Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne–who claims to be an “unabashed supporter” of high-speed rail–reviews Anaheim’s new train station and finds it “oddly antiseptic.” Hawthorne doesn’t care that taxpayers spent $2,764 per square foot for what is essentially a big glass tent. He is a little disturbed that the design is so dysfunctional that train passengers “exit onto an uncovered platform, take the elevator or stairs [up] to a pedestrian bridge, and then enter the building at its highest interior level” only to have to go back down again to get to ground level.
What really bothers Hawthorne is that the building is “empty of context and obvious character,” and–most devastating of all–“placeless” meaning it would be “equally at home in Tacoma, Wash., or St. Louis.” The architects, he thinks, should have adapted regional forms, similar to the way L.A. Union Station used the Spanish Mission style.
While Hawthorne’s critique is pretty negative, it is also naive. He thinks that reducing “California’s reliance on the automobile is going to require architectural as well as infrastructural leaps of faith.” Sorry, even the most perfect architectural design won’t overcome rail’s inherent disadvantages over the convenience of cars and the low cost of flying.
France is discovering this. Despite having one of the most ballyhooed high-speed rail systems, “a homegrown startup called BlaBlaCar is challenging state-run railway monopoly SNCF by creating an alternative transport network out of empty car seats.”
Cardiothoracic surgeons accomplish surgical disease viagra online uk of the vessels in the brain. It helps to viagra sale australia increase the blood circulation in the muscles along your spine. The most obvious benefits of buying online is the possibility to purchase free online cialis prescriptions. It is the ingredient viagra levitra viagra inside this medicine that helps to cause erection which is manufactured by ‘pfizer’.
California’s system won’t even be very high-speed for a long time. While the state is building a short (25-mile) stretch of high-speed rail tracks from Fresno to Madera, for the rest of the distance trains will share tracks with Amtrak and freight, which means speeds will be limited to 79 or, at most, 90 mph.
Moreover, so long as high-speed trains share tracks with conventional trains even for only short distances, they will have to meet federal safety standards to deal with crashes, which means they will be very heavy relative to, say, the Japanese trains that exclusively use their own tracks. Heavy trains mean energy-intensive trains, thus eliminating any of the supposed environmental benefits.
The low end of the latest (meaning three-years-old) estimated cost of building exclusive high-speed rail tracks from Anaheim to San Francisco is $98.5 billion, which works out to about $3,000 per inch. By 2040, when the system might be completed if funds were available, which they aren’t, this cost is certain to rise even more.
To architecture critics, it may seem perfectly appropriate to spend $2,764 per square foot on stations designed to serve $3,000-per-inch rail lines. To the taxpayers who will have to foot the bill–most of whom will never ride the trains–neither expense makes any sense at all.
Other than sitting on your hands and hoping driverless cars offer the capacity upgrades you claim they will how do you plan to accommodate growth in travel demand in California?
Buses are the obvious choice, just as they are in the eastern seaboard.
“Other than sitting on your hands and hoping driverless cars offer the capacity upgrades you claim they will how do you plan to accommodate growth in travel demand in California?”
Did you read the article? Did you click on the link to the article about BlaBlaCar?
Start there.
And there is certainly plenty of room to widen Interstate 5 in the Central Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vzDDMzq7d0
I loved “The Best Laid Plans” and have learned so much on this website. keeping the heat on and educating the public on the foolish streetcar fraud / deception is primary, but I would like to discuss the legitimate ways that accommodating the automobile can make places that are very pleasant pedestrian environments. We have been through the pedestrian mall experiments that killed downtowns all over the country in the 70’s, but there are three communities near me that have created lively and economically viable mixed use communities that seem to be healthy without artificial growth boundaries etc. These are Greenville SC, Asheville, NC and Biltmore Town Square in Arden, NC. All three have encouraged mixed use with a combination of retail, office, and resedential, and have sold public land for private development with some constraints on mixed use requirements. The way that these developments have made accommodating the automobile a primary concern has been the primary component in their success. With on street parking and an abundance of multistory garages, the retail, office and residential parts work together in a way that functional, practical, and economically successful for the automobile and pedestrian. I would like to introduce this as a topic if it does not interfere with the other topics. This video touches on the topic and provides an ideological exception where government responded to a private citizens idea in a way that successfully transformed a traffic engineering nightmare into a pleasant public space that accommodates the auto and the pedestrian with a minimizing top down bureaucratic traffic engineering an government micromanagement.
What a tangled web the planners weave with their lies! It’s always the same loaded question….how will the new growth be handled? The fact that a pathetic toy train that won’t even go 100mph when averaged out can’t handle a significant number of passengers and won’t even make a blip in I-5 numbers is irrelevant. All that matters is steering large contracts to corrupt contractors and blindly following inane ideologies.
“And there is certainly plenty of room to widen Interstate 5 in the Central Valley.”
True for long-distance traffic. Route 99 from Wheeler Ridge to Red Bluff is another matter. While the rural areas might be easier to widen, the urban areas may not. I haven’t driven the route since 2001 (bypassed it in favor of I-5 for long-distance haul in 2005), I remember it being extremely crowded from Fresno to Sacramento. Apparently, CalTrans wants to upgrade it to interstate standards, which is a much better use of funds than HSR, which will largely bypass the most populated Central Valley corridor.
“Frédéric Mazzella got the idea for BlaBlaCar after struggling one Christmas to travel back to his parents’ home in western France. All the trains leaving from Paris were fully booked.”
France is finally starting to realize that no one takes trains anymore, and for the same reason that no one lives in urban centers anymore – they’re too crowded.
“they’re too crowded”
Yes. During holidays like Black Friday.
ahwr wrote:
Other than sitting on your hands and hoping driverless cars offer the capacity upgrades you claim they will how do you plan to accommodate growth in travel demand in California?
Ever heard of the airplane?
As others suggested above, ever heard of a bus?
Estimated costs of new roads to accommodate the demand high speed rail would were 170% the cost of high speed rail. Expanded air facilities hike the price another 50% Zilliacus. People don’t like buses, and they don’t like to car pool. Dynamic tolling would help, but california FREEways are hard to charge for. You’ll need expanded facilities, and they aren’t cheap.
ahwr wrote:
Estimated costs of new roads to accommodate the demand high speed rail would were 170% the cost of high speed rail.
Source of that assertion? And what is the definition of those new roads? Widening I-5? And remind me how much freight the proposed California HSR network can carry.
Expanded air facilities hike the price another 50% Zilliacus.
Expanded air facilities? Which price? As in airport capacity? Or something else? Source for your assertions?
People don’t like buses, and they don’t like to car pool.
But you think they would like a train better? Passenger rail is legacy technology that has not shown itself able to compete against other transportation modes, even with generous subsidies from taxpayers.
Dynamic tolling would help, but california FREEways are hard to charge for. You’ll need expanded facilities, and they aren’t cheap.
Sounds like you are not very familiar with the freeway network in the Golden State. California is where the first variably-priced toll lanes were introduced in the United States. Ever heard of Ca. 91 (Riverside Freeway)? I-15 (Escondido Freeway)? As well as more-recent efforts by LAC MTA to convert HOV lanes to HOV/Toll Lanes.
Here in the Maryland we have added an entirely new tolled freeway. It’s called Route 200 (perhaps you have heard of it?). We have also added tolled lanes to a “free” section of I-95 northeast of Baltimore on the JFK Highway. Across the Potomac River in Virginia, a public-private partnership has added HOV/Toll lanes to a section of I-495, and a section of HOV lanes on I-95 were converted to HOV/Toll lanes.
Ditto. Whenever I hear the passive voice I tend to doubt the assertation.