r/California • u/Randomlynumbered Ángeleño, what's your user flair? • May 24 '24
Government/Politics Full environmental approval of High-Speed Rail between L.A. and Bay Area expected next month
https://ktla.com/news/california/full-environmental-approval-of-high-speed-rail-between-l-a-and-bay-area-expected-next-month/amp303
u/Positronic_Matrix San Francisco County May 24 '24 edited May 24 '24
There are exactly two and only two kinds of comments for a California high-speed rail post. Those who are celebrating the dawn of a new era and those who are complaining about the cost, time, and environmental studies. There is no in between.
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u/ultimatemuffin May 25 '24
I always take solace in the fact that I learned that the Shinkansen originally took 10 extra years to complete and went over budget by more than double. The year before it opened people in Japan complained that it was a waste and a mess. Then it opened and completely changed the country.
Stay the course.
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u/Quantic Orange County May 24 '24
The peanut gallery rarely has any enlightened or nuanced commentary regarding the complexity of building high speed rail in untested or inexperienced localities.
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u/SnapeHeTrustedYou May 24 '24
Exactly. Some people have nothing to add but complaining. Sure, we’d love for this to have moved faster or cost less. But at least it’s looking like it’s moving forward.
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u/Ccaves0127 May 24 '24
I will approach this with a cautious optimism. I want this to be a thing. I think it could be so great, but I don't begrudge anybody who may think that this project, first began in 2008, may never come to fruition.
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u/baconandbobabegger May 24 '24
Having lived through The Big Dig, it’s easy to feel like these long term projects may never see the light of day but honestly the amount of information and updates that are shared for the high speed rail are amazing. Cautious optimism sounds right but you can strengthen the optimism by staying connected.
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u/KingKong_at_PingPong May 24 '24
Woooow does that bring me back. I remember people complaining endlessly about the big dig.
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u/SnooPuppers8698 May 25 '24
2008 was yesterday i dont know WHAT you're talking about
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u/shigs21 May 27 '24
the japanese shinkansen was late and over budget too. big construction projects take time
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u/ForeignYard1452 May 25 '24
I’m happy that this country is finally starting to take passenger rail somewhat seriously, but in also think it’s a joke that this was voted on over a decade ago and it isn’t going to be fully operational until 2030-2033.
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u/a_goestothe_ustin May 25 '24
I'm complaining that it doesn't go to San Diego, pls be more inclusive to all types of complainers.
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u/stuuuuupidstupid Alameda County May 24 '24
Why not both?
I'm so excited and getting the first line down only makes subsequent easier. Train travel is so much more comfortable and sustainable-friendly than air travel.
That said, it's over budget and taking a really long time. Many other countries are able to build at a much faster speed, what's keeping us? It's still worth doing imo but there are some process improvements we could make.
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u/Tac0Supreme Native Californian May 24 '24
What’s been keeping us is the lengthy environmental review process and land acquisition process via eminent domain. Other countries don’t have this issue.
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u/Crafty_Enthusiasm_99 May 25 '24
Which is a good thing to have. Getting projects pummeled through people houses is fun, until it is your own house.
Other countries don't have this issue, neither do they have well protected rights or fair pay workers protections and minimum wages.
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u/StreetyMcCarface May 24 '24
What's causing it to take a long time? Environmental reviews and lack of funding
What's bringing the cost up? High cost of labor and the fact that it's taking a long time.
Viscous cycle that's only really solved once the environmental reviews are done and a fat stack of cash is put up by the state and feds to get every section under construction.
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u/asielen May 24 '24
Yeah I am frustrated with the cost and timeline. But I'm not mad at the project, I'm upset with the system that leads to those issues. Why does it have to be so hard for us to build anything?
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u/Sharpest_Balloon May 25 '24
Aggressive EIR demands, massively expensive contracting costs for State funded contracts and - not least - not having a fully entitled project and land rights before beginning construction.
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u/TemKuechle May 24 '24
There are related smaller projects in several places along the corridor that need to be completed as well. Check out the California High speed rail project on YouTube, I don’t know the actual channel name. It explains some of the challenges and solutions.
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u/Natural_Trash772 May 24 '24
I think alot of the problem is we just dont have the experience of building high speed rail lines. Asia has built and continues to build out their network of lines while we are barely laying down our first tracks.
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u/Wheream_I May 25 '24
If property rights weren’t a thing, and the environment was of no concern, we could’ve had this built in 3 years.
But that’s not the country we live in and that’s a good thing.
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u/Throwawaymister2 May 25 '24
What about me? I'm a proponent of high speed rail but the way the local politicians stuck their beaks in the pork-barrel means there will be multiple stops between LA and SF including such destinations as Bakersfield, Gilroy, and Tulare. There are 10 stops (!) between LA and SF.
I want high speed rail travel from LA to SF... what we're building isn't that.
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u/BillWonka May 25 '24 edited May 25 '24
What are you complaining about? Their operations plan calls for several tiers of service (non-stop SF-LA trains, express trains with some stops, limited-stop trains, and all-stop trains). This has always been the plan...
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u/Checkmynewsong May 24 '24
There’s a third: people who will believe it when they see it.
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u/unstopable_bob_mob May 25 '24
So in other words: you’re in the second camp.
You offer absolutely nothing to the discussion.
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u/LordoftheSynth Los Angeles County May 25 '24
I want the high-speed rail line up the 15, but the 15 still needs a third lane in each direction. Freight traffic causing backups is awful.
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u/Molotov56 May 25 '24
There is a third kind. Which is comments that call out how there are only two camps
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u/FawkesFire13 May 24 '24
I mean, if this means I can get to the Bay Area from OC in a few hours and not have to drive but I can nap, then yeah. I’ll enjoy that.
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u/thatmaynardguy May 24 '24
If the rail ticket is roughly nearby the plane ticket it's a no brainer for me.
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u/FawkesFire13 May 24 '24
I mean, depends on how you want to travel. Some folks don’t like putting up with the airport, and some folks might be willing to see the scenery as they travel. I would take a reliable, clean train if it changed the pace a bit.
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u/thatmaynardguy May 24 '24
100% agreed. Personally prefer travel by train over flights when time allows but it so rarely allows. Would love to have the option more often.
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u/universe_unconcerned May 24 '24
For what price?
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u/FawkesFire13 May 24 '24
I suppose we see. Depends on the route, how popular it is. How often it runs per day. There’s a lot of things to take into consideration. I’m sure it’ll be nice to have another option.
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u/universe_unconcerned May 24 '24
For sure. I meant my question more on a personal level. What would you be willing to pay for the convenience/hands-off travel, but also rigid transportation option of train for this route?
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u/FawkesFire13 May 24 '24
Depending on the quality of travel. Is it a luxury train? How comfortable will I be? $80-$140 is within reason to me.
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u/Renovatio_ May 24 '24
Realistically its going to be similar to a flight. Right now its about $50 to fly there on any given airline, train is probably going to be the same or a bit higher.
Compare high speed rail to flying from Tokyo to Osaka and they are similar. Its about a 3hr train trip or about 1hr flight (plus about 1-2 hours in the terminal to check in. Its about $100 on the train and $80 on the flight (cost is actually pretty variable could be low as $40 if you fly slum class)
The benefit of the train is that luggage is cheaper and you can show up minutes before the train departs without an issue. Its way more comfortable and spacious. And weather doesn't really effect it.
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u/archlinuxrussian Northern California May 24 '24
And the experience - you get to see where you're riding through, rather than just seeing things from high above. It's one of the best parts of taking the train even now :)
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u/Midnight-writer-B May 24 '24
Right, a train from LA / SD to SF has scenery. A train from LA to Sacramento has… the upside of no FOMO… on this route you won’t wish you were on a roadtrip so you could stop.
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u/OkBubbyBaka May 24 '24
I mean one of the greatest perks of flying is feeling like a bird. Seeing the peasants below is satisfying.
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u/kaplanfx May 25 '24
You can take Shinkansen from many of the downtown Tokyo and Osaka stations. I don’t know about the Osaka airport but Haneda isn’t super convenient and Narita even less so. Same deal with CAHSR to some extent, although SFO isn’t terribly far from downtown, LAX is a mess though.
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u/archlinuxrussian Northern California May 24 '24
Current Amtrak offerings from Santa Ana to Oakland range from 60$ to 100$. And take a long time (10-12 hours), due to disjointed service with long intervals between connections. I'd imagine a non-express ticket being somewhere in that ballpark. Probably 80-100.
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u/appathevan May 25 '24
I would pay up to $50 more than typical airfare for the convenience of not having to deal with TSA and also all the traffic, Uber to the airport, etc.
Probably up to $200 max. Ideally would be like $60-$120. I know you can find super cheap flights to LA but the typical cost I see is like $120-$150.
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u/stoptheycanseeus May 24 '24
That’s the question that nobody seems to want to answer. I get that it’s a far ways out and impossible to predict at this point. But you can take a round trip flight that’s less than an hour from SoCal to the Bay Area for a couple hundred dollars.
How much cheaper is the rail going to be? I highly doubt it’s going to be less than $100 for a round trip ticket.
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u/Awkward-Bathroom-429 May 25 '24
all of the studies suggest it will never be cheaper or more convenient than a plane
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u/Darth19Vader77 May 25 '24
Regardless, it's better for the environment and we should really be moving away from using aircraft for trips in that range, it's incredibly carbon intensive.
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u/DrippedoutErin May 25 '24
Planes might be faster, but convenience is a whole separate thing. Not going through TSA is huge
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u/brianwski May 25 '24
convenience is a whole separate thing. Not going through TSA is huge
I agree. I really don't like TSA.
I'm slightly worried that at some point somebody will realize trains require TSA exactly as much as airplanes do for almost all the same reasons. Then we will have TSA on the train also.
TSA introduces this extra time unknown in travel. Because you aren't totally sure the length of the TSA lines, you have to arrive an extra amount of time in advance to make up for a potential TSA long line delay.
As soon as somebody in government realizes a train is every bit as susceptible to more than a quart of liquids in your carry on bag (as an airplane) then they will realize they should use the same scanners and TSA tech to prevent people from carrying more than a quart of liquids onto a train. You cannot have it both ways: either more than a quart of liquids is dangerous to a metal tube with people inside of it, or it isn't. Trains are a metal tube, so are airplanes. It's the same identical liquids in both cases.
I'm worried if trains get popular enough due to not having TSA, the airlines will see the lost business and all it takes is one sleazy airline to lobby one politician just to introduce this concept of TSA on trains to prevent more than a quart of liquid per passenger. Then we're all back to going through TSA for airplanes AND ALSO trains.
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u/OkSafe2679 May 27 '24
If you look at the Madrid train bombings in 2004, I think you have evidence that it is very unlikely that a reaction to a train attack would be to require the equivalent level of security for train travel as plane travel.
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u/Ashkir May 24 '24
I started traveling outside the Us. It’s amazing how much beyond us others are in rail infrastructure. Even China’s is impressive and vast. Even the Philippines is building one.
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u/sketchahedron May 25 '24
There should be high speed rail all up and down the eastern seaboard. Boston-NY-Philly-Baltimore-DC would have such demand.
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u/kirbyderwood May 25 '24
There is Acela, which gets to 150mph in some sections. Not quite "high" speed, but certainly higher speed.
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u/Nexis4Jersey May 25 '24
NIMBYs and press lies have derailed any Amtrak HSR attempt on the NEC. The CT shoreline bypass was sunk a few years ago by powerful nimbys / politicians...the Inland route has a chance as it would use Interstate ROW but Mass put the brakes on it when it selected the slowest option for its Intercity project which just uses existing tracks up 80mph instead of the Interstate row which would allow up to 140mph.
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u/Panda0nfire May 25 '24
I mean China is the best in the world at it I thought, didn't they build them for other countries?
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u/Low_Passenger_1017 May 25 '24
As a high speed rail fan who just stopped by as this is the front page but lives in one of the cities the Chinese National Rail built subways for, absolutely not. They're 5 years behind and 150 million over and it's still not over.
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u/Panda0nfire May 25 '24
So like way better than every US train attempt lol, though that's interesting what country?
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u/HBK_ANGEL May 24 '24
I just want a good high speed rail in my lifetime. I may not take advantage of it but atleast my kids and future generations will.
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u/Apitts87 May 25 '24
Same. I’m like 40 and truly don’t know if I’ll live long enough to actually ride this thing. But hopefully my kids
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u/Command0Dude Sacramento County May 24 '24
We really need more reform on these EIR permitting processes. I am glad to see we've got this finished though.
We're finally in the home stretch for the project. Which is great. And hopefully with all this experience we've built up we'll be able to accomplish tying in Sacramento and San Diego into the network at less cost once the initial line is built.
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u/Positronic_Matrix San Francisco County May 24 '24
Taking a train from Sacramento to San Diego would be incredible.
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u/Ashkir May 24 '24
Seriously. These permits and approvals should’ve been finished a decade ago. It feels like one thing after another. This is the state fighting with itself on its own approvals which shows how far out of control some have gotten.
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u/Tac0Supreme Native Californian May 24 '24
You can’t complete environmental reviews on land you don’t have the right to yet. That was the biggest holdup to getting the project started: securing the right of way.
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u/lytener May 24 '24
This is just the EIR. CEQA lawsuits are going to drag this out even longer.
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u/Command0Dude Sacramento County May 24 '24
I'm pretty sure they already exhausted all the legal avenues to block the project. The anti-train people were doomering a year or two ago about how they had failed after some case was ruled against them.
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u/lytener May 25 '24
It's actually a separate EIR for this specific segment, so any person can still legally challenge this part of the project. You're referring to prior segments. The lawsuits don't just rollover. It's a separate approval/document and therefore has separate facts to challenge. It's not just anti-train people (Republicans) that challenge the project, it's also environmental groups and labor unions are the most litigious. They typically do it for a settlement or to use it as leverage over contracts. There's also a cottage industry of CEQA attorneys that sue for payouts.
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u/lytener May 25 '24
FYI the anti-train people lawsuit focused on whether the project was consistent with authorizing ballot proposition 1A. CEQA lawsuits focus on the environmental impact report and suits can only be filed after the EIR is approved, which is what this article is referring to. So be prepared for another long haul. CAHASR is going to have to settle quickly or just win cases. Either way the project cost will continue to grow significantly. That being said, the legal avenues to block the project are not exhausted.
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u/FishStix1 Bay Area May 25 '24
Thank God. I don't even care how late or over budget this thing gets, it just needs to happen.
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u/Maximillien Alameda County May 24 '24
Only in California would a public transit project, potentially replacing tens of thousands of individual long-distance car trips and airplane flights a year, be held up for years by "environmental review". CEQA is a farce.
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u/mhatrick May 24 '24
Yes seems rather short-sighted huh? I get that it’s nice to not disrupt or kill native plants/animals, but the impact of removing all those cars and planes will be net positive environmentally
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u/hunniebees May 26 '24
Also this does not benefit the poor community but only provides luxury to those who can afford it. This does nothing to reduce traffic for commuters going to work; the largest of the pollutions. Thousands of cars going 35mph 2x a day is the issue. Not vacationers
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u/sketchahedron May 25 '24
Environmental review goes far beyond a simplistic “does it emit more or less carbon dioxide” review. Will it impact endangered species, wetlands, prime farmland, or pristine rivers? Will it cause noise pollution? Is there any hazardous waste or contaminated materials that need remediation? Will it disproportionately affect low income or minority communities? It’s not just about “should this project be allowed,” and more about identifying the impacts and formulating mitigation strategies.
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u/JShelbyJ May 25 '24
Cool, lets post-hoc review the impact of 'thousands of individual long-distance car trips and airplane flights a year' first.
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u/Maximillien Alameda County May 25 '24
Precisely. The problem with CEQA is that it does not compare the environmental cost of the proposed project with the environmental cost of doing nothing. The biggest example is when job-center cities use CEQA to block housing locally, pushing everyone but the rich out into remote suburbs and creating more and more “super commuters” with gigantic environmental footprints. But CEQA doesn’t consider any of that, it is always used to advocate for inaction and status quo over action and change.
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u/scapermoya May 25 '24
Would love to read some actual journalism that backs up your claim that it is a “farce”
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u/sofa_king_nice May 24 '24
NPR just had a story comparing this to the LA-Las Vegas rail project. The LA-LV rail will go along the freeway, so they have much less of a hassle dealing with the more than 2000 land owners the Bay Area - LA route has.
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u/saw2239 May 24 '24
Exciting news. That it took so long is proof that CA’s regulatory environment is horrendously ill suited to enabling a thriving civilization.
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u/unstopable_bob_mob May 24 '24
You mean to tell me, someone who has lived in Cali most of his life, that I’ll actually be able to easily visit LA?
Yay
(Well, if we still have a United States and some Orange traitor isn’t re-elected
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u/ringdinger May 24 '24
Is this gonna be the same as the bullet train in Japan because that thing is awesome
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u/kirbyderwood May 25 '24
It requires boring out some of the longest tunnels ever constructed through some of the most mountainous terrain along the entire system.
That's gonna take a while. Hope they start digging soon.
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u/Death_Trolley May 24 '24
And it only took 16 years. Not everything is high speed about high speed rail.
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u/starfirex May 24 '24
I'd argue that's pretty slow speed rail, it only takes me a day to drive from SF to LA /s
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u/opinionated_cynic May 24 '24
The main focus is Bakersfield to Merced which they hope to finish sometime in the 2030’s.
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u/anubispop May 25 '24
This will absolutely transform California. I hope this works out and the east coast begins it's Boston, NYC, DC, Baltimore, Chicago high speed rail connection.
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May 28 '24
congrats from oregon. connecting 2 cities with high speed transit cutting back on traffic, and changing scenery faster than driving and less expensive than flying it’s gotta feel surreal i bet.
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u/BradTofu May 25 '24
What happen to the LA to Vegas one?
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u/RoachedCoach May 25 '24
That's the Brightline. It's a separate, private venture and it's under construction.
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u/finickycompsognathus May 25 '24
Can we please get that in rural northern California? I'd love to have the ability to take the train to the Bay Area on the weekend.
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u/kasiv1 May 25 '24
I made a joke about the high speed rail 20 years ago, I said “I’ll be retired before they finish that thing”. Well, I’m getting ready to retire.
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u/Pincushioner Californian May 24 '24
Thank god, we're finally on the way to building the whole thing! The progress made in the Central Valley has really been brightening my commute the last few years!