California High-Speed Rail

The train will never connect LA and SF. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/california-rail-project-advances-amid-cries-of-boondoggle.html?pagewanted=all The first phase would be a 130-mile stretch from Bakersfield to just south of Chowchilla in central California, at a cost of just over $6 billion; of that, $2.6 billion would come from a $9 billion high-speed rail bond passed by California voters in 2008, and $3.5 billion from federal stimulus money. ...

It'll be more like 3 hours, and it will end up costing around $100 billion. It would be dramatically cheaper and faster to subsidize free plane tickets between LA and SF for the next 50 years.HSR works well in places with high density and competent infrastructure construction strategies. California has neither.

California voted to build high speed rail, they're spending $35B for nowhere to nowhere. If built with Shinkansen efficiency, they'd get 1000 km for the same money, more than enough for San Diego to San Francisco to Sacramento.There's simply too much bureaucracy to overcome, too many fingers in the pot, too many laws blocking expediency. The USA is a broken cruise liner full speed ahead to climate destruction and it won't be stopped without blood.

A train from 2 hours outside LA to 2 hours outside SF is not doing any CA taxpayers any favoursGood think no one (who isn't named "Elon Musk" that is) is talking about building a high-speed transportation system that doesn't go into the heart of SF or LA.As for what you refer to as "snark" - it's the cold reality of capital projects in the modern age. Governments and companies can't just ram projects through the countryside with little regard

Furthermore, it’s not even a big city problem. California High Speed Rail has been an immensely expensive project so far, an order of magnitude more than comparable systems, and the only segment built is in Central California, not the expensive coasts.

The following ideas are not mutually exclusive:1. Easy transportation around the state is a good idea2. If the original plan was to build 500 miles of high speed rail from SF to LA for $33b by 2029, but what we actually get in the year 2030 is 120 miles of HSR from Merced to Bakersfield for $120b, maybe the project is a mismanaged mess

It doesn't make sense because of the money. I don't know why everyone keeps ignoring that.And like I said before, California is actually trying to do this and completely failed: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/15/18224717/c...

I've been following this project off and on. There are various Youtube videos about it. Lots has been written. It's interesting because it's really a failure on almost every level but most especially political. Some examples:- Proposal 1A, the voter amendment that was passed to build the project, specified the speed of 220mph. This was really a mistake. It's greatly added to the cost;- California's notorious environment impact review for a project of this scale req

California can’t even build a train that’s useful without blowing obscene amounts of money.https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2020/02/26/californ...

HSR only makes economic sense in the northeast. Everywhere else is too spread out for rail to compete with air travel. The most popular air route in the western US (SF-LA) isn’t worth making high speed rail between. The project is expected to cost over $30 billion. Assuming 100% of air passengers use rail (4 million per year), at $150 per ticket it would take 50 years to break even… and that assumes zero maintenance costs. Also it would be slower than taking a plane.