California HSR

GDRRiley said:

The cheaper way would have been the 90s plan to run at 110mph down the coast.

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On what right of way and to where? Little confused on this.

crescent-zephyr said:

On what right of way and to where? Little confused on this.

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SP coast line which may have gotten bought by the state, SF/Oakland to LA and eventually to SD.
Lots of realignment work along with likely ITCS would have been used.

So the existing Coast Starlight route?

crescent-zephyr said:

So the existing Coast Starlight route?

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Yes

GDRRiley said:

SP coast line which may have gotten bought by the state, SF/Oakland to LA and eventually to SD.
Lots of realignment work along with likely ITCS would have been used.

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Would SP have been willing to sell for a reasonable and fair price?

GDRRiley said:

Yes

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Well that's at about 11 hours for the Starlight with an average speed around 40 mph.
Could they actually get the average speed on that route up to 80?

cirdan said:

Would SP have been willing to sell for a reasonable and fair price?

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SP had offered it up, thats how LA metro and VCTC bought their segments

crescent-zephyr said:

Well that's at about 11 hours for the Starlight with an average speed around 40 mph.
Could they actually get the average speed on that route up to 80?

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Focusing on just the SJ-LA segment this is estimating 8.5 hours vs the 10-11 it takes now. Alt 5 (likely at 90mph) or alt 7 were probably most likely given the state was investing in California and later Surfliner cars. 7.5 hours would be ~50mph.

cirdan said:

Would SP have been willing to sell for a reasonable and fair price?

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Highly unlikely. The experience of dealing with SP then UP was a significant factor in choosing that the HSR parallel the BNSF where practical, despite the ex SP route being in general straighter and better serving the city centers.

Something that most people have probably missed is this recent planning document for the Merced station that includes the proposed timetables for the San Joaquins/ACE connecting trains: https://cdn.sjjpa.com/wp-content/uploads/20240716202402/App2.0-3_MITC-Ridership-Memo.pdf

The High Speed Rail Alliance published another A-grade video, this one covering CAHSR, called The Need for a National Railway Program. Despite the title, the heart of it is about CAHSR, from the vantage of the Transit Costs Project at NYU. The interview is with Eric Goldwyn, who points out two examples of problems with how we plan and pay for passenger rail in the U.S.

• The planning and environmental report became a Christmas tree for unrelated infrastructure. The goal of the planners was to get approvals, not keep costs down, he says. The example is a grade-separation bridge not only for CASHR, but also for the nearby freight railroad. A worthy cause, but who pays is the problem. We have a lot of infrastructure that needs work!
• The environmental planning cultural mandate caused several revisions moving CAHSR further and further away from a park and monument. But the freight railroad was always closer to the site. Again, getting the approval was the goal, not costs or engineering or common sense.

The Transit Costs Project often talks about having expertise in the government administration, and maintaining it through a steady pipeline of projects. Most planning documents seem to be written by consultants. Administrative expertise seems like a double-edged sword, though, when it's less than expert. NYC has plenty of both expertise and projects, but TCP points out (not in this video) that the transit authority routinely hires a consultant to get around a bureaucratic slowdown due to rules or resistance. Most of all TCP argues for transparency, because no one knows what is going on in those agencies.

Another example of questionable expertise was way back when Sacramento government workers were trading against Enron in the newly liberalized electricity market, leading to volatile costs and blackouts. A consultant could have done better there! Or, Enron was the consultant, in a sense. It made out like a bandit, and then collapsed for other reasons. I guess Sacramento ended up fixing the problem, though.

The land acquisition for CAHSR was probably not aggressive enough, leading to many cases in local courts. All these rules do have a reason, though. When Shenandoah National Park was created, the state political machine consolidated cases by county and dispossessed many people unfairly, and closed their roads permanently. It was a scandal at the time, then forgotten for fifty years, except by local lore, but now is written about in books. Including one you can buy at the park bookstore. (One of the widely reported news stories at the time had an old man in overalls watching the park service burn down his house so he wouldn't keep going back.)

TCP also points out similar costs problems to the U.S. in Canada, the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore, all with a more or less English system, as opposed to the strong administrative state in France and Spain. The latter system is Napoleonic in origin, as would be Mexico's, but TCP doesn't get into ancient history.

JamesWhitcombRiley said:

The High Speed Rail Alliance published another A-grade video, this one covering CAHSR, called The Need for a National Railway Program. Despite the title, the heart of it is about CAHSR, from the vantage of the Transit Costs Project at NYU. The interview is with Eric Goldwyn, who points out two examples of problems with how we plan and pay for passenger rail in the U.S.

• The planning and environmental report became a Christmas tree for unrelated infrastructure. The goal of the planners was to get approvals, not keep costs down, he says. The example is a grade-separation bridge not only for CASHR, but also for the nearby freight railroad. A worthy cause, but who pays is the problem. We have a lot of infrastructure that needs work!
• The environmental planning cultural mandate caused several revisions moving CAHSR further and further away from a park and monument. But the freight railroad was always closer to the site. Again, getting the approval was the goal, not costs or engineering or common sense.

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Just sticking this in for reference.

I was part of the dreaded consulting group for the CAHSR from 2007 to 2013, so I will make a few comments, but try to avoid saying anything that might be legally actionable. Fortunately, you can't be taken to court for your thoughts. My own opinion is that the equivalent project could be built elsewhere for about half or less of the cost it will end up costing in California. There seemed to be a tendency by the state and every subdivision thereof to throw every change they could imagine into the project, thereby inflating its costs. NIMBY's were on steroids concerning everything about the project. Also, there seemed to be a near aversion to most practical and lowest cost, and the nearer the two came together the more so. Yes, the state did seem to lag in right of way acquisition.

His first example, the bridge over the HSR and paralleling railroad: For the one I am thinking of, that was the only way practical. Originally through Fresno the concept was to go elevated. Some in the city liked the idea as giving a futuristic appearance, but those that considered it a blight in appearance won out so that it is to be at grade or depressed throughout at considerably higher cost. (In an urban area, elevated is usually both lower cost and less disruptive as all you have is column footings at intervals instead of having to modify every road crossing and utility line crossing, in addition to major earthmoving. With solid walls on the outside to about car floor height aerial is also quieter, as the general noise is project upward. Yes, with steel supporting beams you do have somewhat of a drumhead effect, but that is not true of concrete structures.

There were several of us that tried to convince the state to go for aerial throughout the valley as it solves many problems that you have with at grade construction, such as cross right of way access, animal crossings, no need for road modifications or drainage system modifications, and trespassing. Their cost analysis made them choke on it because a simple line at grade is cheaper than the same length of viaduct, however that is not including the cost of road grade separations, other ground level modifications, and that the efficiency of construction of long lengths of viaducts will result in lower unit costs that you simply do not have in transit work. I may have said that in this thread before.

I saw in some of the anti-HSR claims that there were things in the alignment details that would make derailments likely, but nothing said was specific. I would dearly love to know what these supposed defects were, since I am the author of the alignment standards. Frankly, I think that person does not know what he is talking about, as there were analyses made of changes in forces for all the various alignment combinations. Much of this was in lessons learned by the Japanese in the newer and higher speed Shinkansen lines. There analyses are head and shoulders above anything done in the European systems.

George Harris said:

His first example, the bridge over the HSR and paralleling railroad: For the one I am thinking of, that was the only way practical. Originally through Fresno the concept was to go elevated. Some in the city liked the idea as giving a futuristic appearance, but those that considered it a blight in appearance won out so that it is to be at grade or depressed throughout at considerably higher cost. (In an urban area, elevated is usually both lower cost and less disruptive as all you have is column footings at intervals instead of having to modify every road crossing and utility line crossing, in addition to major earthmoving.

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If I recall correctly, that was a section where the HSR would have run parallel to an existing freight railroad for considerable length. Placing the HSR on an elevated alignment while leaving the freight at ground level would have created an insurmountable barrier, as any future attempts to eliminate road crossings by building bridges over the tracks would have been frustrated by the elevated HSR alignment being in the way. The only logical way out would have been an elevated alignment for the freight as well, and that would have been very costly indeed.

cirdan said:

If I recall correctly, that was a section where the HSR would have run parallel to an existing freight railroad for considerable length. Placing the HSR on an elevated alignment while leaving the freight at ground level would have created an insurmountable barrier, as any future attempts to eliminate road crossings by building bridges over the tracks would have been frustrated by the elevated HSR alignment being in the way. The only logical way out would have been an elevated alignment for the freight as well, and that would have been very costly indeed.

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That is not the area I was talking about. There is much of the length that is not closely parallel to a railroad. For the close parallel to a railroad yes, match the railroad in profile and grade separate both. There was not as much of this as originally envisioned. One of these close parallel to a railroad sections is between the railroad and Highway 99 and as part of this a few miles of Highway 99 are getting rebuilt as part of the HSR budget.

George Harris said:

Highly unlikely. The experience of dealing with SP then UP was a significant factor in choosing that the HSR parallel the BNSF where practical, despite the ex SP route being in general straighter and better serving the city centers.

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SP had offered it up to the state and we know that LA metro bought right of way for around a million a mile across LA including key mainline segments like Chatsworth to Burbank and Palmdale to downtown LA

Another example of HSR funds going to highway projects. It would be informative of how many HSR funds go to highway projects.

GDRRiley said:

SP had offered it up to the state and we know that LA metro bought right of way for around a million a mile across LA including key mainline segments like Chatsworth to Burbank and Palmdale to downtown LA

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Yeah. One thing we forget now is that up through the 1990s, as the mergers happened a number of the Class Is were willing to dump what they considered to be secondary or redundant lines. Don't forget that prior to the UP merger, the company in question was actually DRGW, not SP - SP lost out in that merger.

Of course, in terms of "reasonable" offers, I'd note that in about 2010 the state could simply have bought UP for something like $30bn (I remember this because IIRC it was when CAHSR's expected price decided to shoot through the roof, from like $30bn to $90bn). Way back then I remember musing that rather than doing the HSR stuff, CA should just buy UP, break out the chunks it wanted, and then re-float the company. Even if they'd hit the company's valuation by 50% vs what ultimately happened, the state would still have made a big stack of cash.

GDRRiley said:

SP had offered it up to the state and we know that LA metro bought right of way for around a million a mile across LA including key mainline segments like Chatsworth to Burbank and Palmdale to downtown LA

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Which SP ROW south of LA were they talking about? The one for the future Metro southeast gateway line? Or the little local line along the 5?