Saturday Open Thread
I’m in Tahoe for the weekend, so I won’t have a chance to post as often. Use this as an open thread for all your HSR-related topics.
Comment starter: Where would you use HSR to go for an in-state vacation once the SF-LA-Anaheim line is completed and open for service? What connecting rail services should be either established (such as service to Palm Springs) or upgraded (such as the Surfliners to the Central Coast)?
By the time Union Station has service, LA will have a much expanded connecting light rail system. Santa Monica opens in 2015. Crenshaw/LAX in 2018.
CAHSR should negotiate with Desert Express for a wye. Although is California interested in providing an out of state tourist connection?
Fresno has finally dropped it’s rail consolidation effort. (HSR plans squashed it.)
Fresno needs to develop a light rail that heads north and east toward the college from a downtown loop that has an HSR connection.
Victor Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 11:42 am
CAHSR? Last I looked It’s the CHSRA(California High Speed Rail Authority).
BruceMcF Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Precisely. The authority is CHSRA. The HSR network itself is CAHSR, and it can’t “negotiate” with anybody – anymore than the branch line I cycle across on the way to work can.
Having spent a couple of years at DLI, I have no desire ever to set foot in Monterey County again, but it’d nice if rail service to the central coast included Santa Cruz, where no small number of tourists go. Of course, a rail line over HWY 17 would have the potential for easing that mother of all commutes.
Peter Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 10:44 am
Well, there used to be a rail line along there. Now Roaring Camp Railroads uses part of it. There were a number of tunnels through the mountains. I think they were closed due to seismic instability. I can only imagine how insanely expensive setting up a rail line on that route would be. I don’t see it being cost-effective.
Joey Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
It would be nice, but there isn’t really enough demand to justify it.
California should some day build to Indio via Palm Springs with an agreement that Arizona will continue the line from there to Phoenix. This could be a way to eventually give San Bernardino a stop, too, without increasing travel time between LA and San Diego. This would essentially eliminate the air market between SoCal and Phoenix, which is one of the most used in the country.
Mad Park Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Indeed – even if there was only every 2 hour service from Indio to LA (and SF?) it’s be great for those wishing to visit the valley w/o having to negotiate the 10 or Palm Springs aerodrome.
Disneyland!!! The Anaheim HSR station will be almost next door. My grandchildren do not do well on airplanes and a (meltdown) is always a real possibility. They are fascinated by Caltrain and I am sure they would totally enjoy a HSR Happy Hop. Two of my grandchildren live in Millbrae (2 miles from the Millbrae HSR station) One lives in Campbell (4 miles from the diridon HSR station by way of VTA light rail) My guess—–Thousands of families would take the HSR happy Hop to Disneyland if given the opportunity.
jimsf Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 10:15 am
especially with packages and special fares available, group tickets, kids ride free on weekends, etc there will plenty of that.
Alistair Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 10:38 am
As part of the public / private partnership, Disney should throw some money into the project then.
elfling Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I long for the day when Disneyland will be a day trip again. We used to go once or twice a year, generally during off-peak times. We’ve only been once in the last 10 years.
I have friends who would go to Angels games via train if they were guaranteed that there would still be a train after the game ended, even if it goes into overtime. They love using the train and except for that detail, far prefer it. They go less than they’d like because of transportation hassles.
San Francisco
San Diego
off the network
San Luis Obispo
Las Vegas
Fresno – to get get my haircut at my friends shop in the tower dist.
Hollywood- just for fun and a change of scenery
palm springs-to relax
I’ll need:
A better red line connection from BUR to HWD
A metrolink connection from RIV-PSN(PSP) (fyi PSN=rail station PSP=bus stop)
or will there be a subway down Sta Ma Blvd? I need to get to WeHo.
Anyway can they just hurry up please. I’m not gettin’ any younger.
Roger Christensen Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Red line construction segments:
1- Western to Fairfax Aves
2- Fairfax to Century City
3- Century City to Wilshire/Federal
4- “Pink Line” Hollywood/Highland to Wilshire/La Cienega
via Santa Monica Blvd
All Measure R funded which means sometime in the next 30 years hopefully. The mayor is hoping to speed up construction for R projects by getting a Federal Infrastructure Loan.
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
hold on let me look at the google…..
hmmm so the red line will go to north hwd as it does now, plus east to century city… wait how can there be two separate lines toward beverly hills/ century city..
IM confused. the pink line will turn back to the south down la cienega to wilshire. I thought there was already going to be a line from downtown out wilshire….. the purple line ext…..?
as much as love LA it will take me a lifetime to ever wrap my brain around that place. its just too much everything in too many directions to ever grasp where anything is in relation to anything else.
at least here in the bay we keep things in proper order.
Victor Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
That’s cause You’ve been spoiled by those Evil Giants up there. ;) But then It’s not Yer fault… At least LA has subways and rail lines again, I think they sell maps for tourists.
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I’m very impressed with LAs efforts… the problem though is that the place is so huge. I mean one day me and a friend from back east were staying at another friend’s in long beach, and had a free day so I was like, hey maybe while xx is at work, Ill take you to hwd and we can see the walk of fame blah blah blah… but to get there from lbc on the blue line to the red line and back in x amount of time.. well, I mean it would like a dreadful trip on a light rail for hours. so we too this other bus to newport instead. which was still like a 12 hour ( or so it seemed) bus ride, huntington beach sure looks nice btw.
Even driving, what looks like a quick drive up the freeway from lbc to say, universal for a concert, is not a quick drive…. first, you have to be like my socal bud and know which fwy… er…. combination of fwys … to take at what hour.. and just getting from a to b is an adventure… you have to strap yourself in, turn the music up real loud.. grit your teeth, and merge.
Ill never forget my first time down there in the early 80s, 19 yrs old, spur of the drunk moment midnite PSA flight…
this is how I discovered that quickly eyeing an sf map versus and la map… very different.
the shuttle driver at lax was like, where do you want to go (2am) “oh, over there by hollywood and downtown” driver “which do you want hollywood or downtown?” … me: ” well on the map they are right next to each other” driver.. laughs… ( little did I realize)
me “well hollywood then, so we can see all the glamour” ( again, little did I realize…)
after finding a gross hotel in the middle of the night and what I think was a bobs diner, full of street urchins,
we decided to go to “the beach” first, no one could tell us how to get there on the bus.
we made our way to beverly center near an intersection of two streets that it took me 20 years to learn how to pronounce… then… what seemed like a 14 hour city bus ride to santa monica where again, I said to my friend, we’ll just walk over to the airport from along the beach, cuz you know, they are right next to each other on the map.
well that was misguided decision. We made it, in time for the midnite flight home.
never did find any movie stars or glamour, just came home extremely tired and with a better understanding of the importance of that little “scale” thingy at the bottom of the map.
Victor Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
Yeah LA is huge, Natives know the area pretty well, But no one has knowledge of every nook and cranny of course, I just knew where I lived at and how to find My way around on the streets/freeways since I was 10 yrs old. The beach, a map helps, Thomas Bros was best though(Google Maps is similar though, Good to use and cheap, You just need a wireless device that can use the web to use It though, I’ll just use Google from home and a printed set of directions today as My phone isn’t wireless as I have no use for that most of the time and It’s more expensive and with no power cells go out, traditional phones don’t, usually), GPS, Bah Humbug, People get lost and snowbound with GPS, and their imaginary roads. Give Me a Map and a Compass and I can find My way around anywhere(If the map is in english).
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
ok I found it – there are sever alternatives 1-5 atl’s 4 and get the whole job done. the other too leave much to be desired. alternative 5
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
but, this still doesnt get the red line to BUR. I want to transfer off of hsr at the bur stop and go directly to beverly/hills/weho/hwd without having to go all the way downtown.
Ok lets snap to it LA. time’s a wastin’.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
..and I want to get around San Francisco without changing buses on Market St. but no….
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
you’ll change buses and be happy with it or no sourdough for you. ;-)
Donk Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 7:46 pm
There are in fact some long term plans to extend the red line north from NoHo to BUR airport, likely adjacent to the Metrolink/Amtrak station. However, this stop is on the Ventura County line, not the Antelope Valley line that HSR will follow up to Palmdale. This line is not included in Measure R, so it would be built more than 30 years from now. Even then, it wouldn’t do you much good since it wouldn’t connect to HSR.
There was some talk about extending the Orangle Line Busway east to downtown Burbank and probably the Metrolink/HSR stop there. This way you could take the busway to the Red Line, then get to HW from there.
The other obvious missing link the LA Metro system is the ~1.5 mile Green Line connection from Norwalk to the Norwalk Metrolink/HSR station. There has been a lot of resistance to building this connect since the line would have to travel through some residential areas, likely requiring a subway. There isn’t really much grassroots movement to connect this missing link and it is also not included in Measure R. However, I think it is one of the most critical components of the system, as people from the South Bay, LB, etc could bypass Downtown and connect directly with Metrolink/Amtrak/HSR in Norwalk. There will likely be more interest in the connection after HSR gets built (Amtrak doesn’t even stop there right now).
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
oh yeh thats right…. hsr in burbank isn’t going to be where I was thinking… well I guess its only a few minutes on hsr to downtown and the existing red line to highland. There’s a marriot right at highland that i like. Does anyone actually stay in downtown la? I mean would there be a reason to? just wondering. Once I found some kind of underground mall there, it was under these twin black towers. ( no I didn’t imagine it) and there was also this international market/food court thing that I stumbled upon by accident… it had noodle shops a fish market, some other stuff… over by laus.
There’s a ton of stuff in la, but its like a scavenger hunt to find any of it. I still have to try canters.
so yeh, id probably use hsr to go to la a lot more than I do now, just because i could go down there for the afternoon and explore, have lunch, whatever, for a change of scenery. Like to day, went for a walk around sf, boring. been walkin round sf for 40 years. talk about been there done that….
and for shows, there are so many more concerts/clubs/etc down there… like next month I have to go to agoura hills. id much rather take hsr, for the simple fact that trains are SO much more comfortable than flying. god I hate flying.
Roger Christensen Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Downtown LA is getting surprisingly fun. There’s a cluster of spots on or near Main St. (yes
Main St) between 4th and 6th of which Pete’s is a mainstay of the “historic core”. LA just applied for $25m in federal grant for a streetcar service on Broadway that will connect the core with the Music Center to the north and LA Live/Staples Center to the south. If the grant comes thru this could be running in 3-4 years.
Palm Springs would be a good idea for a stop on any future LA-Phoenix line. The Coachella valley region would probably need some sort of regional transit system for it to be effective, however.
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
THey actually have an excellent transit system in the coachella valley, sunbus, its very useful )( i lived in ps before) and the buses run on clean natural gas or hydro I foret which… take a look
Joey Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Ah I see … How frequently do buses run?
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
30-60
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Of course, one is going to take a cab to one’s hotel anyway. One isn’t going to carry one’s bags on the city bus upon arriving in palm springs. really now. how would that look?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
I’ve noticed that there’s usually a cab or two or three loitering outside the Toolshed or the Barracks, not that the buses are running at the time of night I’m noticing this.
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
oh yeh, that … never heard of it. I try to forget what little I remember about my palm springs days.
coincidentally, i just got back from a trip riding taiwan’s HSR on (chinese) new year’s eve. unfortunately i didn’t have the presence of mind to have my camera out to shoot video of an express train ripping through the tainan platform at full speed, but suffice to say it was far less noisy than the FUD crowd agitprop would lead one to believe. also: beetfield/suburban stations with bus connectors are a headache compared to those sited in city centers tied into mass transit.
my mom, who has never been on HSR before, was impressed, and wanted to know when we’d get the CA system up and running. CA will be a real engine generating demand for HSR elsewhere in the nation, once tourists get to ride on them during their CA vacations.
jimsf Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
it will be HUGE for tourism. almost more important than for locals….
wu ming Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 8:00 am
yes, the statewide package tour deals alone will be quite popular, i imagine.
jimsf Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 9:46 am
right now, caltrans/amtrak offers a ca rail pass that is really popular. its good on the state trains and thruway buses, and the coast starlight. you get coverage for just about anywhere you’d want to go if you were a tourist and its only 159, for 7 travel days out of 21 days. –OH and, it includes vegas, reno and tahoe NV. with good planning you can see everything from the strip to yosemite, disney, hwood, monterey aquarium, carmel, santa cruz, humbolt redwoods, sequoia, palm springs seaworld… and that’s pretty much what they all do…… at 159 its a very good deal considering sf to vegas alone is 85 bucks. Only CA and FL offer these with state partnerships
wu ming Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 8:53 am
the speed of travel makes a difference in what’s practically feasible, though. that 2.5 hour HSR trunk line will really transform things.
Nadia – if you’re out there… Have you heard anything more on a recording of the Feb board meeting. Still not posted on the CHSRA website as far as I can tell.
morris brown Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
The audio for the Feb. board meeting is posted, but not on the home page. To find go:
site ->library->board meetings -> 2010 meetings ->Feb. There you will see 6 MP3 audio files or use the following direct links. They are about 10 MM bytes each.
Direct links are:
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20100211150901_Hsr_disc_1_32_side1.mp3
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20100211152750_Hsr_disc_1_32_side2.mp3
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20100211153123_Hsr_disc_2_32_side1.mp3
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20100211154326_Hsr_disc_2_32_side2.mp3
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20100211154727_Hsr_disc_3_32_side1.mp3
http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/images/chsr/20100211155640_Hsr_disc_3_32_side2.mp3
as for CA HSR tourism, i’d mostly use it to visit friends and family (esp. in socal) on weekends a lot more than i do these days. now i can only manage an insane bataan death march road trip once a summer, but with a 2 hr straight shot to LA without having to mess with the headache that is kids and planes, the calculus changes.
i would definitely make it down to the OC beach towns again. for other non-family tourism, i’ll probably stay in nor cal anyway. a ski train up to tahoe would be nice (if just to take all those SUV-driving idiots off of 80 every weekend), as would more amtrak feeder spurs building off of the capitol corridor route but heading up into napa or sonoma. a sped-up CC would make it a whole lot easier to see folks in the bay area as well.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
February 13th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
They’d have to build a mighty big station in Oakland to support all that.
@Roger Christensen
We tried to lo light rail, monorail in Fresno about 10 year ago. Darryl Bear (The Hungry Bear Cookie guy) Led the effort and it died on the vine. Our freeway system is good enough for north/south travel but traveling East/West there’s one main road (Herndon).
I think we still have a website even.
http://www.skytrain.org/
I wonder if this is something we can get going again now that there is more funds available.
jimsf Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 10:10 am
I like that rendering of “downtown central station”
Peter Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 10:24 am
Looks kind of like a anti-aircraft missile battery.
Jack Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 10:42 am
So many spelling errors, sorry guys.
Roger Christensen Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Didn’t know about the effort, Jack, thanks for the information.
As a note of encouragement, 15 years ago the Mayor of LA and EVERY LA County Supervisor opposed light rail on Exposition to Santa Monica. Today it’s under construction.
In 1998 LA voters killed all future subway projects.
In 2008 2/3 of LA voters taxed themselves for future subway.
Hopefully, Fresno’s day will come.
From LA, most of my vacation travel on HSR will undoubtedly be to SF once the SF-LA-Anaheim line is running. After using HSR in Japan, Europe, China and Taiwan during vacations, I appreciate the convenience of avoiding protracted check-in, glacial security lines, lengthy boarding procedures and inconvenient trips to/from remote airports. Having to hassle neither the six hour (provided the cops aren’t out in force and I leave at a traffic-friendly hour like 5am) drive up the I5 nor the get-to-LAX-check-in-take-off-my-shoes-wait-in-security-line-get-to-the-gate-30-minutes-before-boarding-fly-wait-for-a-gate-deplane-make-my-way-from-SFO will make weekend vacations to Bagdad-By-The-Bay very appealing.
Here in LA, extending the Purple Line at least to Westwood and building the Downtown Connector would greatly enhance access to/from Union Station. From SF, building rail into Marin and improving Central Coast access would most encourage me to vacation even farther afield.
Isn’t Yosemite half an hour from Merced? That’d be a good station to use.
On another note, if one wanted to professionally get involved in the high speed rail project, where would he look for project opportunities?
Joey Reply:
February 14th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
I thought it was longer than that, but I believe it is the closest station.
elfling Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
There are decent connections to Yosemite via bus thru Amtrak California. I have been wanting to try that trip on the existing system, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Open threads breaking out all over – feel free to drop over to the Sunday Train Open Thread at Daily Kos (and Docudharma and ProgressiveBlue and The Hillbilly Report).
I live in Japan now, but if I were back with my family in Santa Barbara I would regularly zip up to San Francisco on it, connecting in LA. Therefore, upgraded Surfliner service is a definite want for me. 110 MPH tilting trains and more double-tracked sections and/or sidings would be needed. Ideally, all the stations would get high platforms as well.
The ROW from LA to Gaviota wouldn’t be difficult to upgrade, however west of Gaviota the UPRR ROW takes a scenic but very circuitous route along the coast on poorly maintained tracks, missing Lompoc and Santa Maria, the other two big population centers of Santa Barbara County, by several miles. I’ve been entertaining the notion of a new ROW that would cut north through the mountains west of Gaviota and roughly follow the Highway 1 corridor though Lompoc and Santa Maria before rejoining UPRR into San Luis Obispo County. The new line would make train commuting a practical option for residents of northern Santa Barbara County as well as reducing travel times to and from San Luis Obispo.
AndyDuncan Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Just drove that trip this weekend. We left on Saturday knowing that trying to get out of LA on a friday of a 3-day weekend with Valentines in the middle was a bad idea, and yet it still took about 4 and a half hours from Santa Monica to Pismo Beach with no stops. We hit traffic everywhere. We looked at taking the surfliners, but there’s only two trains per day north of LA, most of the surfliner trains are just LA-SD. Even at 5 hours on a train plus an hour getting to/from the stations, we would have taken it if there was another, later train on friday.
One TPH from LA to SLO would be awesome. If they can get the trip down under 3 hours, even better.
Andrew Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
Huh? I remember Santa Barbara getting six trains per day in each direction, some of them terminated in Goleta though.
AndyDuncan Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Sorry, yes, I meant there’s only two TPD north of Santa Barbara. Technically there’s three if you count the Starlate. Departing at 7:30am, 10:15am (starlight) and 2:55pm. There are bus connections for the trains that terminate in Santa Barbara. Transfers suck, but then the bus is 30 minutes faster between SB and SLO. Either way, there’s nothing leaving between 2:55 and 7:00, which is pretty much when you’d want to leave in order to get to the coast before midnight and not have to take a half day.
Alon Levy Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Tilting trains + FRA regulations = epic fail.
Andrew Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
FRA regs be damned!
No, but seriously, I’m hoping that agency will get some sense soon.
dejv Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 9:28 am
There can be a workaround.
A Disney-HSR partnership==sounds good. Disney parks in Anaheim draw about 20,000,000 visitors each year, but the last few years attendance has declined slightly. If the high speed trains could boost attendance at the Disney parks and if a high number of Disney visitors would ride the high speed trains everyone would benefit. Picking off as many Disney visitors as possible would really help that ridership bottom line.
elfling Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Build me HSR and I promise to take my family every year. :-)
Peter Reply:
February 16th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Hell, people at my work go there with their entire family four or five times a year.
I live in San Diego and visit friends in Berkeley 3-4 times a year, I would definitely choose HSR over flying. Probably would connect to BART at San Jose. I used to work in SF and LA quite a lot and would have chosen HSR for that too, although now I don’t travel north for work as much. However I avoid going to LA because the drive is just too gruesome, and the traffic to infuriating once I get there – I guess I really have become a San Diegan. And my experiences with Amtrak to LA have left much to be desired. But at this point there are enough commuter connections to Union Station that if HSR got me up there in a hurry I would do it – for example to go see a show at the Pantages next weekend. I have friends in Grass Valley, so HSR up to Sacramento and then renting a car would be a good option to go see them – and as mentioned above Merced gets you close to Yosemite. If there were a connection to Palm Springs and Las Vegas, I would definitely use that too.
Joey Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Actually, it might be faster to get of at SF and take BART from there.
Bobierto Reply:
February 15th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Actually, I’m sure you’re right!
In addition to Disneyland, I would love the opportunity to visit my friends in LA and San Diego more often, just for a quick weekend overnight or even a day trip. I would also visit clients that I have in LA more often, because I’d be able to work on my laptop during the travel time.
I’m on the north coast, so the situation is a bit more complicated for me: currently it’s a 3 hour bus ride to join the system in Martinez (though it at least is a convenient stop, and it’s all Amtrak). The worst part is that the buses are very noisy (engine noise) and bumpy, making it difficult to work or read or otherwise use that time productively unless you get one of the seats near the front. As Sonoma-Marin’s SMART comes on line, added to a bus bridge to connect me to the main line in the east bay, this might get much more doable.