Here is the map of the proposed system. As you can see on the map, it made too much sense to go direct from LA to Bakersfield.
Posted on 11/08/2010 9:20:18 PM PST by gunsequalfreedom
California's Central Valley To Be First Section Of California's High Speed Rail System
The first section will be Merced-to-Fresno or Fresno-to-Bakersfield
The bill for the first section will be $4.3 Billion (with "B") and will be a dollar for dollar match with state funds. Trains will travel at speeds of 220 miles per hour, meaning you will get from Merced to Fresno or Fresno to Bakersfield really faaaaast!
The trip from Merced to Fresno by car takes 59 minutes. With the new high speed rail system you will be able to make the trip in about 15 minutes - once the train pulls out of the station. Add the time to park your car, get tickets, pass through security, get on the train and get the train moving and our bet is by car will be faster.
Is anyone going to ride this thing or will we have a $4.9 billion empty train going back and forth between Merced and Fresno?
Eventually the final first phase will be an 800 mile trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Funding for all 800 miles, however, is not secured and you have to wonder if it ever will be. Once the reality of an empty train going back and forth through the Central Valley at a cost of billions of dollars sinks in, some will no doubt be using the word boondoggle. Some already are.
Yes it is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XQybKMXL-k
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Glenn Miller Orchestra
And what out of the way routes are included in those 800 miles? What am I missing here?
Last trip I made driving from SF to LA was 382 miles.
How ya been?
Thats just crazy.
Yep. They will have to shut it down due to the dust from the desert I mean former farms.
Will you have to go through the TSA “Grope and Poke” to get on the train?
I'm with you on both points and have been for years. Unfortunately, peak oil production in this country was 1970. Even if we have every off-shore location, ANWR, the shale oil in Colorado, and a pipeline from the tar sands in Alberta, we cannot produce enough oil at an acceptable cost to meet our needs. That is a simple geological reality. All the cheap oil has been found. Everything from here on out is going to cost more and involve more risk and uncertainty.
We can build more nuclear plants and should have been doing so for the last three decades, but we cannot build enough of them fast enough. Wind and solar? Forget about it. The "renewable energy sources" are mainly fantasies and wishful thinking.
Here's the bottom line: we use 70 percent of our oil for transportation, and over 95 percent of our transportation depends on oil. Natural gas works for large vehicles, but the tanks are too big for compact cars. Hydrogen fuel cell technology is like cold fusion, a mix of laboratory fact and science fiction.
There are no good answers out there. We can conserve and be more efficient, but we can't go buy hybrids and electric vehicles and think we can continue business as usual. The Obama administration, incredibly, is stuck in the past, trying to resurrect failed auto companies rather than seeing reality as it is unfolding. The best for which we can hope is that American corporations can drill where the best prospects are, build as many nuclear plants as possible, rebuild the freight railroad system, and do the R&D that will give us some options down the road.
The U.S. Military is very concerned about fuel availability in the next five years and the lack of capital commitments to finding it, as expressed in the Joint Operation Environment (JOE) report in March of this year. They see the period of 2012 to 2015 as critical in terms of supply. The German military has essentially the same viewpoint.
One thing is certain: getting to work each day and getting from one city to another is going to take more time and more money in the future.
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Should be called the “Smelt Runner”. Since our own government shut down thousands of fields, put thousands our of work, created another “Dust Bowl”. the crowning glory of the Enviro crowd will be so ZIP through the deadlands. May they starve and get ecoli from other nations foods on their way to nirvana.
The “high speed” train would be a great terrorist target. The same security measures that we have at airports will be required for the train.
The route goes through Reno and Las Vegas. Reid got to pick it to pay back the folks who voted for him.
If I wanted to go from Reno to SF..I'd have to travel to LV...on to LA...and then to SF?
Sf - Reno - LV - LA
LA - LV - Reno - SF
This way you avoid Snail Darters, too. /s
It is actually possible to drive from Reno to Las Vegas in nearly the same time as a flight.
Driving is MUCH more convenient in the long run.
The flight in “only an hour”, except, you have to get to the airport, find a place to park, arrive an hour early, get your bags checked, pass security (several times), wait to board, finally take off, fly, arrive, find your bags, take a shuttle, get a car.
Total time, about four hours, on a good day.
I have made the drive at night in five hours, more than once.
Before the Fed. blackmailed us into adopting their mandated speed limits this was legal and could be done more safely, in daylight.
BILLIONS for a hight speed short line shuttle rail is insane.
15 minutes? I’d take the train to work if it saved me time to arrive there.
I consider two hours to be a good drive for me.... if I want to go further, a train would make good sense.
But that’s not most of the country. America is not uniformly populated like Europe and Japan. There taking a train really allows you to see more than you would with a car.
Running an empty train through a deserted rural corridor doesn’t make any financial sense.
Here is the map of the proposed system. As you can see on the map, it made too much sense to go direct from LA to Bakersfield.
The 60 miles section to be started in California will not be completed until 2017. The rest will not be completed in our lifetime (that's anybody lifetime that is reading this).
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