California Building 220 MPH High-Speed Train from San Francisco to LA
Imagine a high-speed rail line that could get you from San Francisco to LA in 2 hours and 40 minutes.
That dream appears to be coming true, thanks to work by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. After getting a green light by State environmental impact assessors, they’ve begun implementation of an 800-mile bullet-train system that will connect Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County and San Diego. Trains traveling at 220 mph on the systems are forecast to carry up to 100 million passengers per year by 2030.
While 2030 is a long way off, at least things are moving in the right direction. Having a high-speed rail system connecting (eventually) the length of the West coast is a good idea for a number of reasons, including greenhouse-gas emissions reductions, improving public transportation and reducing congestion, and creating half a million new jobs. While our aging standby Amtrak is still around (believe it or not) and bearable for short distances, it’s more expensive and takes twice as much time to travel the same distance when compared to driving (non-California example: 15 hours from Portland, OR to San Francisco).
The State will have a bond measure of $9.95 billion on the November 2008 ballot, which requires a simple majority vote for approval. The measure allocates $9 billion for the high-speed rail system and $950 million for improvements to other rail services that connect to the high-speed service.
For more information, see the website of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
Posts Related to Green Transportation Technology:
- Affordable Electric Cars Coming to US in 2009
- 2009 Jetta BlueTDI Comes to US This Summer, Sports 60 MPG and Cleaner Emissions
- The Cleanest Cars on Earth: Honda Civic GX and Other Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs)
This story was also reported at EcoLocalizer: A Train as Fast as a Plane: The Plan for High-Speed Rail in California Moves Forward
Photo Credit: NC3D, provided by the California High Speed Rail Authority
Great, spending more money California doesn’t have — a brilliant idea.
Koowan - rail died on the East Coast for a reason indeed - the auto and oil lobbies killed it. Most cities and towns here had trolley and train service, until oil companies literally bought the tracks and tore them up, all so they could sell more cars, tires and gas. Learn a little history before blowing off about something you don’t understand.
@James
Amtrak owns very little of the track they use in Ca. Most of it is UP track they have rights to run on, which is why the Coast Starlight is constantly having to pull over and let freight trains through. Building their own ROW will not only allow for true high speed runs (unlike the NE Corridor) but will allow local Amtrak trains to run at much higher speed and with fewer interruptions.
I am wondering why we have waited so long to come up with such a simple solution ? ( may be gas at $ 8 per gallon and oil reaching $ 200 will develop our inventiveness ) .The European TGV ( high speed 200mph train: train a grande vitesse ) already links Paris to Brussels or London in less than 2 hours It makes more sense now to travel by rail from the center of London to center of Paris to avoid the trouble of airport transportation .Ok I understand everybody has to make a living : the oil companies , car makers , the tire industry etc..)
Don’t worry people! Almost all government projects are completed on time, and wayyy under budget!!!
/sarcasm
Its a bleedin’ train so what?
Hornby have been buildin’ em for years
Imagine the nightmarish scenes when this baby hits a redneck in pickup.
When is the last time any gov did anything that worked? Amtrak, for instance? The FAA’s airports, for instance. The Space Shuttle, any war you want to name, …
The FDA? Kills us by the 100s of 1000s every year due to expensive medicines, preventing European medicines from competing with US manufacturers, and so very few new medicines.
Economies controlled by govs don’t work. They all crash, sooner or later of an overdose of national debt.
The bigger and more intrusive the gov, the slower the economic growth rate, across all times and styles of govs.
Already, in the US, we don’t generate enough jobs for young people.
A bullet train won’t help any of that, just makes it worse.
Lew
Sweet.
On the east coast business travelers prefer the Acela over commuter flights for a lot of reasons, price is not one of them.
1) Less hassle at the station, you don’t have to show up at the station that early, less time dealing with security/check in
2) More roomy/get up and walk around/plug in your laptop/use a cell phone = get more work done
3) They do not seem to get as delayed, under booked commuter flights magically get pushed back due to “weather” on sunny days, has happened multiple times on a DC to Boston flight that I know of
Generally it takes less time by train than airplane once you factor in the airport at either end.
Plus it is safer & better for the environment.
Although I have to think that it would be better done by private companies, they can recoup the money so long as they are only doing select lines and I bet they would get it done sooner than 2030. The passenger trains got crushed by all the legacy routes they had when planes came along and the trains were mostly empty, they can compete on the busy lines.
>ID said on May 14th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
>If it won’t be more expensive than a plain, I am in
More expensive than a plain what?