're necessarily going to have a lot of engagement between the public sector and whatever private concern ( or other government arm ) is trying to get stuff built. You can see this in the Oakridge ( Cambie & 41st Ave, Vancouver ) redevelopment taking a decade to plan but only expecting to take 4 years to build, there's a lot of slow interactions with the city going on in all that planning.
The first phase of the California HSR project feels to me like a big project that has been designed to fail. Once the segment between Fresno and Bakersfield is online, and nobody is riding the trains because the demand between those two cities is low (they are close together, and neither have extensive public transport, so driving between them is sensible,) then the politicians that are against the project can get on their soapboxes and say "Look! We tried HSR and it doesn't work for California! Let's cut this economic white elephant down before it sucks up too much money and resources in the big cities!"
Thanks for another great transport video, Reece!
You are absolutely right.
That's why upgrading the speed of the Altamont Pass route to connect SF to Merced makes sense because it would immediately promote more demand. Also, traversing the Tejon Pass to LA would complete the "improved and shorter redesigned" Phase One route.
In my hopeful opinion, the Brightline project from LA to Las Vegas will be a great motivator for politicians in CA to finish the LA to the BAY HSR.
Too Long Didn’t Read:
Great video Reese, what I take from this is that the Authority made some mistakes, but we are where we are and we as citizens of this great country should get behind the revolutionary project and fully fund it! (Comment keeps being deleted for some reason)
The Long Response:
This program needs to be fully funded and spread across the country. California is doing the best it can, and we (supporters and citizens) need to help them succeed. The federal government needs to step in and assist in getting the entire project done before the 2028 LA Olympics! It would be an amazing way for the USA to show the world we can get things done and can make a world-class high-speed rail system in the country.
Just like you Reese I wrote that during the preamble and will be commenting as I listen to your video. Side note, have you heard of the Rio Grande Plan here in SLC Utah? I feel like it would be up your alley since it’s a regional rail hub plan. Christian Lenhart, here on TH-cam has some great videos on it.
I have to say I completely agree that the biggest issue with the Central Valley would be that people are going to still be dependent on their cars. Without building out a streetcar network or light rail in Fresno, Merced, and Bakersfield to move people from the station to their places of business/residence would be an issue. Now a branch system would solve that issue if they had moved the mainline line SNCF suggested. It would’ve hit many outlying suburbs along the way and could’ve been used to be the start of a rail network in the Central Valley. That being said we are where we are and need to allow the Authority to push forward with more funding and support.
Reese, you are right that it would be hard to translate our highway building ability into rail. BUT if we took 10 billion dollars a year out of the highway budget and allocated it to rail, I bet we could figure it out and get a really nice network out of it. The High Speed Rail Alliance makes some really good points in regards to this.
Again, thank you for a great video and sharing your opinion. We need to continue to get the word out about this project to get it the proper funding for the construction of this high speed rail project!!
Reallocating budget is maybe ok, but the last thing you want to do when you have a cost project is starting spending more and incentivizing further overruns
@@RMTransitDo you seriously think the Authority's Board of Directors would allow the extra funding to go to waste? Have you watched any of their meetings? They understand that if they waste money now they are under real threat to lose funding entirely. I watch every single board meeting and they are hyper vigilant in making sure that programs and projects within the larger HSR project are as efficient with funds as possible.
As long as the House is controlled by Republicans, don't expect any significant Federal funding for CAHSR. Remember that Trump tried to take back funding for it that Obama had previously allocated for it.
In an ideal world, starting in the major cities would have been best but starting in the central valley was the right move given the reality on the ground. Imagine a "first of its kind in North America" trying to succeed in two of the largest metropolitan areas in the country with no track record of success. The project probably would've gotten killed in the cradle and any infrastructure built probably would've went to Metrolink without even electric trains. The central valley was the best option given the conditions on the ground. Also, when if CAHSR didn't like the central valley condition federal money placed on them, kicking and screaming likely isn't going to change the laws in the time window funds are available especially with polarization and money in politics.
The mindset that republicans have saying that high speed rail is outdated is just wrong. We just need to find a better way of financing the project. Maybe it would've been better if the amount of time was about 3 and a half hours to get between the 2 cities. Also I feel like the tunnels are huge factors to the insane cost. I know it became too ambitious but I have hope for it.
If HSR is supposed to be "outdated", what is NOT outdated? HSR came long after planes and cars...
I just wanted to put in a little Fun-Fact, since you mentioned CalTrain should use ETCS: ETCS has a maximum train length of 4km, which is an issue because in the US there are freight trains longer than that.
But obviously that shouldn't be too hard to fix.
canada actually surpassed California in population this year!
also Merced has links to SF via Amtrak
Yes, California's population stopped growing as recently as 2016. Good for Canada I guess.
@@akhilkarandikar99Also, the ACE Train already links San Jose to Stockton and the San Joaquin Valley.
It does not matter how much it costs. Genuinely. It could cost 10x as much and I wouldn't care. It needs to be finished, and this penny pinching is so counterproductive, Reese. The budget overruns were caused primarily by landowners and lawsuits. Blame them, not the Authority. As it stands, half of my high school alumni in Fresno are now employed as unionized, well paid railroad workers to build the HSR. It has already reaped dividends.
To me, the amortization is over 20 or 30 years. Someways it looks like they are overbuilding the stations but those stations are going to be there for 50 to 100 years. There is probably a lot of cost in earthquake design and the problems with buildings in the middle of nowhere. There is a high cost of living for skilled tradespeople. (Also, after Covid, a lot of older tradespeople are retired.) There will be a return as those areas along the track will start to build up and also take the pressure of development off the coast. Yes, there is a lot of pork. There isn't a Robert Moses overseeing the project which may be a good thing; if you want efficiency that guy could do it but for a lot of other costs. Yes, it is f---king expensive but once it is done and the trains are moving at every 20 minutes, people will forget flying or driving or the original cost.
The best frequency CAHSR can hope for is one hour on the NorCal route. Perhaps a few trains every 30 minutes, during peak times, when SoCal is connected. The project will not be completed by 2050 unless consistent annual funding is increased from the present $1.5 billion to $5 billion.
It should be worth mentioning that Caltrain made a outrageous move recently ordering prototype, untested battery-multiple units for its San Jose to Gilroy section for $80 million... rather than investing $80 million into extending electrification to Gilroy, it is instead ordering a SINGLE trainset (that costs $80 million!) based on a unproven technology. Right now, there's a concerning trend in North America where politicians and transit departments are disillusioned with the assumption that battery and hydrogen trains will somehow become immediately available, affordable, and work flawlessly which is a notion that entirely fabricated and baseless. Battery and hydrogen trains are utilized in niche services for infrequent (usually rural) branch routes or for terminal switching in other countries, NOT for mainline services (not to mention battery and hydro trains are more expensive to procure and maintain than EMUs). Some North American agencies such as the LIRR and Metra have already dropped plans for battery electrification due to the fact they discovered the technology was costly and unreliable. North American isn't just disillusioned regarding electrification, it is outright ignorant and combative against proven century-old electrification technology, which sets a concerning precedent.
10% dilusion 90% Lobyists from these hydrogen and battery companies paying off politicians to purchase these new technologies for these public funded projects...
As a native of Merced, I'd like to point out something that you may not have considered, especially as a native of Canada. There is a cultural and political component to it, that can't be ignored; simply presenting economic or technical arguments will not get infrastructure built in America generally, and California is not only a microcosm of this facet of America in miniature, it also has a unique cultural makeup of it's own. This has reared it's head many times and resulted in many abortive attempts at trying to build great projects that would serve the public and the economy of the state. Unlike many other parts of the developed world, and despite it's vast wealth, America generally (and California specifically) have great disparities in wealth, and span diverse sectors of economic activity, which informs the political interests of the stakeholders. PolySci 101 description aside, California (as part of the Southwest) also has the legacy of Spanish settler culture as well, meaning you really do have to come hat-in-hand to certain local caudillos' parlours and be prepared to accommodate them or it just doesn't happen. California is actually really sharp in some respects for going for the route that it has, because in time the homogenising affect that it will have will blur some of the hard edges between the liberal cities and the conservative agricultural centre. To future leaders in Sacramento, this ability to make the state more governable in a future where things like water rights are going to need to be navigated for survival, is well worth the extra money spent. In short: it's a feature not a bug, but only visible when viewed from a political and cultural lens and not a technical or pecuniary one.
If familiar with this line of thought but, I disagree with it, thus why I mention that I think connecting the Central Valley to the coast is where you see most of the benefit for the central valley
@@RMTransit We have the Pacheco Pass now. Listen, I understand it may seem like pork-barrel spending, but if you want it built, these are their terms. Merced was supposed to get a UC Campus: land was set aside, it was all ready to go, but the politics got in the way, and we ended-up demolishing our only golf course to get it built on that site instead. Multiple projects in the Bay Area have been scrapped right before groundbreaking could begin because rich folks in Marin County didn't want it passing through their territory; SoCal has the same sort of problem routinely. The Central Valley is under-developed but holds the keys to some things that will be important to the state in the future, so not appeasing them isn't an option. By building the span outside of the rich major cities first, they can do an end-run around the NIMBYs who would also oppose it for different reasons and get the spine of the project built.
Also, with regards to the Central Valley itself: the history of this region should inform the future. Cities like Merced only came into existence as a result of the original railroad built through California. The post Civil War government gave lots of money to (rather sketchy) developers and speculators to build that railroad, and those developers purposely built a windy, snaking railroad because they were getting paid by the square mile of track and Congress wasn't paying close attention. It was the peak of inefficiency and waste but it's just history now, and we have Merced as the direct result of that project. Compared to that, we're doing much better this time around :)
Hey Reece, this was such a thorough video at challenging some of the common arguments in defense of how CAHSR has been going, while still indicating your support for high speed rail in CA. I appreciate how thoughtful and well-researched you were, and I thought you made a lot of good points. It’s too bad to see so many comments that almost sound like people didn’t even watch the video.
What I took away most is that America really needs to take its systemic high-cost infrastructure problem as a top priority before attempting more big projects, and better learn from the rest of the world.
Ive gone in circles a lot on this as someone from the UK and fundamentally the issues of cost come down to weak leaders, generally politicians and governments. Projects that are started by a governing body on a weak footing near always end up over budget and late because the governments that started them lack the ability to commit to them long term.
California no longer has a population larger than Canada, I think Canada grew bigger than them a few months back.
I appreciate the little San Jose line of acknowledgment
I hope the stations connect to existing metro lines like metro rail in LA or BART. If it just takes you to a parking lot I'm still going to need to rent a car or Uber to go anywhere. If it gets too expensive, I might as well drive
They indeed will connect to metro lines. At LA and SF you will have about a block of walking in tunnel to make the connection. Better than at airports.
i think the reason californians, especially central valley residents are so defensive about hsr is because our state is the literal punching bag of the country and everytime we want to do something good, we just get bombarded with negative press that threatens those good things.
honestly, you’re right about basically everything in this video. it just makes me depressed that we give so much importance to nimbys and fake environmentalists. seeing that the state government also thinks hydrogen trains are the future makes me want to slam my head into a wall.
we need massive deregulation when it comes to transit projects in california. even if cahsr kills 1 million baby turtles, it would still be more environmentally friendly than one more day of traffic on the 5 and planes between LA and SF.
we also need to quit it with the american exceptionalism and xenophobia. just adopt foreign regulations for christ’s sake.
great video reece. i just wish there was some way to communicate these issues with transit normies without them advocating for the immediate end of high speed rail in california.
Engineering around the politics may be a very Californian way of doing things. Tackling the politics directly, however, is a very Cascadian way of doing things. We’ve seen how far this gets us in places like Portland and Seattle, I’m not convinced however the Cascadian way is getting any more done than in California.
Portland and Seattle don't seem to even be taking Cascade HSR seriously right now
good video but it doesn't address the root cause of all the problems: Californias ridiculous red tape. 10 billion dollars have gone to just environmental review. also, they should have done LA - San Diego
The Surfline could be upgraded to an average speed of 80 mph for a 90 minute LA-SD trip. I believe the EIS reports have cost less than $1 billion.
As an American, I've noticed that Americans tend not to like imitating other countries that much. So for nearly every project or issue, rather than just copy things known to work elsewhere we have to do our own thing.
Winston Churchill once famously observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else
Supporting HS2 in the UK has become more and more frowned upon... the project is so mismanaged that costs and times go up and up, and the whole thing loses support, when in theory it's still a really good idea!
Great video- I loved it. A similar video about HS2 might be cool aswell, it's quite a controversial project and it would be interesting to see the opinion from an expert on a project which I'm sure many British citizens are conflicted by.
Very glad that California Rail has had a deep dive video- it was very informative.
Writing as a Brit, I would strongly support Reece doing a video on HS2. But be warned. HS2 is already experiencing huge cost overrun. Many Brits think that the line will be limited to London to Birmingham, with the rest abandoned. But (unlike in the California central valley) the truncated line would link two indisputably major cities.
Thanks for watching, HS2 might come down the road!
Funny, I had the same idea. Maybe also because the thumbnail looks a bit like a Southeastern Highspeed train (which uses HS1)
yea but doesn't HS2 have funding and tunnel machines? CA doesn't have any of this yet.
@@chromebomb It's mostly controversial because of the cost- with the Leeds extension (which has beem cancelled) the project would cost an estimated 106 billion pounds.
GO is having trouble electrifying because the shed at Union Station is just about too low, and they can’t remove it because “it’s heritage”. And as CN still owns the air, 6m over the right of way, they also have slowed down the electrification. “Thou shalt not build electric track within 10ft as we don’t want to evolve our maintenance to accommodate the added risk”
How to add billions in complexity: make all trains battery-fueled to withstand the non-electrified USRC. I’m baffled this would even be considered as an option, just because a wooden outdated shed is “heritage”.
Any takes on the sensible paths to take?
Yep, good Cal HSR (current management) and bad Cal HSR (early project team and bad scheduling).
How about a video about HS2 in Great Britain?
I think there are some similarities with Highspeedrail California.
HS2 is also a lot overbudget and behind the schedule. Plus while Great Britain has already a lot of upgraded 200km/h (125mph) lines, the highspeed route to continental europe is the only new highspeed line with higher speeds than 200km/h.
So while I think Great Britain has more experience with true highspeed rail than the US, both countries seem unexperienced compared with many european countries that have whole highspeed networks.
I think a lot of issues come down to politics and America's insistence to do things their own way (which is also politics). California is uniquly difficult with their public referendum system which has done a lot to handcuff the state government. I also think the geography was always going to be challenging to connect LA and SF, while trying to not repeat the mistakes of building I-5.
Also, while I get you excitement about Texas HSR, ignoring the politics of it is kinda short-sighted. Politically it is going to be tough when the state government is at open war with their cities.
What was the mistake of building I-5?
@@davidjackson7281 "Mistake" is probably overstated, but it does go through the middle of nowhere. It is why the argument that HSR follow I-5 is a bad idea. You don't want it to just connect the major cities.
@@jbirzerAgreed. The Central Valley Hwy 99 alignment makes sense and I support it 100%. However it should pivot from Bakersfield to the Tejon Pass rather than the Tehachapi Pass and then ridiculously going through the San Gabriel Mountains.
If we are talking about serving cities branch lines and bringing up metro area populations for the other cities then I think you should state the metro area populations for the Central Valley cities too. For example say Fresno has over a million people instead of half a million.
I thought that they can have trains on existing routes from San Francisco to the central valley, right? Like that is where part of the budget go, which is to electrify and speed up the main lines
One factor you don't mention however is just how vociferous the opposition is, and why that is. It all comes down to high cost of living.
In the SF Bay region mostly (which the HSR project would reach well before LA, because the mountain approaches and right of way issues are easier there), housing is astronomical. There is a lot of fear within the Central Valley that they will all become exurbs of San Francisco and San Jose because HSR would make, say, living in Merced and working in San Jose quite feasible. That would cause rents in Merced to go way up, as the effective distance to San Jose would be shrunk by a lot.
Similar happened during the Covid crisis when working from home meant high paid Silicon Valley workerbees could work from home in Merced or Tulare, where rents are cheap (relatively speaking), bidding locals out of the housing market.
For me, I live about an hours drive from where an HSR station will someday be, and I would love to be able to hop on it, and ride to go to SF for urban amenities, or to SD to visit family, rather than driving 5+ hours as the situation is currently. I want to see the project built as quickly and safely as possible, personally.
Are you interested in doing a video or a section of a video on the delays we have had in Seattle with out line out to the east side? It seems like its about a three year delay because the track ties they spent years installing proved defective.
13:31 This is a good point, but it would be better to overspend on HSR that is needed than overspend on highways and the military industrial complex that isn’t needed.
Seeing failure projects and hopewell as a first on the list stings as a Thai lol. We still have the debris till this day.
I was curious if anyone would notice
@@RMTransit We Thais definitely remember it. It became one of the symbols of rampant corruption in our country. Lol.
Thank you for your analysis! I would love for you to visit the Kuala Lumpur - Singapore High Speed Train project.
It will be great when finished i hope they get it done
We are having the same debate in the UK. Why costs for HS2 are so high Why we cannot electrify at reasonable costs, why new power stations take so long
Why infra in the UK takes so long to deliver, why it costs so much. I am a civil engineer and much of the issues are similar between the UK and US .. we have structural problems that until are addressed mean it really isn't going to get any better.
Say for HS2 the project was started in 2008. The London terminus at euaton, the gov has changed the scope 3 times. 15 years in. Don't have a final design yet. You can deliver infra with govs behaving like this
Was this video made after the news that they started the procurement process for trainsets?
6:54 I’m not sure which city, but in 2031 either Los Angeles or San Francisco will be connected to the central valley by high-speed rail
I'm hype for the Rennes video
Go Rennes! I lived there for a while and it has amazing public transport
🥳
It’s awesome frankly, a fantastic city
I’m a resident of a phase 2 city, I think everyone (except people with land on the alignment) would love the project when finished however, with current lack of funding? no one takes it seriously. We are still 7 years out from a Merced to Bakersfield line and that is simply unacceptable. I get why they wanted to construct the most likely to be defunded portion first but connecting Bakersfield to Union Station first would allow rail connections (unfortunately through Amtrak) to be made through out the state and make the biggest impact first. A big issue I think is that people that don’t work in infrastructure don’t know how trivial a billion dollars is at this scale. Just fund and finish the thing so we can get return on all the money we’ve already spent.
The comments on not reinventing the wheel is great and very true I had no idea they plan on using not realized technologies.
But on a third comment, they aren’t reinventing the wheel on viaducts and roadway grade separations so just get on with it!
how many cameras do you have now?
I would love it if you did a vid on all the up and coming HSR networks across the world. Ones that are being built / Confirmed to be built etc.