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.
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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.
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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
Yes Yes Yes. (But at what cost?)
There are over 30 million people in California, and most of them move around via automobile… the gasoline costs of which are subsidized by the federal defense budget. If gasoline and jet fuel were taxed in accordance with their true costs, people would be more enamored with rail and bus services. And the monstrous federal deficits we are leaving to the (disenfranchised) next generation would be less daunting.
Koowan, can you be serious in your allegation that the population centers served by such a train might evaporate, like “Gold Gulch,” etc.?
the Anaheim to SF portion will be open by 2020. Extensions to SAC and San Diego will open later and be partially paid for by the profits of the first phase.
Koowan says - “A really, really BAD idea”
What is your IQ? Rail competes PROFITABLY with airlines at anything less than 350 miles. The only BAD idea is not having done this 30 years ago.
One thing to note is that they haven’t actually started building it yet. California’s residents need to vote on this issue in November in order to get this thing started.
So, if you are a Californian citizen like me, please vote yes this coming November. And inform other people about it too.
GOod for them. Rail here in Northern California is very popular. Peak hour Caltrain is standing room only as is BART and the VTA light rail and the Muni light rail. Private passenger trains can’t compete with highway transportation because roads are subsidized by taxes, unlike railroads, so it makes sense to subsidize passenger rail with tax money too so that they can compete on an even basis. And unfortunately, our experience here in Northern California (and Amtrak’s experience nationwide) is that the actual rails to be owned by the public because the freight lines won’t allow passenger trains on their rails in a timely manner — sometimes passenger trains here get delayed for hours because Union Pacific keeps routing one freight train after another onto the lines.
Assuming that the fares are competitive with airlines — a no-brainer given that trains are far more fuel-efficient than planes and the price of aviation kerosene is going to just keep going up — definitely I would ride the train rather than fly to Los Angelese. It takes two hours just to get into SFO and out of LAX at the other end, even if the flight itself is only 45 minutes. As for those who talk about earthquakes, this is basically a Japanese design, and all the Japanese designs are built to deal with earthquakes (duh, they live on an earthquake fault line too).
So I look forward to it being built, even though it’ll be retirement time by the time I can actually enjoy it. Sigh.
I have submitted your article to http://www.autocar-live.com which is a social site where users can submit car/auto articles and vote for already submitted articles.
neat concept. totally impractical. that is unless everyone who flies up and down the coast never uses a rental car when they get where they are going. you aint gonna get many people who drive because of the personal mobility factor to ride the train more than one time just for the experience.
and yeah, like the dude said below- it’s california, it’s gonna cost minimum twice what is projected, probably four or five times, and people will be taxed enormously for it when it fails to meet revenue needs. might as well call it the concord. fast, pretty, expensive as hell.
good luck california. socialist stupidity is gonna destroy you yet.
Lies! Every time I hear this crap I want to punch faces. It will never happen. 2030, bah. Our country is so stupid broken, it’s not getting fixed. If China can have high speed rails already, we’re screwed.
I wish I wish I wish we could implement something like this in the west, but people making comparisons between Europe, Japan, and the western US are not thinking at all how much space exists out here. Also, towns and cities are laid out completely differently than old cities in Europe and Japan. It’s completely non-radial out here, and rail systems just don’t fit well with the geocultural layout. I do wish we had a bullet train system between Seattle and San Diego, though. That’d be blissful.
Rail is not dead in California “koowan” it so happens that rail is growing by leaps and bounds in california. Amtraks top 3 most successful train routes are in California, and setting record ridership - and more communities are asking for stations. Keep in mind our population will be at or exceed 50 million people by the time this is done and great majority of those people and that new growth be be exacly where this train will go.