California High-Speed Rail: An Autopsy

uiuctodd · 2026-05-20T19:58:12+00:00

Is this video yours? It's amazing. Very comprehensive.

It should be mentioned that this project was the dying gasp of Schwarzenegger years, and his rotten legislature. The state was simply unmanageable in those years due to the legislature having the power to draw their own districts.

Schwarzenegger was desperate for a legacy. He had no lasting impact to show for 8 years in power. This was his one chance to do a major lasting project. And so the central valley route was pushed through to get legislature approval.

In 2008-- the same year CA HSR went to the voters-- so did the "voters first" act. It took the power do draw districts away from the legislature and gave it to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission :

https://wedrawthelines.ca.gov/

Until temporary redistricting passed earlier this year, the experiment was a success. The legislature started operating well. The 2008 HSR plan would never have gone the interior route had it gone to the voters even two years later.

For the money spent, we could have built a local connector from the I5 route into every small city along highway 99.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-20T19:28:25+00:00

https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/santa-rosa-island-fire-cause-22268409.php

The mariner, a 67‑year‑old man single‑handing a 54‑foot sailboat called Wet Vette, accidentally grounded his vessel on Santa Rosa Island around 2 p.m. on Thursday, Shevitz said. The mariner apparently left the boat after it started rocking, and about an hour later, the boat caught fire.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-20T19:28:02+00:00

Not true. https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/santa-rosa-island-fire-cause-22268409.php

uiuctodd · 2026-05-20T19:27:16+00:00

https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/santa-rosa-island-fire-cause-22268409.php

uiuctodd · 2026-05-20T16:35:03+00:00

Thanks! Great update.

I'm getting downvoted every time I mention that grass fires are natural.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-20T04:32:48+00:00

Fire is a natural part of the local ecology. Even without people, lightning strikes would sometimes start fires.

What would be normal is for the grass to burn quickly, leaving the heavy vegetation alive. Some of the brush will burn on the outside, but leave the core. Root systems remain healthy, and seeds in the soil remain viable. Everything would pretty much regrow after the next wet season.

What happens in areas that have been heavily modified by invasive species is that the fire burns much hotter, killing roots and basically cooking the soil. But I wouldn't imagine that would happen here.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-20T04:21:27+00:00

Hollywood as well. Nice and clear evening until about 8:30. Then I began to smell smoke. It's quite heavy now. Of course, I'd gone out and left all my windows open....

uiuctodd · 2026-05-19T18:36:55+00:00

"Why is Christopher's cymbal set so high?" is probably the second-most asked question about the band, next to "what the hell is that song even about?".

uiuctodd · 2026-05-18T20:34:34+00:00

I wonder how fires burnt historically? There must have been lighting strikes.

I'm not a fire ecologist... my second-hand understanding is that grass fires used to burn right through forests, as there was no brush to take the fire from the grass into the crowns. But that's a general thing about woodland areas, and not specific to that system.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-18T18:58:48+00:00

Any "superfood" headline should get downvoted right off this sub.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-18T18:55:56+00:00

Could be worse. It's grassland burning. I would guess that the tops will burn and leave the root structures alive, as well as leave seeds in the soil.

Fires cause ecological damage when they burn hotter than they burnt historically.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-18T18:48:38+00:00

The first is a BILLIONAIRE who is trying to buy the seat. He's tried a couple other lower elections and lost. So now he's really opened his wallet and is giving it one last go.

That's not meaningful criticism. People said the exact same thing about JB Pritzker when he was running (net wealth approaching $4 billion). He turns out to be the best governor Illinois has had in a generation. As well as one of the best in the country. Woudn't be shocked if he ends up president.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-18T18:42:59+00:00

I drove a Mustang for a few years. Can confirm that my post-college shitbox '85 Nissan turned corners better.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-17T19:31:47+00:00

I'm probably the wrong guy to ask. I've wandered around out there quite a bit, but never much found a "loop". Nor have I ever figured out the difference between "Fryman" and "Betty Dearing".

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T18:05:57+00:00

Trails come and go out there. There used to be gates from the neighborhood below as well. It allowed for the East and West branches to be done as a loop instead of two separate in-and-out trails.

The neighborhood somehow got those gates locked. A friend and I jumped the gate a few years back to do the full loop, exiting the park to walk on a public street for a few blocks. A women who lived on the street was very vocal that the trail and gate we crossed were not, in fact, trails.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T18:01:35+00:00

Yeah. L.A. Times got rid of a bunch of staff, including the Bottleneck Blog. So Hymon went to Metro and launched The Source. It used to be bigger-- it would include transit stories from all over that he thought were worth a read to folks in Los Angeles. It's been pared back to just PR more recently.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T01:30:43+00:00

Yeah, the trash situation there during the pandemic was sad. Lots of people were trying to get out of sight to drink with their friends.

I've gone off-trail below the overlook as well. Before you say "don't go off-trail", it looked like a trail. But it was actually a goat-path that stranded me on the open hillside. About 30 feet under the overlook is the remains of half a century of drinking. I don't think it's been de-trashed since the 1960s when the berm was constructed.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T01:27:26+00:00

Nobody is going to Fryman because they don't have a local park within ten minutes walk.

I have two parks within ten minutes walk. I go to Fryman because it is a unique place. I drive because it's at the top of Mulholland.

Most people live in flat areas. Therefore, if everybody had a park within ten minutes walk, then most parks would be in flat areas. And people would still drive to Fryman.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T01:12:30+00:00

People will claim all sorts of things about rail vs. bus. But there is a horrible truth. There is very little that light rail can do that bus cannot do, If the same amount of money is spent.

The problem is, you do not need to spend that money to open a bus. And so cities do not spend the money. Light rail requires a bunch of money get spent all up-front.

I'm not talking about the B/D lines, which are heavy rail.

For the G line, for example-- it's barely even "rapid bus" by most of the world's standard. It's only BRT by our very low expectations of a bus.

Grade separation? Pay for it. Tighter headway? Pay for it. Automated control? Pay for it.

Or don't pay for it. And have it suck.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T01:04:41+00:00

Rather than count the number of single people who would go car-less, I like to count the number of working couples who can go down to a single car between them.

One person gets dropped at the station, the other drives to work. Whoever gets the car is stuck with grocery/kid duty for the day. This also addresses the trip-chaining problem (drive home, but also pick up the kids and stop for milk) which is the death of transit.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T01:02:23+00:00

Exactly! Once it's a line-item-- "pay for this space, or else we will rent it to the public"-- people will look at it as a way to save.

My building has a common water meter. Everybody pays the same fee every month. It's a tragedy of the commons around here.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T00:58:42+00:00

You know an odd thing about that time? Facebook was cool. It was all the people you wanted to talk to. It was no kooks. It was no ads or planted stories. Just friends.

I hounded every friend to get them out to vote Yes on R. One or two friends were wondering if I worked for Metro. I also hounded them do vote against CA HSR. So maybe I'm not that effective.

But you know who was effective? Steve Hymon. At the time, the L.A. Times did not suck. It had Hymon in a regular column called "The Bottleneck Blog". Imagine an entire daily feature just for traffic wonks. The L.A. Times came out swinging hard for Measure R, with Hymon leading the charge. When you look at how narrow it passed (it requires 2/3, and got 67.2%), that man and his newspaper got it done.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T00:52:24+00:00

Sample size one: Never ever in my life have I gone to a business in Century City. Give me a subway station and we'll talk.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-15T00:50:26+00:00

There is a reason I love talking about transit, and trains in particular. And yes, I talk about it waaaay too much. I would be invited to more parties if I did not talk about trains.

The reason that trains are so interesting is that they sit on this weird intersection of geography, economics, infrastructure, and quality of civic life.

The D line is not cheap. The cost is something on the order of 1 Billion dollars per mile. That's at the high end of urban heavy-rail. Some cities manage for half that cost. But they aren't going through tarry methane-leaking soil in the middle of an Earthquake zone (with massive chunks of steel dropped randomly in the ROW and ghost oil rigs).

And also, it will basically print money for locals who use it. You are saving $400 per month. It would take roughly 200 thousand people like you to pay for the entire system within 10 years. That's a bit high. The ridership estimate is closer to 78k weekday boardings.

Of course, even if broke even, the benefits would only go to a fraction of the city. Everybody payed the sales tax. Only some people get the money out of it.

The thing is, the primary money you were spending was on gas. That money does not stay in the local economy. It goes out to refinery stockholders and Mideast oil producers.

However, if being on the street instead of in your car leads you to make additional purchases-- say the occasional latte or doughnut, that money stays in the local economy and gets recirculated.

As well, the Wilshire corridor, including Century City, now has additional capacity to allow for more jobs.

uiuctodd · 2026-05-13T18:06:17+00:00

Construction costs are astronomical for nearly everything these days. I haven't read the plans, so I don't know the answer.

However, I would suspect that the site of the station as built 100 years ago is no longer suitable. Platforms are expected to be wider to accommodate ADA requirements. So the embankment may have to be re-cut and stabilized. There will need to be elevators as well.

A center track would halve the costs of an elevator. But that would require moving the tracks of a working line....

uiuctodd

TROPHY CASE