Why the Los Angeles to San Diego bullet train should have been constructed first.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.พ. 2022
- We're building our first high-speed rail line here in California that will eventually connect San Francisco & Los Angeles, and travel at speeds up to 220 miles per hour. Unfortunately, revenue service for the 520-mile long project's completion has been pushed back to 2033 due to unstable funding and numerous lawsuits since breaking ground in 2015.
In this episode of Imaginary Lines: Return to Form, Space, & Order we will explore why the planned 167-mile Phase II bullet train from LA to San Diego might have been a better proof of concept investment for California to begin construction on. We'll also explore what our options are for improving regional rail service in sprawling Southern California.
Thank you to every single one of our viewers for waiting so patiently!
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Imaginary Lines is a show about re-imagining cities across California with sustainable housing, rapid mass transit, natural space, and other public amenities. Join Architect Marcel "Mars" Caldera and see how intuitive and resilient urban design can challenge the impacts of irreversible climate change while providing a healthy and prosperous life for all Californians. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I appreciated the super high production editing style, especially the audio edits at 9:37
I agree that CAHSR might have started in the wrong spot, but in my opinion it was both underfunded and had a rough planning team from the start. Hopefully in the future more transit systems can get funded with less concern over the price, especially with the amount of money we already spend on highways.
Hi Alan :)
Market HSR as highway substitution
Yeah, you also like that vaporwave vibe, don’t you
Alan, why do you think that CHSR was started in the wrong spot? I hear this idea very often from anti-rail propagandists and am very surprised and disappointed when genuine transit advocates spread it as well.
Their main claim that CHSR is a train to nowhere, but this is clearly bunk as the Central Valley houses 6.5 million people. Even in it's current form it will connect at least two million-population metros (Fresno and Bakersfield) alongside a bunch of smaller cities and towns with a couple million more people.
We see that land acquisition lawsuits and obstruction from NIMBY local governments have been the main tool the considerable opposition of this project have used to tank the project. Given how effective these land acquisition lawsuits have been in slowing the project down and increasing costs, I just don't see how starting this in the insanely NIMBY and quite right wing SoCal suburbs could have gone any better. Moreover, I honestly think I would have been 100x worse trying to eminent domain 100x more SFH small parcels of land rather than relatively fewer farmland parcels they are currently struggling with.
Just wanted to hear your opinion. Thank you!
Yep
The current LA-SD line can see upgraded trainsets and minor improvements to bring the speed up significantly without major HSR right of way.
If I am not mistaken, San Diego County has been double tracking just about the entire line.
@@procrastinatingpuma straightening the coaster?
Yeah, it should! But this would be a regional project and needs to be paid for by the regions that will benefit and not by the whole state.
There seems to be a lot of political infighting coming from the LA area pols in trying to hijack CHSR money for local projects. We should remember that a statewide project needs to bring statewide benefits! CHSR is supposed to serve the entire state, not just one region!
Yep. That blue line looks like it goes out it way to go the same place as Amtrak. But it is all about Tuff and HSR paying rent to either Amtrak or Freight Railroads to operate on their right of way.
@@qolspony Amtrak does not have its own right of way, except a few short segments and parts of the NEC. In California it always runs of “rented” tracks and the freight railways make sure that it can’t run good regular service practically anywhere. Hence, the need to build CHSR in the first place.
Constructing L.A. to San Diego first, would probably have been a politically bad idea. The whole state voted for high speed rail, and residents up north would feel like they've been had. So L.A. to San Francisco is a good start, although I'm unsure I'll still be alive by the time it's finished. :(
California has never built a high-speed rail network before so it would've been practical to connect our two most heavily populated regions that are closer together and in desperate need of rapid transit infrastructure. From a Regional & State Planning perspective, a phase 1 HSR project from LA to SD would have been marketed as a proof-of-concept or Pilot Project for bullet train service from LA to San Francisco.
Yeah that really makes sense. So let's start with a single track, $23 billion dollars to connect Merced to Bakersfield. Stupid.
@@jirky015 that’s not how this is going. Get updated and stop being misinformed by outdated information.
@@californiamade5608 Oh my bad. They just decided it’s now going to be double tracked from nowhere to nowhere.
@@jirky015 : The HSR ROW being built in the San Joaquin Valley is NOT "single track" IT IS DOUBLE TRACKED.
*Anyone with an IQ higher than 80 would realize trying to operate high speed rail on a "single track" GUARANTEES CATASTROPHE AND THAT IS WHY EVERY EXISTING RAIL CORRIDOR BUILT FOR HIGH SPEED RAIL IN EUROPE AND EAST ASIA MANDATORY ALWAYS DOUBLE TRACKED.*
There are a few reasons CAHSR had to start in the Central Valley. Besides being wide open and flat, which allows for testing high speed trains at over 220mph, the federal money they received from the Obama Administration had a requirement that it be used in the Central Valley. The CV is the backbone of the entire HSR system, and had to be built at some point.
The Central Valley has historically been economically left behind by the Bay Area and LA Basin, so having the high speed rail project begin in the CV creates construction and other jobs for those who live here, as well as provides business for local communities, both of which help boost the region's economy.
Sure but the current disaster of a project was always going to be the outcome of doing it this way - they will be doing well to ever actually connect the Central Valley section to Gilroy and get the line connected into SF, Merced-Sacramento might also be attainable but it looks like it could be decades and decades until finally connecting CV and LA. In the meantime that money pumped into Gilroy-SF and Annaheim-Burbank would have served WAY more people WAY faster and possibly provided the impetus to really push on a finish the project. History now though.
While I agree with some of this, given all the lawsuits that have taken place in the central valley over barren farmland by middle class farmers, it's kinda foolish to think the lawsuits would not have been GREATER in the richer, coastal towns through which this railway would eventually pass.
Also, the new Avelia high speed trains have been having issues partly due to the age of the NEC and, in addition to being delayed on the rollout, until that railway is modernized, those trains will not be much faster.
Right, that would be the case if the alignment were to go through the I-5 corridor and if it were a completely new right of way. However, either is the case, the alignment would traverse through the inland empire, the working class industrious side of southern California, and would hang a right and drop south down the I-15 corridor (mainly sparse suburbs) toward San Diego, which is also of lesser economic affluency as it is completely inland. Most likely they would also parallel existing freight right of ways, at least through inland empire. All the current gridlock in the Central valley is due to it being a completely obtrusive structure. I would like to think the SoCal segment would've been better integrated into the existing built environment.
This would only be more viable considering the freight companies cooperation, which could take some bribery, which might also make the cost more expensive. It really all depends, which is what makes long range urban planning so difficult.... which why need some mf urban improv XD
@@bryanschurmer5050 it’s better to build separate completely new lines than to bother with the freight companies
Time to dismantle NEPA
@@bryanschurmer5050 I don't think that this assessment is even close to reality. It is precisely in suburban SFH areas that opposition to any kind of aerial structure is and always was strongest! I think it is universally acknowledged that building aerial structures in suburban ad urban areas in California would have been many many times harder and more expensive than anywhere in farm country. This is precisely why the major metros weren't chosen as the place to start building. It would have tanked the project before any construction even began!
If you want to see how this type of a NIMBY conversation would go, you can look at the Peninsula ROW debate in NorCal. Basically everything was blocked. Aerial structures were a complete nonstarter, the torches and pitchforks came out immediately. Grade separations and passing tracks have been successfully shot down by the local homeowners. They even tried to kill electrification! Thank god that didn't end up happening!
Basically, if we started in populated areas CHSR would have been single track, completely at grade, probably not electrified, speeds at 79mph to 110mph, and hourly frequency at best! We already have the San Joaquins for that. We don't need another one.
@@bryanschurmer5050the current Central Valley segment follows SR99 or the UP or BNSF line most of the way. A route on I-15 through SoCal would definitely face strong opposition and high costs as their is a lot more complicated geography and uneven terrain on the I-15 corridor.
One of the main reasons they are not expanding the LOSSAN corridor is due to threats of NIMBY lawsuits, not from oil companies or car makers, but from rich residents of Southern California, especially those who live in southern Orange County and Northern San Diego County near the corridor.
And because it frequently has to close or operate on heavy speed restrictions due to the track’s coastline location and tight turns.
The LA-SD HSR line should have been built in the 1980s, as "American High Speed Rail" proposed, when it might have helped influence the development of Orange and San Diego counties.
You hope for SoCal big events like the Olympics and the World Cup could convince more people that more public (efficient) transit is needed.
Thanks for this. If Amtrak could just do 100 to 125 miles per hour overall, it would change everything about travel in the US. We're only talking welded rail and quad crossings.
You also need PTC and you need the freight railways to cooperate which they are hellbent on not doing! From their point of view Amtrak is just something that they need crush asap (but it staunchly refuses to die). There is zero incentive for them to let Amtrak get any improvements whatsoever. The faster they can kill it the more money they can make.
@@TohaBgood2 I thought the PTC was completed for Amtrak in 2020? I could be wrong. A lot of the problems that I see is that the class 1s got rid of their double mainlines but I think they can work around that with AI doing the scheduling.
The FRA mandates that if you want to go faster than 79mph you need to install cab signals.
@@thetrainguy1 i thought all Amtrak trains had ACSES. Is that not correct?
I like that you put the Slovenian Railways new rolling stock into the thumbnail :D they look nice
Glad you like them!! I think they're pretty fresh myself, made me think "we deserve nice trains too" haha
San Diego to LA is so densely populated, and with strong property rights in the US, this is always a challenge that takes decades.
Ya know, even a direct regular speed rail from LA to SF would just be fine with me. Let me sleep for 5-6 hours without transfers. Why is this not acheivable?
That's actually coming. Amtrak has announced that they are bringing back the Coast Daylight. So soon you'll be able to take the daily SF-LA train. It takes longer than 6 hours though due to freight railroad shenanigans.
You're right. They should have gone to San Diego first. Just because the cost of buying land in southern California keeps going up, they should have done it early.
Tell that to china lol they found a way build the tracks so high that property won’t be taken. Pass laws to block land acquisition lawsuits or allow HSR authorities to sue NIMBYs for land
It would never have gotten off the ground. Just look at what happened in the Peninsula corridor. The local. NIMBYs successfully downgraded everything to regular rail, cancelled four-tracks and even passing tracks (!), removed grade separations, reduced speeds to 79 and 110mph, and even took a swing at electrification!
Basically, even ignoring the fact that the whole state wouldn't want to pay for a purely LA-SD system, if they had started there it would have either died outright or would have become regular diesel rail.
This way we get an anchor firmly in HSR technology and the major metros are forced to come up with the money to get connected to the existing HSR network.
I don't think that there was any other way that this gets built.
Most of the San Diego to Los Angeles line is now double tracked. The only single track sections are from the top of the Miramar hill through the Sorento Valley to Solana Beach, parts between Solana Beach & Oceanside, crossing the San Luis Rey River in Oceanside & most of the stretch between Oceanside & just before Irvine is single track, about 65% to 70% of the San Diego to Los Angeles line that is used by Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner trains, the San Diego Coaster & Southern California Metrolink commuter train as well as the BNSF freights is double track guesstimate.
Loved your video! Didn’t realize how few subscribers you had until I went to subscribe, I can’t wait to see your channel grow!
It’s good news that the Central Valley segment has been constructed, the silicon valley to central valley segment will be in operation by 2029 and the full phase one with service to Anaheim will come online in 2033. And here I got the impression from watching the board meetings every month that the target was to get the Merced to Bakersfield segment up and running by 2033 assuming we get the additional five billion dollars needed to complete it. Who knew.
This video was absolutely fantastic
Thank you!!! That really means a lot to hear :D
This is quite shocking as a Slovenian. I never thought that I’d see our rolling stock outside of Slovenian media.
Also congrants on the video, the quality of it genuinely blows my mind.
I feel like San Diego is often overlooked economically or in its size. Los Angeles and San Diego are the two largest counties in California with 10 Million and 3.3 Million respectively. Connecting these counties along with Orange County and Riverside would unite around 18 Million people with fast transportation. I was typing this before seeing the whole video but that map at 5:00 shows what I mean beautifully. This should be a project that all Southern Californian counties take up
While the San Bernardino station is a desirable one it puts a huge jog in the LA-to-San Diego route - making the entire route into one big jog to reach San Bernardino - and requiring several miles of property acquisition through mountainous, thickly settled terrain. Yes, the LA-San Diego part should have been built first, but they have located it wrong, using the same ploy already implemented in the existing and planned parts of CAHSR to devastating effect. For instance, the part said to be opening in 2028 is about six miles longer than the existing parallel line built in the 1870s. At high speeds it's twisting and circuitous alignment will add considerably to operating and maintenance costs. This is a "pattern" in the sense specified by RICO Law and the people who have engaged in it should be in jail.
fantastic video!
Glad you liked it! More to come soon!
SD to LA is connection two wealthy metros. It was clear from the beginning that investment equity was the driving factor of construction the Central Valley segment first.
But why does Metrolink only operate during rush hour times? Because of this I have to rent a car for my trip. Metro link barely runs at all. I really don’t see it having trains every 15 minutes in the future.
SCORE program disagrees
Why are there Slovenian trains in the thumbnail? They seemed so familiar to me and then I realised i take one almost every day lol
To insult Slovenia
It would make a lot more sense to build it from San Diego to Anaheim and connect it to the California HSR.
I think the problem with that tho is it leaves the historically ignored Inland Empire behind
@@theluckyone3212 "inland empire"...lol
My favorite part as a San Diegan is it would have introduced a rail connection along the 15 to escondido, which would have filled out a much needed transit gap. Currently, transit goes up the coast from san diego center to oceanside, and then east from oceanside to escondido. The additional rail connection would have seriously jumpstarted municipal transit demand.
The reason is because of politics. Since northern cali and southern cali often have differences. Construction in any of those two would have been seen as favoristism. Besides the central valley is the biggest section and the cheapest. It just makes economic sense.
Actually it's just San Francisco and Los Angeles metro areas that the rest of California is at odds with.
Metrolink operates in six counties in California
Coming from a Central Valley Resident, Nah, it’s good that it started in the valley
Why should the HSR start in the Valley? The land is more favorable for a large project such as HSR and we have the population to support(financially) any established systems
Imo it should’ve started in Bakersfield and gone all the way up to Redding for Phase 1 and then connect the greater L.A and Bay Area through smaller lines within phase 2
This isn’t about “which county gets the HSR First” or anything about money, population size nor politics, Central Valley just deserves nice things🥲🐻 and starting in the valley makes more sense since some of the largest cities in the valley(Bakersfield, Fresno+Visalia+Madera , Merced, and probably others) use to be founded on and by railway lines essentially, like Fresno is a great city to turn into Train/Transit hub for the Central Valley and any other residents that travel between the Bay and L.A or even the various coastal and mountain communities… not only cus of location but also physical infrastructure that we already have in place, another city besides Fresno that would work great for this are Merced and Chico
I like seeing construction on the rail whenever I’m leaving for school or work, as long as it gets done and at least 45mins faster than driving on the 99 from Fresno to Sac or something then I’m a happy resident
I fully agree. I wish they would have expanded the line to Redding as well. That would have been the true "spine" of the system. I personally wish they did go to Redding because it would also have been an option to explore continuing north into Oregon and Washington IF those 2 states decided to "link up."
Also what many people do not realize is the central valley is actually the easiest section to build. The connections to the Bay Area and the Los Angeles basin are riduculously expensive thru geologically unstable mountains and the cost to build tunnels in the mountains.
The other issue was the legacy of the I-5 freeway. It simply bypassed ALMOST ALL of the central valley towns, to emphasize the speed to connect between SF and LA. So in a way the HSR project was a way to not have history repeat itself.
Finally, the biggest issue was in 2008/2009 the project was billed as a "jobs" bill in the central valley beause in the late 2000's any valley residents were out of work due to the collapse of the construction housing boom.
@@markjensen7091 I am pretty annoyed that I constantly have to remind people that if they had started anywhere but the Valley, this project would have died long ago. I guess no one remembers the bloody beginnings of a turf war between SF and LA over this. I guess everyone forgot that this is precisely the reason why the Valley became the only viable choice. The coastal megaregions would have eaten each other alive over this, and this idiotic fight was prevented only with the Feds stepping in.
And now everyone is like "oh, why didn't we do that extremely stupid thing that I wanted us to do but no one else wanted?" Kind of sad and hilarious at the same time :)
@@TohaBgood2 If they started in So Cal like the video suggested, TBH it would NEVER had been built. The Orange County NIMBY's would have stalled and ran the project into the ground. Why do you think the phase 2 goes thru San Bernadino county, versus thru the more direct Orange County? AND then you have the Bay Area Arseholes to add in as well. Where do I start? So CAHSR if they chose So Cal to build (even though it would have worked well), the Bay Area would 1 never voted on it, and 2 would have fought it into the ground because "the state would be supporting ONLY the southern section of the state."
THEN because of the Bay Area Arse holes you have the fact that they WOULDNT ALLOW CAHSR and CalTrain to straighten out the right of way to make the line have higher speeds and be grade separated. SO this is why we have the "below" high speed rail speeds thru the SF penninsula because CAHSR couldn't get a straightened and more direct grade separated right of way that could have made the route better for all.
So here we go, why did the project start in the valley? Because the area has seen a massive level of unemployment. They are allowed to develop a better infrastructure package to benefit the valley, AND the valley allows the most track to be built and thus creates a spine that all of the larger cities can slowly work to connect to. I still wish they would have built the line to Redding to offer a MASSIVE connection for all residents in the valley. This line would have offered a safe direct route thru the valley and pulled more vehicles off the I-5 and Ca99 highways. Then by having that big spine, the trains and funding could have been made to connect thru the mountains to So Cal and the Bay.
@@markjensen7091 I agree with most of this except the Bay Area hate. The NIMBYs are mighty everywhere in California and the Peninsula millionaire brigade has certainly played a number on CHSR. But it’s not a fatal blow. After all, that is a tiny section. Going 110mph for a few dozen miles isn't the end of the world. You literally lose seconds of run time. But yeah, certainly detrimental and shows what insane power the NIMBYs have in the state.
On thing that should be mentioned about the Bay is that this is the statewide nexus of support for CHSR. Without the Bay this project would not have passed and would have already died. It is the Bay that is currently carrying this project both politically and in terms of popular support.
SoCal pols are trying to loot the CHSR budget and is otherwise imperiling it's very existence with genius ideas like "50mph battery trains" (that don't even exist)! They are almost as bad as the Repub jurisdictions in the Valley that are waging open war on CHSR at this point.
The Valley also has some things to answer for here. Sure, some jurisdictions support the project, but even that support is lukewarm. Every other town is trying to extort the project for additional local improvements while knowing full well that CHSR is already low on money. I'm not even going to mention the many Valley jurisdictions that are openly working against CHSR. I don't see any of their colleagues going to bat against them and for CHSR. So I wouldn't say that the Valley is blameless for the problems with CHSR or even more supportive of it than the Bay.
@@TohaBgood2 Unforntunately, I do agree the NIMBYS are every where in CA. I guess what made the highway project better in a sense. Simply "we are the FEDS and we don't give a hoot about your local issues. We are going to build this highway if you like it or not." The state is more fractured than you can imagine.
I'm in the far northern most section of CA (the part that is forgotten for the most part) and if you want to know who gets effed over the most in CA, head north of Sacramento. The roads are broken, the rest of the state takes and fights every ounce of water leaving the northern most residents with none, and the massive environmental laws that the state champions has essentially destroyed the economic livelihoods of any one north of the Sacramento and Bay area's.
I think the biggest issue in the state is simply how easy it is to add ballot measures in state. Look at the re-call election of Newsom. So essentially the state ran an election that cost MILLIONS, for the benefit for the small minority that were not happy that their candidates keep losing.
Am I happy with the hybrid plan they have put forth? Not really. BUT if the project does fail, it will be because the citizens ALLOWED it to fail. Do I think the management has been wasteful, yeah. Do I think the execution of the plan was flawed, yeah. But the huge benefit in the plan is it has invested BILLIONS into improving the state rail systems in many ways. You get the electification of CalTrain, you get improvements to Metrolink with the potential of electrification, you get improvements to right of ways to make the rails safer, an investment into rail transport in the valley, and other smaller regional rail improvements to make things better for the state.
I personally wish many youtubers would focus on the good the project is doing, versus focusing on the "missed opportunities." When you focus on the missed opportunities it just feeds into the "HSR in the USA will Fail" narrative, versus "CALHSR built the Caltrain Electification," etc....
8:07 why blue monday start playing XD
Why not? :3
song at 5:12 is wayyyyy too hard for a vid about trains my guy lol
What year is the California High Speed Rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim and Sacramento to San Diego going to be completed?
When the sky falls sadly
If they get it by the 2050s, I would be impressed.
As an undergraduate studying urban design/planning from SoCal... this literally brought me to tears... (cue succession of illegible analogue emoji's) : 3 :} :')
I dont think you appreciate how rugged the mountains east of Los Angeles and San Diego are. The grades are no where near train friendly. Even though it's California, it's like building a bullet train in Afghanistan.
I honestly question whether the proposed Inland Empire route from LA-SD would even be faster then the existing line along the coast. With a few curve realignments and run-through tracks, limited-stop trains might be able to complete the trip in less than 1h45.
It would be considerably faster. But the cost to make it faster is pretty high. The only way to justify it in my book is that it adds completely new connectivity that would be impossible with the other routes.
Basically, why would you want to waste CHSR money on upgrading existing service if you can spend it on completely new service and let the local jurisdictions upgrade their local services on their own? A lot more service in more places is better than slightly improved service in the same areas that already has it.
One interesting thing about the routing of the San Diego to Los Angeles portion of this project is that it runs up the I-15 corridor, through Escondido, Temecula, and Murrieta, among other places. What that means is that, it's also possible that, had that been done first, L.A.'s Metrolink service could have had a line go to Escondido (they already have a line linking Oceanside and Los Angeles), and a similar commuter rail line linking San Diego to Escondido (like the Coaster from San Diego to Oceanside) could also have been done. Currently, the only way to get to Escondido by rail from either Los Angeles or San Diego is to use the Sprinter light rail line from the Oceanside Transit Center to Escondido.
How is the train going over the hills from Esco to Temecula? I thought it was too steep there for rail.
@@DiogenesOfCa I don't think it would be if they roughly followed old US-395 to about CA-76 in Fallbrook, and then use an alignment east of I-15 between Rainbow and Temecula, which I don't think is as steep as I-15 itself is. They could also use a winding route to get there to lessen the elevation change, if needed. The next question would then be, once in Riverside County, do they follow the I-15 corridor through Lake Elsinore or the I-215 corridor through Perris, where there's already a Metrolink station?
San Diego to Escondido shouldn't be as difficult, and a rail line to link up with the MTS' Green Line from where Snapdragon Stadium's being built, could be built along the I-15 corridor to serve Miramar, Mira Mesa, Rancho Bernardo, and a major mall near Lake Hodges before linking up with the current Sprinter stop in Escondido.
Escondido means hidden. It was never an easy place to get to.
The California Central Valley is not “nowhere” by any stretch of the imagination. It is more populous is than 40 states and is growing faster than the rest of California.
There is no reason to build a second line to San Diego. The route is impossible to build along the proposed alignment as a result of freeway expansion and the route from Anaheim to San Diego would be shorter and less expensive to construct, especially considering it already exists.
The reason San Francisco to Los Angeles was started first is that there is no passenger rail route between the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles.
Yes there is but you have to get on a bus in Bakersfield to finish the rest of the way to LA Union Station.
Completely agree. The Shinkansen in Japan was built exactly in this way, in smaller segments first. At the same time, you would think they would have done Sacramento to Merced too in phase one. Sacramento is a big destination for some commuters in places like Stockton and Modesto.
They got a Federal grant that was intended for economically depressed areas. The Central Valley was already favored to be the birthplace of CAHSR for a bunch of other reasons, so this just sealed the deal. But there's a ton of other reasons. For example:
1. If Sacramento got the entire state to pay for an HSR line and then built the first section serving just Sacramento then you'd see riots on the streets. Plus, SoCal and the Valley would claim that this benefits NorCal too much and block the project because it doesn't benefit their regions equally.
2. The Central Valley was the only "neutral ground" where neither NorCal nor SoCal could claim that either megaregion was favored. Starting there was the only way to ensure that either side does not torpedo the whole project. Just look at the current conversation about which mountain crossing should be built first. After the SoCal pols found out that the Bay Area one might be built first they immediately threatened to take away the project's funding. This literally happened just last year. This is exactly what would have happened to the entire project on a larger scale.
3. The Central Valley has the flattest terrain in the state (it's an ancient lakebed) and the longest stretches of open farmland. They would have had to build a test track in the Valley either way. It's the only place where they could do high speed runs completely outside of urban areas. Any other proposed starting point would still necessitate the construction of a disconnected tests track just for testing. By starting in the Valley they can just immediately incorporate the test track into the system and use it for operations from day one.
4. The Central Valley is the least economically developed part of the state. A dollar spent in the Valley goes a lot farther in terms of economic stimulus. This project was envisioned during the financial crisis so the economic impact of the project both during construction and early operations was a major selling point. Conversely, the two megaregions were extremely expensive even during the height of the Great Recession. More construction activity was not that desirable.
As someone who is not from America, I am gobsmacked that the mainline between San Diego and SanFran would be only single track in many sections. California literally has nearly 2x population of my whole country. In my country our mainlines between major cities are all at least double tracked, with many having 4-track or 6-track sections where the intercities lines meet the regional and commuter lines. I believe that for such a rich place, this is not only a great hamper on it, but also a great shame. :(
I hope California can get its current conventional rail fixed, because there's no reason the trackage can't be as big of a cash-cow for the railroads and amtrak that the North East Corridor is.
The rail lines built between the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California were built by PRIVATE railroad companies well over a century ago with their primary goal of the rail corridor being to carry freight(goods) with passenger trains as a secondary consideration.
The coastal rail corridor was built by the Southern Pacific RR with the main purpose being to haul out agriculture product out of the Salinas Valley into the SF Bay Area and into Southern California while the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe railroads built rail corridors in the Central Valley to haul the Central Valley agricultural products to points east.
With freight trains being the overwhelming traffic on all the rail corridors, both the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe got by using sidings AND as both the SP and SF both ran only a few passenger trains per day, using sidings for the passenger trains were more than adequate for both railroads.
If the (probably will never get fully built) California High Speed rail line is actually ever fully built it WILL be ALL fully double tracked as anyone with a clue knows that building a single track high speed rail corridor GUARANTEES CATASTROPHE.
Great video! A high speed line between SoCal and Vegas would be huge! I take the rail in San Diego and they’ve been slowly double tracking towards L.A. They’ve been expanding lite rail quite a bit as well.
Was that an Evangelion reference at the end???
They're not very bright. I have no idea why they didn't think of this first. Or maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.
Weren't the tilting train sets in Britain abandoned? I seem to recollect high maintenance costs as an issue. I was surprised to see the San Diego/LA corridor planned so late in the system.
An Italian company finally made them viable, if I'm not mistaken, though many decades later.
@@speedzero7478 Ahhh, something else to find the time to read up on. So much to learn, so little time.
Will it stop at lax?
Been saying this for a while. LA to SD is already a very successful rail corridor, and there would be much more support from the public for HSR in that area, which could help cut through all the beuraucracy. Then with money rolling in, it would make implementing the other parts easier.
Nonsense. That's the region with some of the most NIMBY people on the planet! After all the rest of the network is fully built out and carrying tens of millions of people then _maybe_ you can just barely push it through using a ton of FOMO rhetoric. But the locals will still sue the crap out of it when that point comes. Plus, that stretch has to go through mountains and will be slower than real HSR in a bunch of places giving the opponents yet more ammunition to attack the project. As is, even though the current stretch under construction will have the highest speed rating for HSR lines around the world, the opponents have no problem flat-out lying that the line will somehow be "slow".
It is almost 100% assured that had CAHSR started between LA and SD it would have already died. Meanwhile, the first three sections that are currently under construction in the Valley are on track to finish by next year. There is no way that the LA-SD section was going to be finished in 7-8 years. Just the lawsuits would have taken at least two decades! Just look at how they are killing a tiny realignment of the current commuter rail tracks in the same region! They are literally showing us what they would have done to CAHSR on that other rail project!
NIMBYs would have sued the HSR to Hell and back. The simple sight of construction workers would have sent the privileged folks in Beverly hills screaming
The public transportation in both metro areas must be improved first like New York before even talking about bullet trains.
Then this is USA. People only talk about why Japan has bullet trains n USA does not have. They will never talk about Japan state of the art public transportation.
If Americans are so obsessed with cars, stay in the cars
While I like the idea of the LA-SD focus, there would also need to be a NorCal balancer, ideally a high-speed replacement for the Capitol Corridor. If it needs to be interface with a later-stage plan, they could have done Sacramento-Stockton-Pleasanton, with a choice of focusing towards SF proper (and building a second trans-bay tube) or San Jose. Doing so could have placed the split somewhere around the Stockton-Manteca-Tracy area, and make use of connections that are already proven like ACE and BART for getting through tricky segments like the Coast Range, rather than the stupid "Oh yeah, Merced will be an interchange, and we're going to go via Pacheco Pass to Gilroy".
What you are discussing here has been considered, but it was inferior in terms of ridership to the current option. Basically, you can't bypass the largest city in the Bay Area and call that a comprehensive system. You also can't just bypass the wealthiest agglomeration of business travel in the state and the country. Silicon Valley will be a major source of ridership. Putting it on a spur is asinine. At the same rate might as well not pass through SF or LA.
You're completely correct and I thought about that too. If you want to go from SF to Sacramento, you have to go south passed Gilroy, all the way out to Merced. Terrible.
@@speedzero7478 No, you don’t need to go to Gilroy! You can just take the Capitol Corridor. From the city you can take BART and transfer at Richmond to Cap Cor.
What we really need is for Capitol Corridor to get the money and approvals to fully upgrade to 150mph+ electrified HSR, like they are already planning to do!
Why would they build the LS-Sd stretch out ro San Bernardino (just short of 60 miles), then south to Riverside, then to San Diego? If you have ever driven that trip, the geography is mountainous, which would require many tunnels and some very steep grades. There are currently NO rail services on that line, and it will all have to be built.
The trip directly from L.A. to San Diego can use the current coastal trackage (or remove it and rebuild it to bring it up to higher standards) mush less costly, and with fewer cuts and tunnels.
That's the whole point though. They want to add service to an enormous population that currently has zero service. The coastal route is a regional service and needs to be upgraded using regional not state money. Since we are building completely new right of way anyway, why not serve new areas and let the existing rail service feed into those new lines rather than cannibalize them?
@@TohaBgood2 I just have to ask: what "enormous population that currently has zero service" would that be? San Francisco, Los Angeles and even San Diego (the three largest cities here in the state) already HAVE rail service.
@@antonbruce1241 Lol, the Inland Empire. You do know that it has almost twice the population of San Diego, right?
I take it you're not from around here, huh?
@@TohaBgood2 You take it wrong, dip-stick. My family moved into the I.E. (Chino, then Ontario) when I was 10. I lived there, barring the time I spent in the Navy, until I married my wife at the age of 33. My mom and step-dad still live there, and I see them often. Don't EVEN presume to tell ME what the area is like, scumbag.
And besides....you OBVIOUSLY missed the point entirely, and one can surmise that you've NEVER driven I-15 south of Perris at any time of your life.
@@antonbruce1241 Lol, it's like you're a child or something.
I call bullcrap, bud. How come you don't know that more people live in the Inland Empire than in San Diego? Were you homeschooled or something?
Really the opposite of what they are doing would have been more successful. Build SD to LA and Sacramento to SJ/SF at the same time, then connect them through the central valley. You get something done that like 90% of the population can use, get the expensive land before inflation and you get fares earlier to help with construction costs. That and they shouldn't have wasted so much money on consultants and just eminent domained a lot of the land.
Land acquisition lawsuits are why most Chinese HSR lines are ELEVATED LINES!!!
Yeah, but in the US elevated lines are much harder not easier in terms of NIMBY opposition. An elevated line is a surefire way to get a project cancelled around here.
@@TohaBgood2ELEVATED is how most HSR is built in different geography. It’s literally illegal and unsafe to be at grade and requires several extra bridges for each crossing
Please do more transport related content with this much high quality production. Cause its really is eye appealing.
I appreciate that, in order to provide a proof-of-concept for HSR, the US federal gov't chose a corridor that has high land prices, crosses two mountain ranges, and is in a seismically active zone.
Hey, give them credit, this is proof of concept for *modern* HSR. The Acela corridor was high speed as of 1990s definitions! Of course, global experience tells us that HSR is much better when it operates as a bunch of random segments with no connectivity or interoperability as opposed to a cohesive network, which is why HSR in Texas is the obvious next step
The Federal government has little to do with this. This is a state project that we voted for in a referendum. The Feds just gave them some tiny portion of grant money, a fraction of what they contribute to a highway project.
The point of the project is to connect two of the most vibrant economic regions in the country. Both the Bay Area and LA would be top 20 countries by economy if they were separate nations! California itself is now the 4th largest economy in the world after only the US, China, and Japan. In LA and the Bay we have have economies that would basically be members of the G20 if they seceded! It makes a ton of sense to connect these two megaregions with HSR to further turbochage their growth. Literally the entire country would benefit from this purely from all the additional economic activity that would be generated.
Respectfully, you’re wrong. The CV is more important
THE FIRST LINE THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUILT IS THE LINE FROM ANAHEIM TO BURBANK, AND THROUGH THE MOUTAIN TO PALMDALE.
PRIVATE MONEY WOULD HAVE BUILT TO LAS VEGAS. EXTEND TO LINE FROM ANAHEIM TO RIVERSIDE, AND EVENTUALLY TO PHEONIX WITH PRIVATE MONEY. LA 2ND CITY TO PHEONIX 5TH CITY MAKES MORE SENSE.
A political reality in California that must be understood is that the state is split between north and south as well as coastal and inland. This project got going with a $10 billion bond from Prop 1A in 2008. If it were put forth that the initial goal would be to link L.A. and S.D., there is no way the northern portion of the state would have voted for it. We now have the benefit of knowledge not possessed in 2008, and what we know is that the CAHSR Authority will defer to a blended system and shared ROW whenever possible to keep the project's massive cost down. What does this mean for L.A. to S.D.? It means the train will likely run in existing freight ROW through much of the Inland Empire. That has different meanings depending on route, but let's assume the populated portions of the I.E. don't get screwed and they run the train through Ontario and Riverside and in the I-215 ROW down to Murrieta rather than along I-15 where far fewer people live. That area is populated all the way from L.A. to Perris, so you're at 79mph(110mph at best) through that entire portion. From there you're either extremely expensive(read not happening) or doing something really dumb like putting the train in the I-15 ROW most of the rest of the way. Then you're dealing with freeway grades and curves, so pretty likely looking at limited speeds there as well. The only portion of this project really that has any hope as shining as true HSR is Burbank to Gilroy. And then most of Merced to Sacramento if that ever happens. The rest will be a bit of a flop.
Dude, again you making completely unsupported claims about the future. All of what you said is entirely your fantasy and has nothing to do with reality.
The Peninsula ROW is an extremely weird special case. There are literally towns full of billionaires on the route of CAHSR who have not only a ton of idle money to oppose construction that they don't like, but also actual political pull in the state. You can't use a sample of one to make any conclusions. This is a singular and very weird case. Plus, isn't the section from Burbank to LA Union Station grade separated and in tunnels? That winnows down all your prior data about this to a two-datapoint sample with 0.5 incidence of your pretend "sure thing" option.
This is sloppy thinking at the very best. But it smells more like idle fantasy. How could you possibly make the conclusions that you have made from the data that exists? This is just a bunch of nonsense.
You make so much more sense regarding CAHSR than some argumentive rude others such as he who calls others dude. The Peninsula and urban LA sections of slow tracks will unquestionably impede the speed.
Don't go to the San Francisco bay area 😡 we too many problems of our own 😡😡
It is turning into a decaying wasteland.
I think your right and i have always thought the far closer cities should have been connected first not only because there close and Tijuana could also be joined with proper polotics!!!
Glad to see more advocacy for CHSR! I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but there are soooo many issues with the info in this video. The main issue is that all of this has already been discussed and a "SoCal first segment" has been relatively easily dismissed as an option on its merits.
Here are some of the main issues (but by far not all),
1. It parrots an anti-HSR and anti-rail talking point. The idea that "they started in the wrong place" is a common way that opponents are trying to cancel this project. When you give credence to this point of view you need to be aware that it will immediately be twisted and used in the propaganda war to try and cancel or at least delay this project. If you want this project cancelled that's fine, but otherwise you need to be careful that you don't fall into the propaganda trap. A lot of what you mention here is actually debunked anti-CHSR propaganda paid for by oil shills. It is unfortunate to hear it here.
2. There is already ample practical evidence as to why starting construction in the heavily populated areas was and still is a bad idea. Just look at the Peninsula corridor in the Bay if you want to see how this would have gone. In brief, the local NIMBYs managed to kill four-tracking and even passing tracks (!). They have managed to kill grade separation almost entirely. They have managed to limit speeds to 79 and 110mph. They have successfully blocked any attempts to straighten slow sections track, so now there are 50 and even 30mph sections that can't be removed! Even electrification was under attack and was almost cancelled! In other words, if they started building in SoCal what we would have gotten would not have been HSR at all. We would have gotten a minor upgrade on regional Metrolink and Amtrak service. That is good, but should be done on local not state money and not by CHSR but by Metrolink and Co.
3. You can't blow all the approved $10 billion worth of statewide project moneys on one part of the state and ignore the rest of the state! This is a statewide project funded by all the taxpayers of California. If you concentrate the early benefits from this project in one region, then the rest of the state loses interest and refused to pay the rest of the money. No one cares that there is a very good system built on their tax dime somewhere else in the state. Everyone wants to see that train running in their own town. If one of the two coastal megaregions were chosen, the project would have lost too much support and would have already been cancelled by now. The Central Valley was chosen as "neutral territory" precisely to prevent this cancellation scenario! And even now the LA area politicians are trying to reverse that decision and run away with the money! (Single-tracked 50mph battery train anyone?)
4. Furthermore, starting in NorCal is superior to starting in "SoCal" by every conceivable metric. The Bay has a rapidly expanding megaregion while LA and SD are largely stagnant in terms of distances. People in the "greater Bay" commute and travel from farther and farther afield for business and work every year. In both LA and SD the megaregions are largely tapped out in terms of outward growth, i.e. people already live at the max conceivable distances that they can sustain. Unlike LA, the Bay Area population actually likes and takes trains, and we have relatively dense downtowns to travel to and from. We are also willing to pay for upgrades where state money comes short. I contend that even if CHSR were to brave our North-South mega-rivalry, it is almost a foregone conclusion that the Bay Area would have been chosen. Even now, the Pacheco pass is being prioritized over the Tehachapi pass precisely because ridership in/from the Bay is expected to be much larger.
*There are many more reasons but I don't want to make this too long. My main point is that this conversation has already been had and a SoCal first segment lost objectively and on the merits to the current strategy. You can either look at the contemporaneous debate to see why or you can just look a little deeper at the alternatives (plural!) it lost to. But the point stands, a SoCal first segment would have been much worse than what we have now and would have made the whole project more likely to be cancelled for a wide swath of reasons.*
Please feel free to ask if you have any questions on this! I was watching the debate on this as it was going on at the time and can explain some of the points or direct you to more expansive treatments of the reasoning.
Loved the dissociative interlude in the middle of the vid! Great stuff! ELECTRIFY AND NATIONIALIZE
i doubt that the " build it and they will come " idea will ever work in California . i grew up there and watched it spread out instead of up for decades .Even if any of this rail system is completed , i'm guessing it will be a flop due to low ridership.
getting quickly from one large metro area to another is only part of the problem . once you arrive at the station it's right back to needing a car to get to any outlying areas .
It's practically impossible for it to be a flop. It would serve one of the most popular and congested travel corridor in the world. There is an incredible need for extra capacity for this type of trip in the state. Even the slower train options are already incredibly popular in California. This system is basically just an upgrade (an extremely big one) on the current options. At the very least those costly options could now be dropped in favor of HSR.
@@TohaBgood2 His point is well taken, however. High-speed rail is most efficient if there is available local public transportation available at each station (which is true for the Northeast Corridor). For the current segment, let's say I take the high-speed train from Merced to Bakersfield for an important business conference in Bakersfield. Once I arrive at the Bakersfield station, how do I get to my business conference? Taxi? Uber? Rent a car?
@@stevenlitvintchouk3131 Uber and Lyft, pretty much. But neither town are that big. They're pretty concentrated, so you can cross to pretty much anywhere you need to go in about 20 minutes.
That being said, at least Fresno is densifying their downtown area around the station. They already have reasonable bus service. Bakersfield is a bit farther behind but is also moving in the right direction. There is also a new east-west rail service planned for the Central Valley. California has been investing in rail and other transit for about 30 years now. Even LA has a metro/subway system now. If the state keeps moving in the right direction like this, soon enough California will match the Northeast in terms of transit.
The Bay Area is already one of the best most transit-dense metros in the country. LA is following closely behind. This seemed unimaginable just a couple of decades ago, but here we are!
The end just kills the whole thing, just another transitard preaching and saying big oil bad.
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The fallacy is that in order to get great rail services the automobile will go into decline. Look to Tokyo for the greatest example of this. They have the best metro/inter City/high speed rail network on the planet and Tokyo still has congestion like LA and Houston. And the Japanese auto makers are among the largest in the world. The argument isn't to have one you must get rid of the other but to add option and choice to the community themselves. You'll never get rid of cars because they serve a different function from trains but in the US it has only been discussed as One function two different modes and we have to choose between them, never the argument is the train takes me to work and my car takes me to hike the mountains.
I don't see how you can ever get rid of cars without getting rid of the sprawling low-density suburbs that we already have in much of the nation (not just CA by any means). We can't just wipe out 2/3 of a century of real estate development and start over. Nor has anyone explained what happens to all the trucks that use those same roads. E-commerce is impossible without efficient truck delivery service, so all those wide roads have to be maintained, not abolished.
Build them in highway medians
Yep. We have that in Perth Australia in the middle of freeways. Normal metro services mind you
Awful idea for a variety of reasons,
1. Only works well with new highways that are designed around rail. If you have existing highways, they are simply not designed for fast rail. The absolute best you can do is 150 mph which is too slow to make a lot of Cal routes viable HSR.
2. You need thick 10ft tall barriers on both sides (!) of the train to pass safety regs for HSR. You'll be riding in a concrete well the entire time.
3. Extremely expensive to fit HSR lines in populated areas with pinned highways. Often times means that you have to single track which kills frrequencies.
4. Awful passenger experience. Noisy cramped stations, you have to look at a highway or a blank wall the whole ride, etc.
Many more reasons why this model isn't used, but this sampling should be enough to start you off.
Look up Transperth Mandurah / joondalup passenger rail... Everything you just said is proveably wrong..
@@psychedelicprawncrumpets9479 Was this answer meant for me?
The Mandurah line's top speed is about 80 mph. That's not HSR, it's not even "increased speed rail". It's just a regular subway line with conventional rail speeds. Amtrak, BART, and Caltrain all go about that fast.
For HSR operations (above 150mph sustained) you need incredibly straight track both in terms of curves and elevation. Highways are simply not built to that standard because it is unnecessary and a lot more expensive.
Hence, you can safely do up to about 80 mph on most conventional highway median ROWs, and up to 150 mph if you happen to have particularly long straight sections. But since it's a highway, eventually you'll encounter bends for which you need to slow down significantly. On a train, both reaching 150+ mph and slowing down takes a long time. It's just not practical to run trains like that and it certainly isn't what one would call "real HSR". It's just grade separated conventional rail. Better than nothing, but not real HSR.
The reason it wasn't built first was purely political, there were congresspersons from CA who wouldn't vote for it unless their section was built first, so we ended up building the most low-usage section first.
Build California High Speed Rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Sacramento to San Diego now.
this was a great video, but i think for people fighting the california bullshit for 15 years to get this thing built are happy to see any dirt being shoveled. even if it is in the middle of nowhere in the valley.
Lol, bud, the first section is already finishing major construction in March. They were at 98% six months ago. Two more section are above 90% completion and are due to complete in the next two years.
You have no idea what you're talking about. All the right wing propaganda that you've goggled up without thinking is simply lying.
Just electrify the surfliner
What's would be the point? It falls into the ocean every six months!
We need a secure and fast inland route between LA and SD. The Surfliner is cool, but it just can't do the necessary volume of passengers with proper reliability of service.
@@TohaBgood2 electrify and move it inland from the bluffs
@@Fidel_cashflo Extremely expensive! Requires taking homes from NIMBY millionaires, the same NIMBY millionaires who have successfully blocked prior attempts to add a second track and electrify the Surfline!
What makes you think that a new effort to upgrade the Surfline, but this time involving home takings will be any more successful than the previous attempts?
No. A new right of way away from the NIMBYS and fully HSR is needed. I'm not even going to mention the 4.5 million people in the Inland Empire that this new line would serve vs the ungrateful rabid NIMBY millionaires!
@@TohaBgood2 will give people a quick and cheaper alternative to get to SD rather than waiting 100 years for CAHSR 2
@@Fidel_cashflo Lol, CAHSR Phase 2 is already in planning. They are at least doing preparatory work. Your plan would only start that work now.
What makes you think that it would be able to be done faster than an already existing project.
Plus, you're not addressing the elephant in the room! The NIMBYs will block this new project exactly how they blocked the previous iterations. Nothing has changed. All the legislation that allows them to block projects is still there. It's still infinitely easier to build stuff in the middle of nowhere where the NIMBYs are less of a concern. (Still present, but not as powerful.)
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Politics GRRRR hate them....
It's not just politics. The SoCal first segment lost to the other options on merits. Politics was part of the reasoning, but definitely not the deciding factor. This video is pretty biased to SoCal. The author is probably based there or at least a fan of the area. This was discussed extensively when the planning was being done. SoCal lost on every point. C'est la vie.
When it comes to alot of stuff San Diego is never part of the plan its always LA
Oh this makes sense, exactly why it wouldn't have happened in California
No, it doesn't make sense. This option was looked at and dismissed. There is extensive reasoning for why if you want to look it up. It would make zero sense to start here in terms of both expense and ridership projections.
If they were to start in one of the big metros it would not have been SoCal anyway. It would have been the Bay. Look it up.
@@TohaBgood2 I mean. With the amount of money they’re currently spending and all the stations being constructed that will slow the journey time down massively. Yeah, building from LA to San Diego would have worked a lot better
@@Da__goat What are you talking about? What stations are they building?
Plus, you do understand that there will be both non-stop express, and limited stop services, right? There’s literally a legal requirement for a 2h40m non-stop train!
Because we have freeways and a high speed train called Southwest airlines. Besides look how much money has been spent on California airports in the last decade. EV's are coming in as well. I once drove from LA at Sunset blvd and made it to Garnet ave exit in San Diego in an hour and half.
Do you realize how much highways cost to build and maintain?
@@darthmaul216 already built
@@sdrob6374 And already full! How about all the insane congestion and future demand?
Must be nice to miss all that traffic
Democrat President, and both houses of congress. Right now is the one chance for HsR, possibly within the next 10 years to get funding. LIkely things are going to be worse for the D-party coming up here, so it is basic not happening now, and likely for awhile longer.