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Comment by bhl | Hacker News Reader

My takeaway from reading about the person's experience is that we need better high speed public transportation in California. It would unlock a lot of economic and non-economic opportunities if people can move across the state within an hour. Imagine if Berkeley was a commuter school for people in Los Angeles, or UCLA was a commuter school for people in Bay Area.

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I voted for California High Speed Rail when I was in university. I’m middle-aged now. I hope that one day, my grandchildren will be able to take that train.

No, you didn’t.

You voted for California rail but nothing high speed was ever proposed.

The proposed rail line you are referring to was a normal speed train and didn’t even complete the SF to LA trip in two hours.

Which is to say: we would have achieved, in 2030, what most of the world achieved in 1990.

This is the entire point of the high speed rail. It unlocks new labor markets. Now workers can live maybe not in LA and commute to berkeley, but further in the central valley and go either way. Cities like Fresno or Merced could see booms as these areas take on the housing demand brought on by labor.

Brightline Rail Company gets it. They are predominantly a real estate play, buying up land surrounding their "higher" speed rail services. They have a Cali project currently though it is to connect to Las Vegas.

Buy the land, build the rail connector and enjoy the boost in land value you created.

It feels like everyone wants rail, benefits from rail and advocates for rail, but no rail gets done.

Brightline rail has the worst safety record in the country. They're too cheap to even put up fencing around their track. The only thing Brightline gets is sacrificing a few lives to make a buck.

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/799962246/brightline-nations-...

Many parts of Europe do not have fencing around railways, yet this isn't an issue here?

Is it? Most, if not all, of the rail I've seen in Europe is either grade separated or access restricted in some manner. The UK in particular stands out to me.

Brightrail runs 130 kph trains through populated areas, mostly at grade including crossings. Caltrain runs a comparable system in length and speed and sees roughly half the annual deaths. Do you have a better explanation?

I think you have to differentiate. At least in germany, most rail is not fenced off and when we do, we do not use fences but instead sound barriers. I think faster rail is usually behind sound barriers in populated ares, and slower commuter rail is often not fenced off. We do not have many at-grade crossings in more populated areas though, they are really only present on the country-side so I think the rail-infrastructure is not that "present". Nobody really walks or drives over rails usually and it's usually naturally separated, so you can't enter tracks by accident and therefore accidents are quite rare.

Not sure where the rail with no fencing is, but it's pretty common around the world to not have fencing on long stretches of track in unpopulated areas.

I just read the article you linked, and while I am just taking the article interviewees word for it, it sounds like they are concerned about pedestrian control at intersections in suburbs. Fair enough concern, but that is going to be up to the state to regulate I think. Rail companies will cut where they can, it's still a heavy industry, not exactly the poster children of ethics.

If you see some of the videos that often end up on reddit it is absurd how many cars end up stalled on the tracks in front of an active crossing in Florida. I wouldn't blame bright line really, the odds of having a car break down right on a rail crossing are so astonishingly small that at least a few of these incidents are probably outright fraud. People also sometimes ignore the gates and drive around thinking they can beat the train. Maybe they are used to a miles long freight train going a few mph where that idiotic move hasn't burned them yet.

Either way, in socal the metrolink trains operate at grade going pretty fast up to 80mph and you don't see so many accidents. I'd blame some other factor over the fact the train runs on the surface behind a gate.

  Either way, in socal the metrolink trains operate at grade going pretty fast up
  to 80mph and you don't see so many accidents. I'd blame some other factor over
  the fact the train runs on the surface behind a gate.

Such as? Brightline has the worst record in the country. In the Bay Area Caltrain runs similar speeds, for a similar length of track, and still manages half the annual deaths. And, yes, Caltrain deals with people on the tracks fairly regularly. And, yes, I know nothing's perfect – someone just managed to drive right into a BART train last Monday. Regardless, Brightline is doing a worse job than any other rail company and they're resistant to any obvious (and relatively low cost) improvements. Caltrain, while already having a better safety record, is moving towards grade separated crossings to safely facilitate higher speeds. Grade separation is way more expensive than the shit that Brightline is refusing to do.

I would guess its just that people are used to slow moving freight trains compared to an 80mph train in florida. I can't otherwise explain why so many Floridians insist on driving past a rail gate. I can't blame brightline when they seem to have the exact same sort of flashing light and gate in socal without this safety record. So in these two cases the train is operating at the same speed, the level of infrastructure is the same, so the only factor I could think to be different that might explain the difference in safety is the culture of the drivers. It just doesn't make sense to knock brightline imo when they are just doing what other rail agencies are doing, and its probably something that's federally standardized somehow anyway, so if anything blame falls on the agency writing standards that aren't enough to meet the realities.

Yeah, the crazy part was the flying. But, people commute long distances for work or school all the time to save money on rents, especially all major cities. Having better subways definitely helps. For e.g. in NYC, where many commute from Jersey, or Long Island.

A high speed rail enabling people to commute to SF/LA from 100+ miles away in under an hour would immediately relieve a huge amount of housing issues while creating tons of jobs in low income areas. The whole central valley would become a valid place for people to commute from.

Too bad we are incapable of building one.

yup it would be logical thing to build so no way California will do that.

https://buildhsr.com/ is tracking the progress (ie, we are capable, if slow). First up, Bakersfield to Fresno.

What a stupid section to start on. They should have done LA-Anaheim-San Diego or SF-San José or Sac-Stockton and started making money on shorter routes. Instead, they’re building a longer stretch between less populated and less wealthy cities.

On the other hand, because it's the less populated and poorer cities, mistakes (which are going to happen) will be cheaper to fix. This translates to not making those mistakes on the more expensive parts of the project.

SF to San Jose is almost completely electrified now with support for HSR and electric Caltrain. Electrified Caltrain testing starts this year with the new service opening to the public in 2024.

The new Caltrain service should be faster and more reliable, so even if HSR is never completed, the Bay Area will get a nice upgrade in its regional rail system.

> Instead, they’re building a longer stretch between less populated and less wealthy cities.

Environmental clearance was known to be quicker there, which met the priority for shovel-ready projects in federal funding being distributed as part of the 2009 stimulus, and the fact that it was in a more economically precarious part of the state was also in line with the funding concerns. It didn’t hurt with the state or federal politics of funding that that was in a more Republican area of the state, either. At the same time, the Bay Area and LA basin were getting a lot of the initial investment for “bookend” projects to improve existing transit systems both for the independent value that produces and as eventual HSR feeder systems.

Sac to Stockton was never even part of the Phase I plan anyway, but part of the distant idea of a Phase II extension after the SF-LA run was complete that would add Sacramento and San Diego.

Have you seen Caltrain's service lately? To be realistic, I'd prefer our regional systems have more frequent headways and BART to circle the bay. SF-LA commuters are a drop compared to local commuters. I'll even settle for a 3am last BART train instead of the lone 800 bus or the 24 hour service we'll never get.

Build more density in the cities you want rather than bussing people in. That's the best answer.

Here is an interesting take on California HSR.

TL;DR the physics is really hard and California might not be the best place for it.

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/10/11/why-high-speed...

Thanks for linking that read! I didn't walk away with that tldr. Mine was that airplanes are better because adding airports is way easier than adding train stations, and that HSR is hard (as in, not just a California thing).

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