America 2050 Shows the Viability of HSR in California
This week the transportation advocacy organization America 2050 released a new study, HSR in America that scores the various proposed HSR corridors and provides a more detailed analysis of the potential for HSR in each region. It’s an attempt to provide some rationality and sense to the debate over where HSR investment should be directed.
Significantly for us, the LA-SF corridor ranks second behind DC to Boston (aka the Northeast Corridor, the NEC) among “long corridors” – those greater than 300 miles – in the America 2050 scoring system. And of course, the NEC already has a kind of HSR, the Acela, which as we explained yesterday, the Acela is very successful, covering its operating costs and running trains that carry nearly full loads.
The study also made some important observational points about potential ridership:
The largest short-haul air market in the nation is between the Los Angeles metro region and the San Francisco Bay area with hundreds of daily flights….
Based on the experience in Europe and the Northeast Corridor, rail trip times of less than three hours between Los Angeles and the Bay Area are likely to capture the vast majority of the point- to-point air travel between the two regions. And because the existing air market is so large in this region, nowhere else in the country is the potential to divert short haul air travel to rail greater than in California.
In other words, there is a strong likelihood that California will repeat the successful experiences of not just the Acela, but the Eurostar between London and Paris and the AVE between Madrid and Barcelona in luring passengers away from short-haul flights toward bullet trains. But the America 2050 assessment notes that there is a significant difference between the scores of LA-SF and LA-San José:
It is important to note that the 450-mile San Francisco-Los Angeles corridor scores significantly higher than the 400-mile Los Angles-San Jose corridor, highlighting the importance of ensuring that the high-speed intercity service continues past San Jose, up the peninsula and all the way into downtown San Francisco. An intercity network that only serves the east side of the Bay, as the Amtrak network currently does, will not generate the same ridership as one that terminates in the central business district of San Francisco.
I do hope someone informs the councils of Burlingame, Belmont, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and others about this. For the system to be viable, it needs to go all the way to the Transbay Terminal. Stopping at San José will cost not just millions of riders, but millions of dollars as well.
The study is mostly limited to these kinds of assessments of HSR in several regions of the country, but it’s still quite valuable in showing where HSR should be built and where it will succeed. As such, I fully expect it to be ignored by all the major news outlets, who seem to prefer looking only at reports that are critical of HSR.
I do think it’s foolish to run all the trains to San Francisco, rather than run some up the East Bay. This whole debate we have about how many trains per hour, interweaving local and HSR service, would be alleviated by running some trains where a good percentage of the Bay Area’s population lives. The extra 1/2 to 1-1/2 hour it takes to get to and cross the Bay Bridge (or BART) to catch HSR in SF is analogous to arriving at the airport 1-1/2 to 2 hours before one’s flight counting as part of door-to-door travel time.
Peter Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 9:29 pm
The main impediment to HSR to Oakland is lack of usable right of way, especially considering UPRR’s unwillingness to share.
Victor Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 10:10 pm
Oh yeah, UPRR is definitly no friend of HSR, Just of the UPRR’s own pocketbook. If the UPRR is legally cornered by an agreement that the UPRR can’t get out of, They’ll cooperate, If not the UPRR won’t cooperate.
BruceMcF Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 9:46 am
Since the direct right of way between Oakland and San Francisco is across water, I am assuming this is saying that is was UPRR that neglected to included a standard gauge rail connection the last time a bridge was put in between Oakland and San Francisco.
jimsf Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
There was only ever one bridge put between sf and oakland, the bay bridge, which has standard gauge rail until it was pulled out in favor of autos. There was never any other crossing except the ferries.
Now I think it would be an awesome idea to the following:
have all trains come up to san jose via pacheco, then at san jose, half continue up the ccjpa alignment to oakland, ( even if not at very high speed) and half up to SF. like this
There was something about passenger rail, ccjpa, purchasing the eastbay row from UP outright, which would make it easier for multiple passenger agencies to utilize as needed.
Joey Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Or, by designing Diridon Station and East Bay Rail effectively, you could have a timed cross-platform transfer at San José to an express up the East Bay (maybe 5 intermediate stops). You have to run fewer trains and both destinations get more service. Of course, this implies that there is something other than the existing freight tracks to run these trains on.
Alon Levy Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 4:20 pm
HSR to Oakland shouldn’t have to go through San Francisco. The problem is that both the optimal Pacheco alignment and the optimal Altamont alignment to Oakland require using UP track.
Joey Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Or at least UP right-of-way.
jimsf Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 4:26 pm
but what about the part where ccjpa was talking about buying the eastbay row from up?
anyway. imo this would be my hope for SOMEDAY
jimsf Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
hmm actually, like that with 5 color coded lines would make directions so easy and no worry about naming things.
get from sf to begas? take the red line to fresno and transfer to the blue line.
sac to san? take the green line to fresno and transer to the yellow line.
simple as taking bart!
Joey Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Few things:
Intercity lines, which tend to be much less frequent than local/regional transportation like BART, require much more careful planning to make transfers effective. Since most of the line is only two tracks, the traditional arrive-at-the-same-time/depart-at-the-same-time transfer won’t quite work. So the best you can have, with careful coordination, is a 5 minute wait for the next train. And every transfer you add to your journey will decrease ridership. Figure you have at least one transfer to local/regional services on each end, you’re up to 3 transfers probably with significant waiting time on each. There are plenty of people who would do that, but a lot who will say screw it and just drive or fly instead. Also BART only requires transfers for minor origins/destinations, at least during rush hour. For instance, you can get to San Francisco from anywhere without a transfer, and anywhere on the Fremont line is a direct transfer from the Pittsburgh-Bay Point line. So looking at intercity lines, it makes sense to provide direct service between all of the major location pairs, even if it’s only hourly or bi-hourly service.
jimsf Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 6:13 pm
i did that on 90 percent of the lines though – only vegas and coachella dont have direct service i think.
I just like the pretty colors ok?
Donk Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Maybe we can pay for it after every other leg of the system is built. Until then people in the East Bay are going to have to take BART to SJ or SF. They wanted BART, they got BART.
Peter Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
That makes no sense. Fremont-Oakland was part of BART since it was first opened in 1972.
James Fujita Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 11:06 pm
Nothing wrong with an East Bay bullet train, but there’s clearly other regions in line ahead of it.
Merced to Sacramento, Los Angeles-Ontario-San Diego, that connector between Palmdale and Victorville to Vegas, just off the top of my head. Maybe even Anaheim to San Diego.
Sometime around around the time that we’re converting the Capitol Corridor to Cal HSR, maybe.
Besides, East Bay has that awesome Richmond Amtrak/ BART connection.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 8:52 am
ie Los Banos. Suck it up, Oaktown!
San José, Capital of Silicon Valley, has the awesome Diridon Panglaactic Caltrain/ACE/Amtrak/VTALightRail Intermodal supercenter already. How could you have overlooked its majesty in suggesting that the Capital of Silicon Valley could possibly be strewn with more transportation jewels?
jimsf Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
just over look it
adirondacker12800 Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 7:02 pm
…. but Los Banos won’t have a station.
brandon from San Diego Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 5:46 pm
Wow, you are a little late to the party! The Authority has already decided the where the trains are going.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
As others have said, a spur to the East Bay (and even an upgrade of the Capitol Corridor to bullet train status) can certainly be done once the current plan is built out. I’m all for accelerating that entire process as much as possible.
Donk Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 7:59 pm
I see room for lots of HSR routes in CA after the main lines are done. Once we prove that it works in CA, people will start clamoring for all kinds of HSR routes. Palmdale-Vegas, Altamont, Oak-SJ, and Oak-Sac via Capitol Corridor are obvious ones. Riverside-Palm Springs, LA-Santa Barbara, and Ana-San Diego coastal could also work, if the momentum is great enough to counter the NIMBYs who don’t want power lines. These will all probably get built before anything to Phoenix or to Oregon.
Writing as a San Franciscan, but thinking in terms of the East Bay or North Bay experience of HSR.
OT
Apparently the rail authority did not get all the FRA agreements in place before year end. http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/01/12/2230705/high-speed-rail-funds-on-way-to.html
Victor Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 10:02 pm
It just means what It says, It’s in the FRAs hands, Not those Anti-HSR deniers in Congress. The money will come, Speaker Boehner or not.
Clem Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 10:02 pm
Did they need to? The HSIPR funds did not have an end-of-year deadline, unless I’m mistaken. All the stimulus funds, which did have such a deadline, seem to have been secured.
Elizabeth Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 10:16 pm
I don’t think any of the funds had a specific deadline. The FRA had all of a sudden wanted everything done by year end. As of Dec 20th, the statements made to the board and the public were that everything would be done by year end. Yet on Dec 22nd, they signed an agreeement that was a billion dollar short.
Victor Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 8:21 am
Some were stimulus funds that Republicans wanted back, So there was a need to get the money spoken for before the New Congress could claw back those funds from a largely Democratic held state, Thankfully the money is safe in California, It’s not like the CHSRA is building a Transcontinental line, Just one that spans somewhere near 1/2 the state of California and that’s a lot of ground to cover and I’ve been from one end to the other, California is a Big & Narrow state, Not to mention an expensive place to live at.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 7:18 pm
There doesn’t appear to be any issue here. As others noted, the FRA still has the authority to obligate these funds. Both the Senate and the White House have to agree to take them back. I’m guessing that won’t happen.
Here is a nice article refuting the Washington Post editorial. Nice to see other people look favorably at the California project.
I don’t know why it can’t be just as simple as building the high speed rail over our Interstate highways? We already have the existing infrastructure with bridges, overpasses and underpasses, the construction costs will be minimal compared to building a new and trying to appease to NIMBYs which try to derail this project. Just build on top of what we already have! Why can’t this be done?
Caelestor Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 8:44 pm
It would be optimal to connect the various rail systems of the state together and put the stations in areas that passengers can more easily access.
Also, viaducts are really expensive.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 9:05 pm
Some places you can do it, some you can’t or don’t want to. Interstates may have curves that are too sharp for trains at the speeds envisioned, and in some cases are too steep for long distances. Maximum grade on the Interstate system is 6%, or 6 feet of climb in 100 feet of travel; HSR equipment is currently designed to climb at 3.5%, and freight railroads, attempting to move enormous tonnages with very modest power, try to keep principle lines under 2% whenever they can, and like 1% better. In truth, you can go much steeper than this, and some railroads, including existing tourist or heritage railroads, routinely climb grades as steep as 11%, but this involves special rolling stock and locomotives to climb such a grade, even if worked by adhesion, and costs go up as speed goes down, both in extremely inverse proportions. . . and then there is the problem of getting back down something like that. . .I know, I’ve ridden that railroad with its average climb of 5%, maximum of 11%, and several strectches in excess of 7%, including a start on such a grade at a water tank (this is a heritage railroad with steam engines), and curves as sharp as 40 degrees in 100 feet. . .and still, there are two places where the trains can climb no further, and must reverse direction as they follow the paths of the civil engineers who sought a way out of this dead end, and found that going forward required going backward. . .
In addition to this, do you want a rail station way out where everybody absolutely has to drive to it? That would be the situation at many places with the station and the railroad out where the Interstate is.
Ken Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 11:52 pm
But the Interstate was meant to connect where people already want to go. Think about it; the Interstate goes right near airports (SFO, LAX, SAN), it goes downtown (passes by our major intercities), and they all go to all the tourist destinations. The freeway exits are practically analagous to train stations so to speak.
Freeways already have bridges, overpasses and underpasses at exits and various places so don’t you think it’d be much easier to improvise with what we have than spending years and decades of tests, endless local level meetings, wasting billions in tax dollars before even a shovel is put to ground, only to find out that by the time we’re ready, inflation and material prices shot up that we have tremendous cost overruns?
J. Wong Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 7:40 am
Actually, not. The Interstate highway system was originally proposed for military purposes as a means of moving men and material around the country quickly and as temporary runways for military aircraft. That said, it clearly doesn’t connect where people already want to go. Most interstates bypass downtowns often by many miles. I5 is the obvious example of this. It bypasses most of the Central Valley cities and doesn’t even connect LA with San Francisco.
thatbruce Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 9:42 am
Actually yes, the Interstates were meant to connect where people already want to go.
While its true that some of the early champions of what became the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 had become frustrated with the US road system while on US military convoys, and had gotten all gooey over seeing the German autobahn system in action, the whole idea of Interstate Runways is an urban myth. Please stop perpetuating it.
J. Wong Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 10:24 am
Ok, no more runways. Still, you have to admit that I 5 doesn’t actually connect where people want to go with respect to the Central Valley and San Francisco and LA.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
People want to go there because there’s an Interstate Highway.
Ken Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 11:54 pm
In other words, high speed rail is supposed to supplant our dependency on cars, and by the time gas prices reaches $5/gal, there’s gonna be less people willing to drive, meaning lot less cars on our Interstates between LA and SF. Why then, keep spending billions year after year in maintaining a freeway with less cars on them, when ya know, be better to just get rid of a lane on each side and run a high speed track right through it?
David K Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 3:50 am
If CA-99 had a right of way for HSR, similar to the Interstate 4 ROW for Florida’s Tampa-Orlando HSR, it would be perfect for the project, but it doesnt, and there arent enough lanes (2 lanes in each direction outside of the cities) to get rid of for HSR. There just isnt enough room on CA-99 for HSR. Despite synonymouse’s incessant rambling on the subject, the I-5 median isnt an option because of the simple fact that it doesnt go to any cities in the Central Valley.
As this has already been stated, the curve radii for HSR is too large for HSR to use urban freeways as ROW. I have only looked at the LA-Palmdale Alternative Analysis report, but using I-5 from LA to Sylmar was studied and found to be incompatible with HSR, which is why CAHSR is forced to use the Metrolink ROW.
Joey Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 12:09 am
The curve radii required for high-speed rail, even in urban areas, is vastly higher than what’s required for freeways. HSR would not be competitive with driving at all if it were limited to 65 mph.
synonymouse Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 1:50 am
Of course I-5 in the Valley is straight but that isn’t the issue anyway. If you see the hsr as merely a diversification and imperial expansion of the highway lobby it will all make sense. Why expand on an existing freeway alignment when you can use these free “green” billions to carve out and pave those new corridors those damn ecofreaks have been fighting for decades. Besides why cramp your pals at Caltrans when you can harass the ancient enemy of the pavers and the truckers, the freight railroads, and, in particular the bete noire of hsr foamer envy, the UP.
Joey Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 7:16 am
Even freeways as straight as I-5 have some minor curves which would be unsuitable for HSR. Look at a map – I-5 does change directions every so often. Of course, cutting off those curves wouldn’t be terribly difficult.
OT: Free HSR seminar in downtown LA this Friday, registration recommended. Japanese transport minister will be there, president of JR East Rlwy Co. as well as a VP of Kawasaki Heavy’s rolling stock division will be making presentations:
http://japantransport.com/seminar/2010/11/hsrla.php
MGimbel Reply:
January 13th, 2011 at 9:05 pm
I’m going! Van Ark will be there as well.
James Fujita Reply:
January 14th, 2011 at 2:24 pm
BTW, “JR East Railway Co.” would be redundant. The full English-language name is East Japan Railway Company, abbreviated as JR East.
Using the America 2050 methodology, L.A.-San Diego scores highest. Even more interesting is that a section within that section, L.A.-Inland Empire (Ontario-San Bernardino-Riverside), scores next highest. Why in the world is the C.H.S.R. Authority not starting Phase Two first since the demand is so great right now?
I also think this information further argues in favor of the station locations at the San Bernardino Intermodal Transit Center and Transit Village (connected by fixed-guideway to the San Bernardino International Airport) and, potentially, at March Inland Port, which, over the long term, probably needs to be connected in order to meet demand for air travel. All three Inland Empire airports would, then, be connected to the high-speed rail service in some way.
Another interesting point is that L.A.-Santa Barbara scores next highest, and that corridor isn’t even being addressed.
Peter Reply:
January 16th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
“Why in the world is the C.H.S.R. Authority not starting Phase Two first since the demand is so great right now?”
Because their statutory mandate is SF-Anaheim.
Matt Korner Reply:
January 16th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
I suppose I should have said, “Why is the statutory mandate SF-Anaheim?”
Howard Reply:
January 16th, 2011 at 5:23 pm
Will phase 2 construction start right after phase 1 is built and starts operating or will it have to wait until the private/foreign government investors in phase 1 are paid back by operating profits?
Will both extensions of phase 2 (San Diego and Sacramento) be built at the same time or will they be built as two separate projects?
Incidentally, Arup, Cooper Carry, and the other designers and engineers responsible for the San Bernardino Intermodal Transit Center and Transit Village, the first phase of which opens in 2013, are planning linkages to Phoenix and Las Vegas. The Brookings Institution scored the L.A.-to-Phoenix corridor highest in the nation.