California High Speed Rail Thread

[TowerDude]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

^^^

???

Are you talking about the High Desert Corridor link once CHSR is running through Palmdale?

Mea culpa, yes.

[Busy Bee]

The eventual plan appears to be that Brightline would concurrently operate out of Rancho Cucamonga as well as over a new High Desert link to Palmdale enabling through running to LAUS using the CHSR basin tunnels. Thus the thinking being that LAUS-LV Brightline trains would be used by those who find that route convenient and Rancho Cucamonga-LV train for those where an IE departure would be more convenient and capturing more ridership.

[ssiguy]

BusyBee...........

You stated earlier that once the first section in the Interior Corridor opens up and people see trains flying by them at lightening speed will get rid of all the naysayers, people will push for the completion of the line maybe a tad overoptimistic. Remember this CHSR is going to be saddled with a monstrous debt and so prices may be higher than one is hoping for. For one person the price maybe worth it as opposed to paying for gas but 2 or more, probably not. Also, due to opening in this section first, demand will not be near as high as it would be if it served SF or LA.

HSR is only successful if it has the connecting transit services to the stations on each end and these cities have pathetic transit ridership and frequencies. We also know that outside the big US cities, Americans are loath to take transit and especially the bus which they would have to as these cities have no rail. They could take Uber to get to the station and/or getting from the station to your final destination but that would wipe out a lot of the cost savings of taking the train in the first place. This is why Acela works in the NEC...........you have connecting transit so you don't need a car to get to where you are going.

Also, due to also not having near the ridership if it served SF and/or LA, the frequencies of the trains will not be very high taking the high speed out of high speed rail. You see this all over the US where cities build expensive rapid transit but with their low frequencies, their ridership levels are pathetic.

I appreciate your optimism and I hope you are correct but if the completion of the line depends upon the success of this section.........careful what you ask for.

[TowerDude]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

The eventual plan appears to be that Brightline would concurrently operate out of Rancho Cucamonga as well as over a new High Desert link to Palmdale enabling through running to LAUS using the CHSR basin tunnels. Thus the thinking being that LAUS-LV Brightline trains would be used by those who find that route convenient and Rancho Cucamonga-LV train for those where an IE departure would be more convenient and capturing more ridership.

I think that when the High Desert Link is built, CAHSR Trains should operate on it from Palmdale to Victor Valley/Victorville in a sort of "through running" mode overlapping with Brightline who would operate from Palmdale all the way to Las Vegas.

There could even be a CAHSR "circular" that goes from Palmdale to Victor Valley to Rancho to Union Station and back to Palmdale.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

HSR is only successful if it has the connecting transit services to the stations on each end and these cities have pathetic transit ridership and frequencies. We also know that outside the big US cities, Americans are loath to take transit and especially the bus which they would have to as these cities have no rail. They could take Uber to get to the station and/or getting from the station to your final destination but that would wipe out a lot of the cost savings of taking the train in the first place. This is why Acela works in the NEC...........you have connecting transit so you don't need a car to get to where you are going.

Also, due to also not having near the ridership if it served SF and/or LA, the frequencies of the trains will not be very high taking the high speed out of high speed rail. You see this all over the US where cities build expensive rapid transit but with their low frequencies, their ridership levels are pathetic.

I appreciate your optimism and I hope you are correct but if the completion of the line depends upon the success of this section.........careful what you ask for.

Yes, to all this. I've mentioned this in the past, and hope I'm wrong, but the entire CAHSR process is ass-backwards. You need service to SF and LA, not Bakersfield. The future of HSR in North America is dependent on getting some of the most transit-hostile geographies in existence to start taking transit at Euro- or Japan-levels. I have no idea how this will work. I imagine the vast majority of initial service will be people taking it like a Disney ride, not as actual functional urban-to-urban transit. These are metros with transit shares of 1-2%, and almost no choice riders.

If initial phase ridership sucks, will voters and bureaucrats have the patience to push forward? I hope so, bc this will work in the end. But I'm worried most voters are stupid and have no long-term vision, and we're gonna get nothing past the initial phase (which can still be spun as a dramatic improvement in service quality).

[ardecila]

The most realistic scenario for successful HSR in the US requires riders to treat it like air travel. HSR can succeed because airports currently succeed at short-haul flights. It will not prompt Americans to rethink their suburban auto-oriented lifestyle, but it could cut carbon emissions substantially along with the adoption of EVs.

That means, outside of a few select cities, most riders will not ride a subway to catch their HSR train. They will take a car - drive themselves and park in a garage, get dropped off, get an Uber. So the spatial needs for an American HSR station are different from Euro and Asian ones. Local transit connections will be available, but not a realistic or desirable option for most users.

Of course, there is a second tier of wealthy riders who live or work in/around *certain* core cities. So I think we will end up with modest city-center terminals, paired with huge park-and-ride shoulder stations in the suburbs. For those who believe in the continued growth and importance of core cities, we need to fight for core-city HSR stations to remain in the program, because I fear the emerging centrist consensus around HSR will deem outlying suburban mega park-and-rides to be "good enough".