California High Speed Rail has not Failed and RealLifeLore is wrong

Your ability to put stock videos over a script does not mean I have to take you seriously.
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0:00 Intro
0:50 California's Rail Plan
2:38 Speed
4:58 Route
8:52 Surfliner
10:35 Cost
14:22 Modal Share
15:12 The Clock
17:21 Outro
Articles:
www-xinhuanet-com.translate.g...
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
• Video
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxing_...)

[@RealLifeLore]

Hello. Just wanted to drop in here to, first of all, thank you for making this video. A lot of non-facts and misinformation slipped through the cracks of my usual fact-checking process for my video on this subject, and I've been incredibly embarrassed over it. It didn't come close to matching my standards of quality, and that's why, ultimately, I've made the decision to take my video down permanently, and I'm working on a follow-up video to go over all of the errors that you, and many others have brought up since it went live. This subject deserved closer attention from my own eyes, and I apologize for ever having it released in the condition that it was in. Cheers, Joseph

[@Benhutchie22386]

I just got so much more respect for you. Thank you. Tbh I just excused it as “well you can’t get all the details right” but nice to see how seriously you take it

[@alexcarter8082]

I just got so much more respect for you. Thank you. Tbh I just excused it as “well you can’t get all the details right” but nice to see how seriously you take it

[@Metalslimeusa]

Nah y’all have to debate now

[@whatare9731]

I am 27 seconds after alex carter

[@MegaKopfschmerzen]

I can respect that. Although I wanted to watch that video just now, as a refernce from this one.

[@haydenhayden]

It’s stuff like this that makes me realize how many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of how public transportation works.

[@Humulator]

yeah, ands that why i cant bike to work because they think that biking and walking and taking the bus/train is for poor people. i wish i could live someplace like the netherlands but i dont have the money to move.

[@custardstuff5178]

A lot of that is intentional misinformation. The car money goes deep.

[@empathyisonlyhuman7816]

I think you hit on a very good point here concerning public misunderstanding. But it extends well and far beyond public transit. It is essentially the backbone of every kind of propaganda system in existence.

[@misanthropyunhinged]

@@custardstuff5178 petro and auto industry has all the power in the u.s & canada

[@Sho-td8wg]

A huge part of it centers around the running gov like a business concept. By far, the big gripes center around the potential operating costs. I don't know if it can operate cost comparatively with airlines once you factor in the extra travel time. The idea that fairs will sustain it goes against the experiences of most pubic transit.

[@Thatdude_Nik]

"The cost has ballooned to 100 billion due to cost increases" "10 people died in the Bronx last night due to a fire that killed 10 people in the Bronx last night during a fire"

[@trulio_]

every 60 seconds a minute passes 😮

[@earleroy]

@@trulio_ in africa 😔

[@orppranator5230]

@@earleroy Only in Africa!

[@Bolt451]

Wtf

[@nomadben]

That is from the show Louie. Great line

[@KIndustries1000]

"If there's one group of people that know way more than you do, it's train people." As a train people, this cracked me up

[@qwerty112311]

If there is one group that will ignore all the pitfalls of a system to promote the system, rail people. BUT MUH AMERICAN HIGH SPRED RAIL RAH RAH RAH EUROPE CHINA JAPAN. No doubt rail works in some places in America, but there are some clowns who think it is perfect for any and all applications.

[@PinkFZeppelin]

@@qwerty112311 Agreed, but it's usually just people with a specific narrative acting like train people I also like the fact that the USA already has more rail line than any other country in the world. We played a huge part in developing the systems. It's a lot of hubris to think during the creation of the largest rail networks ever they didn't apply it anywhere that it provides benefits.

[@TohaBgood2]

@@qwerty112311 Auto transposition only works in some places and is actually fully subsidized everywhere in the country. Why are we subsidizing boondoggle highways that earn zero money ever vs trains that actually make money in some regions? Aren’t our tax dollars better spent on the thing that requires fewer subsidies to build and run?

[@takablepigon9686]

Oh God. We found the Hivemind.

[@PinkFZeppelin]

@@TohaBgood2 These train systems don't make money. Most of them are in massive debt.

[@liamwinning860]

The BART point was actually hilarious, like saying why doesn’t crossrail in london just run on existing underground lines 🙄

[@MikeWillSee]

Even worse than saying crossrail should run on the tube, as that's a commuter line rather than a high speed line. This comparison is like saying HS2 should run on the tube!

[@Bureaucromancer]

@@MikeWillSee even worse than that given that but for the hundred and fiftyish years separating them there are huge parallels between crossrsail and the northern half of the circle line. Crossrail VERY similar in conceptio, purpose and even central routing to the original Metropolitan line.

[@SamAronow]

@@MikeWillSee If you want to get literal, it's saying that HS2 should run on Crossrail.

[@zaydansari4408]

Yeah like forget about the fact that a HS service will not be able to work on a double track local metro that is clogged up with frequently stopping trains. The rolling stock isn’t even compatible.

[@zaydansari4408]

A road based parable is, why should we build a road between these two place when you can get there using local residential streets, county dirt-roads, and rural easements and right of access lanes?

[@defaultmesh]

typical non-foamers always think that a "track upgrade" just means grabbing a magic wand from the TpF2 UI menu and in one touch it upgrades the tracks to 350 km/h without change in alignment, grade crossings, tunnels, etc.

[@At0m1c420]

funny thing is they'd know thats not possible if the actually PLAYED Tpf2 and tried that.

[@derekhalcon8287]

obviously track upgrade means hitting the track with the tf2 engineer wrench to the next level

[@trashrabbit69]

Derek Halcon Unfortunately CHSRI forgot to equip the Jag and it made everyone mad it took them so long 😔 smh bad rollout strats

[@assonance9057]

It’s so silly man

[@Chrischi3TutorialLPs]

Well, that IS how it works in Victoria 2, so why would real life be any different?

[@roterotevideo]

I am flabbergasted they said that diverting only 13 minutes to enfranchise a small city is a bad thing.

[@ianhomerpura8937]

A city with a population of 120,000 is not small to be honest

[@metrofilmer8894]

Ikr. And more than 1/2 a million people live in this region, the antelope valley, so there is actually a lot of people there

[@MugroofAmeen]

He also ignored the fact that the line also runs on nearby city called Lancaster which has over a quarter million people.

[@SirSayakaMikiThe3rd]

Going along the coast completely ignores the millions in the Central Valley. As someone originally from Fresno, I am very excited to see such a massive investment into our part of California.

[@IONATVS]

@@SirSayakaMikiThe3rdYeah, people see LA, SF, and SD on the coast, and the 5 freeway running between them, and just presume the entire coast is densely populated, and the interior is empty. When any californian knows, apart from the aforementioned metro areas and their suburbs, our geography forces the opposite-untamed mountainous nature on the coast and a continuous patchwork of settlements along the interior.

[@k7y]

you know this video gonna slap when RealLifeLore is in the comments apologising and admitting the error

[@nolantherailfan5048]

It's gonna slap him in the nuts

[@someotherdude]

....he got RealLifeLore on some FACTS. Unfortunately, California HSR is still a huge fail. It won't move very many people, there actually are several spots along the route that are terrible choices, the costs have gone insane, and the (absurdly optimistic) revenue projects won't even come close to keeping it running. Last but not least, the original backers of the project have backed out, admitting it's a fail. One thing that will pop up in the future to alter the equation is short hop electric aviation, fortunately.

[@nerd2814]

@@someotherdude ehh I doubt it. There are many in the country right now who are itching for a new, more convenient and comfortable service without the hassle of security and what have you that airports have. Besides, I think Bakersfield-Fresno sector will actually be a big hit, considering that both cities are pretty big, over 500k each. Also, remember the Shinkansen - that went twice over budget and nobody talks about it. Even if the numbers are nowhere as big as the Shinkansen or TGV, once LA and SFO are connected, that's when the moolah will be rolling in.

[@pandarosamusic5751]

@@nerd2814 I was gonna say, I'm sure the Fresno-Bakersfield will at least be moderately popular, I doubt anybody loves driving the traffic-snarled roads between the two cities, and honestly I think the convenience of the train here would make a splash. It's not like these are tiny towns, they're certainly cities in their own right.

[@yuzu-tsuyu]

I've honestly only heard of this RealLifeLore guy in context of him being incredibly wrong about things--and his "NATO's biggest weakness is Scotland" from 4 weeks ago is still up despite there being multiple response video outlining how nonsensical and misinformed most of it is, and the comments being full of people saying they're fed up with how erroneous his videos are. Seems like he gives zero fucks about being wrong, with the views he gets he could hire a ton of researchers, but all he wants is clicks.

[@shubdotclub]

I’m always disappointed when people want to bypass the central valley’s cities. That region of California is growing and most auto dependent section of the state as well as home to another 5 million Californians. Clearly there’s necessity to build in “nowhere” when nowhere starts becoming somewhere.

[@notthemama9986]

That’s my home turf! 559 born and raised and will fight tooth and nail to bring HSR home.

[@liamlee4817]

They are literally almost colinear with the Bay Area and LA and it’s just a fact that they are a huge part of the population and economy. There’s seriously no reason to make them use busses to go to an i-5 corridor. That people suggest that is insane to me. It really is also elitist

[@Peaks209]

There’s a reason ACE has been trying to get service expansions into Modesto and Ceres, just a matter of it coming to fruition.

[@travcollier]

The University of CA has a big campus, including medical school, in Merced. The Central Valley is really not "nowhere" and hasn't been for a while.

[@pennyforyourthots]

Not only that, but I imagine being connected by High-Speed rail would probably make them more desirable areas for people commuting to the major cities, and as a result would increase their size and hopefully reduce the cost of living in a place like LA

[@MicahRousey]

I was one of the consultants for this project in the early stages. My responsibilities was organizing the documentation around the project for the inevitable lawsuits and public disclosure. I hate the 'all the lawsuits' issue brought up by critics. As one of the PM's told me: "You can guarantee lawsuits on a project of this scale, it's just a part of doing business." And yeah, take it from a consultant.... consultants are the biggest factor to government projects costing so much.

[@JasonBoyce]

There’s ALWAYS lawsuits. For example, there’s lawsuits by people who own land that is either getting seized via eminent domain, or they’re trying to force the government to buy land they don’t want. There’s landowners who don’t want the tracks through their property and there’s landowners who want to offload land to the estate and force a nice high price.

[@JeffLocke1]

I can imagine the feeling of looking at those plans with the rail going through Kern County and knowing how much pushback you were going to get just on principle. Harvey Hall and the DA spent a lot of time and money strategizing on how to fight the project before any of the initial plans became public. Just absolutely hateful people there...

[@patches152]

Second Thought just did a video about consultants and government.

[@ciello___8307]

@@JeffLocke1 and this is before it gets to more populous areas too. The metro purple subway in la got so many malicious lawsuits by beverly hills and other rich communities that didn't want a subway running under them.

[@encinobalboa]

Then you are aware the HSR initiate was sold as a $30bn project. How the heck did cost estimate balloon to $70?

[@blackbirdgaming8147]

The funny part about the Surfliner issue is they just closed the line *again* because the hillside wanted to be friends with the ocean

[@tobingallawa3322]

Building on unstable ground, or downhill from unstable ground, never works.

[@lucaspadilla4815]

They currently be dumping more rocks into the water to see if that works

[@sandsalamand3763]

@@tobingallawa3322 To be fair, the water was probably a lot further away from the tracks when they built it in 1880

[@sortascouseace]

Climate change go brrrrr

[@tobingallawa3322]

@@lucaspadilla4815 They are going to try and fill up the ocean, perfect

[@kajerlou]

I live in South Korea. The train lines and the metro systems are always expanding here. Often things go over budget and/or projected dates but, once they're completed they generate some measure of pride on top of increasing conveniences, reducing traffic, etc. People only ever get mad before and during but, rarely after.

[@benjaminfranklin329]

The trains in Seoul were great when I lived there for a few months, and so well used, it really is such an asset to the country.

[@ExtraThiccc]

Damn south Korea sounds like a fucking utopia wish our shithole of a nation was as much of a perfect ethnostate as yours

[@sentryion3106]

@@ExtraThiccc no please no, Korea is more like a dystopia with all the oligopoly and terrible work culture. We always think about japan is bad, but Korea has way more suicide than japan.

[@garywilson1688]

BART in the Bay Area has been built. Less and less people ride it now. And the cost to ride it makes driving much more attractive. LA has built 100's of miles of light rail transit. Less and less people are riding it now. Crime is high on it and may be a big reason ridership is way down. So, "If you build it people will use it" doesn't always apply. Also, here people don't get mad before and during (for whatever reason) and they keep voting the same people in that approved and oversee these rail systems.

[@kajerlou]

@@garywilson1688 sounds symptomatic of a variety of other sociopolitical issues that need to be tackled. Bare in mind, the infrastructure is the most important part. Your community, with enough sociopolitical will power, could improve the other factors at any time. Then turn around and make that light rail beautiful.

[@brokeafengineerwannabe2071]

Funny how Mustard's video on Shinkansen itself has already answered most of these "technical" problems, the Japanese's choice of digging new routes, abandoning old slower tracks with different gauges, over-budget problems, etc. High-speed rail is a different kind of transport and should not be compared to rails like commuter rails. And the economical benefits are simply too great to be ignored in the coming decades.

[@Pensyfan19]

Agreed. I saw a video once that compared the French TGV to my local commuter railroad (the Long Island Railroad) and it made me lose hope in society.

[@MichaelfromtheGraves]

the Mustard Shinkansen video is Oscar worthy. I think I've seen it about 15 times

[@brokeafengineerwannabe2071]

@@stuffbenlikes I think it’s mostly due to it being the previous 3 decades of mistreatment and careless planning

[@ogzombieblunt4626]

Well the designation for HSR is 250km/hr so i wouldn't call it a different kind of transport. It requires different engineering techniques for sure.

[@MaticTheProto]

Mustard is amazing

[@uzziya6392]

Missed the part where RealLifeLore just forgets that express trains exist and thinks that CalHSR has to stop at every single station along the route every single time.

[@macstrong1284]

Jfc literally one level on ANY railway management or tycoon type game and you’d know that. I think RLL is okay but he really dropped the ball on this one

[@RandoWisLuL]

yup

[@Racko.]

As a train expert, I'd say he definitely messed up badly on that video, sure most of this takes were true but overall he simply doesn't seem to understand how trains and their economics actually work, I found out when he mentions places like Merced and Palmdale not having alot of ppl and thinking the Surfliner Coast rail can be used to HIGH SPEED RAIL, that's when I knew he doesnt know much about it

[@neutrino78x]

it doesn't matter, even if you assume no stops it's still slow as fuck. It's a 380 mile route and wheel on rail craps out at 200. The fastest speed they're talking about is merced to bakersfield average 130. I would put a link but youtube doesn't let you anymore. It's a Deutsche Bahn document.

[@ratedpz9461]

This is the only CA HSR video i've found that actually mentions how mountains are the reason the route goes through the central valley and is so curvy. It should be relatively obvious but I'm still glad there's at least one video that explains this feature. Great video in general too.

[@Moskeeto]

There's also literally millions of people that live in the Central Valley. Most of the coast, however is not inhabited. Building along the coast would only serve LA and the Bay Area while ignoring the millions of people that live in the valley.

[@PopoySD]

There was an article where the HSR authority management were being interviewed and they said the agreement to build hsr through the state was it had to connect SF to LA, but had to go through Central Valley cities to help expand these cities, and economic growth.

[@JosefDerKaiser]

Reminds me of a video someone made where he outright said "Why doesn't Brazil just become a superpower already." Well, you have impenetrable rainforest on one side of the mountains, and a thin strip of arable land on the other. The mountains. You can't, you just, agh it bothered me so bad.

[@TheZweric]

and most importantly, most of their capital isn't their own, but comes from foreign investments, so the profits are leaving too.

[@someotherdude]

Brazil was on it's way to becoming a developed nation and went off the rails after the 1990s, with social spending and corruption. I hate to say it, but the military junta that ruled in the 1980s had the country on the track to prosperity.

[@nidhishshivashankar4885]

?? Natural resources have nothing to do with capital power

[@HolyAvgr]

@@someotherdude absolutely mental take on Brazil's performance. Take your ultra-fascist bullshit somewhere else.

[@floofzykitty5072]

@@nidhishshivashankar4885 did you just... say... Natural resources have nothing to do with capital power?????????????????????? Surely this is a troll? No one surely thinks that?

[@zizafell]

Also regarding the Palmdale station: RealLifeLore dismisses Palmdale as only being a city with 150,000 people however nearby is the city of Lancaster with a similar population. So it makes a lot of sense to have a HSR station serving an area of over 300,000 people, and HSR would complement existing commuter rail service. That number is also probably expected to grow as cities like Palmdale, Lancaster, and Santa Clarita have grown in population over the past ten years while cities closer to the core of Los Angeles have declined in population due to how expensive housing has become.

[@esjd812]

The AV is around 500k in total I think, so yeah he’s definitely just being ignorant for the sake of it

[@RoscoeWasHere]

I grew up in Palmdale and it has grown a lot in the 18 years I lived there. The Antelope Valley is a very large urban area for being in the middle of the desert, and is home to some of the most important military spots in the state.

[@pitabread79]

Yep, and good public transit is not just for the people who live there now, but for the people who will live there in the future BECAUSE of that transit.

[@KuroshiKun]

it's also going to eventually also connect with brightline west to Vegas

[@gamerike777]

There’s surprisingly a lot of industry jobs out there in the Palmdale area where I’m sure living in LA and commuting to Palmdale via HSR would be quite beneficial.

[@TotoDG]

The reason he got so many things wrong is because he didn't compare anything to a Toyota Corolla.

[@davidty2006]

Hmmm oh yeah..... he didn't mention how many toyota corolla's could of been taken off the roads.

[@stickynorth]

OR WALKING!

[@TouringWolf42]

How can anyone criticize the transportation system without taking in to account the glorious dimensions of the world acclaimed Toyota Corolla.

[@LiveType]

Actual facts. Toyota corollas should have been a part of the video in a video about transportation. How they were omitted is beyond me.

[@timmele7031]

this is a fair point!

[@joergsonnenberger6836]

Fun fact, when the new high speed connection between Berlin and Munich was completed in 2017, the number of customers for that route doubled over the next year. It's a project that was quite comparable in nature to CHSR.

[@1AngryPanda]

Public projects always goes over budget, because the numbers who get called at the start are mostly the absolut minimum who only could be realised when nothing goes wrong. 15:00 when you take Italy as example, the highspeed railnetwork killed the own airline. Because inland flights where not necessary anymore for people.

[@mitchyoung93]

Then they shouldn't be sold to the voters at low ball costs. This project passed by less than 6 percent of the vote...had voters know the true cost (and time, and route) they might have chosen differently.

[@leonpaelinck]

@@mitchyoung93 nothing ever gets done by that logic

[@randomprotag9329]

@@leonpaelinck a middle ball cost should be used with the high ball cost given so that voters actually know the realistic budget needed and the less likely but still possible budget additions that can be needed. if the cost is so high that the voters has to be lied to the project should not be done.

[@fjp3305]

@@mitchyoung93 You have to think in the future

[@beekerakadjsnaxx6133]

There's a difference between "over budget" and "It's now estimated to cost 15 times more than the original estimate". Show me where there's $129 BILLION for this project .. and that's as of TODAY ... 10 years from now, it'll be twice that .

[@wblynch]

What a lot of critics don't know is, 30 years ago California already had an advanced proposal for high speed rail up the San Diego coast, close to the current line, and the lawsuits and NIMBY-ism were overwhelming to the point it was all shit canned. My father was one of the senior engineers on the original BART system and later served as Executive Engineer, overseeing construction of 3/4 of the system’s rail line. I worked as a lowly laborer, laying and affixing that same 52 miles of rail; both directions. I choked on my beer the moment I heard someone suggest combining the long distance line with BART. I know dozens of reasons why that wouldn't work. Although a shared transfer station would be a great idea.

[@patmcbride9853]

Just like the Sacramento freeway bypass from Hwy50 to I-80 that was ready to go until the idiots sold out to developers. More congestion, more accidents, more frustration. But the politicians and their friends were happy.

[@Zraknul]

At least 1 shared transfer station should actually be required. Get off one, onto the other. No extra walk, bus, etc.

[@jsrodman]

A *good* shared transfer between BART and high speed rail is tricky. Today, those two sysstems don't get anywhere near each other, except at burlingame which is a mostly-useless transfer point. ( Aside: Burlingame is low density. The BART path from Burlingame swings FAR to the west making its transit to SF downtown take much longer even at its higher operating speeds to reach the same point of SF downtown. This might be mitigated if the BART route served high density areas, but it mostly doesn't, save for Glen Park and the Mission district. it is generally faster to take the caltrain up into the city and RUN on foot the 6 city blocks to the BART, than it is to transfer at Burlingame. The real reason for this transfer point is so that caltrain riders can get to the San Francisco Airport, and vice versa, which is fine, but it doesn't really connect the systems for most transit purposes.) The most useful transfer point would be bringing the high speed rail, and catrain, all the way into downtown SF as was planned originally (don't know the currents status). The caltrain would be vastly more useful for commute purposes with this as well. Currently, most people who might want to commute into the city from the south need to add a bicycle to the trip to get to the dense office areas in a reasonable time. The second most useful transfer point would be in San Jose, when the bart extension down to San Jose is completed. It looks like this is .. sort of planned, with BART being extended to have a Diridon Station, though probably nearby rather than same-platform with caltrain & High Speed Rail. This would bring the entire east bay into a reasonable transportation link to the high speed rail, BART of course is a pretty disappointing system. It is far too expensive due to all the custom engineering to be very cost effective as a purely commuter system, and most of the outer stations are designed to only encourage higher car dependency and sprawl. And as a transit system, it doesn't go to enough town cores, or run often enough to convince people to skip driving for non-commuting trips. As a commuter system, the downtown station placement is ridiculous with some stations being about 2 blocks apart. As a transit system, the outer stations placements are ridiculous with outer stations being far to far apart to support intermodality. Part of the problem is a pretty hardwired design that will be almost impossible to ever scale to 3 or more rails, to support express and local service. All that said, connecting it with more systems in shared stations would improve its future potential.

[@dogguy8603]

The NIMBYs in this case have a point, they will be losing their homes, if you support HSR then burn your home for it

[@electrictroy2010]

China has built more miles of high‐​speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐​owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. SPAIN has built its high‐​speed rail system with a public‐​private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐​owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has the world’s highest Debt to GDP ratio of 270%

[@chaos386]

The "skip Palmdale and go through the Tehachapi Pass" idea is even more bone-headed once you realize it's actually a good idea! Such a good idea, in fact, that the freight railroads already built a line there over a hundred years ago, and very rarely let passenger trains through it these days, since it's already at capacity with just the freight traffic... Also, I have to laugh at RLL saying Palmdale was "only" 150,000 people (metro area of half a million). Hardly worth building transit infrastructure for! /s

[@purplegill10]

Thank you for bringing that up.

[@Connor_Herman]

Not to mention being a potential jumping off point for future HSR to Las Vegas

[@mendodsoregonbackroads6632]

These stops at the smaller towns will end up being transportation hubs for each area. Palmdale for instance, probably has a bus line, if not some kind of light rail or street car, which will go to the HSR station and make it worth while. You could get on public transit in your Palmdale neighborhood and take it to the HSR station and actually go on a trip to another part of the state instead of driving. Same with all the other stops. Each town/region will build its transportation network to interface with CHSR and probably have a standardized payment system through your phone that takes care of the transfers.

[@SamAronow]

@@mendodsoregonbackroads6632 Palmdale is currently linked to Lancaster and Los Angeles via Metrolink, and this has already happened.

[@SCHMALLZZZ]

You simply can't build high speed rail through the mountains, they need generous gradients and capacious curves.

[@jayc222]

“Anyone from the Bay Area knows what the problem is here…” Haha yup! One thing I think would help a lot of the KZbin fails I see is just talking to a local expert first. That alone would prevent so many erroneous claims.

[@futbolfan27]

I live in the central valley of CA, but work remotely for a company in SoCal. WFH has seen a major increase in people moving to the Central Valley from LA and the Bay area. The High Speed Rail will be a HUGE plus for those of us here working for the SoCal and Bay companies. It will allow us to go into the office once or twice a week if need be. CA will become accessible which means over population in the Bay and SoCal can bleed into areas without much population right now. I'm stoked for what it is going to do for our state.

[@LMB222]

That's what we over the Big Water have been trying to tell you, folks: we use those trains for all purposes, including *business*. As a freelancer I was able to accept a project in Hamburg, very far from my home, because there's HSR. The money I made due to this was significant. Once Cali gets HSR up, there's going to be all kinds of economic changes, most important of which is access to cheaper real estate.

[@strickenrod2681]

@@LMB222not to get too political but it's amazing how conservatives here in the states disregard trains and call them untraditional when trains played a huge part in u.s history.

[@PARK-sy3tf]

@@strickenrod2681 I’m definitely more conservative, but I actually agree with you. Trains are honestly just as important as highways. I love America and Americans (I moved here from Canada about 5 years ago, and I’m confident that America is the better country haha) but we do need to work on revitalizing our trains. Cheers. ✌️

[@electric7487]

HSR will also dramatically reduce the number of short-haul regional flights, which will do wonders in terms of energy efficiency.

[@someotherdude]

You'll get to ride your boondoggle no sooner than 2035.

[@GingerWritings]

Californian here: One major change the plastic bag and straw laws did do was reduce rubbish, at least throughout the Bay Area. They used to litter every drain and parking lot. They took effort to pick up, and thus often were left to accumulate when other things were cleaned. So it was partly to boost taxes, that is true, but I can say walking around without drifting bags everywhere has been welcome.

[@vonnikon]

It is definitely a noticable difference. Less litter everywhere.

[@Moonless6491]

Too bad the rest of the state is garbage.

[@OALM]

We ban plastic bags but we let the homeless shit all over the sidewalks… awesome

[@thisisntsergio1352]

Californian here. My sister didn't understand the law until I told her why it was put in place: in 2015, a turtle with a straw in its nose needed humans with pliers to take it out. While they tried removing it, the turtle's nose bled PROFUSELY. People across the world felt the pain. Their distress made its way into a Californian regulation. Source: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mmOtY6SahNeKapY

[@Matkatamiba]

I drove back into SF the other day and, like a Western movie, a plastic bag tumbled across the street.

[@namenamename390]

Side note on Caltrain: Yes, it is great that they electrified the route and bought modern trains to serve the line, but they had to get weird special trains with doors with two different heights because there are multiple platform heights along the route. Apparently the solution is to adapt the trains, not the platforms.

[@gdrriley420]

It’s because CAHSR was stupid, they picked door heights by taking an average around Europe for the time not seeing what manufacturers had planned. Now if they were to change it 610mm or 2ft would be a good choice. Lines up with existing bi levels (other than superliners family which are 21) , KISS and quite a few HSR trains.

[@energeticstunts993]

@@gdrriley420 they should take Asia as an example, not Europe. I'm still pissed by my last journey from Berlin to Praque. A train that is more than capable of going over 100 km/h went 70 km/h most of the time. Even the fastest German train, the ICE cannot use it's top speed for most of the lines it serves. China and Japan have mastered trains. Whilst German government thinks having no speed limit on Highways is a good thing, they think setting speed limits on trains that are capable of going insanely quick is a good idea as well.

[@petitkruger2175]

@@energeticstunts993 i dont think any deomcratic country should compare itself or learn from China's high speed railways, they are build to boost the economy and are going to create so much debt in the future. sure its very big and impressive, but its funding structure wont make sense in any western country and is impossible to re-create in any moraly-correct manor.

[@86pp73]

I believe Caltrain do plan to standardise their platform height in the future, but currently have to make do with a twin-level system. Then again, I could be wrong, or it could get bungled by some stupidity.

[@xinlu2806]

@@energeticstunts993 As far as i know the problem is less a speedlimit on trains but more the way the lines are built, especially in germany. Europe has a high population density and lots of mountainous regions which is why it can be difficult do built lines where trains can reach their potential speed. Also in germany a huge problem is that there arent many dedicated high speed lines whichs is why ICEs are often stuck behind slower trains.

[@hermannbrandi2022]

I lived in the Bay Area for many years and I always chose BART or Caltrain to move around. My father was a civil engineer. I once blurted that roads should be more direct. He looked at me and said, "do you know how much money, time, and resources are needed to drill a tunnel into a mountain?" He explained to me just briefly all the effort and all the types of things to do including ecological and geological studies, calculations, planning, etc., is impressive. And that was brief. I was schooled and I'm grateful. I hope they can finish that project. Will help a lot.

[@vistaxp2600]

About the San Diego segment: The HSR segment to SD goes through San Bernardino which makes sense as San Bernardino to Los Angeles is the most popular Metrolink line. This route passes through Escondido, a large suburb of San Diego, which is only served by light rail to Oceanside and BRT to Downtown. HSR could cut commuting times (and by extension rush hour traffic) by a lot. Plus, the Inland Empire would have a good chance to densify as well as link Ontario airport.

[@TARINunit9]

5:28 "...rather than utilizing the already built BART system." This made me facepalm immediately. I take BART every single day, it is an urban subway system. _SUBWAY_ system. Up and down above and below ground. RealLifeLore tipped his hand, you would have to know nothing at all about the SF Bay Area to think you can start combining BART with any other trains at all

[@timseguine2]

Even assuming it had the right gauge and such to work, BART is still almost pathologically overloaded isn't it? Seems like adding more lines to the already existing corridors would worsen that significantly.

[@TARINunit9]

@Riorozen Where did THAT come from? I wasn't talking about the SF metropolitan area as a whole

[@danagoyette7932]

Man, with how badly BART screeches even at normal speeds (they had signs touting a reduction from 95 decibels to 75 decibels), I don't even want to imagine how bad it would be at higher speed!

[@kindGSL]

@@TARINunit9 Right wing media programming. You mentioned you live in the SF Bay Area and it triggered him due to the massive amount of anti San Francisco brainwashing that has been a regular part of right wing media programming.

[@AlmightyDude420]

@@danagoyette7932 New BART trains are much quieter and actually really nice. Old ones are still kinda fucked, but they have improved it.

[@arhanmenon1526]

I would've started LA to SD at first, but now that we're already this deep in, just finish SF to LA and the rest of the network will build itself.

[@evanserickson]

Exactly b

[@SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

LA to SD already has decently reliably service via amtrak, but LA to SF basically doesn’t exist. So I think this is a decent enough way to start. Can’t wait to visit relatives via HSR!

[@kaixiang5390]

or LA to Vegas

[@chaos386]

I'm of the opinion they should have done the Bakersfield-Palmdale-LA section first, since it would allow the San Joaquins to continue into LA Union station without having to put you on a Thruway coach. Giving the SJ those hybrid locomotives that can run on diesel or pantographs would even let them lower emissions in the LA basin.

[@viewer-of-content]

Both LA to San Diego and Oakland to SF to Sacramento would work better to start with than the middle of nowhere.

[@DangoUnchained8649]

16:40 "California high speed rail had a lot of fundamental issues when it started, but they're on the right track" Nice pun there

[@frmcf]

FYI the European high-speed rail map at 7:50 has some mistakes, or is at least a decade out of date. The Barcelona-Figueres line was completed in 2013 and has now carried 13 million passengers.

[@TheSpecialJ11]

An additional thing I have to say about the going to "nowhere" cities like Palmdale, is a lot of these places will experience serious growth once they're better connected to the job markets of the Bay Area and LA. Palmdale is already a bedroom community for LA due to housing prices...with a 3 hour drive. That time will literally be cut in half by HSR.

[@meso772]

As someone who lives here, I’m also seeing businesses and high density housing complexes get built out the rear end…there’s some serious growth happening here

[@aramondehasashi3324]

That is if they have water by the time the HSR is built. The megadrought is hitting the American west hard.

[@bootmii98]

The train should be over halfway to Diridon, 90 minutes out of LA, not still in LA county

[@davidty2006]

Palmdale is about the size of Middlesborough near me in the UK. And Middlesborough just got 125mph service direct to london. And yeah house prices being lower than LA or bay area is sure a benefit. Why live in expensive place when you can live in cheaper place and take transit in and out.

[@bootmii98]

@@Stevie-J Palmdale isn't halfway to San Jose, not even close.

[@kaisarion6668]

As a Californian, I’m still sad. Maybe California is shooting for something truly special but I just want my high speed train. I hate having to drive everywhere. This project has been in progress my entire life, so I’m still a little sad. Hopefully I’m still here when it’s finished.

[@jt1559]

@California Dreamer well, future generations are inheriting the massive public we're leaving behind, so at least they'll get something tangible.

[@cbmech2563]

@@jt1559 🤣🤣🤣🤣 not a chance

[@azeria1]

@California Dreamer maybe they should of invested in water and getting rid of all the eucalyptus trees

[@MyChavo123]

For what so homeless can be in it smoking crack like they do in the subways?

[@kaisarion6668]

@@azeria1 I see you are a victim of the demagoguery. Your brain is literally rotting.

[@carmelopearman5721]

“If there’s one group of people that know way more than you, it’s train people” this is the most accurate damn thing I have ever seen

[@SeattlePioneer]

However, they all seem to be on drugs when writing comments. Drug induced fantasy is the best way to explain it.

[@someotherdude]

They've had training.

[@SeattlePioneer]

@@someotherdude Train people just LOVE the idea of spending other people's money on their avocation. Billions of dollars, preferably MANY billions of dollars. I don't think I've ever encountered one who has actually invested in stock in a railroad.

[@SleepTrain456]

That applies to a lot of stuff relating to trains!

[@anonygent]

​@@SeattlePioneer It's funny how the number of private companies investing in passenger rail is exactly zero.

[@username9774]

As someone from Switzerland it is surprising to see any non electric trains, that is just something we never see.

[@rppacademic]

They also still have inches, foot and gallons. You should not be surprised.

[@kaekae4010]

From Europe I can only tell you, to build that as soon as possible. The longer it takes, the more expensive it will become. The sooner you have more experience for the implementation of the following lines. The United States lost the opportunity of the high-speed train, and if today a country decides to buy material and management, it will go for European companies. Experience in that industry is everything. Germans, Spanish, Italians and French are already developing the next generation of trains.

[@Pensyfan19]

Sadly, the U.S. has spent more funding on airports and highways since the 1950s, thus leaving rail with little to nothing, causing politicians to give more funding to cars. Private companies like Brightline, however, bypass most of this political stall and receive significantly more funding from the private sector, thus causing them to be operated more efficiently much sooner.

[@KerbalRocketry]

the time thing can't be understated, a project has basically a fixed cost per year. if it takes longer it will cost more. spending more money up front gets shit done closer to budget than doing wind-down build-up cycles over the course of a decade

[@dwc1964]

this was the purpose of the "lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit" that got thrown at the project right at the beginning - opponents of the project deliberately sought to cost the project money and time getting started, in order to create/exacerbate the delays and cost overruns they could then point to as reasons to cancel the project altogether

[@Chrischi3TutorialLPs]

Well only problem for Germany is that the high speed trains aren't going anywhere anytime soon, because our rail system is about as close to a gridlock as a rail system can be. Essentially, after reunification, the government quasi-privatized Deutsche Bahn, but in a way that gives you all the inefficiencies of a state run business and all the stinginess of private companies. The main problem is that they have this thing going on where, if a track is in bad enough shape, the government will pay to have it repaired. Now, Deutsche Bahn, being nominally a private business (though majority owned by the government) doesn't want to pay for the repairs themselves. However, the government doesn't want to pay for these repairs either unless it's absolutely necessary. So what does Deutsche Bahn do? If you answered begrudgingly repair the system anyway to prevent decay, you are right. Nah, just kidding, they purposefully neglect the rail system until the government has no choice but to pay. This leads to the rail system actually shrinking, which brings all sorts of other issues. Mainly that there is now a lack of alternate routes to take. This brings an unpleasant result with it: If you have a train breaking down somewhere, most of the time, if the route is even remotely important, you'll probably have a second or even a third rail that other trains heading down this path can take that runs more or less parallel. However, if all of the alternate tracks are out of operation due to purposeful neglect, this means that any trains headed down the same path will either have to wait or go for a longer trip, thus causing additional delays. However, this can easily cascade. Say, for instance, that one of these delayed trains arrives 25 minutes late due to the mechanical failure of another train causing said train to block the intended path. This might then result in a situation where the platform it is meant to go to is by then occupied by another train, and there is no other platform available either. This means that, either way, one of them will have to wait, and depending on the circumstances, the train that is already delayed might be prioritized, as it is already delayed. However, both of these trains now leave that station later, and if it's a small station, chances are there's only one rail heading in, so only one train can depart at a time. This means that another train might now get delayed to allow for the departure of one of the other trains, which can cause that first train to itself cause more delays down the line.

[@HaydenSchiff]

To be fair, part of the reason the U.S. doesn't have much good rail service is that a lot of the country isn't suited to it. You need cities to be pretty close to each other for rail service to make sense, and most of the country isn't like that. We could definitely have better rail service in high-density areas like the northeast, California, Florida, and maybe Texas and North Carolina, but we just don't have the geography for a national high-speed rail system like European countries have.

[@TheRuralUrbanist]

Thank you for responding to Real Life Lore's video!!! Totally correct that the project is not perfect, but it's an important step for HSR in America. One of the biggest issues with America right now is that we get the sticker shock and can't see long term benefits of a project like this. Also, lol BART 😂😂😘

[@wakannnai1]

Exactly. California is the state to do it. $100 billion sounds scary but when you consider that California has a budget surplus of close to $100 billion right now, that price tag doesn't sound too bad.

[@dunkey7739]

@@wakannnai1 yeah better than funding wars.

[@nikoclesceri2267]

@@wakannnai1 That money would be better spend fixing the homeless crisis in their god forsaken state and cleaning the shit of their streets that on a HST that'll probably be a decade late and cost three times as much as promised if other infrastructure projects in Cali are used as a benchmark

[@TheRuralUrbanist]

@@wakannnai1 I realized this also when car shopping with my dad. I was young and needed a low price car (he offered it as a gift because I was in school and this was America after all), so we spent a long time looking at cars. For him, the ones that seemed in good condition were too expensive. We finally found an old convertible for under 6k and bought it. After 3 years, the maintenance required double the price of the car... High sticker price would've Ultimately saved money, my dad is the proof.

[@geisaune793]

God I want trains in the US so bad. Long comment incoming but it's just my personal experience with trains. It has a happy ending. I go to school in a typical midwestern college town about two hours away from St. Louis where I grew up. Driving along the interstate between those two places can sometimes be a real pain in the ass. There's an Amtrak station about 30 minutes away on the highway from that college town and the train will take me in two hours to another station which is about a 15 minute drive through the StL suburbs from my parent's house. I've taken that train a handful of times. I won't lie and say it's practical to take it every time I want to visit my parents. It's inconvenient to find someone to drive me to the station. Amtrak has a reputation for not being on time anywhere except the NEC. As far as luxury or speed goes, Amtrak isn't even _comparable_ to Europe or Japan, and I probably spend more money for a round trip ticket than I would on the amount of gas it takes to drive two hours on the interstate. Despite *ALL OF THOSE THINGS,* taking the train every once in a while is still a *_really_* nice change of pace. There's plenty of leg room, you can get up and walk around whenever you want, the train usually moves along at highway speeds, the ride is usually very smooth, there's nice scenery, two hours on a train seems to go by faster than two hours driving on the highway, and honestly, other people on a train are usually much more pleasant than other people on the highway or on a flight. For riding the train to still so have many positives despite how crappy passenger rail is in the US right now, I think really says a lot about the potential of rail to improve peoples' lives, not just the climate. And the thing that makes this a little harder to bear is the fact that decades ago, there used to be a train that would take you almost directly from the station in my college town to a station literally a five minute walking distance from where I grew up. Both stations are still there. All the track is still there, but passenger service on that route ended in the 1950's almost 70 years ago. God that would have been so convenient. So nice. To walk downtown, get on a train, relax for two hours and enjoy the scenery, then get off and walk five minutes through quiet, residential neighborhood to get home.

[@geographynut]

fellow columbian?

[@AngelloDelNorte]

There's already trains in USA though. I mean, not train that takes you state to state but city to city. People just needs to realize USA is too big with several metropolitan cities for a train system to work. I don't recall Canada having a train that takes you from Vancouver to Ontario and yet they get no criticism for it.

[@geisaune793]

@@AngelloDelNorte "People just need* to realize USA is too big with several metropolitan cities for a train system to work." Wrong. There's no reason intercity passenger rail can't be convenient, practical, and reliable for the *entire* USA, as well as make stops in small to medium sized towns along the way. See China, Japan, all of western Europe, and the USA in the late 19th and early 20th century. But honestly if you're writing that kind of a comment on a channel like this, I get a good feeling you're probably never going to understand.

[@AngelloDelNorte]

@@geisaune793 China and Japan has different political systems and there cities are closer to one another which where the train system are. That what I heard anyway. USA would need serious reformation about transit which several ppl, politicians, and big corporations wouldn't want to agree with -- geography, railroad expenses, deforestation, private properties, etc...

[@geisaune793]

@@AngelloDelNorte "That what I heard anyway." Don't talk about something you only know from hearsay. "USA would need serious reformation about transit which several ppl, politicians, and big corporations wouldn't want to agree with -- geography, railroad expenses, deforestation, private properties, etc..." Yeah no shit. But it's going to happen. It's inevitable. And as for deforestation, there's very little reason to cut down any more trees to lay railroad track. Most of the necessary track is already there anyway. I would suggest you stop trying to talk about something you don't know anything about. If you'd like to learn more, watch more videos from this channel, or from channel Not Just Bikes.

[@ReneRivers]

I am 49 years old. Every single time a massive public works project takes place there is the same chorus of "it's failed, it's not worth it, it's a waste of money!". If the general population had their way, we wouldn't even have an Interstate Highway system.

[@LFPAnimations]

As someone who grew up in the bay area and used to live in LA, I have had a somewhat doomer-ish outlook on the high speed rail. Every news article or report seems to detail just how colossal the failure is on the project. You are legitimately the first person in a decade that has given me hope this rail will actually happen and it makes me happy. The vast majority of Californians want to see this thing happen. The drive from SF-LA sucks (I have done it many times). You waste an entire day traveling between two major hubs of industry. Considering these two metro areas are some of the richest in the nation (and the world) it is a complete no brainer to build this rail. Nowhere else in the US needs a high speed rail more than California. The current LA-SF rail line takes between 8-16 hours! Yeah, it is slower than driving. This rail would bring the US infrastructure into the 21st century and will also better integrate the state as a whole.

[@kolkoreh]

The flight from LA (any airport) to SF (any airport) isn't anything to write home about either.

[@LFPAnimations]

​@@kolkoreh The time spent in the airport triples the total transit time. Is it fast? Yeah, but a train would be cheaper and way more environmentally friendly.

[@ciello___8307]

The four foot has some really good videos on the construction thats ongoing in the central valley right now- they actually have built quite a lot

[@TohaBgood2]

Don’t listen to the anti-CHSR propaganda. A lot of money is being spent by some dark money groups to ensure that we lose faith in this project and drop it. Sure, it’s had some issues and the opposition has been well funded enough to cause pretty spectacular delays and cost overruns via land acquisition shenanigans. But the project is honestly, doing fine. It’s delayed. It’s over budget. But the money is still all there and they are starting to build at a steady clip now that they’ve figured out how to defeat the anti-CHSR terrorists. It’ll be fine. A decade sooner would have been great. But this thing is actively getting built, despite all that was done to stop it.

[@afrodynamic]

Seconding the suggestion on the four foot’s channel. Also Streetsblog has very good coverage on the HSR project among other things (and they have local coverage for SF / LA and California).

[@AlexaDonne]

Yeah anyone who lives in California knew every single thing you were going to say haha. If you live here, you get it. I will 100% take a high speed train from LA to SF Bay Area. Having to fly is annoying and I don't want to do that drive. I LOVE taking the Surfliner to San Diego!

[@ellonico]

i laughed out loud when he said that. id do anything to avoid the 5

[@gaguy1967]

There will never be a HSR from LA to SF. BTW where will you park at the LA station?

[@jefe.amo32]

Flying and driving between LA and SF sucks and is so wasteful on carbon fuel. Can’t wait for the CHSR. It will show the reds of America why California is a leading economy.

[@OopsAllFrench]

@@gaguy1967 for a good portion of LA there's LRT that goes directly to Grand Central. Or you can park at any of their stations that have massive parking lots and go from there.

[@thesoundsmith]

Only if there is a local that stops in Salinas. San Jose is as bad as SF, and driving 101 is fun - at least it was 10 years ago, it's been awhile.

[@robertbalazslorincz8218]

"Costs overruns" "100 Billion dollars" *Doesn't the Pentagon have a 768 Trillion dollar budget?*

[@SleepTrain456]

I looked it up, and it turns out the US Armed Forces has a budget in the 700 billions! It's so large, it has an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to it! For more information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

[@kennethcoenen7643]

@@SleepTrain456 Trillion? Do you mean billion?

[@SleepTrain456]

@@kennethcoenen7643 Yes, I did! So, the US military budget isn't as large as the original commentator said... but it's still larger than the California High-Speed Rail budget! Thanks for the correction!

[@dragonflydreamer7658]

this is your future learn to love it... THREADS

[@MrWphilips]

Also please note- routing the high-speed rail through Palmdale, provides potential passengers who chose to avoid the congestion at LAX could realistically consider arriving and departing through the underutilized Palmdale airport. This would be beneficial for those whose destination is not the west side of Los Angeles! This also provides valuable revenue for the ‘small city of Palmdale’.

[@MarioFanGamer659]

Though given that one of the CAHSR goals is the reduction of airplanes between LA and SF, that one likely isn't too much of an advantage in this situation.

[@dougmoore5209]

That would be counterproductive, the goal is to cut air travel by use of HS Rail. It looks like the I-15 HSR line connecting Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas is going to happen. Including an underground rail link to Ontario International Airport.

[@reappermen]

@@MarioFanGamer659 Not necessarily. One would imagine that the benefits of having another airport acessible would also apply to all the planes comefrom/going to places outside california. Plus it helps if somethong happens to close one of the airports, then you can redirect people and chuck them into high speed rail en masse.

[@MarioFanGamer659]

@@reappermen I mean, you aren't wrong, though from what I know, many flights are short-haul to the Bay Area which CAHSR is planned to (partially) replace, leaving more capacity for other flights. That's why I don't see Palmdale's airport getting too much of a use here because it competes with the airports in the LA Metro.

[@Paul_Lucas]

"Your ability to put stock videos over a script does not mean I have to take you seriously." One of the driest burns I've seen on this site oof! Great video as usual.

[@JoeLikesTrains]

I agree

[@Token_Nerd]

That means a lot coming from the king of sass.

[@skorpion101382]

Coming from a Brit, that is high praise!

[@Charlie-jp6mx]

Deserved tho, I stopped watching Reallifelore years ago bc of to much bs

[@robertsteiner4696]

Its drier than most of the water sources in CA.

[@kueller917]

The contractor issue is the real core of every major California transit project that usually just gets blamed on "California bad". San Francisco's Central Subway delays are terrible because of the contractor. It's the same formula: get the contract on a low bid, then push a bunch of added expenses until the total cost is more than if the state just did it themselves. Also targeting drivers is totally the right way to go. It's a long 6 hour drive and that's not counting getting through LA during peak hours which can add a couple more hours alone. Flying is relatively cheap and only about an hour flight time so it would be a harder sell against that.

[@altriish6683]

Except you have to consider time spent getting to, and waiting in, the airport. That probably adds another couple of hours, so it might be competitive in terms of overall time spent.

[@kueller917]

@@altriish6683 Yeah but then the numbers get close to each other. Even the airport time still greatly outmatches driving.

[@dwc1964]

another big issue with both the Central Subway and the Van Ness BRT is that they ended up having to replace century-old sewer pipes at the same time - which in the end is a good thing, since they were way overdue for an update/upgrade anyway & might as well do everything at the same time if you're tearing up the roadbed anyway, but it might have gone over better if they'd factored that into their calculations in the first place.

[@avirambhalla-levine1854]

The other factor that might make the train more competitive against flights is that it is never necessary to go in the "wrong direction" towards the airport. For example, if you are traveling from Hollywood to Palo Alto, the cheapest flight is probably between LAX and SFO. That is at least a half-hour drive or hour bus trip from Hollywood to LAX and a half-hour drive or hour BART + Caltrans trip from SFO to Palo Alto. Compare to a high speed rail option where the "last mile" trips move you closer to the destination while they take you to the high speed rail line. For example, Hollywood to a Burbank high speed rail stop, or going from the high speed rail line straight to the local Caltrans system in the south bay. These factors can save time an money for many popular trips.

[@AlexDahl]

Anyone who has ever had to go to LAX for this flight (Or even bob hope if you can get it to Burbank) Understands two things: 1. Airport security is a pain in the ass. Trains are just show up and go. Maybe they'll have metal detectors like they do in spain or something, but I doubt it. 2. LA Union Station is right in the middle of downtown with excellent connections to local transit (Both subway lines terminate here, as well as the gold line). Most Metrolink services also call here, linking out to the surrounding suburbs---in particular the inland empire cities. It also has connections to many, many, bus routes that stop on the other side of it. Compare this to LAX which has no rail connection (They're building one to connect it to the green line and some buses) it is also rather far away from the city center being located in Culver City, which on a good day takes about 45 minutes to get downtown (Maybe less if you get a late flight and the uber driver floors it). Not to mention the completely horrific traffic just getting in and out of the airport itself. LA Union station starts to seem better! 3. Southwest, which is one of the most popular carriers on this route, has single-class seating with not the best legroom. Trains are a lot more comfortable! 4. Electric trains, when plugged into California's absolutely massive solar power network, will not generate any greenhouse gas emissions as they whisk thousands of people across the state between one of the most traveled routes by car and plane anywhere in the world. The train will quickly become profitable and an excellent competitor to air travel for all but the most urgent of occasions. 5. LA Traffic and I-5 traffic easily make the trip time between SF and LA about 8 hours, depending on where you need to go. If you're heading from SF to Anaheim, for example, for a convention, you are basically guaranteed to sit an extra two hours in traffic as you navigate through LA's perpetually snarled freeways.

[@RadiumDesu]

As a lifelong Cali resident and a strong advocate for better public transit in general, I'm so happy you've discussed everything here! People seem to think HSR makes in cost and route no sense or they seem to latch onto the idea that the costs are due only to lawsuits, but don't factor in contractors or the geographical aspects that make routing difficult. California's not one giant beach where life is easy and I've travelled between LA and the Central Valley many times via car and I would love nothing more than to make my travel easier AND for more local governments along the way to thrive because of it.

[@artistjoh]

There is no good reason why the wealthiest country in the world has such poor public transport. The US has the population density to support an extensive electrified rail network, but every time a proposal is made the nay-sayers come out in droves.

[@metrofilmer8894]

There are definitely reasons. Density is definitely an issue and has led to a priority of air travel (which is public transportation when you think about it). But I agree that there are multiple areas where improvements to would be really good

[@leonpaelinck]

The car and oil companies...

[@LuckyDuckie115]

Imagine California trying to break the airlines monopoly on travel...while other states do NOTHING about it. Also driving on the i5 is a bitch to/from socal/NorCal

[@ish7957]

It's such a boring stretch. I hate it

[@JoshuaPlays99]

The i5 isnt too terrible going san diego to LA and back, you're right though, I definitely wouldnt wanna drive much further than that if I had the option of high speed rail. Plus i could avoid having to drive that one stretch of i5 south thats nothing but potholes and bumps for over a mile.

[@taoliu3949]

It's already broken in the Northeast. Amtrak trains on the NEC dominates airlines on intercity travel.

[@itoaster]

I'm an automotive nut - I love to work on my own vehicles and I love to drive everywhere. And even so, I utterly hate the i5 and would take high speed rail any day over driving. In current gas prices alone, it's already considerably cheaper to take the slow Coast Starlight than it is to drive - my next trip up from LA to Sac in July, I'm going business class and it's still cheaper than driving a 4 cylinder Mazda.

[@HamguyBacon]

The problem is comifornia steals taxpayer money from the rest of the country and produces over priced crap.

[@IamthNight]

Living in Palmdale, it's a miracle to have progress like a high speed rail line. Many people here commute to the valley and downtown LA so it will impact the area tremendously.

[@bellairefondren7389]

Palmdale and Lancaster should get ready for significant upzoning.

[@mxdanger]

@@bellairefondren7389 And hopefully that upzoning is done properly where everything is walkable/bikeable and it doesn't become desolate asphalt parking lots next to apartments with 8 lane stroads splitting everything apart.

[@josephinepura525]

@@bellairefondren7389 might as well plan for a new dense mixed-use urban center surrounding the new railway stations. That is how many Asian countries plan their new HSR lines, and almost all have been highly successful.

[@geraldbennett7035]

no it wont. Still need a way to get to home and work at each end of the line. Just wait until the junkie bums hop the gates and ride for free and ruin this sham.

[@josephinepura525]

@@geraldbennett7035 ah, the classic last mile problem. How about having motorcycle taxis? Still public transport, but without the throng of people. Seems to be okay, works in a lot of countries.

[@Matt_JJz]

Public Transit might be expensive to introduce, but fully implemented will save so much money as turns out two pieces of metal next to each other is cheaper than a 10 lane highway (that needs to basically be remade from scratch every 20 years)

[@AgathaWhispers]

$100B 10-lane Highway?

[@ianhomerpura8937]

@@AgathaWhispers remember how ONE interchange cost around $2 billion? No thanks to Scott Walker?

[@manusiajawa715]

the thing about "rail related" transportation is that it's a high investment cost but the payoff (if it is built well) is worth it, a lot of people take a look at the investment cost without seeing the long term goal and got scared

[@MicheleLLOYD-bk2mt]

USA can ONLY think short-term. Intrinsic part of the system based on greed not service. Hence usa now backward and China leads almost everything.

[@SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

As someone who lives in LA, it’s been a wild ride these last couple of months to read headlines like “we’re still building High speed rail!”, “Oh and we’ll probably connect Vegas to LA!”. Honestly, since I have relatives up in the SF area I’m so excited to be able to visit them with low emissions and easily via HSR. LET’S FREAKING BUILD IT ALREADY!!!!!!

[@Pensyfan19]

Enter Brightline West who's about to start construction on a dedicated high speed rail line from Vegas to LA.

[@colormedubious4747]

What's keeping you from taking one of the existing low-emission 17 daily trains NOW?

[@ronclark9724]

@@colormedubious4747 While they won't admit it, TIME... Simply put the airlines can fly that distance in an hour or so, while Amtrak takes nearly 10 hours LA to SF...

[@ciello___8307]

@@Pensyfan19 *vegas to victorville… that line isnt even directly going to la.

[@Pensyfan19]

@@ciello___8307 Not initially, but it'll connect with LA eventually. Probably sooner than CAHSR.

[@DuuudeMaaan]

I live in Los Angeles and I can't wait for this train system to be built. Just the thought of being able to take a relaxing train from LA to San Francisco instead of driving gets me so excited.

[@lioneljones6484]

hope your alive in 80 or so years from now then because that's probably the timeline

[@comlain2513]

first mistake: you live in california

[@whathell6t]

@@comlain2513 What about that people who were born, lived, and died in California? The Californios.

[@harouttorkomian5897]

I also live in LA but i will not be making a statement like yours. Why? Because i have no idea how much it's going to cost, and quite frankly everyone in this comment section stating the brain dead bot like statement, "Yay! Cant wait to ride this thing." are lying and will not touch this thing with a 10 foot pole once they see the dollar amount appear on the kiosk.

[@LordRambo]

You may have to live to 150 years old if you're hoping to see it finished

[@TheRealE.B.]

Cries in "trying to reverse engineer 20th-century infrastructure because all of our institutional knowledge is lost, and even relatively routine work is horrendously expensive".

[@pangeyi]

Same as Taiwan High speed train. Super expensive to build but then everyone love it after.

[@liamhodgson]

“Tunneling is expensive” very true, in Pittsburgh it cost a billion just to run the trolley under one of the rivers. No high speed for us probably 😞

[@pWarlop]

That's what bridges are for, granted it's also why separated freight and passenger rail lines are for, the CSX and Norfolk Sothern line ownership and refusal to upgrade is a big part of the problem

[@LoveStallion]

But you DO have a better light rail system than many cities of Pittsburgh's size, and it's all the more impressive that you handle it with extreme terrain variations and water everywhere. Pittsburgh is a fantastic city.

[@tianwang3768]

@@LoveStallion the light rail only serves downtown and southern side Coverage wise I don’t think it stands out even by American standards. Also Pittsburgh’s rapidly aging/ failing infrastructure is in dire need of upgrade, one could only hope to not fall in a sinkhole or a bridge collapse, surrounding towns issued boil water notice etc. This place has a lot to overcome

[@dwc1964]

@@tianwang3768 sounds like "a fixer-upper with good bones"

To be fair, the most expensive part of tunnelling is the stations. The tunnels are not cheap, but for high-speed rail you get significantly lower cost per kilometer/mile than for urban transportation

[@ClearTrackSpeed]

This is exactly why I skipped real life lores video; He didn't even pretend to know what he was talking about.

[@derek20la]

Neither does this guy

[@superj8502]

@@derek20la proof please

[@superawes0meguy151]

I also like how at 9:00 RLL says to just upgrade the surf liner only totally ignoring the 4 million people that live inland that could benefit from public transportation

[@metrofilmer8894]

Ikr. The Inland Empire is the 12th largest metro area in the us and possible High Speed Rail stations for Riverside and San Bernardino to build their Transit Systems around us extremely valuable

[@mind-of-neo]

What a great point you made about how our infrastructural developments in the US often go slower because we don't do it enough to keep a really solid working knowledge. I used to find places where construction is always going on to be annoying as a passerby, but nowadays i am happy and proud to see a city that is constantly building and expanding its infrastructure.

[@no2pencilman]

I really want California’s high speed rail to succeed. It is something that makes a lot of sense, and seeing the setbacks has been frustrating

[@R_.709]

It will fail The operation would start in 2045 No one likes it becuase there are fast cars So no one uses CHSR in 2045- 2050 Total Revenue is -5 Trillion CHSR closed in 2050 becuase of debt

[@TheJonesmonster55]

Yeah until you see the price to the consumer and it will most like flop…

[@vincenty747]

@@TheJonesmonster55 Eh it's the same argument made when the Shinkansen was built. Like the video mentioned, now no one ever mentions how overbudget that project was at first.

[@sandal_thong8631]

I think we can no longer have big projects succeed in the United States. Too many people have their hands out, like "The Big Dig" in Boston. Cost-overruns and delays are the thing if not downright fraud like the nuclear project in SC that was cancelled.

[@thebabbler8867]

They only people who don't want it is the Government: they want everyone dying in cars.

[@joeyvelez3708]

As someone from the Bay Area, I want to thank you for setting the record straight on this one. I did watch the other guy’s video and the second he started talking about the “existing BART” rails, I closed my laptop and went to get a beer…like SERIOUSLY?!? Anyway, thanks for giving our state some credit and hope this project serves as an inspiration once it’s finally completed.

[@It-is-not]

small town of a HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND, god damn.

[@nolantherailfan5048]

People say it's a waste of money but they said that to many other big projects

[@novus201]

"Build HSR on BART ROW"🤡

[@occamsrazor1285]

5:25 Uh, what? Dude...my train was held at Daly City station this morning for someone "being on the track". Point is, BART runs through residential areas AND it took us like 10 years to even get the APPROVAL to extend it to SJ (and it's not even done yet!). Thank you Alan Fisher for pointing out how unsuitable BART lines would be for running HS rail on. One of those trains could come of the track in the up hill climb coming from Colma into Daly City, launch itself through the air and land in GGP

[@peskypigeonx]

That launch to GGP would probably be a very good amusement park ride though

[@mywifebeatheroin]

Really tremendous video. There's so many people in this Explainer KZbin space that there's more than a few people pumping out videos that amount to reading a Wikipedia page. Thanks a lot for doing this

[@cptlatency428]

This is the exact same sort of backlash that is happening with HS2 here in the UK

[@Jay_Johnson]

Apart from HS2 has a terrible route. for the same money they cold build so many standard speed lines. The purpose of HSR should be to eliminate internal flights not car usage. Regular rail should be used for that. I don't think people are going to see a 12 minute reduction in travel time from the outside of London to the outside of Birmingham as worth over 50bn when for half the cost they could double the number of regular tracks an services on that route. If they built the line through Manchester to Glasgow it would be worth it. I make that comparison because distance from LA to San Francisco is about the same as from London to Glasgow. The UK is a small country and England specifically is very population dense. We need consistent regular speed rail services here in the England because the difference between HSR and regular rail between English cities is going to be a few minutes on journey times. In my opinion their are only two HS rail lines that make any sense and that is the LNWR and the LNER but these replacements need to actually link together with for example HS1.

[@cptlatency428]

@@Jay_Johnson Good point mate. My only problem is that a chunk of the people complaining about HS2 would also complain about any kind of rail investment preferring to just pave motorway everywhere instead.. And then there's the climate protesters fighting against a project that at least would have better effects for the environment in the long run compared to what we have now. But I definitely do agree with you that a boost of funding into already existing lines should be a higher priority than HS2

[@drdreel5559]

HS2 was, pre cancellation of Northern leg, set actually to be * even more expensive * than the California route despite doing less. For no apparent reason the decision was taken to build the fastest train line ever built, with no thought as to cost, and frankly incompetence in planning because the UK has almost no useful experience in building such lines except HS1 (which itself came out as the most expensive rail line in the world per km at the time it was built) but seemingly views itself as being more expert than countries like France, Germany and Japan in something they have been doing for, in some cases, half a century. Add in constant reliance on consultants instead of developing a proper in-house transport planning agency and it has been an utter clusterf***. The backlash in the UK Against the cost is wholly justified : it should not be costing anything like this much and the French would have built literally ten full length high speed lines with what the UK looks set to spend on one.

[@klicclak]

I only lived in the Bay Area for two years and I was so confused by RLL's BART reference. I assumed he meant we could take the BART to get to the HSR because the BART is something completely different than HSR. But if he truly meant that the BART infrastructure could be utilized to lower the cost, well then that's just ridiculously wrong. The BART is so different that it would probably cost MORE to replace and redo it. Plus with the multiple lines and routes, we're getting into cars sharing a bike path type of talk.

[@1hall]

nice bias ;3

[@1hall]

100% right also

[@klicclak]

@@1hall lol didn’t expect that from the comments on this video

[@dng2000]

I saw RLL's video too and I was like "what?" I mean, if RLL dared to mention CHSR could have considered the kind similar to New York's Metro-North New Haven line that switches between 3rd rail and overhead wires as necessary and use variable gauge rolling stock (i.e. Talgo), then maybe that makes more sense and of course, if that introduces another problem of whether BART management is willing to share their stations and tracks or not and whether they want to revamp their fare collection system or not for shared stations. And it's probably not comparable to how Metro-North shares their New Haven line and Hudson line tracks with Amtrak trains.

[@conanobrennan53]

Yeah, there's some ten degree curves (like 500 ft radius, super tight) that every train on BART has to navigate. There's no logical way to retrofit those areas to speed up the trains without destroying West Oakland in the process. also really tight tunnel clearances.

[@nlpnt]

If there's one thing we should've learned from the pandemic and ongoing post-pandemic shortages, it's that building redundancy into systems and avoiding single points of failure is how you get to resiliency.

[@justusilgner3647]

Hello Alan, thank you for this wonderful update - and a salute to RealLifeLore for his honest response (I was still keen to see the original video, though). I live in the West of Germany but happen to be in the Bay Area every year a round January for an annual conference - so at least once a year. I don't have a car and in fact our area is so densely populated, I never felt the urge to buy one. Just a few comments: 1. European rail system analysts state that speeds above 187 mph (300 km/h) don't really pay off for the traveller in time savings when stops are less than 180 miles apart. This is why our high speed rail network is designed for 250 to 320 km/h, although anything above 250 km/h is only used for reducing delays (which, under current German Rail conditions is useless to try, but that is another story). 2. Good rail service costs money. It is illusionary IMHO to ascertain to a 100% that high speed rail for passenger travel can be profitable. I am not saying it is impossible, but most European governments do accept that rail infrastructure is a part of their citizens' needs that need to be catered for. I do wish the Californian High Speed RaIl project every bit of success though, because I am 100% confident it'll transfer thousands of car journeys onto the train. Once the offer is there, and it is attractive in terms of comfort, ease of use and time saved, people will use it. 3. BTW, the Alps in Europe are no longer a bar for high speed trains. The Gotthard Base Tunnel in Switzerland allows crossing the Alps over 53km length a track speed of 250 km/h. The Brenner Base Tunnel in Austria will follow during the next decade (57km) - also at 250km/h. 4. Blimey, I have been to SF so often - but I never noticed BART was running on "Spanish" Broad Gauge! Thank you for putting me in the picture...

[@nathanchildress5596]

However annoying it is that American construction is so expensive and wasteful, the bottom line is that this train will connect 40 million people in a place with the worlds 6th largest economy. It should work out pretty well in the long run.

[@mrxman581]

Exactly. The construction of the route is over engineered on purpose because it's meant to last 100 years in a state known for earthquakes. That costs money and time to build correctly.

[@hedgehog3180]

It feels like an almost universal thing that people always oppose all of the actually good infrastructure projects while never giving a second thought to the terrible ones like high way expansions. Even here in Denmark people were being idiots about the tram in Århus and were acting like the one year delay was some kind of terrible disaster, yet now that it's here it's been a massive success and always has plenty of riders.

[@jeffbenton6183]

People never notice modifications to an existing system (even if the existing system is terrible) but everyone loves to hate a big project. It's much more noticeable. Every single set-back is seen as a sign that the whole project is unworkable and the money should be "saved" by being sent to a less noticeable (but also less effective) project.

[@OnboardG1]

Same issue in Edinburgh, although to be fair the construction company made a bloody awful mess of it and it wasn't well managed. The end result is actually really good, but I wish we'd hired a better team to build it in the first place.

[@badger7275]

It’s the fact that this project has entirely gone massively over budget and they are asking for more. A private company would’ve built this within budget and in a timely manner. On top of being under the control of one of the state governments that is well known to be entirely corrupt and overly bureaucratic.

[@ammster1234]

To add to this, I think a huge point is because people are initially excited and looking forward to it being completed. So the delays are felt more and it starts seeming too good to be true. In my home city of Mumbai, India, they have massive metro and highway expansions that aim to really alleviate the terrible congestion they have on our roads and it can’t happen soon enough, but the time it takes to build out is really felt. (Especially with the disruption cause by the construction but that’s a second point)

[@VitalVampyr]

@@badger7275 The high speed rail project in Texas was being built by a private company, seems to be cancelled now due to financial insolvency. Brightline in Florida was built by a private company and their first line cost more than double their initial projections to build (plus it's the least safe length of rail in the country due to how cheaply made it is).

[@michaelmarkson3564]

The "whole new rail line between San Diego and LA" take was so baffling, having paid attention to local news for so long and hearing not only how the coastal tracks are being threatened but cities along that line like Del Mar are burying their heads in the sand regarding coastal erosion.

[@kevinmencer3782]

Well, at least they won't be able to bury their heads in the sand once it's gone...

[@abhinavgv5178]

@@kevinmencer3782 💀💀💀☠️☠️

[@ianhomerpura8937]

Doesn't the US have any coastal protection project of sorts? Japan did it, and somehow it has reduced erosion along their seaside rail lines significantly, especially up north going to Aomori.

[@michaelmarkson3564]

​@@ianhomerpura8937 This would entail a) admitting that coastal erosion is happening and b) drive real estate prices down in wealthy coastal areas, so we can't have that here, no sir.

[@ianhomerpura8937]

@@michaelmarkson3564 so that explains why beach nourishment projects are more common there.

[@furkadurka]

as someone who grew up in the bay area, i will never use public transport in california, they are absolutely nasty, bart is a perfect example.truly is a waste of time and money.

[@deadtome44]

Must be nice to have the privilege to stay off public transportation- I never thought Bart was that bad.

[@furkadurka]

@@deadtome44 oh yea massive privilege to use my own legs or a bike to pedal anywhere i wanted to go....stfu

[@deadtome44]

@@furkadurka even bigger privilege to be close enough to walk! I have the same set up right now and I love it. But I see people that live further away using the bus and train every day.

[@furkadurka]

@@deadtome44 my retard in christ, get off the high horse. I wouldn't have called 5 miles to high-school every day a privilege. You know 0 about me but are saying I have privilege, a person of color. Stfu whity

[@deadtome44]

@@furkadurka lol why would your color matter? Unless you were black, which you aren’t because you would’ve mentioned it by now.

[@carlosfromearth]

Thank you for making this video!! I get more and more excited as each year goes by!

[@davidjackson7281]

Just think in 2050 how excited you'll be still waitng for CAHSR to operate beyond only the 171 m segment.

[@carlosfromearth]

@@davidjackson7281 You’re so lame.

[@bullydungeon9631]

As a construction worker the pay now save later mindset that everyone ignores drives me off the wall

[@electrictroy2010]

China has built more miles of high‐​speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐​owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. SPAIN has built its high‐​speed rail system with a public‐​private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐​owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has the world’s highest Debt to GDP ratio of 270%

[@davidherdman9798]

@@electrictroy2010 Japan has the highest REPORTED debt to GDP ratio because the CCP conveniently ignores "local debt" in their reporting. Local governments in China have trillions in outstanding bonds which are being covered up, then add to that the GDP is actually much lower than what the CCP reports. Just like the Soviet Union used to do, China is reporting GDP of selling land to their citizens. And 'contributions' by their government-owned companies. So little of the output is actually usable by anyone. At least what Japan makes is useful.

[@ShotgunRocket]

@@electrictroy2010 So what's your point, other than pearl-clutching about debt being bad?

[@childeryeeter4202]

@@electrictroy2010 and your point is? I really don’t see how this proves jack-shit

[@reecedrystek2992]

@@ShotgunRocket Are you dumb? I know it doesn't make any economic sense and we will all be worse off but we should do it anyways.

[@computerman790]

My only gripe with it, really, is the stipulation that it has to be self-funding. I feel like all the new infrastructure is going to poorly maintained because they want this to be for-profit, not for our benefit

[@robertmartin6800]

You won't benefit from it if you're paying out the ass to maintain it.

[@chris1789]

You’re totally right. The point of infrastructure is to be a public service that improves peoples quality of life or the economy. This will do both. It can capture some of that increase with taxes and doesn’t need to make all its operating costs off fares. Nobody ever asks if a highway or a exurban development is profitable or self funding 🙄

[@jkeelsnc]

@@chris1789 and highways are not really profitable. Also, do you know how much gasoline would cost if the federal government didn’t subsidize the oil industry. You would NOT want to pay those prices.

[@TheGheseExperience]

Actually, I think that is exactly why it will be great. If there is an incentive to make money, there will be a greater attention to how the infrastructure functions. If it is poorly maintained, no one makes money, it’s in the rail network’s best interest to keep everything clean and well maintained.

[@computerman790]

@@TheGheseExperience That's also possible. I guess I'm just skeptical because the same incentives led PG&E to let their infrastructure age and fall apart in favor of huge executive compensation, knowing that the state would have to step in and fix everything for 1000x the price of maintaining it. I guess I don't trust them to take a long term view when they make more money by delaying / deferring small fixes and just leave before the consequences of neglect catch up to them

[@jasonjohnston6569]

Thank you for this video. I wanted to add that his estimate of Palmdales population is misleading as it relates to this subject. Palmdale has a population of around 150,000. But Lancaster is right next to Palmdale also with a population of around 150,000. Them if you add Little Rock and the unincorporated areas, that station would have around a 350,000 population base.

[@robertborchert932]

Nice work! I can speak personally about the Surfliner route, it is right on the edge of the beach. Sand on one side, ocean. I lived in San Clemente. Also responded to several incidents as seen here as a firefighter. One thing not mentioned, is high speed rail in an area where you have thousands crossing the tracks in the way to enjoy the surf.

[@1TigerAce]

I totally agree with the evaluation of the situation. As a Californian myself, like it or not, living in traffic is a nightmare here. I do see the potential in having finally something that can help us improve our travel options. Hope it works out. The first Shinkansen bullet train and its finances original story are glanced at a bit in a channel name Mustard - The Shinkansen Story. (If any are interested)

[@jjbarajas5341]

I would like to not have to worry about encountering storms over the Grapevine when visiting my parents for the holidays and stuff or be stuck if some remote part of the 101 gets destroyed by a landslide again 😔 The worst way to spend 5-9 hours imo. I'd 100% rather nap on a train. Maybe chat it up with (potentially cute) strangers. Driving that long sucks period.

[@jeffbenton6183]

I'm also a Californian, and - though I support High Speed Rail, I've long thought that California's project was unworkable. I had concluded that we should just give up on the project and wait for the federal gov't to just build a whole bunch of it everywhere (making better use of economies of scale, etc.). This video suggests that maybe I was wrong, and I should do more research and reevaluate my priors. (Also, I watch every Mustard video soon after it's released. "The Shinkansen Story" is a great one, good recommendation! I'd also recommend, as a follow up, people should watch the video Vox made about the guy who used biomimicry to make Shinkansen quieter)

[@areoladan5580]

I’m incredibly excited for the new track to reach down to SoCal. Even if you won’t be using the train, it will immensely improve your experience as a commuter on the 5 because of reduced traffic, reduced accidents, less frequent construction because of reduced wear and tear… it will make it better for everyone.

[@LucidStew]

Any portion of this project has max throughput of ~125,000 trips a day. Compare this to approximately 18.5 million daily trips by road vehicle in the state. That's 0.7%. This project has no real ability to impact road traffic. This is a distortion that has consistently been put forth by the CAHSR Authority. Same with the whole idea that it's going to open Fresno up as a commuter town or that it will have any real impact on the air quality of the Central Valley.

[@jjbarajas5341]

@@LucidStew 125,000 trips a day according to...?

[@OnkelJajusBahn]

As someone from Europe. I am really happy to see, that Californians also will some day get to enjoy riding high speed trains. It is worth it. Great video.

[@izzieb]

They'll be able to travel between cities faster than by road, from centre to centre and relax while doing it. Every time an American I know visits us in Europe, they seem blown away by the public transport in most places.

[@OnkelJajusBahn]

@@izzieb Yes. Here in Austria people love to complain about public transport. And yes, there is still a lot of room for improvement, and there are way too many carbrains, like everywhere. But it is still fairly easy to get around. At least in the more densly populated areas.

[@derek20la]

Bet it will never get finished. The money is going to run out and the average person's concerns will be worrying more about affording food to put on the table.

[@dwc1964]

as someone who's been envying Europe's rail network from afar most of my life, and after finally experiencing it on a whirlwind tour a decade ago only having that envy grow more intense - I can hardly wait!

[@aramondehasashi3324]

If it does get completed I don't see it happening for awhile, maybe in fifteen years.

[@earthling_parth]

The moment he mentioned that electric cars cannot save us and public transportation is the future, I immediately subscribed ❤️

[@peterkelford]

14:33 - Interesting bit of information about modal shift: In France prior to the opening of the PSE line in 1981, the railway mainline (the PLM) was already very heavily used with sleeper trains and daytime expresses. The mainline timetables for expresses and semi-fasts in the 1970s for Paris-Lyon runs to several pages.

[@williamlulay7982]

As a resident of California, right on the high speed rail corridor (Fresno), I thank you for your kind words about the project. I think high speed rail is the most promising thing we have right now to diminish auto and plane use. The U. S. had better rail service in the 1930's and 40's, with many interurban lines connecting many cities. Los Angeles is so sprawling because it was built around its interurban lines. Then General Motors, and, I think, the oil companies, got the bright idea of buying up all the trolley and interurban lines and shutting them down, to encourage the sale of petroleum consuming vehicles, and passenger rail service went to hell. The neighborhood I grew up in, in N.Y.C., had a cable car trolley system, which was shut down as I was growing up in the 1940's, replaced by diesel buses. I remember as a kid thinking how smelly they were, and really missed the trolleys.

[@garryferrington811]

I think you mean overhead wires. Cable cars are pulled by cables. I was surprised to discover that the last streetcar line in my home town of Detroit closed as late as 1956.

[@neutrino78x]

but will from Fresno you can already get to SF or LA in less than an hour, there's an international airport in Fresno. I believe its United Airlines that provides the service.

[@Ash2theB]

@@neutrino78x you forget about traffic getting into LAX or SFO and TSA peak hours unless you have Clear. And the cancellation or delays of flights since there is shortage of pilots btw.

[@neutrino78x]

@@Ash2theB "you forget about traffic getting into LAX or SFO and TSA peak hours unless you have Clear." I do have clear, so it's five minutes for me, and without it, it's like 20 minutes. If you look at SFO delays they never have more than a 30 minute delay all day on the security lines. This doesn't make up for a FOUR HOUR TRAIN. Even if we make the airplane 2 hours to account for getting to the airport etc., the train is still taking twice as long. So if you're someone who has to get down there for a concert or whatever and come back to work on Monday, you're going to fly, not take this slow train. The vast majority of us who go down there are flying, and we wouldn't take a four hour train instead. Point being, the train would probably still fill up, but it wouldn't affect how many flights there are, because people who currently fly would continue to fly. "And the cancellation or delays of flights since there is shortage of pilots btw." I feel like that's more on the east coast if anything. I've never had a flight cancelled going from the Bay Area to Southern California. Even if it gets cancelled the next one is in an hour.

[@electrictroy2010]

China has built more miles of high‐​speed rail than any other country and has gone more into debt doing it… $800 billion, and most of its lines aren’t covering their operating costs. As a result, China is shifting to building more roads. France’s state‐​owned railroad has piled up debts of more than $50 billion and has been repeatedly bailed out by the government. SPAIN has built its high‐​speed rail system with a public‐​private partnership. Officially, the private partner has gone into debt by $20 billion. The state‐​owned Japanese National Railways has a debt of $550 billion. Today Japan has the world’s highest Debt to GDP ratio of 270%

[@janmelantu7490]

It seems like RLL just looked at the “controversies” section on the Cali HSR Wikipedia page and wrote the script without doing any more research

[@P0w2you]

He could've just gone on "California High-Speed Rail Authority" - Channel on KZbin and found out more! 😂

[@098saw]

I'm just glad he didn't quote the crackpots at reasonTV and their videos

[@chinafuture6484]

RLL's lisp makes him sound like a snake villain in a Disney movie 🤣😂

[@meganizonda]

Another thing about why that route was chosen to go through Palmdale: there is also a plan to someday have a line from there to Victorville which would carry on to Las Vegas via Interstate 15, so going through Palmdale would make the spur to Las Vegas easier to connect.

[@jultomten3739]

Ngl the USA should have just baught some X2's of off sweden back in 1994

[@kms1.62]

I am sure there would be several quality systems approaching transcontinental coverage, and a robust a domestic manufacturing base to support hsr by now if we had just imported some high-speed train tech back then to get a jumpstart. It is frustrating.

[@russellmancillas4464]

Thank you for putting the "other video" straight, as a N Californian we all know that BART runs on its own size rail, and since I live next to Caltrain track I have seen the progress on upgrade!

[@josephinepura525]

To be fair, nowadays BART can purchase better and cheaper trains, since India, which also has broad gauge, now manufactures modern trains.

[@SimplyRailway]

Fantastic video man, you’re right on many points. I can’t wait to ride it. Thumbs up 👍

[@lamegaming9835]

i love your videos, simply railway! im excited too!

[@Cobalt985]

God I fucking love trains

[@civicgsr19]

Good job my dude! I grew up all over socal, some being in Palmdale. When I saw him say "they wanted to connect to palmdale" I was like...yeah, it's a flat dry lake bed without the weather of the mountains. Earned a sub.

[@gbrldnny]

it'd be really cool to see rails in Lake County in my lifetime...

[@popeurban4741]

I love how much 'its a massive failure' discourse boils down to saying that a government project went over budget.

[@sirsnakespeare]

Over budget, and the progress runs like a slug, it's been a decade but nothing is visible, the tracks is not even connected. Beg the question, Is the US really a 'first world' country?

[@gong2541]

@@sirsnakespeare Yes, 'first world' country is decided on whether or not you're able to build a high speed

[@weatheranddarkness]

Imagine a private contractor bidding on a public project actually going into it with an understanding of all the costs of the project, AAANNNDD being honest with their bid. It just ain't gonna happen.

[@sirsnakespeare]

@@gong2541 considering the fact that y'all made fun of China on the daily, in 5 years alone China had completed thousand km of railway connecting every major city while y'all bitching about "budget". Maybe, just maybe put those trillions of dollar y'all spent for "playing the world police" and diverge it to something useful, smh.

[@gong2541]

@@sirsnakespeare ​ @Sir Snakespeare “considering the fact that y'all made fun of China on the daily” I “made fun of China on the daily“? Sources? And what does that have to do with my comment? “in 5 years alone China had completed thousand km of railway connecting every major city while y'all bitching about "budget".” What does that have to do with my comment? Or are you saying that "'first world' country is decided on whether or not you're able to build a high speed"? And about the Chinese railway, go see a video by Polymatter, please. “Maybe, just maybe put those trillions of dollar y'all spent for "playing the world police" and diverge it to something useful, smh.” Again, what does that have to do with my comment? And yeah, the US is so bad and China is so good that in 2018 alone 149,00 Chinese legally immigrated to the US .

[@ChrisJones-gx7fc]

7:24 I imagine he got the “12-minutes longer, $5 billion more” from the 2013 Clem Tiller ‘Tejon vs Tehachapi’ article, in which he examined the proposed route through Palmdale vs his own hypothetical route over Grapevine, which included a station on the western outskirts of Bakersfield instead of downtown, and crunched the numbers on both to come to the conclusion that his Tejon route was both faster and cheaper than CAHSR’s Palmdale route. Now whether he’s right or not is irrelevant now, since CAHSR is committed to going through Palmdale, but his research did seem to make some valid points, and early on I agreed with Tejon being the better route. But lately I have seen the merits of going to Palmdale, since that is a growing population center for LA and, maybe more importantly, it allows a connection with Las Vegas HSR. When Japan built the first Shinkansen, the existing Tokaido Main Line was either very near or at capacity, and so the Shinkansen was namely built not for sheer speed but to increase capacity on the Tokaido route between Tokyo and Osaka, and be able to move large amounts of people quickly and efficiently (at least to my knowledge). By connecting to the population centers outside of LA and SF, like the Antelope Valley, Central Valley and Silicon Valley, California’s high speed train will be able to do the same and move large amounts of people throughout the state quickly and efficiently, reducing the need for driving and capturing a bigger market than just the LA and SF crowd.

[@ilikehardplay]

There's a reason that the current railroads from Southern California to the Central Valley go over Tehachapi....and not Tejon. ‘Tejon vs Tehachapi’ is the sort of argument that only someone wholly ignorant of what railroad technology can and can't do in the real world would make. Steel wheels on steel rails are restricted to low gradients along their routes. Most railroads try to keep their routing at < 1% (a 1% grade is a rise of 1 foot for every 100 feet of travel). While you can cheat a little by trading speed for steep approaches to overpasses and the like up to 4-6% for distances less than .5 km, even the steepest sustained HSR routes in Europe and Japan have "ruling grades" (sustained average grades of over 2 km) of 1-2%. Interstate 5 going over Tejon Pass is 5.5 miles (almost 9 km) of 6% grade. That's steeper than the steepest ordinary speed railroad in current operation in the United States (Raton Pass, NM-CO, 3.3%). It's an impossible grade for railroads... Not to mention that the curves are way too tight for high speed operation. And the grade from the Central Valley up to the top of Tejon Pass is matched at the other end by a nearly equally impossible "Castaic" (or "5 mile grade") which averages 5.5% down off the ridge route for five miles into the Santa Clarita Valley. And don't get me started with the "just tunnel" crowd.....who are asking for a tunnel longer than the longest rail tunnel on earth (Switzerland's Gotthard Base Tunnel) through some of the worst geology and earthquake faults in the United States... That would easily double the cost of the whole system.

[@ChrisJones-gx7fc]

@@ilikehardplay I understand railroad gradients, but from what I’ve learned about the histories of California railroads, the reason the Southern Pacific went over Tehachapi was because they were building from SF to New Orleans, and had no intention of going to LA which at the time was a relatively small city. LA petitioned the SP to build to their city, so the SP turned south at Mojave through Soledad Canyon to LA, then turned east to continue out to Yuma and beyond. Later, the Santa Fe did seriously consider building a route over Tejon Pass to give itself a more direct route between LA and the Bay Area, and better compete with SP for intra-California traffic (since it had the longest California route going from LA out over Cajon Pass then turning back west to go over Tehachapi before getting to its Central Valley line), even going so far as to start grading a right of way, but felt they couldn’t compete with the state-funded highways being built at the time. So they instead used that money to invest in upgrading their Chicago-LA mainline (which proved to be the much better investment), and launched a new fast passenger service between Oakland and Bakersfield with a new bus connection to LA, which would eventually become the San Joaquins. The Santa Fe’s graded right of way over Tejon became part of the new (1933) Grapevine highway, I believe the stretch that goes up Piru Canyon to what’s now under Pyramid Lake. I believe all that was covered in a 2015 article in California Rail News, ‘Tejon, Tehachapi, and the Truth’, which ultimately makes the case for a Tejon HSR alignment based on Clem Tiller’s findings.

[@jaredvanhook5938]

This funny cause the surf-liner is now closed indefinitely due to the soil shifting

[@CommonDaeze]

I grew up between Bakersfield and Palmdale, it’s one of the poorest areas of the state, having a public transportation option for these communities to commute to work or school is so important, many people don’t even have cars. It’s going to pass right through my hometown and it’s honestly going to look beautiful in the spring going along that route your going to probably see aqueducts, thousands of windmills that light up in the dark, solar farms, rolling green hills, wild flower covered fields, wild horses all while going from 4000 ft to sea level vise versa

[@AngelloDelNorte]

As someone who lived in Central valley (bakersfield, Lancaster, fresno, etc) the ppl have a violent and gang culture so all it would do is spread the influence from bakersfield's ghetto to other cities lol. Many cities of Central Valley are like outdoor jail for aggressive and violent ppl

[@CommonDaeze]

@@AngelloDelNorte poverty creates crime, the HSR would help reduce poverty

[@CommonDaeze]

@@AngelloDelNorte unlike you I love where I’m from and want to improve it :)

[@AngelloDelNorte]

@Burning Rocket Man For the most part, laziness, violent ideology, and violent culture create crimes that transit won't solve. USA violent crimes are higher than many 3rd world countries, which shouldn't be the case, but that's just ppl for you.

[@handsfortoothpicks]

@@AngelloDelNorte laziness doesn't cause crime, it's poverty and homelessness. When you're poor or homeless you need to survive and you will have to do more extreme stuff.

[@mgbroncos]

My man! Thank you for defending HSR in CA. Everyone knows that the project delays are problematic, but It's a massive leap forward for sustainable transport and competing with airlines. As you say, videos like RealLifeLore's are ultimately detrimental to the cause of sustainable transport solutions.

[@bakubread9308]

I'm not a train person but I can relate. Real Life Lore in specific seems to have a problem with not doing enough research and making blatantly wrong statements as if they're facts, and proceeding to think that pinning a comment is going to magically cause people to suddenly not spread the misinformation he just told them all.

[@connorcore7008]

It's part of his strategy for more user engagement. Therefore more revenue. Disgusting.

[@klobiforpresident2254]

I wonder how several of his videos are still up, if I'm honest. I know, I know, nobody likes journalism school but dammit, if yer asleep during research class at least pay attention in ethics. Retracted articles (easier to do online) and corrections exist for a reason.

[@jjproductions4768]

Might as well report the video for misleading

[@chv2948]

His entire thing is that he finds a take and then goes to find facts to support it. There's almost never any nuance to be found.

[@P0w2you]

Yuppp specially since a lot of people don't look at comments at all.

[@Salt0fTheEarth]

I think what's less important than the high cost of CAHSR is that the cost of not doing it is far higher. Every alternative to expand throughput between California regions, whether it's expanding highways or airports, is not only more expensive in terms of program dollars, it's also starkly incompatible with any vision of climate change mitigation, and will cause untold billions in negative externalities.

[@paulbytheriver4976]

One of the major differences we have in construction with other countries is the bidding process, which emphasizes low-bid procurement. Nowadays contactors will often bid at cost, and then search for contractual "extras" to make up their profit. Finding extras in a project has become an art form here. To your point, many projects aren't adequately funded in the first place.