You shouldn't expect Asian speed of building the high-speed rail when construction work are at least 10 times more expensive(also eating out in USA is more expensive where often American pay $11 for Mcdonald meal while in Japan cost $4).
@@ninadsbhatt100 But don't forget the two main cost for airplane (fuel, airplane purchase) are same across the world, that makes on relative term, it would be more expensive to run high speed train than airplane relative to poorer country like Indonesia.
@@ninadsbhatt100 No it's not as the income is higher but the taxes you pay provides far less services that you need to pay for them on your own and the costs are far higher than other places around the world.
The title is misleading. Nowhere remotely near $128 billion has been spent (the actual amount is $13.59 billion as of November 2024, out of $22 billion currently available not including future state cap & trade funds), and voters only approved this project in 2008 with full construction starting in 2016.
The Obama Administration awarded California $2.5 billion in ARRA funds in 2009 with the stipulation that the money be spent within a certain time frame as the funds were for American Reinvestment and Recovery. The only section of California High-Speed Rail that had environmental clearance was in the Central Valley so it was the only segment capable of being constructed within the time limit and so the only segment eligible for funds. The ARRA award also stipulated that the funds were to be spent in the Central Valley. It may have been better to start construction on the Bay Area peninsula, which would have pleased Sen. Wiener's constituents, but if California had refused the ARRA funds then there would be no High-Speed Rail construction.
Exactly. Prop 1A funds weren’t available yet and State cap & trade didn’t start until I think 2014, so that ARRA grant was crucial to getting things started. Plus the Central Valley is the only realistic place to test trains at their top speeds, and had to be built at some point anyway.
If you're talking on full high speed rail than any country with the shortest segment has more than the US. China does have the bigest HSR network with no competition but Indonesianjust open their first line which is 88 mi long with planes to expend it in the future. The longest network in Asia (excluding China) is in Japan with a out 1800 mi with Turkey behind with about 1600 mi. Spain has the second largest network in the world (After China) with about 2600 mi and France has a bit more than Japan. - all also have more lines under construction.
@@Dog.soldier1950 California has the same density as Spain and pretty similar area (Spain is a about 25% larger in size of both area and population) an has the 2nd biggest high speed rail network in the world. What matters is not the general density but how dense are the areas where people live an the distances between them. The US is not a dens country but 82%of the population lives in urban areas and those account for abour 3% of the total size of the US and there are countless of areas where HSR is perfect for. Start connecting those areas with high speed lines and later on connecting the different sections into a national one. That's how the older rail network was built, that's how you built the national highway system (a far slower transport methos and yet it connects the whole country with a planned netwrok).
It really is a shame because there is so much untapped potential with this railway. Many European and Asian cities have become much more economically competitive with the addition of high speed rail connecting their cities. I wish Americans can realize its benefits. Yes, we know CAHSR has had issues and we know it has been mismanaged. But it has continued nonstop. Imagine if they had all funding in hand.
Wait... these cities are already connected by airplanes. So how exactly would they benefit if travel between them is already fast and relatively cheap? America is not Asia and not Europe. There's 3 major mountain ranges between San Francisco and LA and no way around them. There's earthquakes. There's huge communities that are already built in the way with no existing tracks. It always looks so easy until you look at the details.
@@mikelfrance-l6x both Asia and Europe have mountains, and Japan and Taiwan are two of the most earthquake prone countries in the world, and yet high speed rail exists there and works really well. There are several large cities between SF and LA like San Jose, Fresno, and even Bakersfield, that HSR will connect as well, and the Central Valley is home to seven million people (four million of those living between Merced and Bakersfield where HSR will run). The truth is California has the population and travel numbers to make HSR work here. LA-SF is the busiest flight route in the country, and it’s a six hour drive between LA and SF. The current fastest rail option, Amtrak’s San Joaquins, had over 900,000 riders this year, despite being slower than driving and requiring buses on either end to reach SF and LA.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc That is an obvious fact, what is so bad about this is that it should have been fully completed by LA olympics, but it seems like it will require another three decades to complete
@@mikelfrance-l6x Yeah details: America is not Europe and Asia. America considers itself the best in the world at everything primarily because of 20th century relics it built back then (and are now falling apart), yet America lately let's things stand in its way, spreads misinformation, complains about spending for railways but spends over 400 Billion over the course of 50 years to build and maintain the Interstate highway network while only spending a total of approx. TEN BILLION on railways in the past 50 years (with the exception of this bipartisan infrastructure bill congress created and signed into law by Biden), but then complains about the price of building them when we don't fund them and forgets inflation can drive the cost of ANYTHING, as we clearly have seen over the past 7 years. You make it seem as if Asia and Europe are on another planet and are the countries who build high speed railways through mountains and Earthquake zones. Japan has more earthquakes than Cali, has MORE people than Cali and invests more in its people. They have seismographers that help protect trains BEFORE an earthquake hits their railways. Europe is building TWO tunnels through 35 miles of mountain to connect their entire TEN-T rail network, but you seem to think America can't build through 12 to 13 miles of mountain. But let this be an interstate instead, and most of you give "crickets." Ideas like yours are why we are consistently being held back and becoming a much dumber country. Perhaps you don't realize the MAIN benefits of high speed railways is the city-center-top-city-center aspect of it; maybe you've forgotten we're CONSTANTLY being warned that transportation is one of the biggest culprits of climate change (oh wait, many Americans don't believe in that). Or maybe you don't realize how sick and tired people are of dealing with airlines, flight cancellations (of which my current flight is at risk), or simply just want a CHOICE. If YOU want to fly, go ahead and do that. The rest of us would like fast, efficient choices like they have in Europe and Asia. But yes, keep living in the past. California will keep building this regardless of where it terminates.
Let me ask you something. Let's say someone gave you $300 Billion and you could spend it on anything. Would you invest in green energy? Fix the homeless problem? Invest in drug rehabilitation? Build desaltation plants? Bury electric cables so forests don't burn every time the wind blows? Fix the healthcare system? Or build a railway that is slower than flying at about the same cost and will take 30 years before one person can ride on it? CA has a lot of problems. Travel times between San Francisco and LA is not one of them.
@@mikelfrance-l6x good thing HSR will only cost about a third of that, and half the cost to keep expanding freeways and airports to meet the same additional capacity that HSR will provide. LA-SF is the busiest flight in the US and total downtown-downtown travel time takes an average 3-4 hours, and the drive is roughly six hours. HSR will take less than three hours, not to mention better connect the cities in-between like Bakersfield, Fresno, and San Jose, increasing mobility and accessibility between them and to SF and LA/SoCal, in addition to other intercity/regional transit throughout the state.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc o but like Why can't California solve the abovementioned problems with one-tenth of its gdp. California has so much gdp and so many resources, yet it has more problems then it should have
@@mikelfrance-l6x I also ask something. How can the flight be faster? It may only be 1 hour, but the time spent at the airport for taxiing, taxiing, and baggage claim at landing is at least 3 hours, compared to the 2.5 hours promised by cahsr. the train is more comfortable, smoother, and less likely to be late than a plane.
@@davidsz.horvath3357 So, you think there should be no security checks getting on trains? Which century do you live in? Why would getting on a train be any different than an airport? You teleport there?
The insistance for HSR to run to SF was a huge mistake. It should have started in San Jose with a connection to Caltrain. The existing rail to Gilroy is not used except for weekday rush hour so HSR is perfect to take up the capacity. Then new track should have been built from Gilroy south to Los Angeles and San Diego.
My thought was connect to BART in Pleasanton, then go to Sacramento, but bottom line for both of us is use the existing stuff.😊 Electrifying CalTrain is, so far, the best thing to come of this boondoggle by a long shot.
@@harleyb.birdwhisperer no need to mention that California within the next decade will be the only place in the Western Hemisphere with high speed trains reaching speeds of over 200 mph. The initial segment between Merced and Bakersfield will connect with other intercity rail and bus transit, and is all CHSRA has enough funding available for. The sooner the extensions to SF and LA are funded, the sooner they’ll happen and less they’ll cost.
The initial construction segment had to start in the Central Valley because when $2.5 billion ARRA funding was granted in 2009 it was the only segment that was environmentally cleared. Environmental clearance for the entire route from San Francisco to Los Angeles was only completed in 2023 at a cost of over $1 billion
It’s 48 rail miles between 4th and King Station in SF and San Jose Diridon. 51 miles were electrified between SF and Tamien, which is the next station south of San Jose and the last one on the Caltrain-owned corridor. A little ways past Tamien is CP Lick, where ownership of the tracks transitions to Union Pacific.
I am confused. at 8:40 you say "Even though California is probably the 5th biggest economy in the world, it is just a state. And central, not a local government, has funded all other high speed rail projects in the world" What does "central government mean"? In the US, would that be the federal government?
Yes, you pay both State and Federal income taxes in California. You pay between 10% and 37% of your income to the federal government and another 1% to 12.5% to the state government.
Yes, for the SF-LA/Anaheim segment. Phase 2 extensions Merced-Sacramento and LA-San Diego have been greatly delayed. This is perhaps a planning error: a Central Valley backbone from Sacramento Airport to Bakersfield would have been a tangible foundation, with ready connections at Modesto and Sacramento to existing Amtrak-operated & ACE commuter services.
but then we need voters to agree to pay more taxes for this past prop 1A bonds. But most californians probably haven't ridden a long-distance train, like, ever, so it's kinda a hard sell
This mindset of “just throw money” at it is what California does but it has unintended consequences because of the bureaucracy in California, things just don’t get done because of regulation, because of greed, and because reward is not completion but to milk through system as long as possible (see the homeless industrial complex we have). This has been a huge problem government in California for a while. The prop was passed in 2008 and yet nothing has been completed. People are tired of that, especially for something that does not match the Car culture. They should have completed the hardest segment first and the government should have gotten out of the way. Central Valley to LA would have been killer and useful.
@@tylerriddle7735 when people say "they're just throwing money at the problem," I don't think they even know what that means, with any kind of specificity. If you had watched the video, you'd have a sense of why it is taking so long, and why it has been so expensive, and without resorting to clichés about fat cat bureaucrats and union bosses. And if you had been watching the progress of all the Central Valley construction, you'd know that there has been a huge amount of progress, they are going to start laying track next year. There's always the Monday morning quarterbacking about how it should have been done. But at the end of the day, it's getting done - and only California could do this. But the federal government needs to step up. Central Valley to LA *will* be killer and useful. But because of the terrain, that will be the last, and most expensive segment to build. San Franciscans will be able to take high speed rail all the way to Las Vegas before Los Angelenos will be able to take it to Palmdale. But when it's done, nobody is going to be doubting the decision to build it, or to use the Central Valley segment as proof of concept.
Because the Silicon Valley is a thing and is the economic engine for the area (and the entire state). It's where Google, Meta, Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, AMD, Intel, and every other high tech company that you can think of has offices. The "commuter trains" service all of the small cities along the route.
@agntdrake to clarify, BART is a fully grade-separated wide gauge regional rail service. It currently serves the San Francisco and Oakland cores, and is expanding to downtown San Jose. Caltrain is a standard gauge rail, newly electrified, but with numerous grade crossings which limit speed. Part of the right-of-way is publicly owned, with the UP freight rail maintaining track rights. A private freight railroad outright owns track south of San Jose. Caltrain's stations are mixed legacy low-level & ground level platforms.
@@timgerk3262 there hasn't ever been a plan to run HSR on the BART tracks (nor would I expect there ever to be). They aren't related projects. The planned route was always going to use the Caltrain ROW which is standard gauge. The corridor is (slowly) trying to get rid of the at grade crossings and there are funds ear marked for their removal in Santa Clara county, although I'm not sure what's going to happen with changes with the federal government (who last time tried killing Caltrain electrification). Regardless, in Palo Alto at least, it means there will be shoofly tracks down Alma Ave for several years while they get built. My understanding was the section between San Jose Diridon and Gilroy was going to have a separate set of tracks from the freight tracks, which (of course) would also be standard gauge.
@aaronguzman7940 well he was the one campaigning against it saying the 'Hyperloop' was the answer... Didn't that turn out to be all B.S. like all his other wild claims
@@entropyachieved750 well they can make the inside Lane of I-5 for self-driving electric cars traveling at 250 mph. Currently The cost of a single ticket for each person in California one way would be $2,672 to pay for the scam
Salute to quality journalism & from a perspective that trains, you know, are a proven working technology. One vital point, seldom made, is that CAHSR is mainly a new right-of-way. Existing rail connections are circuitous and barely even suitable to modern freight operations. Both port cities are better connected toward the East than in the north-south direction. Some political persuasions would say this is intentional, to keep California more bound to the bulk of the US population on the east coast, three timezones away, than to develop more autonomously.
Unfortunately, the many car-brained politicians made the project more expensive. As far as I know, the authority has enough reserves to continue construction for the next 4 years. Once the IOS is ready, hopefully the rest will be faster, given that everyone can experience the benefits and effects
LA and SF is too big aerially to accommodate a central train station. If a person has to spend 30 min to drive to a train station, the deal is dead on arrival. Just look at the ridership of Amtrak because majority of passengers actually riding high speed will be these folks. Cities in Asia are very high in population density and they have existing and very convenient transit systems (buses and underground). Although anticipation might be high, majority of these people will stay in their cars.
But people already have to spend 30 minutes (and sometimes a lot more) to drive to airports, get parked, and ride the shuttle to the gate. And then they have to stand in lines to check in, get through security, wait for their boarding call, get boarded. And then at the end of the flight they have to wait to de-board, get their luggage, find a shuttle to the rental car, stand in line, and drive another half-hour into the city center where they want to go. The flight might be quick, but the entire process around it is inefficient, inconvenient, expensive, time consuming, and wasteful. I'm about a half-hour from the San Jose rail station. And using CAHSR, I would already be at my destination in Los Angeles before I would even be in the air, if I were to fly out of SFO.
I would think it would be good to go through a few less developed areas. They could make an argument that a new city could be created like in Trump’s idea for creation of new cities, then maybe they’d receive more federal funding.
certainly you can't compare with China but compare with Spain instead with a huge high speed rail network. on the utilities side everyone have the same problem.
Biggest problem is trying to serve too many masters. This project is a misnomer. It is not prioritizing speed, it is being compromised to serve the intervening cities along the way, for political and economic reasons. If California really wanted high speed rail from LA to SF they would have run it down the I-5 corridor.
Oh good lord. Do you not understand how high speed rail works? Stations have bypass tracks so not every train has to stop at every station. If you looked at the four Central Valley stations, you’d have seen that they too will have bypass tracks. Just like every other high speed rail system in the world, California HSR will offer several different services ranging from express with minimal to no intermediate stops, to limited with some stops, to local stopping at every station, twelve total between SF and Anaheim. The entire system is being designed and built for revenue speeds of up to 220 mph (110 mph on shared tracks in the Bay Area and between LA and Anaheim). As for the choice of route, the San Joaquin Valley that HSR will pass through is home to four million people and counting, and the fifth and ninth largest cities in the state (Fresno and Bakersfield). Bypassing those like I-5 did would mean sacrificing that ridership for minimal time savings, not to mention voters approved the route that’s being built now. It’s also completely moot to try to keep arguing the I-5 route. More than just about speed, this project is about better connecting the state’s interior to the major coastal cities and increasing mobility and accessibility across the state. It’s the backbone of a modern statewide transportation system comprised of local, regional and intercity transit, that’ll reduce dependency on driving as well as flying for distances better covered by HSR.
That is a very narrow-minded view of the project, assuming that the only objective is to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. The system will do much, much more than that. And just the Central Valley segment alone will connect up a population that is larger than most states. And these are also some of the fastest-growing communities in the state. A train system that only had express service from LA-SF, and that wouldn't connect up any other communities along the way, would have been a totally asinine decision.
Why the hell can’t British people pronounce Los Angeles properly? There’s no Z in Los Angeles. They get pissed when we mispronounce the Thames but they all get a free pass on this? It’s Los An-juh-less, not Los An-juh-leez.
Of course. We've seen how republicans filled tje country with cheap and efficient high speed lines 😂 There are many reasons why such projects are so expensive and take too long in the US but one of the main reasons is lack of funding. When a projects like this cannot secure the budget needed and lives day by day costs tend to rise and it takes longer to construct. Now, remind me which side always objects to provide any kind of funding for passenger rail?
@ CA doesn’t need a high speed rail. I doubt funding was the issue. CA already secured the funding prior to construction. They just wasted it all. Check the receipts buddy
@@kenxiong6830 check your facts, buddy. California only secured seed money for the project with Prop 1A. Rail systems should be built by government at the national level. And everywhere else in the world, they are.
@ the country already has a rail system that nobody uses. This is why only California is dumb enough to try and build one. Americans prefer to drive or fly. Nobody likes trains
The design of the route was deliberately wrong. The 114-mile segment expected to open in 2030 will be 9 miles longer than the parallel line built in the 1870s, as measured from the same termini located along the old line in Fresno and Bakersfield. The old line has a fifty-mile-long tangent perfect for high speed rail, unlike the serpentine and inefficient-to-operate new one. The cost of upgrading the old line for mixed use would have been a fraction of what it cost to build the new one, particularly with omission of the customary "padding" that affects almost every US passenger rail project whether though intentionally disputative property disputes, preposterous infrastructure (as in the present case) or more conventional construction ploys. They finally settled on having the Fresno station at the old location, though they will be doing considerable work in order to demean and deprecate the original station building: the necessary grade separation could easily have been carried out as an enhancement of the old station rather than a curse. On some level there are people responsible for these deliberate actions who should be sitting in jail. It is a conspiracy - part of the Freight Carrier Railroad Engineering FRA Revolving Door Cabal.
Brightline West shows you what California HSR should have done to speed up the process and keep costs down. Keep the trains OUT of the secondary cities and re-use FREE existing Interstate Rights of Way to get reasonably fast high speed train service built for a fraction of the cost of building a new greenfield route through thousands of properties.. Would have it been a bit slower? Sure! But service would have been up and running by now and not sometime after 2032 or so...
Calling Fresno a secondary city is odd. It is larger than the largest city in most of our states. Interstate 5 follows the western side of the central valley, winding around the protruding foothills of the coastal mountains. This means that high speed rail can't follow the route of the freeway as it will travel at three times the speed.
Brightline is running a SINGLE-TRACK high speed railway in the median of an interstate. The comparisons are not even CLOSE to what CAHSR has to deal with.
What BLW is doing is fine for conventional passenger rail service. Just don't call it HSR because it's not. What BLW is doing is a terrible way to build true HSR of the future. They are building it on the cheap, value engineering the project to death resulting in a train ONLY capable of an average speed of 101 mph. For a train capable of 200 mph, that's pathetic. By comparison what CAHSR is doing is harder, more expensive, and takes longer, but it's the correct way to build HSR. Taking shortcuts in HSR construction is not smart, and will only cost more in the long run in inefficient passenger service that will need to be upgraded to stay useful. CAHSR will be the preeminent HSR line in the Western Hemisphere traveling at 220 mph.
I agree with your assessment of HSR; slower is faster in terms of getting HSR built. The segment Bakersfield to LA could perhaps junction with the Brightline route? The segment from Merced to Sacramento could spur along the Altamont route to Fremont and across the Bay on a refurbished rail trestle. The joy in train travel is the passing scenery which is lost in a blur at bullet train speeds. Silicon Valley robot people compute in terms of themselves alone.
To add to the reat (not that fast, single track) It does not directly connects the two cities it's supposed to serve. The line starts in Rancho Cucamonga, which takes 1h10 to get to from Union Station, and ends much closer but out of Las Vegas, a bit further away from the airpot! This makes tje promissed 2h10 journey to close to 4h which makes flying better. One of the advantages of trains is taking you from city center to city center.
There's a limit. You probably don't live in a high traffic area. People spend hours driving home where the distance is just 20 miles one way. All because of traffic jams. Much more efficient to move hundreds of people at once than every car in traffic transporting only one to two people.
Get this. A congress man wants to end funding for this project and redirect money to - you guessed it, Highway Widening projects
Typical. No matter how many more lanes you build, traffic will STILL be terrible.
@@TheRailwayDrone Exactly! The US really needs to stop investing in roads and fund more rail projects, especially CHSR
@WaitNoIdidntMean AGREED!
If you turn that new Lane into a 250 mph self-driving electric cars only that would instantly make the train obsolete
@@Uvoted4this That is almost like a train you're describing.
You shouldn't expect Asian speed of building the high-speed rail when construction work are at least 10 times more expensive(also eating out in USA is more expensive where often American pay $11 for Mcdonald meal while in Japan cost $4).
But incomes are aloso high so its all kinda same relatively
@@ninadsbhatt100 But don't forget the two main cost for airplane (fuel, airplane purchase) are same across the world, that makes on relative term, it would be more expensive to run high speed train than airplane relative to poorer country like Indonesia.
@@ninadsbhatt100 No it's not as the income is higher but the taxes you pay provides far less services that you need to pay for them on your own and the costs are far higher than other places around the world.
The title is misleading. Nowhere remotely near $128 billion has been spent (the actual amount is $13.59 billion as of November 2024, out of $22 billion currently available not including future state cap & trade funds), and voters only approved this project in 2008 with full construction starting in 2016.
the video is misleading itself
The Obama Administration awarded California $2.5 billion in ARRA funds in 2009 with the stipulation that the money be spent within a certain time frame as the funds were for American Reinvestment and Recovery. The only section of California High-Speed Rail that had environmental clearance was in the Central Valley so it was the only segment capable of being constructed within the time limit and so the only segment eligible for funds. The ARRA award also stipulated that the funds were to be spent in the Central Valley. It may have been better to start construction on the Bay Area peninsula, which would have pleased Sen. Wiener's constituents, but if California had refused the ARRA funds then there would be no High-Speed Rail construction.
Exactly. Prop 1A funds weren’t available yet and State cap & trade didn’t start until I think 2014, so that ARRA grant was crucial to getting things started. Plus the Central Valley is the only realistic place to test trains at their top speeds, and had to be built at some point anyway.
Just ask the Spaniards for help, they have one of the best systems on the planet at a reasonable cost
Yeah, I wondered if they have consulted with other countries on their railways
@@galaxylabs1877 Deutsche Bahn (Germany’s HSR provider) ECO North America will be the early train operator for the IOS between Merced and Bakersfield.
when this is complete, places like indonesia and china already have ten to a hundren times more miles of rails already in operation
If you're talking on full high speed rail than any country with the shortest segment has more than the US.
China does have the bigest HSR network with no competition but Indonesianjust open their first line which is 88 mi long with planes to expend it in the future.
The longest network in Asia (excluding China) is in Japan with a out 1800 mi with Turkey behind with about 1600 mi.
Spain has the second largest network in the world (After China) with about 2600 mi and France has a bit more than Japan. - all also have more lines under construction.
They have higher population density
@@Dog.soldier1950 California has the same density as Spain and pretty similar area (Spain is a about 25% larger in size of both area and population) an has the 2nd biggest high speed rail network in the world.
What matters is not the general density but how dense are the areas where people live an the distances between them. The US is not a dens country but 82%of the population lives in urban areas and those account for abour 3% of the total size of the US and there are countless of areas where HSR is perfect for.
Start connecting those areas with high speed lines and later on connecting the different sections into a national one. That's how the older rail network was built, that's how you built the national highway system (a far slower transport methos and yet it connects the whole country with a planned netwrok).
This will never get completed. Waste of money.
It really is a shame because there is so much untapped potential with this railway. Many European and Asian cities have become much more economically competitive with the addition of high speed rail connecting their cities. I wish Americans can realize its benefits. Yes, we know CAHSR has had issues and we know it has been mismanaged. But it has continued nonstop. Imagine if they had all funding in hand.
Wait... these cities are already connected by airplanes. So how exactly would they benefit if travel between them is already fast and relatively cheap? America is not Asia and not Europe. There's 3 major mountain ranges between San Francisco and LA and no way around them. There's earthquakes. There's huge communities that are already built in the way with no existing tracks. It always looks so easy until you look at the details.
@@mikelfrance-l6x both Asia and Europe have mountains, and Japan and Taiwan are two of the most earthquake prone countries in the world, and yet high speed rail exists there and works really well.
There are several large cities between SF and LA like San Jose, Fresno, and even Bakersfield, that HSR will connect as well, and the Central Valley is home to seven million people (four million of those living between Merced and Bakersfield where HSR will run).
The truth is California has the population and travel numbers to make HSR work here. LA-SF is the busiest flight route in the country, and it’s a six hour drive between LA and SF. The current fastest rail option, Amtrak’s San Joaquins, had over 900,000 riders this year, despite being slower than driving and requiring buses on either end to reach SF and LA.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc That is an obvious fact, what is so bad about this is that it should have been fully completed by LA olympics, but it seems like it will require another three decades to complete
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc Did they build two 20 KM long tunnels through these earthquake areas? Get back to me on that one.
@@mikelfrance-l6x Yeah details: America is not Europe and Asia. America considers itself the best in the world at everything primarily because of 20th century relics it built back then (and are now falling apart), yet America lately let's things stand in its way, spreads misinformation, complains about spending for railways but spends over 400 Billion over the course of 50 years to build and maintain the Interstate highway network while only spending a total of approx. TEN BILLION on railways in the past 50 years (with the exception of this bipartisan infrastructure bill congress created and signed into law by Biden), but then complains about the price of building them when we don't fund them and forgets inflation can drive the cost of ANYTHING, as we clearly have seen over the past 7 years.
You make it seem as if Asia and Europe are on another planet and are the countries who build high speed railways through mountains and Earthquake zones. Japan has more earthquakes than Cali, has MORE people than Cali and invests more in its people. They have seismographers that help protect trains BEFORE an earthquake hits their railways. Europe is building TWO tunnels through 35 miles of mountain to connect their entire TEN-T rail network, but you seem to think America can't build through 12 to 13 miles of mountain. But let this be an interstate instead, and most of you give "crickets." Ideas like yours are why we are consistently being held back and becoming a much dumber country.
Perhaps you don't realize the MAIN benefits of high speed railways is the city-center-top-city-center aspect of it; maybe you've forgotten we're CONSTANTLY being warned that transportation is one of the biggest culprits of climate change (oh wait, many Americans don't believe in that). Or maybe you don't realize how sick and tired people are of dealing with airlines, flight cancellations (of which my current flight is at risk), or simply just want a CHOICE. If YOU want to fly, go ahead and do that. The rest of us would like fast, efficient choices like they have in Europe and Asia. But yes, keep living in the past. California will keep building this regardless of where it terminates.
theres tons of naysayers but once its built people will want more and more.
Let me ask you something. Let's say someone gave you $300 Billion and you could spend it on anything. Would you invest in green energy? Fix the homeless problem? Invest in drug rehabilitation? Build desaltation plants? Bury electric cables so forests don't burn every time the wind blows? Fix the healthcare system? Or build a railway that is slower than flying at about the same cost and will take 30 years before one person can ride on it? CA has a lot of problems. Travel times between San Francisco and LA is not one of them.
@@mikelfrance-l6x good thing HSR will only cost about a third of that, and half the cost to keep expanding freeways and airports to meet the same additional capacity that HSR will provide. LA-SF is the busiest flight in the US and total downtown-downtown travel time takes an average 3-4 hours, and the drive is roughly six hours. HSR will take less than three hours, not to mention better connect the cities in-between like Bakersfield, Fresno, and San Jose, increasing mobility and accessibility between them and to SF and LA/SoCal, in addition to other intercity/regional transit throughout the state.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc o but like Why can't California solve the abovementioned problems with one-tenth of its gdp. California has so much gdp and so many resources, yet it has more problems then it should have
@@mikelfrance-l6x I also ask something. How can the flight be faster? It may only be 1 hour, but the time spent at the airport for taxiing, taxiing, and baggage claim at landing is at least 3 hours, compared to the 2.5 hours promised by cahsr. the train is more comfortable, smoother, and less likely to be late than a plane.
@@davidsz.horvath3357 So, you think there should be no security checks getting on trains? Which century do you live in? Why would getting on a train be any different than an airport? You teleport there?
The insistance for HSR to run to SF was a huge mistake. It should have started in San Jose with a connection to Caltrain. The existing rail to Gilroy is not used except for weekday rush hour so HSR is perfect to take up the capacity. Then new track should have been built from Gilroy south to Los Angeles and San Diego.
My thought was connect to BART in Pleasanton, then go to Sacramento, but bottom line for both of us is use the existing stuff.😊 Electrifying CalTrain is, so far, the best thing to come of this boondoggle by a long shot.
@@harleyb.birdwhisperer no need to mention that California within the next decade will be the only place in the Western Hemisphere with high speed trains reaching speeds of over 200 mph.
The initial segment between Merced and Bakersfield will connect with other intercity rail and bus transit, and is all CHSRA has enough funding available for. The sooner the extensions to SF and LA are funded, the sooner they’ll happen and less they’ll cost.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc speed will be like 116mph. Even Brightline west only has average speed of 116mph
The initial construction segment had to start in the Central Valley because when $2.5 billion ARRA funding was granted in 2009 it was the only segment that was environmentally cleared. Environmental clearance for the entire route from San Francisco to Los Angeles was only completed in 2023 at a cost of over $1 billion
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc Chris, you left out the word ‘empty’. How many passengers make the commute from Merced to Bakersfield daily?
San Jose to SF is around 50-60 miles, not km. So about an hour on the Caltrain tracks.
It’s 48 rail miles between 4th and King Station in SF and San Jose Diridon. 51 miles were electrified between SF and Tamien, which is the next station south of San Jose and the last one on the Caltrain-owned corridor. A little ways past Tamien is CP Lick, where ownership of the tracks transitions to Union Pacific.
I am confused. at 8:40 you say "Even though California is probably the 5th biggest economy in the world, it is just a state. And central, not a local government, has funded all other high speed rail projects in the world"
What does "central government mean"? In the US, would that be the federal government?
Yes, you pay both State and Federal income taxes in California. You pay between 10% and 37% of your income to the federal government and another 1% to 12.5% to the state government.
All environmental plans for every segment of the system have been approved.
Yes, for the SF-LA/Anaheim segment. Phase 2 extensions Merced-Sacramento and LA-San Diego have been greatly delayed. This is perhaps a planning error: a Central Valley backbone from Sacramento Airport to Bakersfield would have been a tangible foundation, with ready connections at Modesto and Sacramento to existing Amtrak-operated & ACE commuter services.
This is pure folly.
California. The world's capital of bureaucracy
“Greatest country in the world”
Just build the line. All the excuses i heard boil down to money. You have it US. Use it lol this is just sad to watch.
but then we need voters to agree to pay more taxes for this past prop 1A bonds. But most californians probably haven't ridden a long-distance train, like, ever, so it's kinda a hard sell
This mindset of “just throw money” at it is what California does but it has unintended consequences because of the bureaucracy in California, things just don’t get done because of regulation, because of greed, and because reward is not completion but to milk through system as long as possible (see the homeless industrial complex we have).
This has been a huge problem government in California for a while.
The prop was passed in 2008 and yet nothing has been completed. People are tired of that, especially for something that does not match the Car culture.
They should have completed the hardest segment first and the government should have gotten out of the way.
Central Valley to LA would have been killer and useful.
@@tylerriddle7735 when people say "they're just throwing money at the problem," I don't think they even know what that means, with any kind of specificity. If you had watched the video, you'd have a sense of why it is taking so long, and why it has been so expensive, and without resorting to clichés about fat cat bureaucrats and union bosses. And if you had been watching the progress of all the Central Valley construction, you'd know that there has been a huge amount of progress, they are going to start laying track next year. There's always the Monday morning quarterbacking about how it should have been done. But at the end of the day, it's getting done - and only California could do this. But the federal government needs to step up.
Central Valley to LA *will* be killer and useful. But because of the terrain, that will be the last, and most expensive segment to build. San Franciscans will be able to take high speed rail all the way to Las Vegas before Los Angelenos will be able to take it to Palmdale. But when it's done, nobody is going to be doubting the decision to build it, or to use the Central Valley segment as proof of concept.
why wouldn't high speed trains just replace the 'commuter trains' between SF and san jose?
Because the Silicon Valley is a thing and is the economic engine for the area (and the entire state). It's where Google, Meta, Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, AMD, Intel, and every other high tech company that you can think of has offices. The "commuter trains" service all of the small cities along the route.
Rail gauges are different.
@@harleyb.birdwhisperer both use standard gauge.
@agntdrake to clarify, BART is a fully grade-separated wide gauge regional rail service. It currently serves the San Francisco and Oakland cores, and is expanding to downtown San Jose.
Caltrain is a standard gauge rail, newly electrified, but with numerous grade crossings which limit speed. Part of the right-of-way is publicly owned, with the UP freight rail maintaining track rights. A private freight railroad outright owns track south of San Jose. Caltrain's stations are mixed legacy low-level & ground level platforms.
@@timgerk3262 there hasn't ever been a plan to run HSR on the BART tracks (nor would I expect there ever to be). They aren't related projects.
The planned route was always going to use the Caltrain ROW which is standard gauge. The corridor is (slowly) trying to get rid of the at grade crossings and there are funds ear marked for their removal in Santa Clara county, although I'm not sure what's going to happen with changes with the federal government (who last time tried killing Caltrain electrification). Regardless, in Palo Alto at least, it means there will be shoofly tracks down Alma Ave for several years while they get built.
My understanding was the section between San Jose Diridon and Gilroy was going to have a separate set of tracks from the freight tracks, which (of course) would also be standard gauge.
They could have done it by now but Elon was too busy with his BS Hyperloop and all his other BS projects
What's does elon have to do with this?
@aaronguzman7940 well he was the one campaigning against it saying the 'Hyperloop' was the answer... Didn't that turn out to be all B.S. like all his other wild claims
@@entropyachieved750 well they can make the inside Lane of I-5 for self-driving electric cars traveling at 250 mph. Currently The cost of a single ticket for each person in California one way would be $2,672 to pay for the scam
Musk could get you to New York in 10 minutes on one of his Rockets
@Uvoted4this 😂😂😂 just imagine the noise of these things taking off and landing everywhere day and night... Some simps believe anything 😂
I regret voting for it. It’s already going to be one of the slowest.
The first generation trainsets will reach speeds of 220mph outside of the city centers. That's fairly average for high speed rail around the world.
I always want California High-Speed Rail in California and I always love California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
Salute to quality journalism & from a perspective that trains, you know, are a proven working technology.
One vital point, seldom made, is that CAHSR is mainly a new right-of-way. Existing rail connections are circuitous and barely even suitable to modern freight operations. Both port cities are better connected toward the East than in the north-south direction. Some political persuasions would say this is intentional, to keep California more bound to the bulk of the US population on the east coast, three timezones away, than to develop more autonomously.
Unfortunately, the many car-brained politicians made the project more expensive. As far as I know, the authority has enough reserves to continue construction for the next 4 years. Once the IOS is ready, hopefully the rest will be faster, given that everyone can experience the benefits and effects
LA and SF is too big aerially to accommodate a central train station. If a person has to spend 30 min to drive to a train station, the deal is dead on arrival. Just look at the ridership of Amtrak because majority of passengers actually riding high speed will be these folks. Cities in Asia are very high in population density and they have existing and very convenient transit systems (buses and underground). Although anticipation might be high, majority of these people will stay in their cars.
But people already have to spend 30 minutes (and sometimes a lot more) to drive to airports, get parked, and ride the shuttle to the gate. And then they have to stand in lines to check in, get through security, wait for their boarding call, get boarded. And then at the end of the flight they have to wait to de-board, get their luggage, find a shuttle to the rental car, stand in line, and drive another half-hour into the city center where they want to go. The flight might be quick, but the entire process around it is inefficient, inconvenient, expensive, time consuming, and wasteful.
I'm about a half-hour from the San Jose rail station. And using CAHSR, I would already be at my destination in Los Angeles before I would even be in the air, if I were to fly out of SFO.
1:00 Emeryville is closer to SF than Oakland.
They should have just planned the main stem of the route straddling I5.
If the had done that, there would be no HSR, because CAHSR needed the political support of the central valley residents.
the reason they didn't do this was discussed in the video at 5:23
Planning the route through the part of the Central Valley where NOBODY LIVES would have been the stupidest decision imaginable.
I would think it would be good to go through a few less developed areas. They could make an argument that a new city could be created like in Trump’s idea for creation of new cities, then maybe they’d receive more federal funding.
certainly you can't compare with China but compare with Spain instead with a huge high speed rail network. on the utilities side everyone have the same problem.
Biggest problem is trying to serve too many masters. This project is a misnomer. It is not prioritizing speed, it is being compromised to serve the intervening cities along the way, for political and economic reasons. If California really wanted high speed rail from LA to SF they would have run it down the I-5 corridor.
Oh good lord. Do you not understand how high speed rail works? Stations have bypass tracks so not every train has to stop at every station. If you looked at the four Central Valley stations, you’d have seen that they too will have bypass tracks. Just like every other high speed rail system in the world, California HSR will offer several different services ranging from express with minimal to no intermediate stops, to limited with some stops, to local stopping at every station, twelve total between SF and Anaheim. The entire system is being designed and built for revenue speeds of up to 220 mph (110 mph on shared tracks in the Bay Area and between LA and Anaheim).
As for the choice of route, the San Joaquin Valley that HSR will pass through is home to four million people and counting, and the fifth and ninth largest cities in the state (Fresno and Bakersfield). Bypassing those like I-5 did would mean sacrificing that ridership for minimal time savings, not to mention voters approved the route that’s being built now. It’s also completely moot to try to keep arguing the I-5 route.
More than just about speed, this project is about better connecting the state’s interior to the major coastal cities and increasing mobility and accessibility across the state. It’s the backbone of a modern statewide transportation system comprised of local, regional and intercity transit, that’ll reduce dependency on driving as well as flying for distances better covered by HSR.
That is a very narrow-minded view of the project, assuming that the only objective is to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. The system will do much, much more than that. And just the Central Valley segment alone will connect up a population that is larger than most states. And these are also some of the fastest-growing communities in the state.
A train system that only had express service from LA-SF, and that wouldn't connect up any other communities along the way, would have been a totally asinine decision.
Why the hell can’t British people pronounce Los Angeles properly? There’s no Z in Los Angeles. They get pissed when we mispronounce the Thames but they all get a free pass on this? It’s Los An-juh-less, not Los An-juh-leez.
Trains are the future !!!
remember if conservatives are against it, its progress
Cringe at Los AngelEEZE. Ugh.
Every Brit does this. It’s obnoxious.
navigate
Sacramento
Los Angeles to Anaheim and San Diego😮
Democrats overseeing the project is the problem
Of course. We've seen how republicans filled tje country with cheap and efficient high speed lines 😂
There are many reasons why such projects are so expensive and take too long in the US but one of the main reasons is lack of funding. When a projects like this cannot secure the budget needed and lives day by day costs tend to rise and it takes longer to construct. Now, remind me which side always objects to provide any kind of funding for passenger rail?
@ CA doesn’t need a high speed rail. I doubt funding was the issue. CA already secured the funding prior to construction. They just wasted it all. Check the receipts buddy
@@kenxiong6830 check your facts, buddy. California only secured seed money for the project with Prop 1A. Rail systems should be built by government at the national level. And everywhere else in the world, they are.
@ the country already has a rail system that nobody uses. This is why only California is dumb enough to try and build one. Americans prefer to drive or fly. Nobody likes trains
The design of the route was deliberately wrong. The 114-mile segment expected to open in 2030 will be 9 miles longer than the parallel line built in the 1870s, as measured from the same termini located along the old line in Fresno and Bakersfield. The old line has a fifty-mile-long tangent perfect for high speed rail, unlike the serpentine and inefficient-to-operate new one. The cost of upgrading the old line for mixed use would have been a fraction of what it cost to build the new one, particularly with omission of the customary "padding" that affects almost every US passenger rail project whether though intentionally disputative property disputes, preposterous infrastructure (as in the present case) or more conventional construction ploys. They finally settled on having the Fresno station at the old location, though they will be doing considerable work in order to demean and deprecate the original station building: the necessary grade separation could easily have been carried out as an enhancement of the old station rather than a curse. On some level there are people responsible for these deliberate actions who should be sitting in jail. It is a conspiracy - part of the Freight Carrier Railroad Engineering FRA Revolving Door Cabal.
No hyperloop 😢
Another 40 years and 200 billion will not be enough time or money to complete this project.
Pronunciation is "Los Angeles' NOT "Los Anyyieles"...........Remember "Los Angeles" is a Mexican name Not a Gringo one.
Spanish name*
Um, the Spanish pronunciation is "Ang-hell-es".
Massive massive failure😂
Yes and yeah of course California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
Brightline West shows you what California HSR should have done to speed up the process and keep costs down. Keep the trains OUT of the secondary cities and re-use FREE existing Interstate Rights of Way to get reasonably fast high speed train service built for a fraction of the cost of building a new greenfield route through thousands of properties.. Would have it been a bit slower? Sure! But service would have been up and running by now and not sometime after 2032 or so...
Calling Fresno a secondary city is odd. It is larger than the largest city in most of our states. Interstate 5 follows the western side of the central valley, winding around the protruding foothills of the coastal mountains. This means that high speed rail can't follow the route of the freeway as it will travel at three times the speed.
Brightline is running a SINGLE-TRACK high speed railway in the median of an interstate. The comparisons are not even CLOSE to what CAHSR has to deal with.
What BLW is doing is fine for conventional passenger rail service. Just don't call it HSR because it's not.
What BLW is doing is a terrible way to build true HSR of the future. They are building it on the cheap, value engineering the project to death resulting in a train ONLY capable of an average speed of 101 mph. For a train capable of 200 mph, that's pathetic.
By comparison what CAHSR is doing is harder, more expensive, and takes longer, but it's the correct way to build HSR. Taking shortcuts in HSR construction is not smart, and will only cost more in the long run in inefficient passenger service that will need to be upgraded to stay useful.
CAHSR will be the preeminent HSR line in the Western Hemisphere traveling at 220 mph.
I agree with your assessment of HSR; slower is faster in terms of getting HSR built. The segment Bakersfield to LA could perhaps junction with the Brightline route? The segment from Merced to Sacramento could spur along the Altamont route to Fremont and across the Bay on a refurbished rail trestle. The joy in train travel is the passing scenery which is lost in a blur at bullet train speeds. Silicon Valley robot people compute in terms of themselves alone.
To add to the reat (not that fast, single track) It does not directly connects the two cities it's supposed to serve.
The line starts in Rancho Cucamonga, which takes 1h10 to get to from Union Station, and ends much closer but out of Las Vegas, a bit further away from the airpot! This makes tje promissed 2h10 journey to close to 4h which makes flying better. One of the advantages of trains is taking you from city center to city center.
Yes 100% California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
at the same time China connected t heir entire country in 3 months via train :(
Cars are much more efficient
There's a limit.
You probably don't live in a high traffic area. People spend hours driving home where the distance is just 20 miles one way. All because of traffic jams.
Much more efficient to move hundreds of people at once than every car in traffic transporting only one to two people.
@bororobo3805 just expand the road network which is much cheaper
@@jerrymiller9039 hahahaha . You've got jokes bro.
Expand into where? Have you seen the 12 lane highway roads in California that get locked up?
@bororobo3805 just tear out the rail lines and put that land to use
@@jerrymiller9039 Now _THAT_ will certainly help with our freight system, especially connecting the ports with the rest of the country.