What I learned today about SNCF and California HSR (2012)

&gt; Namely, they wanted to make a straight shot from LA to San Francisco by running along the flat, government-owned I-5 corridor with spurs out to the eastern Central Valley, whereas the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) and state politicians wanted the main line to go through every little town in the Central Valley, directly.<p>For Germans, this is nothing new. Local&#x2F;regional politicians always want to have the ICE (Intercity Express, our version of high-speed rail) stop in their more or less tiny village.<p>The problem is almost always that the villages lack adequate rail connections to the next hub, and I imagine that this problem is even more expressed in the US, given the near total lack of passenger rail...

This is a classical example of American &quot;worst of both worlds&quot; governance. People in Bakersfield aren&#x27;t going to take the HSR to LA, at least not in enough numbers to justify connecting Bakersfield to the HSR. It&#x27;d be better to just build a straight-shot HSR and take all the money you save and give a tax break to folks in Bakersfield, or <i>something</i>. But our political system isn&#x27;t able to achieve that result.<p>How do European countries deal with it? It&#x27;s not like Germany and France don&#x27;t have rural areas versus urban areas (vast swaths of both countries are farmland).

For those interested, here is a rebuttal article, also from 2012: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cahsrblog.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;07&#x2F;new-evidence-shows-flaws-in-sncf-plan-for-california-hsr&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cahsrblog.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;07&#x2F;new-evidence-shows-flaws-in...</a>

I had guessed this would work myself:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13632763" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13632763</a><p>Note that neither I nor SMCF had suggested the cities on SR-99 would be excluded from the HSR service area, but that transportation &quot;spurs&quot; would be created at some point in the future to connect those towns to the HSR conveniently. This concurs with projected trip data (linked and discussed in above thread) suggesting that most trips from the CV cities end north of the Gilroy or south of Palmdale, i.e. Bakersfield to Fresno even with direct-to-city HSR has difficulty competing with the convenience of cars (which are going to get cheaper as battery technology improves). As such it&#x27;s my opinion that HSR on the I-5 corridor would not really underserve those towns, although they would (correctly IMO) no longer be the first to get rail connectivity.

Does anyone know why using spurs (branch lines) is a bad thing?<p>For example, the BART runs a branch line to Dublin&#x2F;Pleasanton (and possibly Livermore) but it&#x27;s not part of the &quot;trunk&quot; to Richmond.

It&#x27;s interesting gossip, but someone talking about private financing in a meeting seems quite far from having a deal lined up?

If this project makes financial sense, ideally an existing railroad company would run it.<p>Berkshire Hathaway (as the owners of the BNSF railroad) is the only US-based company that has the capital and railroad experience to even consider it.<p>In this situation, I&#x27;m not sure how or why the California government would turn away any foreign company willing to do it.

2012

HSR is a great example of what happens when a bunch of coastal elites look at the countryside (&quot;flyover country&quot;) and assume it&#x27;s empty and worthless so nobody will object if they run a bulldozer through it for a big government project.<p>On the contrary, California&#x27;s Central Valley is one of the most vibrant and important areas of the state with property claims going back to the homesteading period. So shocking that these people aren&#x27;t happy with a bunch of LA and SF people wanting to tear up their back yards for a boondoggle they will never use or care about.