Once selected and constructed, the high-speed trains would top out at 242 mph while traversing a 171-mile starter segment connecting Central Valley’s Bakersfield and Merced
Oh wow! In only 6.5 years, I’ll be able to get from 2/3 of the way to San Francisco to 3/4 of the way to Los Angeles very efficiently!
I swear we’re going to be litigated into irrelevance with all this NIMBY idiocy.
That's the easy stretch to complete. It'll be another 15 to actually connect SF and LA.
Do the easiest part first to prove it can be done successfully. It's the pilot basically.
But without main population centres is it going to be done successfully? Imo they should have started with one of the ends, so that at least there is a big trip destination.
Too late for that now and I really hope it works out and we get a good example for north american high speed rail projects to point to despite everything.
They would be waiting forever if they wanted to break ground in downtown la or sf first.
You can’t will car lobbies and nimbys to action, you have to coerce the general public and the state, and this incomplete rail will be the coercion.
Honestly it’s a brilliant strategy for a shitty situation. After this phase, if they somehow don’t get permission to complete the line, they would never have gotten rail built between the cities anyway.
I just hope it works so that people can shut up with the high speed rail only works in other places garbage. Just tell them to go visit california and see how good it is... Only works if they finish it so I hope they do.
The central valley eating good for once
Oh wow! In only 6.5 years
Then again look it this way... Once the lining has been built it will serve California for centuries, just as the original built rail corridors have. The rail tech might change, but the cleared out suitably shallow contoured corridor remains. For centuries.
I hope you’re right, but having grown up in California, and being very familiar with NIMBY shit there as well as in the northeast… I don’t think you are.
I'll believe it when I'm on it.
Right? This has been rehashed so many times over the years. I've lost count.
I really hope they connect to SF or LA soon after. That train is going to be empty without one of those two cities.
What? It doesn’t go to LA or SF? What is the freaking point? All this will do is encourage more ticky tacky townhomes in the middle of nowhere along Highway 5.
It will, but the initial operating segment won't.
But wait, Elon has a better idea …
"okay but what if single-occupancy trains where every possible destination has its own train yard that you can pay to leave your single occupancy train in? They would leave on your schedule and go where you're going."
Sounds brilliant. I bet we can find some fee-waived trainyards in popular areas too.
do you guys validate berth and steerage?
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