Rant: more nonsense from California

[bikkuri bahn]

Let me start out by saying I was raised and educated in California, with roots both in NorCal and the Southland, but more and more I have come to the belief that a lot of Americans, and people in Northern California in particular, are a bunch of selfish and self-entitled nitwits who want to have their cake and eat it too.  Especially when it comes to infrastructure, and high speed rail in particular, I think a miracle must happen if I am to see anything built within my lifetime in my (possibly former) home state.  Here is a gem from the Mercury News (albeit a strongly anti-HSR newspaper), about how downtown San Jose interests are against elevated tracks through their area, and are calling for tunnels(!), citing concerns about "dividing" their community (haven't these people ever heard of, or seen the wide open spaces beneath properly designed elevated tracks???)

 

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_14145542

 

Heck, why don't we just tunnel the whole darn route, 'cause even farmer Joe might not like how the HSR line obstructs the view of his cows from his front porch out in Sticksville, CA!

 

Why does this rile me up?  Because I have seen what a civilized country can do with HSR- Just last week, I was at Shin-Osaka Station, where daily, 365 days of the year, in all kinds of weather, shinkansen trains depart for Tokyo at 3 minute intervals- that's subway-like headways, folks.  OK, you say, California isn't as densely populated as the Osaka-Tokyo corridor.  Well then, a few days before that, I was in Hachinohe, where Tohoku Shinkansen trains were departing on approx. half hour intervals, in winter weather that California HSR will 95% of the time will not face on its proposed route.  

 

"Patriots" will say, well, the US is a democracy, and things take time to get done and people's voices need to be heard.  Well, Japan is a democracy, so is France, so is Germany, and so is Spain.  And they get things done without dithering and wasting millions (billions) on "studies" and "proposals", and caving in to pressure from the NIMBYs and "trains aren't profitable, lets build more (subsidized)highways" crowd.  I'm afraid the US has become what was once a nation of AmeriCANS to a nation of AmeriCAN'Ts, to paraphrase a line from a recent movie.  Perhaps the California HSR will be built eventually, but the road to that goal will be very bumpy and likely more expensive than it need be.

 

Rant over...

[Guest ___]

Well, did you read the AP report that showed the billions spent on transportation road construction had no impact on employment, and that the was no evidence to show that Obama's spending on roads created any jobs within the industry?

[Mudkip Orange]

NIMBYs exist in Japan, too. Take a look at the freight bypasses around Yokohama - every viaduct is boxed in, like a Wisconsin covered bridge, for noise reasons. Or the similar walls along freeway/shinkansen viaducts. Or the fact that all new Shinkansen designs are using a squared profile (a la 700) because the tunnel boom from cylindrical trains like the 500 series is too loud for the farmers at either end.

 

The key is whether you let the NIMBYs block a project entirely.

 

California High speed rail has momentum. I doubt the tunnel proponents will succeed.

[westfalen]

This article on the subject was in the Brisbane Courier Mail newspaper a couple of days ago.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,26572849-5012446,00.html

 

Politicians in this country seem to have some strange priorities and logic, our state government is selling off the profitable freight division of Queensland Rail to raise money to pay off debt but the other day announced they are giving the state's horse racing industry $80 million.

[CaptOblivious]

Bikkuri, while I agree with the spirit of what you say, let me offer a case study to the contrary: St Louis.

 

St Louis has been on the decline for the last hundred years or so, but one of the factors that helped the long slide down was the construction of I-64 through the middle of the city. This was our first east-west interstate, and it was designed to facilitate the movement of suburban commuters from the county in the west and Illinois in the east. And while, like with many American cities, this interstate fueled depopulation of the city directly, it also had a lasting indirect impact on the city that will linger long after the Urban Revival boom has restored this city to its rightful place as second largest in the nation (as if...): I-64 was routed without regard to the neighborhoods it split. This had two effects. The first, is that communities built over the last century were literally torn apart. My wife used to live on a street just a block or so from the interstate, and you could see the houses on the other side—houses that would have at one time been close neighbors—completely inaccessible. It was psychologically devastating to many. But that passed.

 

More lingering is that north-south travel through the city is nearly impossible. This only really became apparent this last year when they closed I-64 to refurbish it. (Part of the refurbishment was a rebuilding of the handful of bridges that create north-south links across it—there are very very few—and the result is that for many weeks in a row there would be exactly one place where the interstate could be crossed, because the other two links were under construction.) So, while east-west traffic was handled well, the interstate totally kills north-south traffic, and so frustrates attempts at building communities across the interstate. It's a real hassle in some parts of the city to get across it (especially in rush hour), and so people in those parts just don't cross it. Businesses located near the interstate suffer as a result—they're just too hard to get to.

 

The upshot is that when we found out I-64 was getting refurbished, there was a huge hue and cry to completely redo the interstate to use a viaduct so that social and logistical links that it had severed could be restored. This didn't happen, but at least MoDOT had the kindness to build a couple of new bridges, which helps. But it doesn't solve the problem of a city split in two.

 

So I can understand the reaction. Viaduct isn't nearly as bad as a simple earthen mound, like I-64 is built on, but there is a real fear of losing a community to it that deserves respect. That said, should this require a tunnel, or even the halting of the project? Hell no. But it does require that whoever builds this thing think very carefully about how it will impact those who live near the ROW, and plan accordingly. This is an opportunity to build communities and to tear them apart, and I think the real message in this article is that California HST should be sensitive to this dilemma.

 

*whew* that was a mouthful! Now if only I could summon the energy to write as much on my dissertation!

[disturbman]

The thing is, viaduct, trench and earthened infrastructure could be very destructive. But it all depends how it is done. How it's integrated in the city scape and how it cut (or not) neighbourhoods. Hopefully we are not in the 60's or the 70's and we had time to learn from the past mistakes. There is many exemple of sucessfull viaducts located in cities core around the world. The most obvious western exemples are for me the Berliner Stadtbahn, Paris'/Berlin's Els and Vancouver's Skytrain.

 

But of course, it all depends how deep is the cut and how it follows and is inserted in the city morphology. Because no matter what you do if you have a 8 tracks cut in a city you will feel its presence.

 

Personnaly I like trenchs because you can, if you need, cover them up. That's what Paris is doing in so many places to sew back together the city and its neighboorhoods. They are even building new neighbourhoods upon railroad tracks (like around Austerlitz station) and some highways. Very impressive work. Problem is, I wouldn't trust too much a trench in a sismic area.

 

Another parisian exemple, work is under progress to tear down the highway ring viaduct around La Défense. The cut was big enough to cut this BD from its surroundings.

[to2leo]

Build a ditch for HSR like what they did in Reno Nevada, problem solved.  On top of that, sell the air right of the ditch for development near station.

 

Everyone knows my belief already. If the HSR is built, I will be overjoyed like you.  Otherwise, I am not surprise.