California Bullets
I had no idea that the State of California had already done so much work on planning a high-speed rail network. The California High Speed Rail Authority website has routes, station plans, videos, economic analyses, and tons of other information about the planned network. San Francisco to LA in two and a half hours? For less than half the price of flying (and only slightly more than driving)? I'm in!
California seems to me like a great place to kick start high speed rail in the US (discounting the sort-of-high-speed Acela trains in the Northeast). LA to San Francisco is about 600 km, right in the sweet spot for high speed rail: long enough to be much faster than driving; short enough to be as fast—or faster—than flying. I've driven that route through the central valley many times. It's hot, crowded, smelly and sometimes very dangerous. I suspect a great many people would be very happy never to drive that route again.
1 Comments
Thank you for taking the time to look at the CHSRA web site and encouraging others to do the same. Far too many California voters still haven't even heard of this project, even though it has been in preparation since 1996.
High speed rail is an expensive proposition for California, but the alternative is not doing nothing. Rather, it is building 3300 additional lane-miles of major roads and several more airport runways. Where those would go is anyone's guess, as neither LAX nor any of the Bay Area airports has any scope for expansion.
The alternative to HSR would therefore not only be even more expensive and contentious, it would cement the transportation sector's dependence on oil forever, exacerbating the already serious safety, air quality, fuel cost and energy security issues.
If you have comments, questions or concerns about this very large project, Robert Cruickshank's daily HSR blog is a good place to start:
http://cahsr.blogspot.com