California High-Speed Rail: Later, Slower, and Way Over Budget

I really hope Florida starts a Palatka to Immokalee line soon. Should only run about 6 billion.

I want someone to explain how a 130 mile rail is going to cost 2.6 billion dollars.

With a straight face of course....

I for one can't wait!

My favorites are the somebodyelsepaidforit trains. Those are beaucoup something. Eurails are fab, amtrak sucks donkey balls. Long as it's bankrupt california paying I'm happy for the government workers labor leaders and politicians who will benefit.

Make no mistake: it's going to cost a lot more than that.

I'll do it.

The 130 mile rail is going to cost a mere $2.6 billion.












































Per kilometer.

Good news people! I crunched the numbers. At $5.8 billion dollars to go 130 miles, that is well under a half billion dollars per mile!

As of the 2010 Census, the population of Bakersfield was around 348,000. The population of Madera was about 61,000. So if there are no operating costs--no fuel, electricity, maintenance, salaries for workers, advertising, or having to print tickets and 99% of the population of each city takes the train to the other city every day of the year, then a round trip ticket only needs to cost a little over $3 for this thing to pay for itself in a year.

It would probably cost around $50 to make the same trip by car. And take longer. Yes, you'd have a way to get around when you got to your destination, but no plan is perfect.

[edit: Seriously, though folks, this is going to make commuting between Los Angeles and San Francisco so much easier. Instead of spending six hours on the I-5, you can instead drive two hours to Bakersfield, park your car, get on a train to Madera, then rent a car and drive three hours to San Francisco. This is the future, people! Welcome to the Obamanation! ]

" For which of you, intending to build a tower (or a rail line), sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man (or State) began to build, and was not able to finish." Jesus Christ, Luke 14:28-31

Jesus hates credits cards.

He does.

We need a "mathintheredroom" smiley

Preferably involving a middle-aged redneck trying to count on his toes or something.

Now this sounds like something I could have really gotten behind:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rail-advice-20120709,0,973921,full.story

Fucking idiots. Don't get me wrong, I can see some merit running the line through Bakersfield, Fresno and Stockton, but telling the French, who have a successful model with their TGV to essentially fuck off?

I see no merit in it.

There is a reason I-5 doesn't snake through the Central Valley going to every little podunk town. Plus the government already owns the Right of Way, no having to buy it up or use imminent domain (with it's associated legal costs). And by avoiding populated areas you significantly lower costs. For HSR the big thing is grade separated crossings, either going over or under cross roads. The Interstate already does this. By forcing the line to go to every little town, not only to raise the time to get from LA to SF but you now have to either elevate or tunnel through the entire town. Orders of magnitude more expensive than just running at grade.

The French were probably attracted by the fact that it was the I-5. Here in France, one of the most prominent high-speed rail lines runs right next to expressway 5 (called the A5; "A" as in "autoroute") for quite a while. When you drive along the expressway at 80 mph, you see the bullet trains passing you up very quickly and easily.

Also, the French don't have the bullet trains stopping more than once in a great while. There are usually about 100 miles between stops, and they don't even stop at all of those. If a train is going from Paris to Lyon, for example (about 300 miles), it is usually non-stop. Takes 2 hours.

The French are good with trains. The Californians aren't.

(My mother would probably be upset with me for saying that; she was from California...)

More likely it's because I-5 (there's no "the") is the major highway in California and the entire West Coast. It covers 2,200+ km and runs from our border with Canada to our border with Mexico (the only interstate highway to do so). It's kinda hard to miss and runs right through the center of California, the perfect area to build this high speed rail.

There's a "the" for just about everything in the France.

I was about to spot this, then I saw the metric qualifier. You get a pass. This time.

And will be until I-69's complete. Currently, only I-15 comes close, but fails because it terminates at I-5 in San Diego instead of snaking down the southern leg of I-805...

I went up 99 last time I was in Cali. I missed I-5

No, that'd be 99 in the Lower Central Valley

This, I-5 is.

I figure I was being anal about the article in front of I-5, so I'd at least meet him half way and use metric.

99 is a bad freeway and you're a bad person for driving on it.


Though, I'm biased because it always seems like its the freeway with the highest amount of traffic in Sacramento. I avoid it like the plague.

Plus it's lame because, even though it also runs from Canada to Mexico, it's not contiguous. It ends randomly and picks up some miles away, and also merges with I-5 a lot. Aren't I-5 and 99 basically the same freeway by the time they reach you?

US 99 used to run from the border north of Mexicali to Blaine and into Canada as BC 99 all the way up to BC 97 a good ways west of Kamloops.

When the interstates came in, US 99 got knocked back to a state highway thanks to California's lead as I-5 and I-10 replaced a lot of the route. Officially, it no longer exists from Mexicali to Wheeler Ridge and Red Bluff to Ashland; Vancouver (WA) to Tacoma; and Everett to Blaine. In Oregon, where OR 99 survives as a whole along the original routes (minus a few places directly on I-5), it overlaps a good number of times on the freeway, acting as I-5 business routes when it doesn't overlap until Eugene, where the two split until Portland.

The I5 corridor would be damn near ideal as it is almost perfectly straight. Sadly, it doesn't check the political boxes for bastards in fly over country who oppose the train but demand it be built through their town. WTF?

Yeah, connecting Bakersfield to Madera makes no god damn sense and is none of the original planning. I'm hoping they're only pausing in Madera because it's just past Fresno (one of the actual stops) and right before the route forks west and north.

I.E. the same bastard Republican state legislature reps who kept campaigning against it and publicly voting against it never the less all demand behind the scenes that their little shit hole district towns all get in on the action. That's why the alignment now twists and turns to pick up each little town even though, as the French pointed out, a much straighter and faster route is to just go up the I5 corridor. That really is sabotage.

There are four 90 degree turns in this crap and two ~45 degree turns.



The original route, the one which the French agreed with and said was better, looked like this (in yellow):



See how it is practically a straight line (if you excuse my sloppy job with the paint brush icon)? I bet it is at least 30% shorter then the politically tampered with route if not 40% shorter. That just has to save money and make the trains travel faster. I find it ompletely unbelievable that the Republicans were making a good faith effort and still came up with such a terrible map. They simply must be trying to sabotage the project.

Seriously, fuck Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield as they're podunk towns which would cost too much to hook up and detract from the real money maker coastal cities. The San Francisco Bay area, greater Los Angeles area, and Greater San Diego areas are the ones who will use this service so making service to those cities fastest is what will make the system a success plus the line would be damn near straight. Also San Diego to LA (through Orange County) should be the first segment built as that area contains ~60% of the states total population and it would be cheaper to build than LA to SF.

If they want to do a loop spur off the 99 after the main line is completed then fine but you have to get the big money maker cities done first or else the whole system will be a failure.

See, here's the crux of the problem.

Is the train a high-speed system connecting L.A. and the S.F. Bay Area? Or is it servicing all the major cities in the Central Valley? Because the more it tries to fulfill the one goal, the more it falls short of the other.

Still see little use for the damned thing (and, given how much it's going to cost, it's a further albatross around the California taxpayer's neck), but what value there is with the current route--connecting armpits like Merced, Fresno, and Bakersfield--could easily (and much more cheaply!) be handled with conventional trains.

The whole thing remains me of the Simpsons' monorail episode. The whole damned idea was silly from the get-go, and comes at the expense of not solving real problem. ("But Main Street's still all cracked and broken!" "Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!")

At this point I'd rather it not be built than to build the completely retarded map which honestly would be a waste of money. With 4-5 90 degree turns in it and traveling hundreds of miles out of the way to pick up useless towns which won't add much to ridership totals it doesn't make sense. If it was the original straight line route connecting the four largest population centers in the state... Well, then that would be very useful and probably actually make money as it would cover one of the busiest air travel routes in the country only be faster and cheaper.

Zig-zagging to hell and back just so each state rep can claim he got his population 20,000 town connected? No, that adds massive costs, slows the whole fucking train network down, and makes it so that the high volume routes simply become nonviable. The first thing you need to do is have a main line which is as fast as possible (meaning it must be as short as possible) connecting the vast majority of the state's population and where people actually travel too. Sorry, but that's not Bakersfield.

I mean look at the southern most part of San Diego to LA:



It is literally twice as long as just going the straight line down the I5 corridor all because reps from the Inland Empire want in on it while it twists and turns down the I15 corridor picking up little towns like Lake Elsinore, Castaic Junction, and Escondido. The track even adds in one 90 degree turn which would make the train slow to a crawl in order to not derail at the turn. It could have been done in one 100 mile long straight line but now it's over 200 miles and weaves all over the place.

Either go back to the original alignment or fuck it because it's no use doubling the miles of track and tripling the amount of time the journey takes (once you add in 10 minute stops for every little town). HSR needs to be ONLY Express trains between major cities and the smaller towns get commuter rail which takes them to the HSR lines. That's how this system works even if Anna thinks I'm being elitist.