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The California High-Speed Rail has been in and out of the news cycle for the past decade, and it hasn’t always been… great. Today, I share my thoughts on the project and what I actually think about it.
Transit Costs Project: https://transitcosts.com/high-speed-rail-preliminary-data-analysis/
Caltrain HSR Compatibility Blog: https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/
Alan Fisher – Why US Railroads should Electrify their Mainlines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI1ctMHnrfY
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Ever wondered why your city’s transit just doesn’t seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
25 Comments
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My Texas Central Railway video, if you haven't seen it yet: https://youtu.be/xPczVsuIlsE
I thought that they can have trains on existing routes from San Francisco to the central valley, right? Like that is where part of the budget go, which is to electrify and speed up the main lines
I look forward for the video on Rennes as I have been living there for 10 years!
Ok video but it obvious that yk nothing about trains
Good Sir… you are beating a dead horse. The local agreement is, that the CA high speed rail is dead and there will be only these comical segments from nowhere to nowhere…
If we could make the political changes proposed in this video, we would achieve peace on Earth. As a San Francisco resident of over a decade, I say that the project as it is today is a political miracle. The forces arrayed against the project are intensely powerful. I recommend that you wade deeply into the nitty gritty of Californian politics over the last fifty years to really get a handle on why this project is the way it is. There is nothing technical about the slow and expensive progress of CalHSR. The problems are entirely political. I can’t emphasize this enough. The problems are entirely political, and changing the politics requires a time scale that makes that of CalHSR seem veritably instantaneous.
How about HS2 – why is the British government so intent to cut it to the extent that the benefits will no longer happen (only Old Oak Common to Birmingham, with a new Elizabeth line station at Old Oak Common)?
As for CAHSR, presumably they want to not immediately incur the vast costs of blasting through LA? HS2 is incurring such costs, as well as blasting through the Chilterns because of NIMBYs. Seismic risk in England is much less than in California
I have used Avanti trains (and Virgin when they were Virgin, actually they are slightly worse now). They are only HrSR, not HSR.
Never gonna get built. 2 decades on you just know that its all PR bs.
Fun fact: thumbnail is 395
I just wanted to put in a little Fun-Fact, since you mentioned CalTrain should use ETCS: ETCS has a maximum train length of 4km, which is an issue because in the US there are freight trains longer than that.
But obviously that shouldn't be too hard to fix.
Ive gone in circles a lot on this as someone from the UK and fundamentally the issues of cost come down to weak leaders, generally politicians and governments. Projects that are started by a governing body on a weak footing near always end up over budget and late because the governments that started them lack the ability to commit to them long term.
Cali pop 38M, Canada pop 40M
GO is having trouble electrifying because the shed at Union Station is just about too low, and they can’t remove it because “it’s heritage”. And as CN still owns the air, 6m over the right of way, they also have slowed down the electrification. “Thou shalt not build electric track within 10ft as we don’t want to evolve our maintenance to accommodate the added risk”
How to add billions in complexity: make all trains battery-fueled to withstand the non-electrified USRC. I’m baffled this would even be considered as an option, just because a wooden outdated shed is “heritage”.
Any takes on the sensible paths to take?
Thank you for your analysis! I would love for you to visit the Kuala Lumpur – Singapore High Speed Train project.
Oh goodness, hydrogen. Alright, theoretically I love hydrogen. I love using excess renewable electricity to create a fuel we can use for industrial, transportation, or energy resilience purposes, among others. Love it. Practically I am beginning to hate hydrogen. I hate hydrogen being used as a way to increase demand for gas electricity, I hate it because used to stall electrification of transport because maybe instead of what we know works now, we could use something that maybe works in five years (and has maybe worked in five years for decades prior too). In a clean energy society hydrogen will be a very useful fuel. Right now it’s a very dangerous tool.
German approach is to have trains that can use both the new and old tracks, and high speed segments e.g. Central Valley can be added progressively, reducing the overall time for longer journeys e.g LA-SF.
Chapters please
I always thought, having been following this project since I was a kid, was that they were forced to build this first segment in the simplest lowest cost segment because it was getting litigated to hell by right wing landowners.
CalMod was also slowed down because of the Trump Administration, when California's GOP Congressional delegation got Elaine Chao to cancel funding shortly before the contracts were set to begin. It was reversed but it got the project off to a rocky start.
Canada has a larger population than California now
An issue I'd have with the branch line option is the HSR would be skipping a lot of the big central valley cities entirely. You'd get maybe one stop in Bakersfield along I5? Branches are common around the world but it's usually from smaller cities to bigger ones not bigger ones to smaller ones.
Major misstep on your part is not realizing that starting in central valley, where housing is cheaper can also be a quicker way to solving Housing crisis in CA. Live in central valley, HSR to where your working. As housing zone issues by cities slows down our housing production. Also central valley is expanding as some industries in the "salton sea" may have a booming lithium extraction in the future. Also Im not hearing an alternative plan to what CAHSR is doing. Dont forget to add that the Democratic party, and Biden administration are putting a lot of money and political will on this project. Its going to get done.
But the point of high speed rail is to connect Californians. I get that it might have been done faster if we didn't go through the central valley cities, but that's missing the bigger picture. Plus these medium-sized cities are the most likely to benefit from hsr and actually update their infrastructure. With a huge infrastructure project, I think it's more important to show the value of transit-oriented development rather than undermining it's value for brevity.
Fresno
We are having the same debate in the UK. Why costs for HS2 are so high Why we cannot electrify at reasonable costs, why new power stations take so long
Why infra in the UK takes so long to deliver, why it costs so much. I am a civil engineer and much of the issues are similar between the UK and US .. we have structural problems that until are addressed mean it really isn't going to get any better.
Say for HS2 the project was started in 2008. The London terminus at euaton, the gov has changed the scope 3 times. 15 years in. Don't have a final design yet. You can deliver infra with govs behaving like this