If you build high speed rail, you want ridership. Adding Fresno to the line takes the distance from San Jose to LA from roughly 340 miles to 366, adding roughly[1] 7 minutes to the route for express trains - hardly a dealbreaker. This also allows other trains to stop at Fresno and Bakersfield, adding a population of ~1million to the route, increasing its' viability.
A straight shot down I-5 would save a few minutes but severely limit the economic and social benefits it will have by increasing access to the central valley.
[1] 26 miles/220 miles per hour = 7.1 minutes. Trains that stop will add a few more minutes. Equivalent systems in every country with HSR have a mixture of express trains and local trains in this situation
But yes, they need riders, and thus intermediate stops. Most train passengers don’t ride the full track, just as most highway drivers don’t ride the entire highway.
You can't even put a decent speed freeway, much less high speed rail, on parts of the 101 corridor.
Of all the armchair alternative route planning for HSR I've heard—and there's been a lot—this is the worst.
> The weather is pleasant and I could see people living along route and commuting to SF or LA. Central Valley was a dumb move.
People do live along the planned alignment (which is why it was chosen) and do already commute to the Bay Area as far as that is practical (and a bit more than most people would think reasonable) with existing transportation options (same on the LA end), and both displacing expected growth in freeway trips from that and extending the viable commute radius along that existing route is part of what HSR is aiming to do.
I’ve actually taken that train. It takes 12 hours. A lot of that is padding because of the unreliability of the tracks, but also because the route is really tight. I doubt you would be able to improve the tracks there such that 5-6 hours would be possible, let alone the 2 hours through the valley.
The Central Valley has millions more people and is projected to add millions more in the decades to come, which matters for ridership and the viability of the system. On speed, the Central Coast is only faster as the crow flies. It may not seem like it, but CV is actually is faster and more direct than the Central Coast on the ground. There's a reason people drive I-5 rather US-101 or CA-1/PCH when doing the NorCal-SoCal trip, unless they're intentionally taking the slower scenic coastal route [0]. There are formidable Coastal Ranges on Central Coast (and much California and Pacific coast of North America) [1][2]. This results in an alignment that is slower and more expensive due to more curves, elevated viaducts, and tunneling. It's also much more vulnerable to erosion, landslides, and flooding. [3][4] CalTrans and local DoTs struggle to keep roads open after winter storms.
[0] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/San+Francisco,+California/Lo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Coast_Ranges
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Coast_Ranges
[3] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-sea-level-rise-califo...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/06/california-h...
It'll be huge for these people to have fast access to SF and LA.
The state has not declared bankruptcy (because it legally can't), not has it repudiated it's debts without bankruptcy (which it also legally can't), so I'm not sure what your point is.
You're right though it wasn't technically bankruptcy!
It isn't the first time the State has had solvency issues either.
It stopped paying a subset of its obligations from July-September 2009.
> and defaulted on a lot of tax sharing agreements it had with counties and the like.
It did not. It suspended, with the required governors declaration and legislative supermajority, a protected reservation of certain funding streams for local use that had only been adopted in 2004 (and only effective since 2006), before which such diversions by the state were common, to temporarily redirect $1.9 billion (which would be repayed) to deal with the state cash flow situation; note that proponents of the 2004 measure noted that $40 billion had been permanently redirected (not borrowed) by the state from the funds that would be protected by it over the preceding 12 years, or about $3.3 billion per year.
These aren’t “tax sharing agreements” made between different parties, they are assignments of revenue to particular uses under the State Constitution, which have exceptions.
> It isn’t the first time the State has had solvency issues either.
No, but it was the last, and Like literally all of the previous ones, it was a cash flow crises as a result of a budget impasse due to the 2/3 budget supermajority requirement (which has since been repealed), resulting in fund exhaustion without authority to do normal cash management things like selling short-term revenue anticipation bonds (there was more involved in 2009, but that was the foundational problem, the other complications were complications in solving the budget deadlock.)
I still have an "IOU" from those years sent by the state instead of the money I was owed due to overpaying state taxes. The state was essentially bankrupt for a signification time, even though no proceedings took place.
California had a cash flow crisis in 2009.
> The state was essentially bankrupt for a signification time, even though no proceedings took place.
Not really. It was unable to make payments because of the political inability (due to supermajority requirements in the legislature—one of the key ones of which has since been removed—legislative/executive disunity, reliance on voter approval for certain actions which failed, etc.) to decide how to change operations to do so, not because of lack of resources.
I guess it was a bit like an involuntary bond.
No. And... I can't even imagine a way to bring hope or scale to the process. I appreciate the question, but it made me laugh.
...The best thing we could do would be to lobby to get regulators to:
- increase the number and type of CEQA exemptions.
- Add mandatory automatic approvals on things if there's no response after x number of days. CDFW does this sort of thing for Lake and Streambed Alteration Notifications. If they don't get back to you within 90 days, you get automatic approval. It's a beautiful thing. In practice, it keeps the agency running with much improved efficiency. They still try to stall occasionally by declaring your application "incomplete" for bullshit reasons, but that only resets the clock another 90 days, and if you respond with all requested information, they can't do shit.
But... the political climate in CA is relatively unfavorable to such things. Lots of NIMBY's and environmental groups will oppose it.
The current route has been modified a bunch to appease local municipalities that want, or don't want, part of the tracks or a stop near them. Maybe that can be stopped by voting, but the wealthy individuals will continue to sue and force more expensive litigative battles like the one that resulted in this environmental assessment needing to be cleared
I think the main thing that has been slowing things down is severe lack of funding, both from the state of California, and especially from the federal government. This is probably due to the fact that there was a lack of experience (both from the rail authority and especially from the legislator). Thankfully it looks like they have stopped withholding funds and at this point they have gained some experience. I doubt there will be another doubling of cost estimate nor much more delays (perhaps a year or two more at most).
No, it's funding.
The switch to exclusive focus on environmental clearance outside of a particular area of focus was based on funding, not lawsuits. HSR has always relied on massive additional funding besides it's dedicated bond fund, much of which was expected from the federal government, and which has not materialized.
It is not even 4 years since Gavin Newsom ordered the stop on any new construction packages (which ironically made this a train from nowhere to nowhere) because there simply wasn’t enough funding to finish anything that hadn’t already started. Thankfully it looks like this era is over now, and we can finally start seeing things get the funding it needs and deserves.
OK, so do you have a solution to that?
I said "not much chance" rather than "no chance." Eventually, some watered-down version of a law like that might pass.
So while the last step in the sequence of events is wealthy people suing, the actual problem here is probably that the CHSR may be illegal to construct and there are people with an interest in testing that theory.
Any bets on how long those last 80 miles take to get environmentally cleared?
> Our last two project sections, Palmdale to Burbank and Los Angeles to Anaheim, will be advanced in 2023/2024
https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022-Business-...
> The Board’s certification of the San Francisco to San Jose Final EIR/EIS and approval of its project section will move the project section closer to being “shovel ready” when funding for final design, pre-construction and construction becomes available.
"Closer" to being "shovel ready" when "funding for final design... becomes available" is not a series of words that gives me confidence that meaningful progress has been made. However, I grant that I am no expert in the art of parsing press releases about big infrastructure projects.
Anybody out there with meaningful understanding of what this announcement might mean in practical terms?