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Comment by curtis | Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem I saw with the High-Speed Rail plan wasn't the outrageous cost, but rather that it was a plan to spend 60+ billion dollars to solve the wrong problem. The state should have been working on some plan to give high-speed access from the SF Bay, where property is really expensive, into the Central Valley where it's really cheap.

Not many people need to travel the 400 miles between LA and SF at 220 miles an hour. On the other hand, if you can travel 60 miles or so from San Francisco (or the mid-peninsula or even San Jose) at 120 miles an hour, that's a big deal, because that opens up a bunch of low-cost real estate for local workers.

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An Altamont Pass segment ought to have been one of first things built. A faster 'Altamont Corridor Express' would have created a ~1-hour link between Stockton and the Bay, integrating the corridor's economy further beyond its current role as an overlong exurban commute. It would've also provided for an alternate rail routing between Sacramento and the Bay that'd be competitive with the Capitol Corridor.

After the initial push towards a 'Super ACE', Altamont lost in the planning to Pacheco Pass; this increased linearity and reduced distance in the SF-SJ-Fresno axis, but in my opinion it was the wrong move. Fresno's accession to the economic continuum of the Bay is far less likely than that of Stockton or Modesto.

Or speed and augment existing infrastructure. Spend a billion dollars on feeder light rail to Caltrain. Run twice as many cal trains. Oops, neighbors complain about traffic wait times. Bury five of the crossings. Now you can speed up the cal train. Nice. Now run more trains, connect the stops to the places people actually live and work. Do the same in and around Sacramento and LA. But don’t build a bullet train to nowhere. There’s so much more good we could have done with billions in transportation funding.

> Run twice as many cal trains.

My understanding of this is that CalTrain is already running at capacity. Trains are, essentially, back to back. Part of the electrification project is that the electric engines should have better acceleration than the current diesel ones, allowing tighter packing of trains on the tracks. (And thus, more trains, and thus, more capacity.)

We really, IMO, need 4 rails from SF to SJ, but if Atherton doesn't want to give up a few trees, I can only imagine the hell that would get raised for more space. That, and funding.

> Bury five of the crossings.

AIUI, Mountain View considered this (grade separation) w/ the Castro/Moffett/Central intersection, but decided against it, opting instead for simple removing the crossing. (The wrong decision, IMO. I'd bury the train, but I think the (canned) plan was to bury the road, as it would be less disruptive.)

That was my understanding as well. Someone did an analysis when I was at Google and concluded that there was basically no way to optimize the rush-hour schedule further and pack further trains in, given reasonable acceleration/deceleration constraints and station boarding times. I've also had the experience of sitting at the Castro/Moffett/Central crossing for 20 minutes as 3 trains go by and block every opportunity for a green light.

"AIUI, Mountain View considered this (grade separation) w/ the Castro/Moffett/Central intersection, but decided against it, opting instead for simple removing the crossing."

Wait, are they getting rid of the Castro crossing? This seems...strange, given that that crossing is the primary highway access to downtown (via 85), one of the primary routes between the Googleplex and downtown/Castro, and also links a densifying residential neighborhood to downtown. Are they getting rid of the bus service between Caltrain and the Googleplex as well?

Shoreline, Evelyn, and Dana are the primary links to downtown from the north and south, with Shoreline and Dana/Evelyn via Whisman linking to Central.

Shoreline is really close to Castro, but its capillary connections to Castro are pretty narrow, though there are a bunch in parallel.

> Wait, are they getting rid of the Castro crossing?

That's my understanding. See https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/pw/transport/services.asp — specifically, the section titled, "Transit Center Master Plan" and the diagram on that section. See also the link in that section that points to http://www.mountainviewtransitcenter.com/ and the images on that page, particularly http://www.mountainviewtransitcenter.com/images/Castro%20Vie....

I originally just heard this through a friend who is more active in MTV politics that I am, but that seems to be the official info/site for it.

Oh. There's actually a bunch of really good stuff in that plan - the rail crossing is being replaced by pedestrian/bike undercrossings, Evelyn is being extended to Shoreline, and a protected bike lane goes from Steven Creek trail to the transit center.

IMHO they should just get rid of the 101 & 85 Moffett interchanges. It's close enough and low-traffic enough that residents can just use Shoreline/Ellis/Whisman. That would make Moffett a prime bike boulevard between downtown & Caltrain and the Googleplex via Stevens Creek Trail, which would make Caltrain + bike into Google (and the Ellis office park area) very attractive, which would take cars off of 101 & Shoreline, which is desperately needed.

  they should just get rid of the 101 & 85 Moffett interchanges

85? Aside from the SB Moffett to SB 85 onramp, I don't know of an 85/Moffett "interchange".

There's a both-directions Moffett (NB has a left-turn lane) to SB 85 onramp, and an NB 85 to both-directions Moffett offramp. I used to live in the area, so this would be my primary highway access (along with 101 <-> Moffett).

Both are kinda superfluous - it's less than 1/2 mile to the Shoreline interchange (with access to SB 85, SB 101, and NB 101), and other than the apartment/condo complexes on Moffett/Cypress Point, the neighborhoods in that area tend to have easier access to either Shoreline or Ellis. It probably made sense when Moffett was an active military base and NASA/Ames was a big employer, but now traffic on NB Moffett is miniscule.

> The state should have been working on some plan to give high-speed access from the SF Bay, where property is really expensive, into the Central Valley where it's really cheap.

Given that that's one of the key things HSR would have provided (and a key reason that it routed through the inhabited part of Valley), and one of the earliest it would have (with the planned San Jose to Merced Initial Operating Segment) provided, how exactly was it solving the wrong problem?

Isn't San Jose still pretty far (in terms of commute time) from where the jobs are in the bay area?

There are a ton of jobs in San Jose & the South Bay. Ebay, PayPal, Intel, Google, and Adobe are the first companies that come to mind.

San Jose was explicitly listed as an acceptable starting point by the great grandparent, and I was responding accepting that framing since HSR would do exactly what was asked for, including operating from one of the enumerated endpoints, and yet was described as misdirected and solving the wrong problem.

Also, San Jose would be a connection point between HSR and Caltrain.

Indeed, sad that they pulled the rail off of the bay bridge. It's really painful to from Amtrak to SF. I suspect a bay bridge link would have WAY more traffic than the high speed rail at a small fraction of the price.

Also sad that they never included a bike lane on the western span of the Bay Bridge. That entire project was managed by idiots who cared more about aesthetics than actual transportation.

Lots of people today travel faster than 220mph between LA and SF; they take airplanes. The point is to take pressure off the airspace because it's already close to capacity, not to mention the visibility issues at SFO that mess things up all the time. And of course flying is terrible from a CO2 emissions perspective.

> The point is to take pressure off the airspace

The original business plan actually was based around taking pressure of need for increased freeway capacity, not relieving airspace pressure.

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