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WA Democrats ask Buttigieg for $200M to plan B.C.-Seattle-Portland bullet train
(www.seattletimes.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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The route selection isn't that big of an issue. CAHSR was always intended to help connect the Central Valley to LA and SF. Merced, Bakersfield, and Fresno aren't that small, and they aren't that out of the way either.
SNCF's bid did use the I-5 RoW, which doesn't pass through these downtowns and would have required connecting spurs in the Central Valley. It would have been cheaper most likely, but not passing through the valley cities' cores would probably have hurt support for the project and limited the impacts it could make for the rest of the state's economy. (These cities (or at least Fresno) have since rejected having HSR go through their downtowns, but that's a new problem.)
Valley metros are still bigger than a lot of 'large' metros in the rest of the country. Fresno and Bakersfield are 500,000 and 400,000 people, respectively. Visalia and Merced are around an additional 100,000 each. The central valley is hugely car dependent, even our airports tend to be on the pitiful side, and driving from the valley to LA or San Francisco fucking s u c k s. Currently, the only alternative is taking the San Joaquins, which runs about once every 2 hours and roughly travels a little slower than a car anyway, due to its shared alignment. Amtrak is doubling the service frequency this fall, but as it stands, that's what it is. Cutting out the valley metros would have been basically leaving ridership (money) on the table and forcing valley citizens to continue on with car dependency for long trips or building a bunch of bullshit spur lines that people likely wouldn't have messed with.
Mostly, the attitude in the central valley is just one of beleaguered exhaustion with the construction. These contractors have left a lot to be desired, and construction is proceeding at a pitiful pace while contractors keep spamming the HSR authority with bullshit overages (one submitted a six-figure cost overrun for long distance calls in 2017. Like, wtf, no, caveat emptor motherfucker, it's not our fault you're too stupid to use Skype). We just want to see the train roll before we all die of old age.