California's Bullet Train Project's Biggest Challenge? - Tehachapi!

[C855B]

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/12/local/la-me-bullet-mountains-20121113

[davefoxx]

Thirty-three story viaducts?  Tunnels 500 feet below the surface?  Half a dozen earthquake fault crossings?  Doesn't sound like a good combination to me, regardless of the cost.

[C855B]

There is somebody (big) pushing this project with a starry-eyed vision of two hours between L.A. and Sacramento. That's what the magic "220 mph" is about. If they were to crank back their expectations to conventional engineering for medium-speed (150 mph peaks), it would cost 1/10 as much. And they'd get 3-3.5 hours, which is a damnsight better than the 7.5 it currently takes to drive the trip (via Antelope Valley, which deviates from the straightline N-S path ostensibly for the growing population center there).

The earthquake issue is big, big, big. Recent major quakes along the route with significant, destructive earth displacements in 1952 (Tehachapi), 1971 (Sylmar) and 1994 (Northridge). All resulted in major infrastructure damage - bridge collapses, separations and misalignments. No amount of engineering can compensate for that.

If I still lived out there I would be a thorn in their side. What is being developed is beyond stupid, and incredibly wasteful.

[Bremner]

Califonia is the land of cereal...it's full of fruits, nuts and flakes

[sizemore]

Isn't CA a state plagued with power outages and brownouts? Yet they want...

When completed and fully operational, the bullet train will need an estimated 2.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity each day — about a quarter of Hoover Dam's average daily output.

This translates to powering 54,000 homes at a 50kWh average per day. I'm not an electrician or genius, but by the fuzzy math, sounds like the priorities are out of wack.

The S.

[Robbman]

Way out of whack... incremental higher speed rail is the way to go, in terms of costs, benefits and logistics... not huge pie-in-the-sky projects.

[C855B]

> Califonia is the land of cereal...it's full of fruits, nuts and flakes

Seriously? I'm a California native. At one time I thought this quip was funny, but, frankly, in my cranky old age I find it hackneyed and offensive (...sorry...) because it's an easy pejorative.

> Isn't CA a state plagued with power outages and brownouts?

Wellllll... that's old news. It goes back to the Enron days when electricity commodity traders were manipulating the market and load-switching resources away from the distribution network. That way they could route power around the contracted delivery grid and turn spot-market megawatt-hour demand purchasing into a ransom as they drove the big cities into brownouts. It was ugly. I could only wish that the snotty little pukes who were pulling that crap were locked-up, but only the bosses were brought-up on charges.

Besides, they could run the railroad probably 10X with what Las Vegas uses to light-up the desert sky for what they deem to be "entertainment".

[Bremner]

> Califonia is the land of cereal...it's full of fruits, nuts and flakes

Seriously? I'm a California native. At one time I thought this quip was funny, but, frankly, in my cranky old age I find it hackneyed and offensive (...sorry...) because it's an easy pejorative.

born and raised in Long Beach. I got tired of the rest of the country sending their wackadoos to Califonia, so I moved to the state of Arizona

[mike in bc]

Ya , there's no wackadodle's in arizona

[Bremner]

Ya , there's no wackadodle's in arizona

not nearly as many

[Scottl]

This is quite the project, rather ambitious considering how frequently I seen "California" and "bankrupt" in the same sentence when I read the news. 

[jagged ben]

Way out of whack... incremental higher speed rail is the way to go, in terms of costs, benefits and logistics... not huge pie-in-the-sky projects.

I agree 100%.   Here's what I posted over a Trainboard on the California HS rail project:
 
"They are doing the whole thing backwards. The whole project should have started with electrification and improvement of the existing passenger rail lines that serve the more densely populated areas. (Yes, they will need the cooperation of the freights.) Once that is done they could start cutting in high-speed chunks that will cut travel times for existing lines, and whatever money they spend will have immediate benefits and not be wasted on an impossibly big goal. And they should have started with a smaller goal; say, making the train the preferred method of travel between Sacramento and the Bay Area, and increasing ridership on Metrolink. As it is, they are building a "railroad to nowhere" in one of the least transit friendly parts of the state, and passengers will have to transfer from this section in the Central Valley to whatever other rail lines or modes of travel they are taking to actually get to their destination. People won't do it, and ridership will be too low. The high-speed line will be underutilized until such time as they can connect LA to Northern California, but most likely the funding will run out decades before that can ever happen."

[peteski]

Ben,
with all this knowledge and your superb logic, I'm surprised that you aren't one of the project's advisers.  They could save billions of dollars simply by following your advice.

[mramsey]

"They are doing the whole thing backwards. The whole project should have started with electrification and improvement of the existing passenger rail lines that serve the more densely populated areas. (Yes, they will need the cooperation of the freights.) Once that is done they could start cutting in high-speed chunks that will cut travel times for existing lines, and whatever money they spend will have immediate benefits and not be wasted on an impossibly big goal. And they should have started with a smaller goal; say, making the train the preferred method of travel between Sacramento and the Bay Area, and increasing ridership on Metrolink. As it is, they are building a "railroad to nowhere" in one of the least transit friendly parts of the state, and passengers will have to transfer from this section in the Central Valley to whatever other rail lines or modes of travel they are taking to actually get to their destination. People won't do it, and ridership will be too low. The high-speed line will be underutilized until such time as they can connect LA to Northern California, but most likely the funding will run out decades before that can ever happen."

The "existing passenger rail lines" between the Bay Area and LA are somewhat pathetic.  You can take the Coast Starlight (aka Starlate) once a day in each direction (12 hours, if you're lucky).  Or, the San Joaquin 4 times a day (6 if you connect through Sacramento) with a bus connection from Bakersfield to LA (8 to 10 hours).  Of course, you can drive in 6 or 7 hours, or fly at relatively low cost.  So, even if you could cut an hour or two off the current travel times, there won't be enough frequency or overall ridership on either route to justify electrification of the existing RoW. 

In the LA area, the only real alternative to the coastal route or a bus, is to connect via the Metrolink Antelope Valley line at Palmdale or Lancaster, but you still have to get across Tehachapi for a connection to Bakersfield.  All I can say is good luck trying to get UP and BNSF to go along with that concept.  In any case, the Antelope Valley RoW is mostly single track with quite a few curves, it's not ultimately usable for HSR, and there would be little point to electrification. 

The Caltrain RoW from San Francisco to San Jose has sufficient existing frequency and ridership to benefit from electrification, and strangely enough, that has been scheduled for funding and completion early in the process.  There is also the ACE commuter line running from San Jose to Stockton via Altamont Pass, but that is unacceptable as an interim route for a variety of reasons.

The most sensible way to build out HSR between SF and LA seems to be building out a new RoW across/through the mountains at either end, then across the Central Valley, but there is no easy way to get enough funding to do it all at once.  So, they are building a nice RoW through the Central Valley first, because it is relatively inexpensive, then hoping that there will be enough political will later on to get the more costly mountain crossings funded...

[jagged ben]

The "existing passenger rail lines" between the Bay Area and LA are somewhat pathetic.

Exactly.  The first step is to make them less pathetic so that there is increasing ridership that can help pay for the overall project while it is underway. 

You can take the Coast Starlight...

The Coast Starlight is not part of the discussion.  It doesn't serve densely populated areas along most of its route.  We are talking principally about Caltrain, Metrolink, and the Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin.  Also potentially the San Diego lines, but that would come later.

So, even if you could cut an hour or two off the current travel times, there won't be enough frequency or overall ridership on either route to justify electrification of the existing RoW.

If that is true (and I don't necessarily believe it is) then the entire high speed rail project as a whole will be a failure.  Because cutting an hour or two off travel times is more or less the whole point of the project (aside from being less dependent on foreign oil.)     

In the LA area, the only real alternative to the coastal route or a bus, is to connect via the Metrolink Antelope Valley line at Palmdale or Lancaster, but you still have to get across Tehachapi for a connection to Bakersfield.

 

To take this as an example, it would not be entirely pointless to electrify the existing metrolink line from Lancaster to LAUPT, along with alignment improvements to allow higher speeds (but not necessarily 'high-speed' travel) as an interim to building a true high speed line through Soledad Canyon and into LA.   Let's say maybe the Metrolink travel time from LA to Lancaster could be cut from 2 hours to an 1hour 15 minutes (but not the half hour they claim for high speed trains).    Such a project could serve as the interim connection for high-speed trainsets, but also provide a long term improvement for Metrolink's Valley line even if the Tehachapi connection never gets built.     The entire current alignment would be left intact for UP freights.

In any case, the Antelope Valley RoW is mostly single track with quite a few curves, it's not ultimately usable for HSR, and there would be little point to electrification.

Yes, and in any case, that section wouldn't be built unless the HS Tehachapi connection were also built. 

The Caltrain RoW from San Francisco to San Jose has sufficient existing frequency and ridership to benefit from electrification, and strangely enough, that has been scheduled for funding and completion early in the process.

That scheduling was a change that was made relatively recently, probably because the HSR authority received quite a bit of feedback similar to mine.

The most sensible way to build out HSR between SF and LA seems to be building out a new RoW across/through the mountains at either end, then across the Central Valley, but there is no easy way to get enough funding to do it all at once.

And that (the highlighted part) is why their plan is seriously flawed, and in fact not sensible.  They are at serious risk of never completing the whole project, but they are not really planning it in such a way that it can still be a partial success if that happens.   They need to plan it so that every phase of investment and construction provides a benefit in and of itself, and then eventually the whole thing comes together.
 

So, they are building a nice RoW through the Central Valley first, because it is relatively inexpensive, then hoping that there will be enough political will later on to get the more costly mountain crossings funded...

And my point is that the political will is not going to be there if they don't make good connections between the Central Valley chunk and other existing lines.  Basically what they need(ed) to do is electrify the remaining part of the San Joaquin route from Merced to Oakland so that the same trainset could run from Bakersfield to Oakland in up to 2 hours less time. 

Forget the Tehachapi part until such time as you have demonstrated that these projects can improve transit options and start paying for themselves before the most expensive and risky investments need to be made.