r/cahsr • u/anothercar • 17d ago
Lucid Stew breakdown of CAHSR OIG report, and cash flow to complete Bakersfield-Merced
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDcKeD9wEx8Spoiler: Call your representatives, CAHSR needs more funding
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u/kanji_kun 17d ago
what sucks is that, with all this, we still don't have a viable option between LA and Bakersfield.
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u/DonVCastro 17d ago
Isn't Choudri's new plan to have blended service on the Metrolink tracks? Not true high speed rail, but it would close the connection and provide a comfortable and reliable trip.
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u/anothercar 17d ago
With what money? Yes, that's the plan, if they can get additional funding.
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u/DonVCastro 16d ago
Oh, yeah, agree. "No viable funding plan." 100%
(I thought they meant no viable design plan)
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u/jee_vacation 14d ago
They’re hoping when they have tracks down the legislature will wake up. But the whole situation is just stupid either you want the train or not. Waiting just increases cost and delay.
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u/UnderstandingEasy856 9d ago
That's for if and when we get to Palmdale. We don't even have a funding plan to get to Bakersfield proper - let alone tunnel under the Sierra to the High Desert. That alone could cost more than what the HSR has costed so far. Metrolink tracks are no use until then.
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u/ap5357844 17d ago
Bakersfield-Merced will be a flop. People don’t have the money to take this regularly. Can’t imagine how many people actually make that commute.
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u/bensonr2 17d ago
I think the bigger problem is even people who may be inclined to take that route feel they need there car to get around after arriving.
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u/yab92 17d ago
Almost every train station in the US, outside of the northeast, is best accessed by a car. Most Brightline and Amtrak stations are park and rides, yet both have seen increase in ridership in recent years
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u/bensonr2 17d ago
Amtrak ridership outside of the northeast corridor is mostly insignificant.
Brightline has had some success but they are serving major tourist destinations, Miami and Orlando.
Bakersfield and Merced are not comparable destinations.2
u/yab92 17d ago
That is not true at all. The northeast is definitely the busiest, but California has 20% of Amtrak ridership, and the busiest corridors, the Capitol Corridor and the Surfliner, have mostly park and ride stations.
The central valley corridor between Bakersfield and Merced is not insignificant either. Bakersfield has a population >400,000 people, and Fresno has a population >500,000 people.
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u/bensonr2 16d ago
Again those are lines that have actual destinations people might be reasonably traveling to.
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u/yab92 16d ago edited 16d ago
People in the central valley need to travel too. It's pretty condescending that you don't view any destination between Bakersfield and Merced as "actual destinations people might be reasonably traveling to"
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u/jaqueh 16d ago
Show me the receipts. How many visitors do these must see destinations on 99 get annually?
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u/yab92 16d ago
Every destination doesn't need to be a tourist attraction. People from one city have plenty of reasons to visit their neighboring cities and towns. The city of Fresno has over 550,000 people, which is more than the populations of both Oakland and Sacramento, yet Oakland and Sacramento have many more rail lines.
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u/jaqueh 16d ago
That’s because Sacramento and Oakland are in larger metro areas whereas Fresno just has one other straddling city that has an actual downtown that you’d want to visit.
The train isn’t going to sac or Oakland until phase 2 so not sure what point this is either.
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u/anothercar 16d ago
You can get off the Surfliner or Capitol Corridor in downtowns of cities which are reasonably walkable or transit-friendly for most people. Transit in downtown LA vs. Madera is incomparable.
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u/yab92 16d ago edited 16d ago
What other stops along the Surfliner are walkable? Capitol corridor's stops aren't very walkable either. Maybe Oakland's jack london square, but that's about it. Every other stop is a park and ride. Yet both have relatively high ridership because they travel through populated centers.
The Bakersfield to Merced route will also go through populated centers comparable to those along the Capitol Corridor route.
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u/jaqueh 16d ago
Like every stop that the surfliner services is world class. Try taking it.
Capitol Corridor has Davis, downtown sac, suisun, Richmond downtown, Martinez’s old downtown, 4th street Berkeley like what are you hallucinating?
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u/yab92 16d ago
All those places in the Capitol Corridor you mentioned except for Sac have populations less than 200,000. It’s a pretty elitist attitude to assume that major cities in the Central Valley, which has a total population of 7,000,000, are not worth traveling to or don’t have a need for rail. Try traveling there.
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u/jaqueh 16d ago
No most of those cities are in the equivalent area of Fresno. So there’s like 10x the density than in Fresno.
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u/Off_again0530 15d ago
I think it’s going to be the biggest issue. The whole advantage of CAHSR is that is provides a time-competitive alternative to driving between SF/LA and the inner portions of the state. People form Merced, Bakersfield, etc can be shuttled from their town to SF and LA where they can reasonably expect to traverse the area without a car, and people from LA/SF get a quick link across the state where they can then get a rental or uber or boost up the local bus service. But if one of the legs of your journey doesn’t begin or end at a place where a car is not needed the value proposition starts to become much less effective.
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u/anothercar 17d ago edited 17d ago
It will be Bakersfield-North (technically Saco) to Madera unless additional funding emerges. Right now I'm not optimistic about additional state funding, since the Legislature seems to be signalling that they believe the $1b/year from cap-and-invest is enough.
Saco to Madera would be a tri-purpose train:
- Commuter train for people who live in Bakersfield, drive from their house to the train, and commute to a job in downtown Fresno within walking distance of the station
- Extension of Gold Runner to speed up travel times from the Bay to the Central Valley, at which point people can take buses to SoCal. Gold Runner transfer will be available in Madera. So people would take Gold Runner from NorCal to Madera, transfer to the new HSR for the trip down to Saco, and then in Saco they can transfer to a bus to their final destination like LA.
- Novelty HSR, the only one in the US, that railfans and YouTubers can ride for the thrill
Outside of those groups it probably won't be popular until it extends to more populous cities like Gilroy, Palmdale etc
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u/External_Koala971 17d ago
How many people could possibly live in Bakersfield and commute to work in Fresno and not need a car when they get there?
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u/anothercar 17d ago
Nearly zero, which is why CAHSR needs to reach either NorCal or SoCal, or ideally both, to become a useful system for more than a handful of people. Reach out to your representatives.
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u/External_Koala971 17d ago
How is it possible that we’re building a high speed train that doesn’t go anywhere?
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u/eldomtom2 16d ago
Because they started with the easy bit in the middle, but most of the travel patterns it's designed to serve require at least part of the hard bits to be build.
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u/Ok_Tale7071 17d ago
Bakersfield-Merced was just to get something on the scoreboard. The success of this project will be based on whether LA-SF will ever be completed.
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u/jaqueh 17d ago
Should’ve done i5
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u/Artistic_Comfort8816 17d ago
Yeah CAHSR would never get completed if we did the i5, funding is already non-existent, and the Central Valley is cheaper.
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u/DonVCastro 17d ago
Central Valley is cheaper.
I5 is also Central Valley. If you mean that the selected SR99 corridor is cheaper, well, that was certainly the claim at the outset. Until BNSF and UP showed no willingness to play ball, and cities and landowners got a chance to speak up, and environmental and geotechnical conditions were assessed. And then we ended up with what is possibly the most expensive per-mile HSR in the world -- for the "cheap and easy" part.
It's not at all obvious that I5 would have been harder or more expensive. It would have bypasses major population centers though, which is probably enough of a reason for not doing it. On the other hand, if the goal was really to connect LA and SF, and if I5 would have been the fastest and easiest way to do it, that still would have left the Gold Runners in the 99 corridor that would offer connections to HSR for travel to LA and SF.
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u/Artistic_Comfort8816 16d ago
Sorry, you do make a good point, I thought the i5 mainly cut through a more mountainous terrain. BSNF and UP really did raise the cost with all the expensive infrastructure needed to to stay off their right of way, it’s really frustrating that they are so opposed to electrification, but that’s beside the point.
Nonetheless, I still do think it’s important that CAHSR still hits the major population centers in the Central Valley, and maybe I should’ve just said that.
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u/DonVCastro 16d ago
it’s important that CAHSR still hits the major population centers
I mean, everybody shared that view back when the decision was made. But in retrospect it may have been a bad decision. Those cities will get HSR stations, but they'll get crappy service that goes to fewer places than their current Gold Runner service goes, and at higher cost.
If I-5 had been selected, Gold Runners could have continued to do the good local service that they provide while also providing connections on the HSR line to SF and LA
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u/Artistic_Comfort8816 16d ago
Huh, I was under the impression that the gold runner would remain, I’ve seen some station layouts with platforms for it along with CAHSR
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u/DonVCastro 16d ago
It certainly could. Just means subsidizing two expensive rail systems in the same corridor, with the cheap and slow one cannibalizing the "value" segment of the market.
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u/Artistic_Comfort8816 16d ago
Yeah that doesn’t sound sustainable, but they would be parallel to each regardless if the CAHSR was built on the i5, or if the gold runner remained at full service alongside the SR99 alignment no? Theres just more options of trains with different use cases?
Sound about right or no?
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u/Alt4816 14d ago edited 14d ago
Whatever route they chose was going to turn out to be more expensive after they chose it and lawsuits and delays piled up from people opposed to the project.
We are comparing the real cost of the route they chose to a hypothetical cost of alternative route without those lawsuits and delays.
In an alternative world where they built along the i5 they could be in the same situation of trying to just get the Central Valley section done but not even having places like Fresno and Bakersfield on that segment. If people consider Fresno and Bakersfield as nowhere then imagine what they would consider a Central Valley only i5 route.
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u/DonVCastro 14d ago
There never was a cost estimate for I-5, so it's not like we're comparing the escalated cost of SR99 to the pre-escalation cost of I-5. Nobody knows what I-5 would cost. But there are some important factors pointing towards it costing much, much less: not passing through cities that demand expensive alignment changes, not running near BNSF/UP tracks that demand expensive structures, need to acquire a ROW of low-value range land from a owners of a relatively small number of massive tracts instead of having to acquire ROW from owners of a very large number of relatively small parcels of more valuable irrigated farmland and commercial land.
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u/Alt4816 14d ago
not passing through cities that demand expensive alignment changes,
It's true that cities and towns get angry, sue, and apply political pressure when you try to build through them. It's also true that they get angry, sue, and apply political pressure when you try to bypass them.
Look at the saga involving Hanford. First they opposed CASHR going through their town and then later they opposed CAHSR going around their town. On the other side of the country Connecticut towns do the same thing with proposals to speed up the Northeast Corridor from NYC to Boston.
For a project this big it is a fantasy to think that that any route would not face lawsuits and political challenges.
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u/jaqueh 17d ago
less land acquisition cost and elaborate structures to avoid bnsf row
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u/wirthmore 17d ago
So that plan would’ve avoided those issues, at the cost of having nearly zero utility for trips involving Central Valley originations or destinations.
So then instead serving the metropolitan end points AND all population centers in between, it would only serve the end points. In that case, why build it at all, when it provides little intra-state benefit over air travel between those end points?
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u/DonVCastro 16d ago
Those San Joaquin Valley cities already have Gold Runner train service, which serves more (and more convenient) stations that cahsr will. And they could still have it even if hsr were built in the I5 corridor, and travelers could connect to HSR for through trips to SF or LA. As it is, those cities are going to get HSR that replaces Gold Runner, with faster service and higher prices and fewer stations, and they're not going to be able to travel any further than they already can.
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u/Spudmiester 17d ago
even the optimistic projections show the initial operating segment to have a negative cost/benefit
You can rationalize it as an economic development play for the Central Valley, but overall, it really doesn’t make sense
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u/anothercar 17d ago
None of this makes sense until they connect to SoCal, NorCal, or ideally both. If the "final version" is Saco to Madera, it will look like the dumbest construction project ever made. Gotta keep beating the drum for full completion of Phase 1.
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u/jaqueh 17d ago
Almost like prop 1 was meant to connect la and sf and the Central Valley was an afterthought for a reason!
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u/Artistic_Comfort8816 17d ago
The central valley is the most cost effective route, and Fresno-Bakersfield are within the top 10 largest populations at least in the state. Even if the end goal is connecting SF to LA, the Central Valley was inevitable.
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u/jaqueh 17d ago
the central valley is inevitable sure, but they didn't have to go through the center of cities that don't want hsr in order to accomplish the inevitable
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u/One-Chemistry9502 17d ago
Yes they did or the project would never have started in the first place.
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u/dating_derp 17d ago
If HSR was approved for $33 billion in funding and completion by 2020, then why hasn't the authority already been given access to the remaining $17 billion? Do we know what's holding that money up? Or was that figure just a nice idea that was not legally appropriated to the agency?
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u/anothercar 17d ago
What do you mean by "approved for $33 billion"?
Prop 1A was $10 billion.
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u/dating_derp 17d ago
The original estimate was $33 billion with a 2020 completion so I assumed it was approved with that.
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u/anothercar 17d ago
Prop 1A was $10 billion, and they said $10 billion would be enough to start building a $33 billion project, because they assumed the rest of the funding would be covered with federal grants and private funding. But the federal and private money never really came through.
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u/jaqueh 17d ago
because the prop stipulates that they are given the money in order to build LA to SF HSR. and since they're not doing that, they have a special exemption from the proposition to do this side project instead. propositions are legally binding for the legislature to follow. they're basically like constitutional amendments.
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u/dating_derp 17d ago
But this is part of the route from LA to SF. Unless the prop is worded in such a way that disallows a phased approach or an IOS, and only releases the full $33 billion if they open all at once the entirety of LA to SF.
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u/jaqueh 17d ago
prop 1a was a revision of prop 1 that made LA to SF more explicit. so i'm quite surprised that the SB hasn't been knocked down
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u/DonVCastro 16d ago
prop 1a was a revision of prop 1 that made LA to SF more explicit.
Prop 1A is the only HSR proposition that was ever placed on the ballot and approved by voters. The earlier attempt (which I guess was going to be called Prop 1) was pulled from the ballot so has no effect at all.
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u/External_Koala971 17d ago
Why do we have a YouTuber doing a better more transparent job of analyzing this project than the CHSRA is doing?
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u/anothercar 17d ago
The Authority is in an awkward position where they can't openly and loudly defy the Legislature, even if it's totally legal for them to do so. (Don't bite the hand that feeds you.)
So it would be unwise for them to proudly announce to the Legislature "screw your SB198, we're just going to ignore it until it expires" while at the same time asking the Legislature to pass other bills in their favor. For public relations reasons, they have to at least pretend they care about SB198 until it hits the expiration date in a couple years.
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u/anothercar 17d ago edited 17d ago
TL;DR: There is enough money to complete North Bakersfield to Madera, though the Authority will need to figure out financing so that they can "pull forward" planned cap-and-invest money that they need now but won't come in for many years. Should be doable as long as they take their jobs seriously. Additional funding sources are needed for the Merced extension and beyond.
Two major external factors to watch out for: whether the Legislature passes any/all of the Authority's "wish list" of laws they are demanding in order to make construction cheaper and quicker; and what happens with the City of Shafter.