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They've started on the parts they could get land rights quickly, non-contentiously. The other bit, the (sub)urban runs each end will demand much more capex, and probably horrendous NIMBY pushback. Once this is done, the rest will follow.

The speed claims are good: going in saying it will be shinkansen fast, 350kph would be suicidal when it can't do it. Going to market on 125MPH means when they exceed it (and they will) it will be better for them.

I think they have made savvy financial choices. I get your pushback, it will suck living the commute delays either side. You think it kills it. I think it's a forcing function.

Thing is, I'm really a big public transit fan. I see time and time again that the US just doesn't get how to build a public transit system that the middle class wants to use, and would prefer to use when they already have a car.

In countries where it works, it's a non-issue to get to/from the train station on both sides, and the train stations have ample good food options (real food; not a Dunkin Donuts), clean restrooms, direct connections to subways without having to even exit the building. It's an all-around pleasant experience.

I suppose, if they can go to market on 125mph, fine, but I'm rather pessimistic that anyone who lives in LV or LA (especially) would use it considering the sad state of public transit in both cities.

To be honest, faster rail between Boston - NYC - Washington (on the order of 1.5 hours between Boston-NYC and 1.5 hours between NYC-Washington, which is doable at Shinkansen/CRH speeds) would be a better market in my opinion until the west coast can get their shit together with public transit (if ever). There's plenty of business need on the east coast for faster trains, the space for the rails is already carved out by Amtrak's stupidly-slow Acela Express, and all 3 cities have excellent public transit, good enough that a significant chunk of the population of all 3 actually lives car-free.

Tons, I mean TONS of people drinking alcohol and or consuming THC will want to use that service. There will be piss all over the train if they don't put in a bathroom. which they wont because they never do...

Yeah the bathroom thing is another thing I don't get. Why is the US so stingy with public bathrooms? I don't even drink alcohol and I've actually had to pee on the road multiple times because I couldn't find a bathroom, and the only bathrooms within walking distance were "customers only" (at least for men; women usually get to use them in anecdotal experience).

In Europe and Asia I've never had a situation in an urban area where there wasn't an easily accessible public bathroom within a couple blocks.

People in SF complain about piss on the ground. Yet I've had to piss on the ground waiting 45 minutes for the Caltrain because the goddamn Caltrain bathrooms were closed for the rest of the night and the Panera next door wouldn't let me use theirs. What do you expect?

Safeway was always the go to bathroom spot over there. Dunno if it still is, but if it’s any consolation, the Panera is dead.

> the only bathrooms within walking distance were "customers only"

They don't want homeless people using them.

Don't they realize that human bodies need to excrete waste and if you don't give them a designated place to do it, it's going to come out on the street? And then the same people who refuse restroom access complain about shit and pee on the street?

This isn't rocket science.

Someone has to clean them too and you clearly don’t realize how trashy people ruin things. And for some reason we seem to tolerate those breaking social contracts and homeless drug users messing things up instead of dealing with it.

It sucks but it’s not a young minimum wage worker’s primary job.

In Europe and Asia, there's always a toilet (usually one per carriage) on a middle or longer distance train. It's only urban trains and metros that don't have them — on these, the expectation is that you use a toilet in the station, and the train is so frequent it doesn't matter if you miss one.

The Brightline website says their trains in Florida have toilets, I don't see why California would be any different.

i’m currently in paris where the only “public” WC in the train stations still require payment and none of the stops between terminals on the RER seem to have had public restrooms on the platforms. it feels quite similar to my home city in the US.

i find there to be quite a few things to love about Europe over the US, but the idea of toileting as superior in Europe than in the US strikes me as odd. colloquially, i chalk it up to travel/cultural anxiety and stress because i can find a place/way to toilet in SF, NYC, or Orlando far more easily than in Paris, Florence, or Frankfurt

this has been helpful whilst walking through the city, though

https://www.paris.fr/pages/les-sanisettes-2396

Come to Japan if you want to see truly superior public toileting. Not only are public toilets numerous and easily accessible (even in parks), they're free, clean, and usually have washlets installed.

As someone living in Germany, I have no idea what you're talking about. Paid public toilets are the norm overwhelmingly here, and even then the offer is minimal. The famous Berlin new main station, while gorgeous and modern, has 1 (one) facility, with 5 or 6 stalls per gender. Many train stations have nothing.

I guess it depends on the city. I found no lack of public restrooms in Zurich for example

https://www.maps.stadt-zuerich.ch/zueriplan3/Stadtplan.aspx?...

I found plenty of free toilets in Amsterdam and Copenhagen and plenty of pay toilets in Stockholm and Oslo. In Germany I usually looked for supermarkets, train stations, fast food restaurants, but come to think of it, Germany was harder.

It's approximately a 4 hour drive by car. The train might be able to do it in 2 hours, but of course there's the overhead you mention.

The drive costs around $40 in gas one-way. If this train is indeed $80 per ticket one-way, then I fail to see how it will be competitive with driving. A group of 5 going to Vegas would pay 10X the cost of driving and lose a lot of flexibility.

> A group of 5 going to Vegas would pay 10X the cost of driving and lose a lot of flexibility

But they'd gain back the time they would have spent driving. Pretty much everyone I know in Los Angeles flies to Las Vegas, though it's an admittedly biased sample.

> Pretty much everyone I know in Los Angeles flies to Las Vegas

Huh what? Almost everyone I know in LA drives to Las Vegas just to avoid having to deal with airports. And when you arrive in Las Vegas you already have your favorite car filled with your favorite snacks.

And so the train will avoid the hassle and comfort issues of airport/airlines and you’re not screwed paying for parking (which you left out of your example for some reason).

Plenty of strip casinos offer free parking. Anything off-strip almost certainly has a free option nearby as well.

I’ve probably driven 100+ days in Vegas over the years and doubt I’ve paid more than $100 in total for parking over that span.

The British Rail HST started development in 1970 and was running at 125 mph in 1976.

The US is only fifty years late.

We peaked with the west coast and east coast mainlines. HS1 was suffered in its ambitions thanks to low cost airlines (the infrastructure is underutilised today). HS2 got gutted. The Transpennine electrification is going at a snail's pace and isn't ambitious in the slightest.

The UK is finished with ambitious infrastructure (and house building), as we are a populous country of rich and influential NIMBYs with a party often in power that panders to them

Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll never actually finish this.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that some American steam locomotives went >120 mph in passenger service (the Milwaukee Road's F7's and the Pennsylvania Railroad's S1's, for example). I believe if you look at the PRR timetables, they had some routes that averaged 80 mph between stops, meaning they almost certainly hit a max speed at least over 100 mph. The US didn't have the same speed record contests that the Brits did though, so there's no official record.

In 1947 a law was passed requiring trains above 79mph to have some kind of automatic train stop system, so that ended most of the high speed steam service.

The UK's record-setting locomotives were pre-war. The HSTs were only a moderate increment over the existing "deltics", but it gets much harder to add that extra bit of speed for true high-speed rail (and there's no real evidence that US steam trains ever achieved 125mph, even though 100mph+ running was routine on some routes).

For those interested, this is a good video that summarizes the US's high speed steam locomotives, from a YouTuber who works on steam locomotives (despite the title, it's fact oriented and there's not too much flag waving). There is some evidence, but it's not conclusive.

https://youtu.be/hVtVk3T80hA?si=Y8PYYt4IRakKLRDg

Great Western Railway locomotives had automatic stop long before the end of steam. Why would having to have that automated put an end to high speed steam service?

In the US, it was only required in 1952 (due to the aforementioned law passed in 1947), and there was very little experience with it before then. By 1947, it was clear that diesel was going to replace steam due to steam's significantly higher maintenance costs (and the lack of MU). If you're running a mainline railroad in 1947, you already know that you're gonna be replacing almost all your steam locomotives within the next 10 years, so why bother upgrading them?

>Connect it to Union Station and LAX if you want some ridership.

FTA:

>Brightline West [...] aims to lay 218 miles (351 kilometers) of new track almost all in the median of Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California. It would link there with a commuter rail connection to downtown Los Angeles

I hope they can run a more frequent service, or at least alter the times to match up with the HSR, once service begins. It's currently only hourly after the morning, and doesn't run after 7pm.

https://metrolinktrains.com/schedules/?type=station&originId...

> It would link there with a commuter rail connection to downtown Los Angeles

So cut the commuter rail crap and just send the bullet trains to downtown Los Angeles?

Put another way, they've cut 4 hours of driving into 3 hours of train riding where you can't even get 3 hours of sleep and have to haul your luggage to another platform, likely up and down some stairs, 2 hours into it. And you still need to deal with transit once you arrive, so add another hour to get wherever you're actually going in LA (if you're lucky with the traffic). Time savings is zero.

Yup, just like flying between SF and LA. It takes the same amount of time as driving once you factor in all the other BS that airports entail. Charter planes are definitely faster but an order of magnitude more expensive. JSX is a decent alternative if you live near OAK and want to go to BUR. JSX out of SJC would be awesome, but not as awesome as a $50 high-speed train ride to LA that took the same time door-to-door as JSX.

> If you want real ridership, public transit in both LA and LV needs to be functional

Perfect is the enemy of the good. Even if everyone who takes the train drives from Los Angeles to Rancho Cucamonga (or takes an Uber), they're still offsetting less-efficient transportation modes.

My understanding is that it will share with the Metrolink station already in Cucamonga.

Also there are already plan for a major bus hub for the regional area in Cucamonga as well.

The magic that makes this work is that the right of way is down the middle of the existing I15 freeway. No real impact studies are likely necessary for that route, and once they hit Barstow, it’s quite flat.

Friday commute traffic out of LA and OC to the area at the bottom of the pass is absolutely impacted by the crush of traffic heading over the Cajun pass into the high desert. Not all of it is Vegas bound, but much of it is.

I am curious how they will get through the pass. I’m assuming they’ll lease ROW from either UP or BNSF, as they own the two sets of tracks currently over the pass.

I saw Bugs Bunny take a train to Rancho Cucamonga

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWHYRjYYLqY

Ooops, it was ppp pp p pp Porky PP p pp PP P PIg

Metrolink goes right from Rancho Cucamonga to Union Station in about 75 minutes. Did you bother to check that before posting?

How convenient.

Rancho C. famously has a train station, now metrolink to downtown. From Union Station everywhere.

> long slow car rental line on the other end while 15 people ahead of you each have a chit chat with the one employee dealing with the rentals

it will be a fast line of ubers and yellow taxis

but okay 2005 called.

jokes aside, Brightline has delivered before. It has potential for grift but I think they’ll pull this one off. They already plan to use metrolink from downtown LA Union Station. not perfect but decent coordination.