Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:45 am

Actually depends…Won’t be that much faster to cities south of Fresno unless the rider takes it originating from Bakersfield. These folks lose time by having to commute by bus to a station that serves the ICS

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:55 am

Substantially faster for Hanford and Visalia, if there is a Hanford station, and for cities to the southeat of Visalia, who would be driving to Hanford station today.

Faster for trips to the Bay Area for people in Corcoran, since the bus from Corcoran is traveling along the line of travel, and doesn’t lose much time compared to the San Joaquin on the legacy corridor.

So its Wasco you are talking about. Fresno, Kings County, Tulare County, and Bakersfield all benefit, Wasco faces longer trips.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:10 am

The main sources of delays on the San Joaquins while running on BNSF are (1) passenger train interference and (2) freight train interference. I can’t tell from Amtrak’s report which segments exactly are causing the delays, but it seems clear that dedicated double tracks for passenger service will make the trains run on time more often. Which is an additional benefit.

For everyone who isn’t in Wasco. :-)

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:22 am

Please define “substantial time”.

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 12:43 pm

Once new construction is been extended to Merced, assuming they’re still running the San Joaquins on the ICS, savings would be approximately 30 minutes between Merced and Hanford.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:03 pm

About half an hour when the track for the Merced / Madera segment is completed, and one additional service per day.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:04 am

Of course it will, the legacy corridor is speed limited to 79mph and with flat track that is not super-elevated for fast running, its not 79mph all the way through from Bakersfield to Merced. The HSR corridor allows the San Joaquin to hit their top speed of 110mph and hold it all the way through except for station stops.

Where in the world did you get the idea that there is no speed benefit from running the San Joaquin on the ICS? Its not the same speed benefit as the HSR will gain, but its a substantial increase in effective station to station transit speed, above the transit speed available by driving.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:21 am

I think you misunderstood me, Bruce.
Those taking buses to catch the train on the ICS don’t get the benefit of traveling the whole length of the segment where the San Joaquin can increase its speed from …. They catch it somewhere mid length.
I believe the projection is a savings of 45 min. if you travel the entire ICS, say from Bakersfield to Fresno. You have to factor in bus travel, transfers, check ins and wait times for folks that will lose their current Amtrak stations.

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:52 am

Whatever. Whinging about decreased service for less than 200 daily passengers (out of nearly 3000 daily passengers on the current San Joaquins) seems like a little bit of a stretch when considering the increase in ridership that would occur considering a 45 minute time improvement. Again, they will take the bus.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:30 am

Again. A 45 minute time improvement if it is non-stop….which it won’t be. So for a time savings of anywhere from 15-45 minutes (on rail) …but they have to add an additional bus shuttle as part of their trip, don’t forget……………….people traveling north (not from Bakersfield) should allow destruction of their properties and farmland.
That is a tough sell tp the Valley. Especially since there is no funding in sight to even complete Phase 1 to get the actual functioning HS system.
The bookends get all types of upgrades to their systems….the valley gets theirs changed to one dependent on buses.

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:33 am

Again. We’re looking at less than 200 passengers that would be disadvantaged. You’re essentially arguing that because 200 passengers would be inconvenienced, we shouldn’t go ahead with the project overall. WTF?

joe Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:35 am

That is a tough sell tp the Valley. Especially since there is no funding in sight to even complete Phase 1 to get the actual functioning HS system.
The bookends get all types of upgrades to their systems….the valley gets theirs changed to one dependent on buses.

Come on Mac. What’s silly is there isn’t even a transportation bill yet – so we don’t know where the money to pay for our roads will come from either.

Congress does annual budgets and can rescind – take back – money. No guarantees anywhere.

What we know is the president and senate majority leader and house ministry leader want CA HSR. So does the Governor and majority of the CA Legislature.

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:45 am

Uhh, no the time improvement if it was non-stop from Bakersfield to Madera at 110 mph would be nearly 90 minutes (with a running start). 45 minutes should be easily doable with stops.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 12:03 pm

So to give Peter the benefit of the doubt , to clarify:
Travel from Bakersfield to Madera or Madera to Bakersfield, a passenger could save 45 minutes on the ICS with stops. For those living in the communities south of Madera/Fresno…they are dependent on buses and will therefore most like save much less time. In fact, those in Corcoran will take minute bus ride to a new Hanford station to catch the train that will save Hanford travelers 9-13 minutes from their old route. Subtract 9-13 minutes from Corcoran’s bus travel time…and you find a deficit. People living in Corcoran and towns south to Wasco areas will have worse service, no matter how you look at it with the ICS… AND they will have to see their prime farmland devastated to get this inferior service

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 12:08 pm

Excuse typos/lack of clarity above. For those living in the communities south of Madera/Fresno (but north of Bakersfield)….they are dependent on buses and will therefore most likely save less time. In fact, those in Corcoran will have to make a 25-30 minute bus ride to a new Hanford station to catch the train that will save Hanford travelers 9-13 minutes from their old route. Subtract the 25-30 minute bus ride from their 9-13 minute “savings” and you find a deficit. People living in Corcoran and towns south to Wasco on the western side of the valley will have worse service, no matter how you look at it with the ICS..AND they will see their prime farmland devasted to get this inferior service.

joe Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 12:20 pm

…AND they will see their prime farmland devasted to get this inferior service.

Ridiculous.

There was no problem taking farmland to build the infrastructure to pump water to these poor victims of State over reach.

Devastated. ?!?

I sincerely hope Gov Brown listens to the outcry and vetoes any and all additional state funded construction that impacts one acre of farm land – no more taking farmland to build prisons, facilities or roads.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:48 am

How much time are you calculating will be saved Hanford to Merced on the ICS…just curious, since this isn’t the full length of the ICS.

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:05 am

50 minutes for current San Joaquins from Hanford to Madera (where the ICS ends).

57 miles Hanford-Madera, at 110 mph (without time for stops and acceleration), is 31 minutes. Add in approximately 10 minutes (conservatively) to account for stops and acceleration, you get a conservative savings of 9 minutes.

At 125 mph you’d get a savings of 13 minutes.

And yes, these numbers are approximations. Running higher performance diesel locos could decrease times needed for acceleration.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:57 pm

So that is ten minutes for one stop and two acceleration/deceleration to 110mph?

Which makes it close to a wash for Corcoran if the Hanford East bypass is used, which is a
21min Google driving time and add 5 minutes for the transfer makes 26min vs 16min by train.

So, as I said previously, if the shuttle bus continues to Visalia its clearly a net benefit for Corcoran.

And of course, when the section Madera / Merced is completed, the benefit increases.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:16 am

Amtrak (or perhaps Amtrak California) will probably be buying higher performance diesel locos before the ICS construction is finished; the existing diesel fleet will be hitting “really needs replacement” age around that time.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:01 pm

Amtrak California or the Northern Alliance, but not Amtrak ~ AFAIU Amtrak does not own the Amtrak California rolling stock, just the long distance trains (Starlate, Zephyr, Southwest Chief and Sunset Ltd). The NextGen bi-level passenger cars are specified to be capable of 125mph service.

Paul Druce Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:05 pm

Amtrak owns most of the rolling stock for the Surfliner, but that’s about it.

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:50 am

They’re not “sold” on the plan because it directly impacts their land. How many of these farmers or property owners currently use the train, anyway, given that there are less than 200 passengers a day boarding at Corcoran, Shafter, and Wasco?

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:42 pm

And why are farmers and property owners in the southern tip of the valley not sold on this plan

Because the benefits are dispersed and become available in stages over time, and the impacts are direct. And since it is not selling off farmland for sprawl development or taking land for road widening, its not a familiar impact, and so it is easier for the impacts to be inflated in people’s minds.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:52 pm

It’s mostly because it pisses off librrruuuuls and hippies.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:30 pm

Excellent points.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:45 pm

What would mitigating against base tunnels have to do with anything? They are not proposing a base tunnel.

synonymouse Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 12:58 am

I brought up the base tunnel as part of the larger question as to how much of an impediment this new fault constitutes. Both for the value engineered approach, where it is definitely slowing down the route, and for the price is no object solution. If it turns out this is not a good location for a base tunnel or several pretty big tunnels that really limits the engineers’ “trade-up” options if the value-engineered just does not cut the mustard. After all the Tehachapi cheerleaders have been pimping it as presenting more alternate routes and less seismically risky.

What is increasingly sad here is that the controversy is not technical but political. Tejon is measurably preferable but the engineers and planners hands are tied. The CHSRA does not have the energy or the moxie to do the right thing. Van Ark did not deserve his media rep as bumbling; it turns out he was both competent and prescient. What good is there in bringing on another hopeless yes man ignorant of the devil in the details.

Since Brown will not countenance any changes or a re-vote the tax initiatives become the only outlet for protest.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:47 am

There is no base tunnel “trade-up” option, so you are raising a fantasy.

synonymouse Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 12:14 pm

Tejon is not a fantasy – it is essentially an automatic “trade-up” with its two substantial tunnels, which apparently are not at all feasible at Tehachapi. Major shortcoming – what is the CHSRA going to do if it determines value engineered at Tehachapi is too slow for the hsr scheme to be anywhere close to competitive. Tehachapi don’t do gold-plate because there is an “undiscovered”
fault line running right up the middle.

Remember White Wolf was unknown until 1952 and it experienced the second largest quake in California in the 20th century.

Clem is right on target labelling the CHSRA mindset “pig=-headed”. But I suggest it could fgast progress to downright dereliction of duty if they continue to ignore the cons piling up on the Tehachapi side of the controversy. In particular I do not recall any mention of the stealth “Tehachapi” fault in the January, 2012 whitewash of Palmdale-centricity. They should dub it the Antonovich fault.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:17 pm

Tejon is not a fantasy

Nor is it a base tunnel.

synonymouse Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 12:10 am

Tehachapi is the antithesis of base tunnel. The best Quantm route at Tejon features two 6 mile tunnels. It is a punch thru.

Tehachapi is a meandering last resort for freight. The Loop is still there because that route is not worth much of anything better. Maybe the UP knew something all along.

Hey, the cheerleaders assured us Tehachapi was a seismic walk in the park. Nothing can possibly go wrong. Everything is under control. Just put the stilts on top of the new fault that really isn’t there. All the way from one end to the other.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 10:25 am

Two 6 miles tunnels, neither of which are base tunnels. That’s why the transit along the Tejon route is so slow.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:09 pm

The “top fuel” (nitromethane) dragsters are still beating electric dragsters by a lot. But they’re weird.

Ordinary “pro stock” dragsters are in very similar time ranges to the electrics. Last I checked, low-end acceleration on electric dragsters was *massively* better than on fuel dragsters, but fuel dragsters regained the advantage at higher speeds. People have been investigating adding a gearbox to electric dragsters, which would probably be

However, the fact is that acceleration eats energy, so the weight of the batteries has to get bigger every time the acceleration goes up, so battery weight remains an issue.

It’s gonna be solved in the next few years.

John Nachtigall Reply:
June 22nd, 2012 at 1:27 pm

So what about the part of the law that says 9 billion in bonds? Can I “re-interpret” that to mean 1/2 the cost of the sytem and actually sell 34 billion in bonds?

Can I ignore the part where there has to be matching funds? Then I could just sell the whole 68 billion.

Officals can design the system, and I agree (as I said in the original post) that it is ok if the operating speeds aren’t the same as the law. But they have to be able to meet those speeds as defined in the law.

In summary, in this case the law is the design document. Call it poorly written, but those are the breaks

joe Reply:
June 22nd, 2012 at 10:08 pm

The law contains a list of high level requirements.

You infer new requirements such as the existence of reviewable documents and models “proving” requirements will be met – no such thing is required. No law is broken.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:23 am

In fact, regarding the bonds, while Prop 1A only authorized 9 billion in revenue bonds, it contains absolutely no prohibition on California issuing another 34 billion in bonds (under another authorization) and using them for the same project. In fact this was probably considered a possible option at the time it was written.

John Nachtigall Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:00 am

Joe..are you serious. They are running the biggest capital project ever in the history of the country and you don’t think they should have to have documents and models proving they can meet the design requirements??? It is not a legal requirement…it is a function of good project management. The law is broken if in the end they can’t meet the requirements, do you propose we build it first and then find out what we have? That does not seem like a good plan

And Nathanael, yes they can authorize a separate bond, my point is they can’t spend more on this bond then what it says because that is the force of law. You can’t just pick and choose what sections you follow.

Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:05 am

They are running the biggest capital project ever in the history of the country and you don’t think they should have to have documents and models proving they can meet the design requirements?

I like choo choos! Trains are fun. Tunnels are exciting. I like it when the horn goes BLART BLART BLART! Go, choo choo, go!

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:10 pm

John, Prop 1A does not require that the bond money finish the project, only that it be applied towards a project which meets the requirements. Think about it for a minute.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 22nd, 2012 at 4:33 pm

You could also appeal to demographics, since in ten years time, a substantial number of avowed opponents of the system will have exited the electorate via the obituary page, and will have been replaced from age cohorts that are stronger than average supporters of the project.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 8:59 am

I can say with certainty that the current authority can’t prove they will make it and has apparently not put any effort into proving it.

“Apparently” there means they haven’t established to your satisfaction what effort they have put into establishing whether the maximum non-stop LA/SF time is 2:42 or less. But of course you have in turn no established that there is any effort that you will accept, or whether you intend to be dis-satisfied with their efforts no matter what effort they put in place.

You clearly can’t say with certainty what some judge will rule in the future about what “certification” consists of and how much effort they will have to put in.

And none of this is particularly relevant to the funding of the Initial Construction Segment, which is not a problematic section with respect to the 2:42 requirement.21

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:02 am

But the Initial Construction Segment is plenty fast enough, being quite direct and with a very careful avoidance of slow zones. So it’s unproblematic from the point of view of the time requirements.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:46 am

But the speed limit situation ~ and the drinking age situation ~ is one in which the leverage is the ability to stop providing ongoing funding, for a system that requires ongoing government subsidy to continue functioning. States are not legally constrained to comply with either ~ they simply cannot afford to not comply, since the highway system is beyond their fiscal capacity to maintain.

The California Express HSR will require continued capital subsidy for expansion, so new capital grants can certainly constrain new capital construction. But its operation does not require ongoing government subsidy.

John Nachtigall Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:53 am

Ok Bruce, we will agree to disagree on this. I am quite confident that the whole system has to be compliant to the 2:42 standard regardless of where the money comes from. But neither of us will be the final judges

Two notes:

1. The reality is they have not proved the 2:42 to any standard (not just mine). The response to the FOI request clearly states they have nothing to provide to prove their assertion.

2. I think it is bad policy and bad project management to start construction without knowing if you can hit the requirements at the end. Se the politics and the money arguments aside for a moment, that is just not a good way to run a project.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:22 pm

They can meet the requirement with the project that they are requesting funding for. Its the Caltrain corridor (which has a freestanding 30min SF/SJ requirements), and the question whether they can get to LA-Union Station both running the double S curve through Bakersfield and running down the alignment from Palmdale down to Sylmar. If your focus is on the 2:42 requirement, the project to challenge is the second construction segment, not the initial construction segment.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:27 pm

As far as the compliance with 2:42, Phase 1 is not finished until it complies. All the State of California has to do to start on “Phase 2″ before Phase 1 is finished is to establish a new authority for the San Diego section.

As I have long noted, it may mean, depending on what the judge says who ends up setting the precedent, that the operating surpluses cannot be used to help fund that second phase work, until the first phase work is finished, but since that is not a bridge to be crossed for over a decade, leave that question to when it comes up, if indeed it does.

Spokker Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:34 pm

“As far as the compliance with 2:42, Phase 1 is not finished until it complies. All the State of California has to do to start on “Phase 2″ before Phase 1 is finished is to establish a new authority for the San Diego section.”

Come on, even I am game for a few shenanigans, but how long do you expect people to put up with this stuff? California voters can and will put a stop to it if they become fed up with the nonsense.

joe Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:57 pm

I don’t agree with BruceMcF – Spokker’s got a point that they’ll need to demonstrate the capability when Phase 1 is done.

Still there are misconceptions.
“1. The reality is they have not proved the 2:42 to any standard (not just mine).”
There is NO requirement to prove the standard prior to construction. In fact there is reason to not have these extra goodies done: Prop1A limits spending for non-construction expenses.

“2. I think it is bad policy and bad project management to start construction without knowing if you can hit the requirements at the end. ”

“Knowing” is not project management: They have risks to manage. Missing the speed requirement is a high impact risk I think is reported to the top level of the project.
CAHSRA knows it can set up a demonstration test run and hit the target. I bet they have thought of contingencies like asking for one-time operating waivers for the demonstration.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 10:24 am

@spokker ~ at the time that it becomes an issue, the question will be “does it get us our HSR segment faster”? At this point in time, there is no trunk system to connect to yet, so no reason to work out what is the most direct path to clear the various institutional hurdles that have been erected, except in response to hypothetical “what-ifs” being raised by John.

@joe ~ when did I ever say that they did not have to demonstrate the capability to declare Phase 1 finished? But if the time comes when the Phase 2 cities no longer want to wait until Phase1 is finished, and their elected representatives can secure funding to jump start work on their segments, then in spite of John’s repeated claims, then its certainly possible to set up an institutional framework that will allow that jump-start to proceed.

I understand that in John’ “uncertainty” is only supposed to be brought into play in order to raise the possibility that things will go badly for HSR, but fair’s fair: we also cannot rule out at this point in time things going well for HSR. For example, consider the benefit to the system if there is a Federal program with both grant and loan funding for the provision of electric transport. In that case, quite a lot could be done without having to tap Prop1a funds. Consider if there is a dedicated funding stream for the Rapid Rail tier of rail projects ~ quite a lot could be done on systems that would connect to and run through the CV corridor, without necessarily requiring additional Prop1 funding for their support.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 5:31 pm

It’s cosigned with I-86 if you are going from Suffern to Jamestown. If you want to go from Binghamton to North Arlington, the terminus of Route 17, you only have to go on Route 17 for a few miles in Binghamton.
The last DL&W train left Ithaca in 1956 but freight trains aren’t particularly useful for most passengers.
http://wnyrails.org/railroads/dlw/dlw_stns_ithaca.htm

BruceMcF Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 10:13 am

If the Bakersfield time is likely to end up slower than originally penciled in, the Tejon can save that time as well by passing by Bakersfield with a beetfield station. However, that is time that could also be saved by the Tehachapi alignment with an express alignment around Bakersfield.

synonymouse Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 12:39 pm

186-200mph over 3%+ gradients?

Alon Levy Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 12:46 pm

Tejon doesn’t require torturous curves at all. It can be done with very gentle curves; the alignments studied in the latest PB report that killed Tejon are suboptimal, since they all skirt Tejon Ranch instead of eminent domaining it.

And Synon is right that Tehachapi can’t sustain full speed because of the grades. Neither can Tejon. That’s why the difference between them is so large (~10 minutes using optimal Tejon): it’s a slower segment.

The other issue is that Tejon is more conducive to an edge-of-urban-area station southwest of Bakersfield; to serve downtown Bakersfield is not that difficult, but offers no additional advantage over Tehachapi.

synonymouse Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 1:00 pm

There is no use studying Tejon unless you take up the best alignment. The Chandlers are being total jerks – Brown and Richard too – this thing can be done without materially hurting the Tejon Ranch Co.’s interest in any material way. Brown and Richard might as well go ahead and fire Van Ark’s engineers who uncovered the “Antonovich” fault at Tehachapi. Bring in some engineers from Bangladesh or BART who know how to read hidden agendas and keep their mouths shut and cover up shit.

Tejon’s real superiority comes into play if you relocate to I-5, not entirely out of the question as a compromise if this thing implodes. Tejon is versatile; that’s why 99 goes there.

This fault that is not supposed to be there could prove interesting, especially if it turns out to be long and likely like to the White Wolf, one that has already proven to be quite destructive. I wonder how many of those supposedly manifold route alternatives thru the Tehachapis will now have to be discarded for seismic risk.

synonymouse Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 1:02 pm

“like” should read “linked”

BruceMcF Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 1:08 pm

I wonder how many of those supposedly manifold route alternatives thru the Tehachapis will now have to be discarded for seismic risk

One would hope at least a few ~ that’s supposed to be the benefit of the variety of specific alignments, that you can be burned on some without substantial loss.

synonymouse Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 1:17 pm

Counterintuitive but the advantage might actually accrue to Tejon, where there stands out only one better route but it turns out to be pretty damn good. Whereas at Tehachapi there is an embarrassment of riches but they are all fair to middling to duds.

You have to wonder if the CHSRA might find itself on some of these last chance alternatives at Tehachapi butting up against UP property or, perish the thought, Chandler domain.

wdobner Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 5:14 pm

186-200mph over 3%+ gradients?

Yes, that’s what the TGV does. But then what do the French know about High Speed Rail?

Tejon doesn’t require torturous curves at all. It can be done with very gentle curves; the alignments studied in the latest PB report that killed Tejon are suboptimal, since they all skirt Tejon Ranch instead of eminent domaining it.

If the area is unavailable then it is unavailable, regardless of the motivations ascribed to the decisionmakers.

And Synon is right that Tehachapi can’t sustain full speed because of the grades.

The French somehow manage to operate at between 270 and 300km/h on the Paris Sud-Est over 3.5% gradients.

That’s why the difference between them is so large (~10 minutes using optimal Tejon): it’s a slower segment.

Yeah, how dare those damn people get in the way of our perfect high speed rail alignment! It doesn’t matter if the alignment is optimal or not. If it is unavailable, for whatever reason, then it doesn’t enter into the trade space regarding alignment choices. The difference as spelled out in the most recent study is 5 minutes, which is reduced to just four minutes if Santa Clarita decides they don’t want trains running through town at 200mph. In what specific way, other than the board opting not to exercise Eminent Domain over the Tejon Ranch, is that analysis incorrect and your figure correct?

And it’s worth noting that Tejon’s low speeds are not a recent phenomenon. The 2004 Operations Report for a variety of alignments pegs the speed over the Grapevine at 150mph. This is well before there would have been a political interests getting a finger on the scale and thus presumably follows the mythical, ‘optimal’ alignment. Meanwhile the same report shows both mountain crossings on the Antelope Valley alignment being fully capable of supporting 186 mph operation.

The other issue is that Tejon is more conducive to an edge-of-urban-area station southwest of Bakersfield; to serve downtown Bakersfield is not that difficult, but offers no additional advantage over Tehachapi.

Except that an edge-of-urban area station would inevitably create a tremendous amount of greenfield sprawl around it. If you’re going to serve Bakersfield then serve the town itself, not some Haute Picardie-like park and ride on the edge of town. I would prefer the HSL, regardless of the mountain crossing, have an express bypass of the city itself, with local traffic using electrified, existing grade level ROWs to access the city center station. It should be quite possible to build the HSL down the western edge of town, then curve around the south end to rejoin the local tracks on their way to Tehachapi. Unfortunately that is more than likely not an option, and would be very difficult to implement if a Tejon crossing is chosen and the HSL approaches Bakersfield from the south or southwest.

There is no use studying Tejon unless you take up the best alignment.

Again, this isn’t make a wish engineering where we make all very special boy’s and girl’s dreams of a perfectly engineered high speed line come true. If a certain area is deemed to be unavailable, it’s unavailable. There are plenty of other areas which have been ruled out without you bothering to raise as big a stink over. So what vested interest do you have in seeing the Tehachapi alignment eliminated from consideration that you’d resort to childish conspiracy theories to get your way?

Tejon’s real superiority comes into play if you relocate to I-5,

Which also isn’t happening, make-a-wish engineering or no.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 12:54 pm

If it leaves LA at 11:00pm it gets into San Francisco at 1:40, enough time for a nightcap at the station bar and a cab ride home to be safely nestled in bed by 2:30. Not everybody in the world gets up at the crack of dawn to be in work by 7.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:32 pm

For what it’s worth, the last weekday TGV from Paris to Lyon leaves at 9, and the last Shinkansen from Tokyo to Shin-Osaka leaves at 9:20.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:51 pm

The NEC is open for business, more or less, 24 hours a day. The last northbound arrives in New York at 1:50AM and the first southbound departs at 3:15AM. Time enough for more than one nightcap and since bars are open in NYC until 4AM, enough time to get a good buzz between the time you get off the 1:50 and get on the 3:15.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:08 pm

Yes, but actual Express HSR corridors normally have a nightly curfew.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:12 pm

The NEC also single-tracks on random days and does track chip-outs that leave the New Haven Line double-tracked for long stretches. There’s a reason Amtrak’s on time performance in my experience is 50%.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 6:47 pm

Yes, but actual Express HSR corridors normally have a nightly curfew.

And they serve cities where the subway curls up and goes to sleep at night. NYC subway, PATH and PATCO run 24/7.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:16 pm

Train service between Madrid and Barcelona does not stop because the corridor is in maintenance curfew ~ the train leaving after the last HSR is the overnight sleeper, which arrives before the first HSR in the morning.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:07 pm

I sincerely doubt there are intercity trains into Copenhagen at night, even though its subway is 24/7 and its S-Tog is also sort-of 24/7.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:14 pm

Alon: CityNightLine and EuroNight. No, there are no arrivals and departures in the middle of the night; that’s partly because Copenhagen is at the end of the line for the sleepers.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:13 pm

If you have 2:10 nonstop SJ/LA and 0:30 nonstop SF/SJ, you also have 2:40 nonstop SF/LA.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 5:47 pm

On the selected alignment, certainly (unless it takes more than two minutes for the non-stop to get by the station), though the 2:10 constraint might be an independent constraint on the alternate alignment into the Bay.

But even though SF/LA is by far the more important economically, they are three independent legal requirements ~ cutting SF/SJ to 25min to make 2:42 SF/LA doesn’t automatically imply that its made 2:10 SJ/LA, and conversely cutting LA/SJ to 2:00 to make SF/LA 2:40 doesn’t automatically meet the SF/SJ constraint.

Bergism Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:39 am

In Joe’s defense, the language of AB3034 is not anywhere near as clear-cut as you seem to believe. When reading or quoting a statute, it is important to read the entire section. The start of section 2704.09 states “The high-speed train system to be constructed pursuant to this chapter shall be designed to achieve the following characteristics…”

The important word to focus on here is “designed”. If the sentence instead said “shall achieve”, then your understanding of the meaning would likely be correct. With the word there, it is much more vague as to what is meant. I don’t know what, if any, legal import the courts place on this word in similar context. Sadly, I will not have access to WestLaw for at least a few months, so I cannot easily find out. Based on its ordinary meaning, it could either be what you think, peninsula, or it could mean “capable of” achieving.

Don’t be so quick to write off an interpretation of the meaning of a law just because your interpretation differs.

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 7:11 am

No, but the private investors will in fact invest in a “high speed” rail that manages 3:00 from SF-LA in operations. Or 3:05.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 12:58 pm

They aren’t building anything in Oakland, so does that mean they can’t build anything in Fresno? Nor are they building anything in San Diego at this time. Does that mean they cannot build anything in Bakersfeild. Or doe it mean they have to find a contractor who will be willing to guarantee every piece of the system will instanteously appear at the same moment as revenue paying passenges glide down from the sky?

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 8:55 am

As usual, you’re talkin’ bullshit., peninsula. Phase I isn’t going to be done, and the 2:40 time won’t be achieved, until the Peninsula corridor is rebuilt. At that point the required time will be achieved.

In the meantime, the Peninsula corridor is a sideshow; NIMBYs have succeeded in making it “last priority” for the CHSRA.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:39 am

And a benefit of that is that there is substantial time, much of it after an HSR service is already in operation, to design the real Peninsula corridor rebuild, without the constant threat of “build it right” being subverted by opponents of it being done at all, because the opponents of it being done at all will have lost their political clout.

joe Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 7:09 pm

peninsula:

Joe, you can stop with your flimsy idea that they don’t have to build sustainable operating times that meet AB3034 requirements. You’re wrong. The wording of AB3034 clearly says the trains have to be capable of revenue operating speeds – meaning sustainable speeds during revenue operations.

No – it’s clear in the text that you understanding is mistaken.

You take the requirement language in 2704.09. (a) and mistakenly assert it applies to a peer requirement 2704.09. (b).

2704.09. The high-speed train system to be constructed pursuant
to this chapter shall be designed to achieve the following
characteristics:
(a) Electric trains that are capable of sustained maximum revenue
operating speeds of no less than 200 miles per hour.
(b) Maximum nonstop service travel times for each corridor that
shall not exceed the following:
(1) San Francisco-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40
minutes.
(2) Oakland-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40 minutes.
(3) San Francisco-San Jose: 30 minutes.
(4) San Jose-Los Angeles: two hours, 10 minutes.
(5) San Diego-Los Angeles: one hour, 20 minutes.
(6) Inland Empire-Los Angeles: 30 minutes.
(7) Sacramento-Los Angeles: two hours, 20 minutes.
(c) Achievable operating headway (time between successive trains)
shall be five minutes or less.

There is no operating requirement fo rthe pseed and 91) and (c) specifically use that operation language – so the omission of “operating” in (b) is clearly intentional. (b) requires it be capable – not that HSR must provide operation, or mandated 2:40 non-stop service.

Bergism Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 1:45 am

Joe, that is a very well reasoned use of language omission to validate your position. As written, I agree that is how subsection b should be read.

jonathan Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:23 pm

40 km/hr? Max, do you think the turnouts for the TTC will be navigable and maintainable — for both rails and trainsets — at 40 km/hr?

That, and there are two mountain rainges to cross, which are neither fast nor cheap.

Max Wyss Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 2:27 am

40 km/h for switches is rather slow, but it does depend on the curvature at the TTC. But besides the TTC, there are other stations where indadequate switches can cause lots of delays.

The mountain ranges to be crossed… Well, cheap… no; a km in the Central Valley will cost less… Slow… that’s a question of how the line is designed (including tunnels); in a few years, a more than 50 km long tunnel is going to become operational where the design speed is 250 km/h (Gotthard base tunnel), and a shorter tunnel (around 37 km long; Lötschberg base tunnel) is operational, where many trans run at 200 km/h, and a few at 250.

So, it is feasible; just requires reasonable engineering.

jonathan Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:34 pm

Nathaiel,

Nope, incorrect. CHSRA’s contract engineers have a slew of their own “design errors”.

Just look at Clem’s blog pages: spendng ~1$bn in Millbrae to save a ~$100m station and avoid a turf war; Ditto for “signature viaducts” into San Jose Intergalactic. and San Jose Cahill St station clearly needs more than half the platform capacity of, oh, lets say Berlin Central (not counting the U-Bahn or future BART). Right??

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 8:48 am

Solar is capable of producing all our electricity needs, many times over.

(Does nothing for the food problem, given current tech, but that’s another matter.)

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 8:51 am

That said, the *payback* of increasing top speeds above TGV levels is so low that it’s not going to be worth it in general.

People’s desire to go fast will be satisfied better by, well, LGV lines — direct bypass lines straightening routes but involving huge, intensive construction — than by raising top speeds from 300 km/h to 350 km/h.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:00 am

Japanese trains also have more seats per unit of train length, both because a larger proportion of the train is used for seating space and because the seats are 3+2 in second class and 2+2 in first class instead of 2+2 and 2+1. The export Velaros and Zefiros used in China, which are wide enough for 3+2, waste much less space than TGVs, and have a smaller proportion of the train’s seating in first class, come close to Shinkansen seat capacity.

Max Wyss Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:38 am

Correct, the Japanese loading gauge is considerably wider than UIC or the US ones. That does, however also mean that a full car may get to about the same gross weight as an ICE3, which then gets the energy efficiency (kW/t) to the numbers of the ICE3. Of course, the kW/passengerkilometer is still better.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:52 am

For some reason I thought the quoted mass figures (~46 t for a motored car) were all for a full car rather than for an empty car. At least that’s what JR Central claims.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 1:20 pm

Correct, the Japanese loading gauge is considerably wider than UIC or the US ones.

The Shinkansen loading gauge is so close to the North American that if you take the rub boards off the edge of NEC platforms Shinkansen could serve the stations. Except maybe Penn Station, the tunnels are very very tight.

Max Wyss Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 1:36 pm

I would say those weights are empty. This gives an axleload of less than 12 tonnes. Now considering the 100 seat car adding 7.5 tonnes (or so) of payload.

My reasons why that is empty: A (somewhat garbled) article from the Railway Gazette, and other sources.

jonathan Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:36 pm

Ssh, don’t confuse Synonymouse with facts.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:25 pm

The core urban distributor in LA is getting built, though. What’s the problem *when HSR opens*?

The 1980s mentality is a mentality which says that you are fighting *against* the tide of rising car culture, rising right-wingery, rising know-nothing-ism, rising “Generation Greed”, oil getting cheaper. It’s a mentality where you are constantly under siege and the political trends are conspiring against you. Where one somewhat poorly planned of rail will be used to kill future rail projects for years. (This attitude may still be correct in Texas, if Austin is anything to go by.)

In contrast, when fighting for passenger rail in California, you are now actually fighting *with* the tide of the mood within the populace at this point and it requires an entirely different attitude. Where a few mistakes will be shrugged off as long as the system basically works, and where more rail will beget more rail. Where the Downtown Connector and the Wilshire Subway are getting built even though a bunch of the previous lines were somewhat questionably designed — because the previous lines were successful *anyway*.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:26 pm

Does that help explain it? I remember my own mentality from the 1980s, it really was fighting against the tide at all times trying to get anything sane done politically. It’s not like that with respect to trains any more, not among the public (perhaps among the older legislators, but not among the public).

D. P. Lubic Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:04 pm

Paul, if it helps (and it should make you hopeful), check out the posts I’ve had on the generational shift; many have links to articles on this subject. One that turned up recently is from last March in the New York Times, with some of the most interesting comments. It’s on this page.

It’s most interesting to read in those comments that some people advocate that GM expand its product line to include sexy trains and trolley cars, partially because cars are so 20th century. . .

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 4:31 am

The folks in Hanford and Kings would have loved to see the project go along 5…but no one listened. The Highway 5 argument that it is in the middle of nowhere doesn’t necessarily fly, but that is another topic altogether.
You are right about the viaducts through the middle of Bakersfield doing nothing to improve speeds. So why are they still pushing for that type of alignment. The HSRA does not confer with the towns/cities on this end of the valley. They just TELL them what they are going to do….and tell them to wait until the next draft EIR comes out to discuss plan details. When the EIR comes out and everyone is outraged, they are called NIMBYS. There has been no real joint effort to come up with better alignments through Bakersfield for sure…since well before the last draft EIR came out . They have just been trying to fast track everything to meet the deadline to grab those Federal funds. Had officials known about the true devastation, the number of viaducts , and other impacts…they would never have supported the “current alignment”. And the new hybrid plan that they are adding into the NEW draft EIR is a joke. It saves a few different buildings, moves a few yards here and there…but still same viaducts smack through the middle of towns and neighborhoods. That’s why, in part at least, Bakersfield has backed away and called BS…..openly opposing the current plan.

Roger Christensen Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 8:57 am

“the folks in Kings would have loved to have seen it go along the 5 but no one listened”
What a lie.
The Hanford East Route was created after a pow wow with Kings Tulare officials who, along with the city of Hanford, agreed it was the best regional option. They high fived each other as an example of government working together and bristled at any thought that it was only a potential station.

Later, of course, they were “blindsighted” and “lied to”.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:13 am

But why do the people of Kings county have the right to deny an HSR station to the people of Tulare county?

The viaducts through the middle of Bakersfield will, of course, do quite a lot to improve speed compared to the current rail corridor ~ its just that they won’t do enough to improve speeds.

Why is the CHSRA pushing that kind of alignment? Its quite possible that they don’t agree with me. But in any event, they are working on refining alignment alternatives based on a previous round of alignment alternatives that have already passed through the board, and, as with the Hanford East bypass, they can’t work on a new alignment alternative outside of the ones that have already been approved unless the board approves a special study of that new alternative and then after the study is completed votes to add the alternative to the collection of possibilities.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:08 am

I can’t speak for Kings/Tulare officials…but I would be interested to know when they agreed “it “was the best option? Most likely before they got the details. The HSRA has been quite consistent about hiding some of the important details and not answering questions. They probably felt blindsighted once they actually got the documentation, EIR info etc and realized what was verbally presented and summarized in previous documents did not resemble what was actually proposed in the official plan.

As for Bakersfield….the Board will not approve a special study of a new alternative station outside of Bakersfield despite requests. They just ignore because they want to move forward.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:54 am

Despite requests from whom, and on what rationale?

If there is a request for a new alignment based on one of these absurd “the train will run too close to the high school” kind of claims, why would the CHSRA be expected to give that a lot of weight? Given the infinite wisdom of your state legislature and your former governor in continuously understaffing the Authority, there is only so much that they can take on board, and right now the focus is on getting the Initial Construction segment approved and underway.

If there are people who want a bypass alignment ~ as opposed to just complaining about whatever that they think they can gain traction on as a way of trying to kill the project ~ they need to do some organizing and start working toward that goal.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 12:22 pm

The HSRA has a long list from Kern County and the City of Bakersfield of problems with the current southern end of the CV alignment. Too long and involved to go into here. The high school claims, while relevant are just a very small piece of it. Requests from officials to study station locations outside of town (i.e., west side of town or airport locations) have been denied. After the next EIR comes out sometime this summer…you will see/hear more outcry. The HSRA alternative thrown together at the last minute, its “hybrid” route through downtown Bakersfield, is a joke given what was requested by officials.
The understaffed Authority just wants to push this through anyway it can and as fast as it can. They are burned out and not interested in creating an alternate route. I get that…but it doesn’t make it right or fiscally responsible.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:18 pm

The length of the list doesn’t mean all that much if they are all of the level of seriousness as the high school complaint. The people doing the AA analysis will have to step through each element in the list, but its quite possible that modifications to address one issue make a second issue worse, and the cost impact of the modification is far out of line with the impact being addressed.

So if all that Kern County has done is put together a laundry list of complaints, that may be an effective way of blame shifting, but its not likely to amount to a serious effort to get the best possible outcome for Bakersfield.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:24 pm

Too long and involved to go into here.

No it’s not. You’ve typed hundreds if not thousands of words pleading for the woebegone residents of Wasco, surely you can manage a hundred or two summarizing it and providing a link to the detailed list.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:47 pm

Please give a little credit to Kern…that this isn’t some insignificant laundry list.
I do understand your point with regard to modifications to one issue make a second issue worse etc. I am serious in asking this: What “serious effort” should Kern County take?
The HSRA is not required to confer with them. They aren’t required to tell them how/why one modification may or may impact other. They are’nt even required to give full answers to issues raised in draft EIRs until the FINAL EIR. They are simply SUPPOSED to address them in each subsequent draft EIR . A very frustrating process. Any serious suggestions would be welcomed. Lawsuits should not be the only form of communication…although they do seem to have worked for the booksends to some degree…..thus the “blended approach” :-)

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:07 pm

Lawsuits is not what drove the blended approach, it was the sticker shock of the “throw more concrete at the problem” approach that the CHSRA was pursuing that was pushing north of $100b (partly, though not entirely, from addressing each complaint with more structures). They should have been pursuing the blended approach from the outset, but Judge Kopp was dogged in his insistence on not allowing the high speed trains catch slow train cooties by sharing track in the 125mph zones.

But you catch more bees with honey than with vinegar ~ while PAMPA was getting its retiree nappies in a knot over the threat of a fictitious tens of miles long concrete wall through the area, Gilroy set out to work constructively with the CHSRA. In the end, Gilroy is going to get much more say in what they get than PAMPA will, as the final design for PAMPA is going to get kicked down the road until the HSR is already running and all the political leverage will have swung to the CHSRA.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:11 pm

I would be interested to hear about what problem/solution was in Gilroy…..their resolution with HSRA

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:21 pm

Gilroy funded a study as to how best to reasonably integrate HSR with their downtown.

They didn’t reject affordable alternatives from the outset and demand the most expensive alternative (see Palo Alto).

Clem Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:32 pm

Come again? They want the 1.8 billion dollar trench.

joe Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:34 pm

City’s page http://www.gilroyhighspeedtrain.org/

This Blog’s coverage http://www.cahsrblog.com/2012/02/gilroy-votes-for-downtown-hsr-station/

The ref article: http://gilroy.patch.com/articles/council-selects-downtown-area-for-high-speed-rail-station

The report visioning the alignment choices: http://www.gilroyhighspeedtrain.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Vision_Report_Final_web.pdf

Peter Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:48 pm

Gilroy wanted both vertical alignments studied. They did not reject the “at-grade” alignment on a retained-wall berm (what was originally proposed for the Peninsula).

Reality Check Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:18 pm

@Roger & @Mac, “blindsighted” is not a word. I think you mean “blindsided”.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:06 am

Kern County and Bakersfield are not making serious proposals. They’re acting like they don’t understand trains.
Perhaps it’s because they DON’T and they haven’t bothered to educate themselves.

Of COURSE they’re going to get ignored.

If they really make enough fuss, they may manage to get the CHSRA to bypass Bakersfield completely, with no station; that would save some money, certainly.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:07 am

“Please give a little credit to Kern…that this isn’t some insignificant laundry list.”

Yes. Having looked at it, it is an insignificant laundry list, some of which are of the “trains will make our milk go bad” level of sanity.

No, I cannot give them any credit.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:09 am

You know what? It’s also true that the CHSRA studied multiple possible Bakersfield station locations. A few were rejected as too hard to get tracks to, but for the most part the current station location was chosen because *Bakersfield wanted it there*.

If Bakersfield changes its mind at this point, fuck them.

joe Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 5:49 pm

Come again? They want the 1.8 billion dollar trench.

Gilroy recommended the trench – that was the outcome of the project but another outcome was the city residents were engaged and it’s not over.

I prefer the other downtown alinement which would ALSO include the UPRR and grade separations using underpasses.

joe Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 12:57 pm

There have not been any studies to put the station in another location outside of the downtown area in over a decade despite adverse effects that have unfolded since that time…of having it downtown

Sounds terrible that CAHSRA isn’t managing Bakersfield city planning correctly.

My town Gilroy, far smaller and less important – managed to conduct some studies and figure out where they want the train station.

Maybe Bakersfield should organize a study to understand what are the best interests of the city and then engage the CAHSRA. Apparently , if you are correct, Bakersfield has not done anything while My smaller city managed to get co-funding and devise an initial plan.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:29 pm

Joe’s suggestion is entirely reasonable and it’s not too late to do it, though it is damned close to too late.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:14 am

The alternatives actually on the table are to approve breaking ground or to set the project back by a decade or more.

joe Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:51 pm

I recall Paul writing that HSR should built years later – after his rail priorities are met.
I also recall Paul disproving of any HSR speed rail at speeds above 150 MPH – he uses SI units which might confuse some. Concorde was the label for the CA system.

Paul doesn’t recall cancelling the project – just working the entire project in 3 weeks and in a way that violates the Proposition 1A funding.

This double think comes from a leader/advocate for rail in CA.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:01 am

Sure, as long as you don’t ask for anything which would jeopardize the federal money coming for the ICS in the Central Valley. Can you promise that, Paul?

Because if you do jeopardize that money, you are proposing a plan which will be *worse* and *take longer*.

joe Reply:
June 22nd, 2012 at 6:43 pm

The Think Small rail advocates had their chance and and failed – their proposals are not transformational, are incremental and could not get popular support and funded. HSR didn’t displace them, it beat their ideas.

Kennedy proposed a moon shot, not a one manned space walk with moon walk to come later.

HSR is not high risk moon shot – it is a been-there-done-that for the world but novel and exciting enough in the US. low risk and it’s funded to the tune of billions.

A smart strategy for the Think Small community is to follow the golden rule rule of comedy – YES AND…. Yes HSR AND we need to concurrently think and invest in urban systems to work with HSR.

Sadly the strategy is to disparage HSR and fight for the carcass.

Academics have two problem with their community research – shitty dull proposals to do the same thing for the Nth time and stupid infighting within the community that destroys funding by confusing the funding source. Communities that cooperate always win.

D. P. Lubic Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 12:20 am

Thank you, Donk and Joe, that’s the sort of thinking we need to get going after almost 50 years (going back to the Ground Transportation Act of the Johnson Administration).

Paul Dyson Reply:
June 22nd, 2012 at 11:46 pm

Wait and see…

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:00 am

Paul, nobody is proposing such a plan, *not even you*.

Start with the current political situation at the federal level: the federal money is available for the Central Valley and if you don’t use it for that IT GOES AWAY.

There is basically no way to design a plan which delivers benefits earlier and for a lower cost unless you TAKE that money and USE it for what the Feds want you to use it for. And within the “do the Central Valley” constraint, the current ICS plan is damned good, and you haven’t proposed anything better.

Feel free to attempt to work on improving LATER portions of the plan which don’t have federal money involved.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 22nd, 2012 at 7:15 pm

who said FUD had to be rational?

synonymouse Reply:
June 22nd, 2012 at 11:44 pm

I believe Path 15 follows the Grapevine.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:16 am

But what is it about the air in California that makes rail corridors in California unsuitable for Ac transmission to outlying substations, as done in electrified rail corridors elsewhere in the world?

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 1:00 pm

I’m beginning to think it’s Hetch Hetchy water since the same views aren’t held by Southern Californinans.

Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 4:41 pm

But what is it about the air in California that makes rail corridors in California unsuitable for Ac transmission to outlying substations, as done in electrified rail corridors elsewhere in the world?

The main thing that would cause this would be your ignorance of HV grid infrastructure, in California and the rest of the world.

Laying in a new dedciated HV transmission line and associated substations to feed a lower voltage rail line isn’t trivial and isn’t cheap, as CHSRA’s consultants have grudgingly and sotte voce admitted.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 5:20 pm

Elizabeth’s claim was not about cost, it was about the time window: if California hands back the CV funding, and waits for the next opportunity to fund construction starting from the San Fernando Valley to Palmdale, there wouldn’t be time to do the environmental review for providing supply to the substation for the as-yet unfunded SFV/north corridor because …

… well, its as unclear after your intervention as it was when she originally made the claim, as rather than explaining what this purported issue is, you instead elected to knock down the straw horse argument that its trivial and cheap.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 6:56 pm

The main thing that would cause this would be your ignorance of HV grid infrastructure, in California and the rest of the world.

things like this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champlain_Hudson_Power_Express

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:02 pm

AC is more suitable for multi-point power distribution such as the grid to substation problem, HVDC, while having very low line losses per 1,000km, is more suited for point to point distribution, which is the grid to grid application of the Champlain Hudson Power Express.

What you see in some of the electrified rail corridor going through sparsely populated areas in Japan is the AC substation supply lines running above the power supply lines. Since the transmission distance is shorter than the AC regional transmission lines, the voltage is not as high, which reduces clearances, and of course makes for a smaller voltage step-down at the substations that feed the power supply lines.

If there is a transmission corridor bottleneck that makes it difficult to run those lines through (for instance, since these are often mountainous area, when the rail corridor goes through a tunnel, the AC transmission wires often pass over the mountain ridge), then an HVDC line could certainly feed a freestanding AC grid. That is how some island AC grids are fed in Europe. But the cost of the transmission corridor would have to be fairly high, since that adds the cost of the HVDC / AC interconnect to the system at both ends of the HVDC line.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:56 am

Richard M wrote: “Laying in a new dedciated HV transmission line and associated substations to feed a lower voltage rail line isn’t trivial and isn’t cheap, as CHSRA’s consultants have grudgingly and sotte voce admitted.”

Let me correct you on this. It isn’t cheap. But it *IS* trivial. Absolutely trivial. The Pennsylvania Railroad did it in the 1930s. The only problem is locating the land, and if you’re building a railroad, *you’ve already done that*.

Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:22 am

But it *IS* trivial.

Wrong. Please, get out of the rec room some time and check out how how the world is built.
Actually, no need to go that far: stay in the basement and use Google Earth.
Or use image search and try to find the co-sited HV distribution network on any contemporary rail construction.

And ask yourself this: if it were trivial, wouldn’t PB — who are outrageously sand-bagging against Tejon and any sort of professional or honest evaluation, in every possible way — fail to even to mention this “trivial” detail? They have and are concealing other immense “added” costs and “unexpected” logistical complications, after all.

PS FYI http://www.pobox.com/users/mly/CHSR/Tejon-Soledad-HVAC.jpg

Alon Levy Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:47 am

Isn’t the LGV Sud-Est ROW much wider than necessary for two tracks, precisely so that they can add power transmission lines in the future?

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:50 am

Richard M., your unfounded innuendo is just nonsense.

OK, so there’s some colocation difficulty in *tunnels*, but not anywhere else. It really *is* trivial.

And why isn’t there a cosited HV distro network on most contemporary rail construction? Because they didn’t NEED it.

When they thought they might need it — it’s there.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:51 am

I see that PB is specifically worrying about the difficulty of running transmission lines across the areas where the railroad line is planned to be tunnelled. OK, I admit, that is a potential difficulty. Along the rest of the route, though, it *is* trivial.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 1:09 pm

HVDC, while having very low line losses per 1,000km, is more suited for point to point distribution, which is the grid to grid application of the Champlain Hudson Power Express.

The pertinent part of the CHPE is that they are using railroad ROW where the Hudson isn’t an appropriate ROW. If you want multi point distribution then look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_-_New_England_Transmission

…and it’s only 95 road miles between Bakersfield and Palmdale. They don’t need to run the high voltage line along the whole route, just the bits that don’t have high voltage service nearby… the people in Mojave and metro Techapachi don’t usually light their homes with kerosene…

Elizabeth Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 1:20 pm

The reports have mentioned that getting power into the area is a 5-7 year process, once you have figured out what you actually want. You will also need access roads and the like through a very mountainous, environmentally sensitive area. There is significant risk of all kinds associated with the lack of power for this alignment.

This has been a known issue for more than a year and is NOT an issue for grapevine. It is stunning that this was not even mentioned in the memo PB produced to decide whether or not to continue study of grapevine.

Our understanding is that Dan Richard determined that the political risk of grapevine outweighted any engineering or environmental or travel time risk.

Just from a risk mitigation standpoint, study of grapevine should have been continued.

Mac Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 1:27 pm

I do believe Elizabeth is right. Political pressure. Jerry moved Mr. Richard in and immediately the Tejon/Grapevine study was squashed. Few details emerged with regard to documentation on the particulars.

synonymouse Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 2:32 pm

Was Richard aware of the quantum out of the void “Tehachapi-Antonovich” fault?

This is stranger than fiction. We are living “Chinatown”. Van Ark is our Hollis Mulwray.

But in this case I think we have learned what we’re dealing with here, Mr. Gittes.

synonymouse Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 2:37 pm

And one would assume the Chandlers would veto any power lines running from the Grapevine area to Tehachapi across their barony.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:31 pm

Fine. Run the high voltage power lines *directly* over or under the railway line. You can even do that in tunnels, though you have to dig an extra bore, so forget the “extra access roads” — bring it in along the ROW.

This is not difficult *at all*. Ugly, perhaps, but not difficult.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 10:06 am

Alon, I believe that you are right on the width of the French corridor, but that is for regional transmission lines, not for transmitting power some 50 miles to 100 miles to one or a few substations that cannot be served from the local grid.

The example I saw a picture of was in Japan, so this may be in Richard’s “not done that way in Europe” Japan blind spot.

Clem Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:35 pm

They will get rather pig headed about it. They want millions of European and Asian tourists to do the great SF-Las Vegas-LA tour using the civilized form of transportation they are most familiar with.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:45 am

“Drop in grid demand”? For residential consumption, it means negative grid demand.

Carbon-free power generation at adequate-for-a-first-world-country cost is a solved problem; the problem that’s unsolved is political.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:36 pm

I agree that it’s not worth being a PV efficiency snob… although I know people with a design which is far better thtna the theoretical “44%” efficiency limit. (Anything more would be spilling trade secrets, but it’s using obvious quantum-mechanical stuff which people have been ignoring for computational reasons.)

Also agreed that the technical problem is solved, and the remaining problem is political. Dammit.

Wdobner Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:41 pm

Carbon-free power generation at adequate-for-a-first-world-country cost is a solved problem;

Yes, by France. But hopefully there’s hope that America’s future involves more than groundwater polluting natural gas, destructive solar plants, and unsightly, unreliable wind turbines.

Richard Mlynarik Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 6:54 pm

obvious quantum-mechanical stuff which people have been ignoring for computational reasons

Very fine indeed. Both obvious and uncomputable. I’m quivering — quivering!! — with trade secret anticipation.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 7:17 pm

If they can manipulate quantum mechanics so well why don’t they skip over the super-duper battery and go right to one of those doohickeys that suck energy out of the dark matter void? Or whatever it is those people on YouTube are claiming to do.

jonathan Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 8:05 pm

See: Casimir effect; vacuum energy; zero-point energy; and dark energy, in that order.

Paul Dyson Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 7:51 pm

I’m a big advocate of electrification, always have been, what makes you think otherwise? It’s still pertinent to make sure we have asked the question as to supply.

Paul Dyson Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:19 pm

Well there is demand, peak or not. So answer the question.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 4:28 pm

Too late, someone else linked to one of the many duplicate answers to this repeated question first.

1% of the electric grid ~ adding effective renewable capacity for an additional 1% generating capacity over the next 15 years is only a fraction of the additional renewable capacity that will be brought online in any event.

Mac Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:13 pm

Yes…the HSR will be pulling from the same grid we use to power our homes and businesses.

Clem Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:32 pm

You forgot the key quote from the article you linked:

The 3 billion kWh needed to power California’s high-speed trains by 2035 represents a little more than 1% of the state’s current total electricity consumption, according to the California Energy Commission.

Billions of kWh and millions of dollars sound like huge numbers to little people like you and me, but in the grand scheme of the power grid, it’s a BIG YAWN.

Paul Druce Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:46 pm

Hey, toss in a reactor and you get nearly free carbon free electricity too. It’d pay for itself in maybe a decade’s time as well.

But unfortunately we are going with the hippie version instead.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 2:59 pm

Toss in enough onshore and offshore wind farms and you get nearly carbon neutral electricity too. Of course, there are people who are concerned with the risk of a big windspill if there should be some problem with the failsafes following some big seismic event. Scary stuff spilling out has never been a problem with nuclear plants following big seismic events.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 3:20 pm

Or you can just turn off the lights when you leave the house.

Paul Druce Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 6:51 pm

While you are being sarcastic, that is true actually. Fukushima’s issue was the tsunami, rather than the quake. Modern reactors (or, for that matter, a more competent TEPCO), are significantly safer and would have survived the disaster unscathed. If you are terribly over concerned, just outsource their location to Montana like all of our coal power.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 8:33 pm

A tsunami is a seismic event.

How does an argument that the failure point is regulation rather than “the technology” implies anything good for nuclear power in the United States, where regulators are routinely captured by the industries that they regulate, and corporations routinely engage in activities with risk of disaster in pursuit of better bottom line figures for that quarter?

Paul Druce Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 11:02 pm

I didn’t say the failure point was regulation rather than technical. Furthermore, the nuclear regulatory agency is most certainly not captured by the industry and if anything, it’s the exact opposite given the last few heads. It’s also got a similar of over regulation as the FRA and the ICC. And quite frankly, if ny industry is going to be relatively immune to “Screw everything for profit,” it would be the nuclear industry. Not only are many of the plants owned by the government in the first place, but much of the staff have come up through the Navy (though admittedly, it isn’t as absurdly strict as Rickover once had it). One may note that American nuclear power, both civilian and military, has attained an excellent service record.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:35 am

You said,

Modern reactors (or, for that matter, a more competent TEPCO)

… both of which are regulatory rather than technical failure points.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:46 am

Paul Druce: you’re delusional. Try looking up the NRC’s repeated approvals of license extensions for nuclear power plants identical to Fukushima, with repeated accident and collapse records, and fly-by-night operators… and the NRC approves *uprating* these ready-to-poison-the-state plants.

Vermont Yankee is a good example.

The NRC is entirely captured by industry representatives. The evidence of inappropriate license extensions — onews which threaten Fukushima-scale disasters across large portions of heavily populated areas and prime farmland — is all that is needed to prove this.

I cannot take seriously the claims of someone who doesn’t realize this.

American nuclear power, both civilian and military, also has a downright crappy service record, mainly due to gross carelessness. Does Hanford ring a bell? How about Three Mile Island?

Seriously, are you paid by a nuclear energy company, because if not, you should quit spinning bullshit. *French* nuclear power — civilian — has a pretty good service record. The US *Navy* has a pretty good record with nuclear power — the *Army* and *Air Force* don’t. The private companies which are running all the civilian nuclear plants in the US now have crappy records.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:50 am

Paul, it’s also worth noting that no nuclear reactor to my knowledge has ever paid for its own decommissioning costs. And the corrosive nature of the conditions under which they operate means that they NEED to be decommissioned after a fairly short number of years. (This is why the NRC’s criminal license extensions are threatening nuclear meltdowns across the US).

Fission-powered steam turbines are a crappy, crappy, technology which is very expensive.

The only really good application of “nuclear power” I’ve seen is the radioactive-decay-powered power cells for space probes.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:51 am

And just for the record, although rooftop solar is better, I am just fine with industrial-scale photovoltaic if that’s what it takes to shut down all the obsolete thermal electricity plants (fossil fuel & nuclear).

Paul Druce Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 2:31 pm

… both of which are regulatory rather than technical failure points.

Er, no. The designs are technical advances and meltdowns will take some sort of outside interference defeating the technical capabilities of the reactor design (and to be honest, given the redundancies and various safety features, it’s kind of a SHTF situation for the world at that point and meltdown is just icing on the cake).

Paul Druce: you’re delusional. Try looking up the NRC’s repeated approvals of license extensions for nuclear power plants identical to Fukushima, with repeated accident and collapse records, and fly-by-night operators… and the NRC approves *uprating* these ready-to-poison-the-state plants

Vermont Yankee is a good example

Fukushima lacked safety features which had been installed on US reactors decades before and, as noted earlier, the problem with Fukushima was the twin disaster of earthquake and tsunami (and incompetence), either one in isolation would not have resulted in meltdown.

As for Vermont Yankee: The only real issue is a rather minor tritium leak.

American nuclear power, both civilian and military, also has a downright crappy service record, mainly due to gross carelessness. Does Hanford ring a bell? How about Three Mile Island?

Hanford’s issues are nuclear weapons related rather than nuclear energy and Three Mile Island took place 40 years ago and involved no injuries or deaths to any personnel or civilians with a minimal amount of radiation leaked, insufficient to raise the cancer risk.

Seriously, are you paid by a nuclear energy company, because if not, you should quit spinning bullshit.

No, though the Navy did try to recruit me into the nuclear program (I turned them down).

The US *Navy* has a pretty good record with nuclear power — the *Army* and *Air Force* don’t

As far as I’m aware, the USAF’s program consisted of a single modified B-36 with no issues. The Army did manage the only fatal US reactor accident, but we still don’t know exactly why the accident was caused (the mechanical causes, but not why it was withdrawn as far as it was). All reactor designs since then do not have the ability to have an accident in a similar manner.

The private companies which are running all the civilian nuclear plants in the US now have crappy records.

You’ll have to back that up with statistics I’m afraid.

Paul, it’s also worth noting that no nuclear reactor to my knowledge has ever paid for its own decommissioning costs. And the corrosive nature of the conditions under which they operate means that they NEED to be decommissioned after a fairly short number of years.

Both statements are completely untrue. One might note that the USS Enterprise’s eight reactors will have been operating for over fifty years when she is finally decommissioned this year.

And just for the record, although rooftop solar is better, I am just fine with industrial-scale photovoltaic if that’s what it takes to shut down all the obsolete thermal electricity plants (fossil fuel & nuclear).

That would be something like five to seven trillion dollars, not terribly feasible I’m afraid.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:38 pm

5 to 7 trillion? Totally feasible.

And the USS Enterprise did not pay for itself. And 50 years isn’t that long.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:40 pm

Military budget of the US is 683 billion per year. We could easily get by with a tenth of that.

That means we could finish the entire project in 10-14 years using just the money wasted on our unnecessary military.

jonathan Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 8:27 pm

Paul Druce needs to go back to kindergarten. A tsunami _is_ a seismic event.
There’s no such thing as a tsunami without an earthqueke — or, I suppose, an undersea volcanic steam explosion.

Claiming that a tsunami and an earthquake are a “twin disaster” is lying, plain and simple.
For pity’s sake, don’t you know that there are living witnesses to the tsunami at Fukushima for whom it’ the third tsunami in their lifetime — the third time they’e seen their village destroyed?

TEPCO and the Japanese government may claim that Fukushima was an “unf0orseeable event”; but that’s bullshit. Total bullshit.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:41 am

Recreational boats. Wow.

Though they are infamously inefficient, so that’s probably part of it.

joe Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:02 am

There are so many – it’s hard to believe the numbers – had to look thrice.
cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb30/Edition30_Full_Doc.pdf

BruceMcF Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 9:13 pm

If fugitive methane emissions are high enough, the reduction in GHG emissions from the CO2 reduction can easily be entirely offset over a 20 year time scale by increase methan emissions.

Its not necessarily the case that all methane in water supplies is from fracking ~ we have lots of sewer systems in this country that are well past their use-by date, which is a potential source of methane, and it only takes a very narrow coal seam intersecting a water table to place coal seam methane into a water supply.

However, the dumping of chemicals that fracking companies refuse to make public on grounds of commercial advantage into old abandoned oil wells have in several places been established to be the cause of unusual seismic activity, which is a potential cause of additional sewer line breaks, among other sources of methane.

And without a public registry of the chemical fingerprint of the chemicals being dumped, it is much more difficult to police whether the dumped material makes it way into the water supply. That difficulty in policing the impact seems to be fine with the fracking companies.

joe Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:09 pm

Alon,

I’m not advocating fracking – I do care about water quality as well as air quality.

There are no easy answers BUT electric power generation is flexible.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:17 pm

Actually, there are easy answers. They’re just not politically easier. People don’t like to be told, “You’re using too much electricity and to make sure you cut back we’re going to put a tax of 50 cents on each coal-fired kWh you’re consuming.”

California Taxpayer Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:32 pm

Its not that people dont like being told they have to pay more, its that they can’t afford to pay more.

joe Reply:
June 23rd, 2012 at 10:46 pm

Wikipedia:
…31 percent of California’s electricity comes from renewable sources. Most of this renewable electricity comes from hydropower, but 12 percent comes from “new” renewables which include wind and geothermal energy.

And accoridng to scenarios here:
pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/download_pdf.php?id=1143

A solution to “OMG we need power for HSR” is a mix of conservation, energy efficiency and economic stagnation.

Since this is total demand is 1% of the current energy use, the question is more generally – how quickly will we accelerate development of renewable sources?

One approach is offer home owners (me) a massive tax credit to install solar cells and weather ize (new window/inserts). I’d do it and produce excess power to help HSR run to Gilroy. The excess would feed into the grid.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:33 am

Feed-in tariffs for wind power and solar power would lead to a substantial increase in installed renewable capacity. The financial risk in establishing a wind farm on a marginal-priced market is that the marginal price of the wind power is so low that it will sell into the market at far below its average replacement cost. Since gas turbines have a much higher marginal cost of power due to fuel cost, when the marginal price dips below their fuel cost, they turn off. A very small period of marginal production prices above the gas turbine’s marginal production cost suffices to cover the fixed cost, and past that point marginal market prices above marginal production cost are incremental profit.

Paying the wind farm a fixed rate for power eliminates the risk that the wind farm will
push the marginal production cost of power below the replacement cost of the wind farm. Then there is a threshold market penetration above which the fixed rate for wind power reduces the average cost of power, because it pushes aside the highest cost power first, and the price reduction during high price parts of the day more than offsets the price increase during low price parts of the day.

For household installations of solar as well as for industrial co-generation, a retail refundable rebate on power fed into the grid at a discount to the current household/industrial cost of power up to a set amount per installation, and then the wholesale feed-in tariff above that point, would lead to substantial installation of decentralized solar power.

And, obviously, a Connie Mae system should be established to finance energy conserving physical investments of all kinds ~ with sufficient increases in sustainable power harvesting capacity and in economic efficiency, the “economic stagnation” part can be removed from the mix.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 9:38 am

Alon: a tax of 38 cents per kWh on coal-fired electricity would make solar cheaper than coal.

Using 2007 prices.

The price of solar has dropped massively since then and the price of coal has gone up some….

So 50 cents per coal-fired kWh is actually more than is necessary.

The payoff of insulation, meanwhile, is massive, unbelievably massive; proper superinsulation can cut heating and cooling costs by 80%. People don’t even know this.

Alon Levy Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 10:35 am

Nathanael, the price I was quoting comes from a carbon cost of $500/ton (yes, way more than most estimates, I know).

Alon Levy Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 12:27 pm

Not sure how much a new E5 costs, but the prototype set was $41 million for 10 cars.

VBobier Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 8:30 am

Corporations are not people as only people are Human and since only Humans can vote, Corporations should not try to influence peddle like their doing with Repugnicans in the US Congress, it’s disgusting & corrupting, amounts to bribery when campaign contributions are given in return for a hard right lunatic fringe fascist type agenda.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 2:43 pm

Five acres is on the very large side for an upstate NY farm.

But yes, I know some which are actually family farms. They’re grazing operations, not exactly prime farmland.

Now, the Central Valley is another order of magnitude entirely.

Nathanael Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 2:50 pm

OK, sorry, I’m off by an order of magnitude (forgetting how small an acre is — bad brain!)

200 acres is the “average farm” in NY, though I wonder how much of that is uncultivatible land.

We do have an awful lot of really tiny operations in the Finger Lakes, though. Boutique products, all of them. Tiny grain-fed animal barns, or small vegetable operations.

My point is that a miniature farm might be devastated by a rail line running through it. The Central Valley farms are *enormous*, all of them. They’re humungous. It’s impossible for the rail line to take up even a quarter of one of those farms.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 3:52 pm

Averages are pulled up by much smaller than median values as well as by much larger than median values ~ a truck gardener growing fresh produce intensively for regional produce markets does not need a very large acreage, and is still classified as a farmer.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 24th, 2012 at 5:40 pm

An acre is roughly 208 feet by 208 feet. If the farm was 108 feet wide and 1040 feet long running a 50 foot wide ROW entirely in it would take up half the “farm”. Someone who lives on a five acre property and sells agriculture products does it to qualify for farmstead property tax exemptions, which are probably more valuable than the production. Raising puppies for instance. Or selling off just enough firewood every year to qualify as a farm, though you’d probably need more than 5 acres to do that.

BruceMcF Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 9:54 am

A truck gardener can grow quite a lot of produce on a 20 acre “farm” consisting of a mix of outdoor produce gardens and indoor greenhouse production. But that’s normally either for direct delivery to either a wholesale produce market serving a large urban area or to a supermarket chain ~ its activity that occurs near larger cities, and not so much out in the middle of Iowa.

adirondacker12800 Reply:
June 25th, 2012 at 2:59 pm

Five acres means they have enough land to stock the quaint farm stand out on the road, during the season. I’m sure there is someone somwhere out in the Central Valley who has converted the 40 acres to organic produce but the Central Valley is where the humongous mono-culture agribusiness farms are.