High-speed rail board completes environmental clearance in northern California
I&#x27;ve been following this project off and on. There are various Youtube videos about it. Lots has been written. It&#x27;s interesting because it&#x27;s really a failure on almost every level but most especially political. Some examples:<p>- Proposal 1A, the voter amendment that was passed to build the project, specified the speed of 220mph. This was really a mistake. It&#x27;s greatly added to the cost;<p>- California&#x27;s notorious environment impact review for a project of this scale require about the same planning, time and budget as the JWST. This is only a slight exaggeration. This article refers to the northern section (SF to the Central Valley). The southern section (Central Valley to LA) is, I believe, still in review. California has started to rollback some of these onerous review processes (eg CEQA) as its become apparent they&#x27;re largely weaponized by NIMBYs to delay or derail (pun intended) pretty much anything;<p>- They&#x27;re still securing land parcels through the Central Valley. Why this wasn&#x27;t a textbook case for eminent domain for farmland (which is usally WAY cheaper than any kind of residential, industrial or commercial land) is beyond me. I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s a reason but it seems crazy;<p>- Counties along the route have managed to extract concessions for not blocking the project that greatly add to cost and travel time. For example, instead of running down the I5 through the west side of the Central Valley, it runs through regaional towns like Bakersfield on the east side. This is greater tack length ()ie more cost and overall travel time) and more stops (ie even more travel time);<p>- The Sacramento spur originally had a plan where I believe it went through Oakland rather than along the Caltrain line. IIRC this was overruled for political reasons;<p>- LA is huge. Acquiring land for this is going to be a massive and expensive undertaking.<p>So I&#x27;m a fan of a robust public transit infrastructure but the likely $100b+ price tag for this just seems insane to me. I actually think it probably would&#x27;ve been better to build a LA to Las Vegas line first. There is a ton of demand for this. Yes you have to cross some mountains (but less than the HSR does) but you&#x27;re also dealing with desert on the Nevada side, so acquiring land gets a whole lot less problematic. It&#x27;s also shorter.<p>The Brightline West route from LA to Las Vegas seems like it&#x27;s going ahead. But it has different design constraints (eg 180mp speed vs 220). You should really design all these systems with the same design constraints and the same rolling stock.<p>Whenever I see projects like the HSR and even the NY 2nd Ave Subway with their truly massive price tags for very little my mind always goes to Crossrail in the UK. It might&#x27;ve been late but really not that much and to me it seems to be a stunning success. To build that much new tunnel under <i>london</i> (which is essentially a ruin&#x2F;graveyard with 2000+ years of accumulation) is, to me, an astounding feat.<p>The comparison to China is always made. Well, that&#x27;s central planning for you. It may have its benefits but it also has its costs.