investing our tax money in a beneficial infrastructure project rather than foreign wars and billionaires' pocketbooks and eight more lanes on the 405?? in MY america???
That's the thing, whatever criticism you can make about some of the ways the project has been conducted, California's ACTUALLY BUILDING STUFF while other states just talk In 30 years, we won't know how we ever lived without the train
Description is incorrect. As of May 20, 2024 740 concrete girders were placed on the viaduct out of 978. 238 girders are still needed for the structure as of that update. Kudos to those guys for working so hard to build this gigantic structure and all the construction workers building CAHSR.
This will also be the location for the Kings-Tulare station, so those groves on either side will be replaced with at first parking lots that’ll later be converted into transit-oriented development. Buses and later a proposed/planned rail service will connect this station to Hanford, Visalia, Lemoore, and Porterville.
I remember how the image of this viaduct with only the pillars set in was always used in those "cahsr is a train to nowhere and not worth the money" type articles written by elon musk fanboys. Glad to see it barely looks like that anymore.
@@pieter-bashoogsteen2283 for Sure they will turn around and say they never doubted it for a minute! We just went through all this in Australia, Sydney built a new driverless Metro that cost quite a bit (things that are good cost money, fancy that) and right up until it opened a few months ago everyone was a massive critic and it was the most wasteful project in history blah blah. Then it opened and suddenly it's the best thing Sydney did since the Opera House.
@@pieter-bashoogsteen2283and I’m sure even then they’re gonna complain that it’s only between Merced and Bakersfield. Get this project the funding it needs, and it could potentially reach SF and LA before 2040. I’m confident it will reach both cities someday, but when that is depends on how quickly it can secure all the funding required, and the longer it continues to take the more it’s going to cost. Still a better deal than the alternative of more freeway and airport expansions, both less expensive and more beneficial.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc What could really make CHSR transformative, not just in California, but across America is, if it inspires other projects to break ground (especially those that directly connect to CHSR, like BLW or high desert corridor). The thing is that with road and air travel is that the costs are often hidden from us. Either because they are underreported (inconvenient facts for all those Elon fans after all) or because they are hard to quantify. The costs of Pollution and time lost are hard to measure, but they definitely still are there. Yeah it’s not really about facts for these Elon-stans. They tend to call themselves “libertarians” which are against “wasteful spending”, which I translate as republicans being against any welfare, except corporate welfare (which Elon has done well off) or in the worst case, Peter Thiel-esque fascists.
oh! Is that what is going on here? This is also the Kings-Tulare station? Seems like they should mention that in the description. Watching the video without knowing that left me scratching my head about why this is so long.
@@jwbaker yup; Kings - Tulare station is set to be located atop this viaduct, which is supposed to carry it above Union Pacific's Hanford Subdivision (which is to one day also supposed to host a proposed Cross Valley Commuter Rail line) and California 198.
@@pokemonred2005 I’m pretty sure what’s in the middle of the viaduct are not platforms. Those are more likely foundations for walls that’ll go between the platform tracks and main tracks, probably to reduce noise and wind as trains bypassing the station go flying through at over 200 mph. CHSRA has posted renderings of what those would look like.
@@snowless456 exactly. Years can seem so far away, and yet they’re here before we know it. We’re already close to 25 years into the 21st century, and in a little more than a year we’ll be closer to 2050 than 2000. We need to keep pushing CAHSR construction, so the first revenue trains can start by 2030-33, and get HSR across the mountains to SF and at least Palmdale before the end of the 2030s. We’ve spent too many decades focused on widening roads and freeways, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, with little to show for it in regard to relieving traffic congestion. To their credit, the LA Basin and Bay Area are expanding and improving their transit networks to help reduce traffic in their local regions, but we still need a fast, reliable, and frequent mode of travel between them that isn’t a roughly six hour drive or 3-4 hour ordeal for an 80 or so minute flight. That is high speed rail, which combined with good local and regional transit will be an absolute game changer for how people can travel throughout the state, just as it already has been for decades in over twenty countries across the world.
@@RR98guy 2030-33 for the first segment smart aleck. Late 2030s for SF and likely 2040s for LA. Sacramento and San Diego maybe late 2040s and 2050s. It could happen faster, or take longer, depending on how quickly it gets funded. Same is true for any infrastructure project, especially one of this massive scale. Imagine if I-5 had been built this way, with CA covering most of the cost.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc I Guess you have not noticed that not only California is broke but American is 40 Trillion $ USD in debt. Where do you think money comes from?
@@RR98guy make the ultra wealthy pay their fair share for one thing, and stop giving them and corporations massive tax breaks. That oughta help bring in some more revenue and help get the deficit down. There’s also such a thing as good debt, like when you’re investing in your infrastructure and other means that’ll generate economic revenue. That includes high speed rail, which’ll provide a faster and more convenient travel alternative than driving and flying for distances of 100-600 miles, bringing the cities and regions it connects closer together. What’s being spent on high speed rail is also a drop in the bucket compared to other things California is spending money on, as it very much is for the US itself. As far as ‘wastes of money’ go, how about how we keep pouring well over $100 billion a year into maintaining and expanding roads and freeways, close to $20 billion of that in California alone, and yet traffic only keeps getting worse? Why not shift some of that money toward transit including high speed rail? Start to provide some real relief to road congestion by providing a competitive alternative for local and intercity trips. Or maybe we should stop subsidizing air travel, and have the airlines make people pay what it really costs to fly. The point is the US more than has enough money to invest some of it into improving and building transit like high speed rail. It’s just a matter of what our priorities are. For decades it’s been roads and air travel, just as it was decades ago with rail. Maybe it’s time we start to shift things back toward rail, and a growing number of Americans would agree with me on that.
People forget that it just takes a long time to get anything did in this damn country but it’s great to see there made huge progress I can’t wait until it’s complete.
It will never be finished. The costs to bring it to LA and SF are astronomic. You can bet your bottom dollar it won't be high-speed rail into LA or SF. It will be some shitty low speed train service.
@@ArthurDentZaphodBeebsure, when it’s in the very urban areas of the SF Peninsula and the LA Basin, on shared tracks with other trains, it will be traveling at those lower speeds (up to 110 mph). But out here in the Central Valley (and really from Gilroy to Burbank), where they’re on dedicated tracks built for high speeds, trains will be traveling at up to 220 mph. You can choose to believe otherwise, but that’s what’s being built.
As for whether high speed rail will be completed, it will so long as it keeps getting funded. What’s your alternative? More freeways lanes and expanding airports? We’ve been pouring tens of billions of dollars into those every year for the past several decades. And you know what? Traffic has only gotten worse and air travel still sucks. No amount of lanes or gates and runways will ever change that. Plus the only current train options are considerably slower than driving. So what else can we do? Wait for some unproven mode of travel like bogus hyperloop? No. The world has proven high speed rail works, and this may be tough for you to swallow, but it’s being built now and will continue to. They’re making steady progress toward getting the first segment completed and operational in the Central Valley by the early 2030s, and are advancing early pre-construction work on the extensions into SF and LA so actual construction can begin once they’re funded.
As someone from LA, this needs to connect to Bay Area/SF ASAP to get it into revenue service and show what this will bring to the state as a whole. That way, momentum can be built to build the final connectivity to LA, which will be the most technically challenging (and cost $$$).
Hopefully the San Jose and Palmdale segments can be funded and built simultaneously, so when the first HSR trains reach SF by the late 2030s they also reach Metrolink to LA.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc Unfortunately, I don't think this will be realistic. The Tehachapi range will be an unprecedented challenge in terms of engineering due to the elevation change. This is why Amtrak San Joaquin stops at Bakersfield and there is a bus to LA. The most realistic option is to get to San Jose/SF and get revenue service up in order to generate some (but not all) funding to get CAHSR into Palmdale.
@@moseschung3220 the reason the San Joaquins stop in Bakersfield, and why there is no passenger rail service over Tehachapi Pass, is because it’s a busy freight route that’s mostly single track. It also would take probably twice as long to go by conventional train between Bakersfield and LA than the current I-5 bus bridge. Electrified high speed rail can also handle steeper grades than diesel-powered freight trains. If you want to talk about gradients though, look at Brightline West’s plan to follow I-15 across Cajon Pass without any tunnels, with grades reaching 6%. CAHSR will have a series of relatively short tunnels through Tehachapi Pass to keep its gradient more reasonable. High speed rail tunnels also are not a new concept, nor is building high speed rail through seismically active areas. Look at Japan and Taiwan. The most challenging tunneling will probably be between Palmdale and Burbank, but CAHSR will gain experience with the 13.5-mile Pacheco Pass tunnel.
@@moseschung3220 the reason the San Joaquins stop in Bakersfield, and why there is no passenger rail service over Tehachapi Pass, is because it’s a busy freight route that’s mostly single track. It also would take probably twice as long to go by conventional train between Bakersfield and LA than the current I-5 bus bridge. Electrified high speed rail can also handle steeper grades than diesel-powered freight trains. If you want to talk about gradients though, look at Brightline West’s plan to follow I-15 across Cajon Pass without any tunnels, with grades reaching 6%. CAHSR will have a series of relatively short tunnels through Tehachapi Pass to keep its gradient more reasonable. High speed rail tunnels also are not a new concept, nor is building high speed rail through seismically active areas. Look at Japan and Taiwan. The most challenging tunneling will probably be between Palmdale and Burbank, but CAHSR will gain experience with the 13.5-mile Pacheco Pass tunnel.
@@moseschung3220 the reason the San Joaquins stop in Bakersfield, and why there is no passenger rail service over Tehachapi Pass, is because it’s a busy freight route that’s mostly single track. It also would take probably twice as long to go by conventional train between Bakersfield and LA than the current I-5 bus bridge. Electrified high speed rail can also handle steeper grades than diesel-powered freight trains.
if we directed 1% of the defense budget to this type of projects we would have this done in another 5 years. Imagine the impact our tax dollars could have.
@@MauricioLeite even if it were 100% funded today, and with no more delays, there’s no realistic way this project would get done from SF to Anaheim in five years. Ten years possibly, though fifteen is probably most realistic if just about everything goes right going forward. That would mean 2039 for the start of SF-LA HSR service, which should be the goal as that would be the centennial year for LA Union Station as well as the original Transbay Terminal in SF.
I have been following and support this project, but I have always wondered, why the reliance on viaducts? wouldn't earthen berms of compacted infill be cheaper and easier to construct?
Once the IOS and Brightline west are both completed (im guessing around the same time) its going to kick off a high speed rail revolution in the US. The chess pieces are really moving into place for it
Why aren't they doing multiple tasks at the same time (i.e. laying track on the miles of finished sub-grade) so that when the few remaining viaducts are completed the project can be finished more quickly?
I actually had the same question. I know they said they're going to start next year, but I didn't understand why they don't start on the finished portions.
@@TheRailwayDrone that is where they’ll start. The design contract for the tracks and systems was awarded back in June of this year. CAHSR let the original contract expire in 2022 due to supply chain issues, and reworked it to award it this year. CP 4, the only virtually completed portion, is also not officially done yet as it’s awaiting completion of a canal realignment north of Wasco, which should hopefully be done by the end of this year or early 2025, so the last bit of guideway can be completed. The only other completed portion would probably be CP 1 between Madera and the San Joaquin River Viaduct.
All of these answers are true but also the farm owners demanded the ability to cross the train tracks whenever they wanted so the Authority decided to just build a viaduct so they can drive underneath
@@vibez3453 cause they had to cross a highway, rail line, and road here, plus some utility lines, and it was simply easier/cheaper to build one large structure rather than several small ones with earth embankment between them. This will also be the location of the Kings/Tulare station.
What is the projected ridership? How many people will opt to ride a train to LA and then have no vehicle to get around that city? Serious replies only, please. Thank you.
No one will truly know the answer to the second question until it is actually in service, regardless of ridership projections. Also, LA is expanding it's metro service so that will help.
I'm definitely supportive of CAHSR overall aim but we couldn't have used existing right of ways more? Or less concrete to build this in the central valley? The route for this thing in the central valley is so crooked it smells of politics.
@@fosarvian while there probably was some politics involved, and the choice of route certainly had its legal challenges, like what land parcels they could use while designing the alignment to allow high speeds (up to 250 mph), what’s being built today is in fact high speed rail. All the structures are necessary, whether road overpasses to keep trains and vehicles separate, which are a must to safely run high speed trains, or the viaducts for the train to get over roads, waterways, other railroad tracks, or any other obstacles. This structure here as an example is cause it has to cross a highway, rail line, and road, and will also have an HSR station. Another example is the reason the viaducts/pergolas over the freight railroads are so massive is because the freight railroads required that (though it also partially had to do with the angle the HSR tracks were crossing the freight tracks). They wanted a certain amount of clearance on either side of their tracks from the HSR structure. That was a change order which increased the price of those structures. Plus a lot of the right of way is on an earth embankment that places the tracks above the historic flood line, which as seen during the very wet winter in 2022-23 that flooded the area that was formerly Tulare Lake is necessary. When CAHSR awarded the first three construction contracts (CP 1, 2-3, 4) back in the early to mid-2010s, they were done so the contractor could design it and then build that, leading to change orders that increased cost. CAHSR has acknowledged they’ve learned from that, and that going forward the design work will be completed before awarding it to the contractor, who will then build that design. This should minimize change orders, as should awarding smaller construction contracts covering shorter distances, which in turn should reduce costs (or at least help keep them from getting any higher).
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc Thanks for this writeup! I'm pretty grateful of the time you put into responding truly. Seems like these larger structures have their reasoning. When I look at the maps and layers of the route in the central valley it does require quite a bit of turns and wiggles so it seems like some of related to ground conditions and others not so much. A mix of engineering requirements and politics like you said. Do you know what their new proposed schedule is?
@@fosarvian complete civil construction (guideway and structures) on the current 119 miles by the end of 2026. Civil construction on the Bakersfield and Merced segments should start up in another year or two. CP 4 is virtually done with its civil construction at this point, only awaiting on a canal relocation to be finished so they can finish that last bit of guideway. The contract to design the track and systems for Merced-Bakersfield was awarded back in June, with actual installation of tracks and systems to begin on completed segments of guideway in probably 2025, maybe 2026. CAHSR will announce its train manufacturer by the end of this year, with train testing to begin in late 2028. Revenue service between Merced and Bakersfield is anticipated to begin between the end of 2030 and 2033. CAHSR is competing for $4.7 billion in additional IIJA grants to close its funding gap for Merced-Bakersfield and begin revenue service by no later than 2033.
Shoulda done it cheaper and quicker by lowering expectations a bit. The only new trackage that was really needed was through tehachapi pass. The rest could have been upgraded and somewhat straightened to allow trips that would still be faster than driving without waiting 30 to 50 years for it. We woulda had it already, and then we could talk about tunnel bypasses. But instead we needed a way to waste 130 billion in taxpayer money on something we know we need now but not if we'll need it another 20y down the line when the damned thing will be finished
@@arxligion building a new high speed railway ($128 billion is the high end estimate for all of SF to Anaheim, and only $13 billion out of $28 billion available has actually been spent so far. Compare that to the $18 billion Caltrans spent last year alone on CA freeways), is not a waste of money. Continuing to widen freeways despite that being proven to make traffic worse long term is the real waste of money. HSR will actually relieve some of that traffic long term by providing a faster travel alternative between NorCal and SoCal, one that also competes with flying. Amtrak San Joaquins currently uses existing tracks, and they’re limited to 6-7 roundtrips a day with a travel time slower than driving. HSR will offer not just a much faster but also more frequent service, for 80% of average market airfare. Sticking to conventional rails, which are owned by freight railroads who already have a hesitancy toward passenger rail, would never have allowed that. Nor would the freight railroads have allowed electrification of their tracks. Trying to speed up those rails was a nonstarter. CAHSR is already trying to work out an agreement with UP to share the corridor between Gilroy and San Jose, building a pair of electrified tracks next to the UP freight track that Caltrain and Amtrak currently share with UP. Caltrain would share CAHSR’s new tracks once those are ready. HSR will already share the Caltrain corridor from San Jose to SF, hence why it was electrified, and will connect with Metrolink in Palmdale to provide transfers to reach LA and SoCal while CAHSR builds their own route. Both the Pacheco and Tehachapi crossings will happen, as will the San Gabriels into LA, and the sooner they’re funded the sooner that HSR trains will reach SF and LA.
I agree with you in principle but in practice these incremental updates almost never happen. It also amounts to a half baked effort which won't yield enough results for politicians to say lets improve. As someone who regularly takes Capitol Corridor, that route could be improved but we don't see it happen besides a handful of studies and reports on future aspirations for the route.
@@fosarvian if it is ‘half baked’, it’s cause of the lack of sufficient funding. This project has never had the funding to do more than it’s been doing. If it did, it could, and almost certainly would, be further along. The $3 billion boost it got from the IIJA grant certainly helped, but it’ll need several billion dollars more to complete Merced-Bakersfield and begin revenue service by 2030-33, and several tens of billions of dollars more to reach SF and SoCal. As for improving the Capitol Corridor, and other regional and local transit in general, that also ultimately comes down to funding. For decades the logic has been to keep widening freeways, despite that costing more with fewer benefits in the long run, with transit more or less left by the way side, not being funded at anywhere remotely near the level that roads and freeways get every year.
It doesn’t help that transit in general gets a bit of a negative stigma, whether that’s from occasional news stories of bad things happening on transit (even though statistically transit is much safer than driving), decades of propaganda left from when auto, oil, and rubber lobbies pushed cars over transit (see National City Lines), or as cars and roads got better and transit stalled out, more and more people opted for the ‘freedom’ of cars and we ourselves left transit behind. Lest we forget America used to have some of the best transit networks in the world, including here in California. Today our ‘freedom’ now means we’re stuck in traffic on endless freeways, but thankfully we are seeing a resurgence in transit as cities and counties are investing more in expanding and making them better. It’ll take breaking that decades-long habit, precedent, stigma, stereotype, or whatever you want to call it, of choosing roads over trains or thinking trains and transit are outdated, even though our country was first built on the latter and transit has become much more advanced, just as the car has. We can have both, and certainly should, but transit needs better funding so it can be a competitive alternative to driving, one that doesn’t necessarily always have to be faster, but needs to be convenient, with frequent, reliable service, and feel safe to use. Go to first-world nations in Europe or Asia and see it for yourself, and ask why the US, the self-proclaimed ‘greatest nation on Earth’, still doesn’t have some of the best transit in it, and that includes high speed rail. California is being a leader to help change that narrative, with not just HSR but also expanding and improving its local and regional transit networks.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc I think we're arguing the same side here. I'm basically saying that if you implement transit halfway you end up not creating much of a benefit or worse justify an argument for why transit doesn't work and doesn't deserve investment (politics).
So the orchards on either side of the right of way are dying because the irrigation system is destroyed. That is a major loss for the local farming communities !
Give me a break. Both of those orchards are less than ten years old, both were planted well after the right of way was established. If they are withering now that is because the planters picked a poor site to try to cash in on nut bonanza. The sustainable groundwater act is going to see all of these orchards removed anyway.
@@jondurr how many acres did I-5 and Highway 99 destroy when they were being built? This train is taking up a fraction of the space needed for those while still being able to move the same amount of people, at higher speeds and with zero emissions.
A great public transport infrastructure project. However, oh, so slow! If Tesla was building this it would have either been completed or near completion by now.
Tesla, or any private company for that matter, would have had to deal with the same land acquisition and environmental review process. The key issue is funding. If this project had the funding it needed from the get go, it would be much further along by now.
Cash Cow of historic proportions. As a California taxpayer I feel embarrassed that we were and are so easily conned by this endless boondoggle of a train to nowhere project.
The captions/description are incorrect. The only remaining portion of this structure is the clearly unfinished segment in the middle. I believe they have about 900 of them placed already.
Crews are hard at work to construct this. They only have ~1,500 construction workers covering 119 miles of guideway, which in the grand scheme of things is not that many. Besides, it only started construction in 2015. At the end of the day, if we want to finish sooner, CHSR needs more workers and more money.
@@TheRailwayDrone This drone footage is a bit outdated as they have been moving fairly quickly here, but there is another row of pillars being worked on on the north side of the tracks. As far as I can tell (from the latest Sentinel2 imagery) they have either already excavated and installed the pilings for that next row's foundation, or they've already put up the formwork for the concrete pour. The south side is also missing a row of pillars, but once those are done, the structure will be finished with that phase of construction.
I am all for high speed rail, and by the time they finish this thing, teleportation will be a thing. Seriously, The way the CA-HSR is being built is incomprehensibly expensive. France's SNCF did this decades ago, and with their immense experience, offered to help California, but they refused, and whilst the French are zipping about in a nationwide network of TGV's spiderwebbing out from Paris, California will not have their single HSR line finished, let alone connecting one of the states two major metropolitan areas. That said, it is still less expensive than expanding the freeways, and whilst I left the state in the mid 90s (only returning for under a year a decade ago, in order to help out my father in Carmel), I do wish that HSR was taken seriously in the US. On the other hand, I am 60 now, and after having to travel constantly for over three decades in my former career, I have zero desire to really go anywhere past the end of my front walk these days.
@@all4espi blame the slow pace on the lack of funding and all the frivolous legal attempts to slow and stop progress. Most of what has made things go so slowly are factors outside CAHSR’s control. As for the SNCF thing, their’s was a very early proposal (with zero studies made) that wanted to follow I-5, which would have bypassed the major Central Valley cities and several million people living there, something California would always be against. The route CAHSR is taking now will connect those cities to the Bay Area and SoCal, bringing all three regions closer together and providing a major economic boost to the Central Valley, a region that’s been historically underinvested in. And it’s already doing that with the over 14,000 construction jobs created, most of which have gone to locals, and over $18 billion generated in economic output. About $13 billion in total has actually been spent on the entire project so far, out of $28 billion available.
I don't care what anyone says. THIS is one of the things for which tax dollars should be used; to benefit the whole of society. Great job CAHSR.
investing our tax money in a beneficial infrastructure project rather than foreign wars and billionaires' pocketbooks and eight more lanes on the 405?? in MY america???
@@teuast Ummm...yes?
I’m not opposed to tax CA residence more to finish this project.
@@teuastwait you don’t want eight lanes on the 405? Um that’s literal communism!!!
That's the thing, whatever criticism you can make about some of the ways the project has been conducted, California's ACTUALLY BUILDING STUFF while other states just talk
In 30 years, we won't know how we ever lived without the train
Description is incorrect. As of May 20, 2024 740 concrete girders were placed on the viaduct out of 978. 238 girders are still needed for the structure as of that update. Kudos to those guys for working so hard to build this gigantic structure and all the construction workers building CAHSR.
That view is going to be so beautiful looking out across those groves
This will also be the location for the Kings-Tulare station, so those groves on either side will be replaced with at first parking lots that’ll later be converted into transit-oriented development. Buses and later a proposed/planned rail service will connect this station to Hanford, Visalia, Lemoore, and Porterville.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fcthe cross valley corridor is not yet planned, it's still in the proposal stage
it feels so good seeing a modern American structure described as a viaduct. We finally made it!
I remember how the image of this viaduct with only the pillars set in was always used in those "cahsr is a train to nowhere and not worth the money" type articles written by elon musk fanboys. Glad to see it barely looks like that anymore.
elmo muskie is a horrible person
You’ll still see those Elon fans make up the same nonsense right up until they hop on the train for the first time.
@@pieter-bashoogsteen2283 for Sure they will turn around and say they never doubted it for a minute! We just went through all this in Australia, Sydney built a new driverless Metro that cost quite a bit (things that are good cost money, fancy that) and right up until it opened a few months ago everyone was a massive critic and it was the most wasteful project in history blah blah. Then it opened and suddenly it's the best thing Sydney did since the Opera House.
@@pieter-bashoogsteen2283and I’m sure even then they’re gonna complain that it’s only between Merced and Bakersfield. Get this project the funding it needs, and it could potentially reach SF and LA before 2040. I’m confident it will reach both cities someday, but when that is depends on how quickly it can secure all the funding required, and the longer it continues to take the more it’s going to cost. Still a better deal than the alternative of more freeway and airport expansions, both less expensive and more beneficial.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc
What could really make CHSR transformative, not just in California, but across America is, if it inspires other projects to break ground (especially those that directly connect to CHSR, like BLW or high desert corridor).
The thing is that with road and air travel is that the costs are often hidden from us. Either because they are underreported (inconvenient facts for all those Elon fans after all) or because they are hard to quantify. The costs of Pollution and time lost are hard to measure, but they definitely still are there.
Yeah it’s not really about facts for these Elon-stans. They tend to call themselves “libertarians” which are against “wasteful spending”, which I translate as republicans being against any welfare, except corporate welfare (which Elon has done well off) or in the worst case, Peter Thiel-esque fascists.
I see the folks at the Authority also listen to "lofi beats in the rain to fall asleep to"
Yes 100%😮
I like that you can kind of see the platforms already starting to take shape
oh! Is that what is going on here? This is also the Kings-Tulare station? Seems like they should mention that in the description. Watching the video without knowing that left me scratching my head about why this is so long.
@@jwbaker yup; Kings - Tulare station is set to be located atop this viaduct, which is supposed to carry it above Union Pacific's Hanford Subdivision (which is to one day also supposed to host a proposed Cross Valley Commuter Rail line) and California 198.
@@pokemonred2005 I’m pretty sure what’s in the middle of the viaduct are not platforms. Those are more likely foundations for walls that’ll go between the platform tracks and main tracks, probably to reduce noise and wind as trains bypassing the station go flying through at over 200 mph. CHSRA has posted renderings of what those would look like.
Great Job California High-Speed Rail Authority (CAHSRA)😮
Guys can we acknowledge that Osman has diversified his comments and continues to advocate for high speed rail? I love to see it
2030 is only almost 5 years away. We’re already closer than we think
@@snowless456 exactly. Years can seem so far away, and yet they’re here before we know it. We’re already close to 25 years into the 21st century, and in a little more than a year we’ll be closer to 2050 than 2000. We need to keep pushing CAHSR construction, so the first revenue trains can start by 2030-33, and get HSR across the mountains to SF and at least Palmdale before the end of the 2030s.
We’ve spent too many decades focused on widening roads and freeways, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, with little to show for it in regard to relieving traffic congestion. To their credit, the LA Basin and Bay Area are expanding and improving their transit networks to help reduce traffic in their local regions, but we still need a fast, reliable, and frequent mode of travel between them that isn’t a roughly six hour drive or 3-4 hour ordeal for an 80 or so minute flight. That is high speed rail, which combined with good local and regional transit will be an absolute game changer for how people can travel throughout the state, just as it already has been for decades in over twenty countries across the world.
Just another century until it might be completed 😅😅😅😅😅😅🙃🙃🙃🙃😅😅😅😅
@@RR98guy 2030-33 for the first segment smart aleck. Late 2030s for SF and likely 2040s for LA. Sacramento and San Diego maybe late 2040s and 2050s. It could happen faster, or take longer, depending on how quickly it gets funded. Same is true for any infrastructure project, especially one of this massive scale. Imagine if I-5 had been built this way, with CA covering most of the cost.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc I Guess you have not noticed that not only California is broke but American is 40 Trillion $ USD in debt. Where do you think money comes from?
@@RR98guy make the ultra wealthy pay their fair share for one thing, and stop giving them and corporations massive tax breaks. That oughta help bring in some more revenue and help get the deficit down.
There’s also such a thing as good debt, like when you’re investing in your infrastructure and other means that’ll generate economic revenue. That includes high speed rail, which’ll provide a faster and more convenient travel alternative than driving and flying for distances of 100-600 miles, bringing the cities and regions it connects closer together. What’s being spent on high speed rail is also a drop in the bucket compared to other things California is spending money on, as it very much is for the US itself.
As far as ‘wastes of money’ go, how about how we keep pouring well over $100 billion a year into maintaining and expanding roads and freeways, close to $20 billion of that in California alone, and yet traffic only keeps getting worse? Why not shift some of that money toward transit including high speed rail? Start to provide some real relief to road congestion by providing a competitive alternative for local and intercity trips. Or maybe we should stop subsidizing air travel, and have the airlines make people pay what it really costs to fly.
The point is the US more than has enough money to invest some of it into improving and building transit like high speed rail. It’s just a matter of what our priorities are. For decades it’s been roads and air travel, just as it was decades ago with rail. Maybe it’s time we start to shift things back toward rail, and a growing number of Americans would agree with me on that.
glad to see the progress in the Central Valley, keep up the good work :)
People forget that it just takes a long time to get anything did in this damn country but it’s great to see there made huge progress I can’t wait until it’s complete.
I always want California High-Speed Rail in California and I always love California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
How many miles could you build for the cost of one B-2 bomber? My name is Bicycle Bob and I approved this message.
1 mile
I hope I don't get too old when this thing is finished
It will never be finished. The costs to bring it to LA and SF are astronomic. You can bet your bottom dollar it won't be high-speed rail into LA or SF. It will be some shitty low speed train service.
@@ArthurDentZaphodBeebsure, when it’s in the very urban areas of the SF Peninsula and the LA Basin, on shared tracks with other trains, it will be traveling at those lower speeds (up to 110 mph). But out here in the Central Valley (and really from Gilroy to Burbank), where they’re on dedicated tracks built for high speeds, trains will be traveling at up to 220 mph. You can choose to believe otherwise, but that’s what’s being built.
As for whether high speed rail will be completed, it will so long as it keeps getting funded. What’s your alternative? More freeways lanes and expanding airports? We’ve been pouring tens of billions of dollars into those every year for the past several decades. And you know what? Traffic has only gotten worse and air travel still sucks. No amount of lanes or gates and runways will ever change that. Plus the only current train options are considerably slower than driving.
So what else can we do? Wait for some unproven mode of travel like bogus hyperloop? No. The world has proven high speed rail works, and this may be tough for you to swallow, but it’s being built now and will continue to. They’re making steady progress toward getting the first segment completed and operational in the Central Valley by the early 2030s, and are advancing early pre-construction work on the extensions into SF and LA so actual construction can begin once they’re funded.
As someone from LA, this needs to connect to Bay Area/SF ASAP to get it into revenue service and show what this will bring to the state as a whole. That way, momentum can be built to build the final connectivity to LA, which will be the most technically challenging (and cost $$$).
Hopefully the San Jose and Palmdale segments can be funded and built simultaneously, so when the first HSR trains reach SF by the late 2030s they also reach Metrolink to LA.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc Unfortunately, I don't think this will be realistic. The Tehachapi range will be an unprecedented challenge in terms of engineering due to the elevation change. This is why Amtrak San Joaquin stops at Bakersfield and there is a bus to LA. The most realistic option is to get to San Jose/SF and get revenue service up in order to generate some (but not all) funding to get CAHSR into Palmdale.
@@moseschung3220 the reason the San Joaquins stop in Bakersfield, and why there is no passenger rail service over Tehachapi Pass, is because it’s a busy freight route that’s mostly single track. It also would take probably twice as long to go by conventional train between Bakersfield and LA than the current I-5 bus bridge.
Electrified high speed rail can also handle steeper grades than diesel-powered freight trains. If you want to talk about gradients though, look at Brightline West’s plan to follow I-15 across Cajon Pass without any tunnels, with grades reaching 6%.
CAHSR will have a series of relatively short tunnels through Tehachapi Pass to keep its gradient more reasonable. High speed rail tunnels also are not a new concept, nor is building high speed rail through seismically active areas. Look at Japan and Taiwan. The most challenging tunneling will probably be between Palmdale and Burbank, but CAHSR will gain experience with the 13.5-mile Pacheco Pass tunnel.
@@moseschung3220 the reason the San Joaquins stop in Bakersfield, and why there is no passenger rail service over Tehachapi Pass, is because it’s a busy freight route that’s mostly single track. It also would take probably twice as long to go by conventional train between Bakersfield and LA than the current I-5 bus bridge. Electrified high speed rail can also handle steeper grades than diesel-powered freight trains. If you want to talk about gradients though, look at Brightline West’s plan to follow I-15 across Cajon Pass without any tunnels, with grades reaching 6%. CAHSR will have a series of relatively short tunnels through Tehachapi Pass to keep its gradient more reasonable. High speed rail tunnels also are not a new concept, nor is building high speed rail through seismically active areas. Look at Japan and Taiwan. The most challenging tunneling will probably be between Palmdale and Burbank, but CAHSR will gain experience with the 13.5-mile Pacheco Pass tunnel.
@@moseschung3220 the reason the San Joaquins stop in Bakersfield, and why there is no passenger rail service over Tehachapi Pass, is because it’s a busy freight route that’s mostly single track. It also would take probably twice as long to go by conventional train between Bakersfield and LA than the current I-5 bus bridge. Electrified high speed rail can also handle steeper grades than diesel-powered freight trains.
When is the summer update video 😵💫
I'm asking that same question.
Most likely there will be a fall update video like 2022
YES YES YES I LOVE HSR UPDATES SET TO LOFI MUSIC I LOVE CHILLING AND BEING INFORMED OF HSR PROGRESS
hell yeah cahsr
if we directed 1% of the defense budget to this type of projects we would have this done in another 5 years.
Imagine the impact our tax dollars could have.
@@MauricioLeite even if it were 100% funded today, and with no more delays, there’s no realistic way this project would get done from SF to Anaheim in five years. Ten years possibly, though fifteen is probably most realistic if just about everything goes right going forward. That would mean 2039 for the start of SF-LA HSR service, which should be the goal as that would be the centennial year for LA Union Station as well as the original Transbay Terminal in SF.
Yes and yeah of course California High-Speed Rail in California.😮
I have been following and support this project, but I have always wondered, why the reliance on viaducts? wouldn't earthen berms of compacted infill be cheaper and easier to construct?
Once the IOS and Brightline west are both completed (im guessing around the same time) its going to kick off a high speed rail revolution in the US. The chess pieces are really moving into place for it
Did they fix the problem on the 198 crossing. The whole thing appeared to be off. They were working on the south side that didn't match up.
Why aren't they doing multiple tasks at the same time (i.e. laying track on the miles of finished sub-grade) so that when the few remaining viaducts are completed the project can be finished more quickly?
I actually had the same question. I know they said they're going to start next year, but I didn't understand why they don't start on the finished portions.
@@TheRailwayDrone that is where they’ll start. The design contract for the tracks and systems was awarded back in June of this year. CAHSR let the original contract expire in 2022 due to supply chain issues, and reworked it to award it this year.
CP 4, the only virtually completed portion, is also not officially done yet as it’s awaiting completion of a canal realignment north of Wasco, which should hopefully be done by the end of this year or early 2025, so the last bit of guideway can be completed. The only other completed portion would probably be CP 1 between Madera and the San Joaquin River Viaduct.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. Much appreciated.
Why is this viaduct so long ? Envious that this has never been built between Washington D.C. and NYC and likely never will
It has to pass over Grangeville Bl, San Joaquin Valley Railroad, and SR198, all while at a shallow enough grade to allow trains to continue overhead.
What jaysayre said and its also a station for kings county and tulare county
All of these answers are true but also the farm owners demanded the ability to cross the train tracks whenever they wanted so the Authority decided to just build a viaduct so they can drive underneath
Is there a reason to why this stretch needs to be above level? Why can't it be on ground and use less concrete?
@@vibez3453 cause they had to cross a highway, rail line, and road here, plus some utility lines, and it was simply easier/cheaper to build one large structure rather than several small ones with earth embankment between them. This will also be the location of the Kings/Tulare station.
Lessssss goooooo
Impressive engineering! The background music is painful...
What is the projected ridership? How many people will opt to ride a train to LA and then have no vehicle to get around that city? Serious replies only, please. Thank you.
No one will truly know the answer to the second question until it is actually in service, regardless of ridership projections. Also, LA is expanding it's metro service so that will help.
I hope the trains move faster than the construction.
I'm definitely supportive of CAHSR overall aim but we couldn't have used existing right of ways more? Or less concrete to build this in the central valley? The route for this thing in the central valley is so crooked it smells of politics.
@@fosarvian while there probably was some politics involved, and the choice of route certainly had its legal challenges, like what land parcels they could use while designing the alignment to allow high speeds (up to 250 mph), what’s being built today is in fact high speed rail.
All the structures are necessary, whether road overpasses to keep trains and vehicles separate, which are a must to safely run high speed trains, or the viaducts for the train to get over roads, waterways, other railroad tracks, or any other obstacles. This structure here as an example is cause it has to cross a highway, rail line, and road, and will also have an HSR station.
Another example is the reason the viaducts/pergolas over the freight railroads are so massive is because the freight railroads required that (though it also partially had to do with the angle the HSR tracks were crossing the freight tracks). They wanted a certain amount of clearance on either side of their tracks from the HSR structure. That was a change order which increased the price of those structures. Plus a lot of the right of way is on an earth embankment that places the tracks above the historic flood line, which as seen during the very wet winter in 2022-23 that flooded the area that was formerly Tulare Lake is necessary.
When CAHSR awarded the first three construction contracts (CP 1, 2-3, 4) back in the early to mid-2010s, they were done so the contractor could design it and then build that, leading to change orders that increased cost. CAHSR has acknowledged they’ve learned from that, and that going forward the design work will be completed before awarding it to the contractor, who will then build that design. This should minimize change orders, as should awarding smaller construction contracts covering shorter distances, which in turn should reduce costs (or at least help keep them from getting any higher).
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc Thanks for this writeup! I'm pretty grateful of the time you put into responding truly. Seems like these larger structures have their reasoning. When I look at the maps and layers of the route in the central valley it does require quite a bit of turns and wiggles so it seems like some of related to ground conditions and others not so much. A mix of engineering requirements and politics like you said. Do you know what their new proposed schedule is?
@@fosarvian complete civil construction (guideway and structures) on the current 119 miles by the end of 2026. Civil construction on the Bakersfield and Merced segments should start up in another year or two. CP 4 is virtually done with its civil construction at this point, only awaiting on a canal relocation to be finished so they can finish that last bit of guideway.
The contract to design the track and systems for Merced-Bakersfield was awarded back in June, with actual installation of tracks and systems to begin on completed segments of guideway in probably 2025, maybe 2026. CAHSR will announce its train manufacturer by the end of this year, with train testing to begin in late 2028. Revenue service between Merced and Bakersfield is anticipated to begin between the end of 2030 and 2033.
CAHSR is competing for $4.7 billion in additional IIJA grants to close its funding gap for Merced-Bakersfield and begin revenue service by no later than 2033.
Shoulda done it cheaper and quicker by lowering expectations a bit. The only new trackage that was really needed was through tehachapi pass. The rest could have been upgraded and somewhat straightened to allow trips that would still be faster than driving without waiting 30 to 50 years for it. We woulda had it already, and then we could talk about tunnel bypasses. But instead we needed a way to waste 130 billion in taxpayer money on something we know we need now but not if we'll need it another 20y down the line when the damned thing will be finished
@@arxligion building a new high speed railway ($128 billion is the high end estimate for all of SF to Anaheim, and only $13 billion out of $28 billion available has actually been spent so far. Compare that to the $18 billion Caltrans spent last year alone on CA freeways), is not a waste of money. Continuing to widen freeways despite that being proven to make traffic worse long term is the real waste of money. HSR will actually relieve some of that traffic long term by providing a faster travel alternative between NorCal and SoCal, one that also competes with flying.
Amtrak San Joaquins currently uses existing tracks, and they’re limited to 6-7 roundtrips a day with a travel time slower than driving. HSR will offer not just a much faster but also more frequent service, for 80% of average market airfare. Sticking to conventional rails, which are owned by freight railroads who already have a hesitancy toward passenger rail, would never have allowed that. Nor would the freight railroads have allowed electrification of their tracks. Trying to speed up those rails was a nonstarter. CAHSR is already trying to work out an agreement with UP to share the corridor between Gilroy and San Jose, building a pair of electrified tracks next to the UP freight track that Caltrain and Amtrak currently share with UP. Caltrain would share CAHSR’s new tracks once those are ready.
HSR will already share the Caltrain corridor from San Jose to SF, hence why it was electrified, and will connect with Metrolink in Palmdale to provide transfers to reach LA and SoCal while CAHSR builds their own route. Both the Pacheco and Tehachapi crossings will happen, as will the San Gabriels into LA, and the sooner they’re funded the sooner that HSR trains will reach SF and LA.
I agree with you in principle but in practice these incremental updates almost never happen. It also amounts to a half baked effort which won't yield enough results for politicians to say lets improve. As someone who regularly takes Capitol Corridor, that route could be improved but we don't see it happen besides a handful of studies and reports on future aspirations for the route.
@@fosarvian if it is ‘half baked’, it’s cause of the lack of sufficient funding. This project has never had the funding to do more than it’s been doing. If it did, it could, and almost certainly would, be further along. The $3 billion boost it got from the IIJA grant certainly helped, but it’ll need several billion dollars more to complete Merced-Bakersfield and begin revenue service by 2030-33, and several tens of billions of dollars more to reach SF and SoCal.
As for improving the Capitol Corridor, and other regional and local transit in general, that also ultimately comes down to funding. For decades the logic has been to keep widening freeways, despite that costing more with fewer benefits in the long run, with transit more or less left by the way side, not being funded at anywhere remotely near the level that roads and freeways get every year.
It doesn’t help that transit in general gets a bit of a negative stigma, whether that’s from occasional news stories of bad things happening on transit (even though statistically transit is much safer than driving), decades of propaganda left from when auto, oil, and rubber lobbies pushed cars over transit (see National City Lines), or as cars and roads got better and transit stalled out, more and more people opted for the ‘freedom’ of cars and we ourselves left transit behind. Lest we forget America used to have some of the best transit networks in the world, including here in California. Today our ‘freedom’ now means we’re stuck in traffic on endless freeways, but thankfully we are seeing a resurgence in transit as cities and counties are investing more in expanding and making them better.
It’ll take breaking that decades-long habit, precedent, stigma, stereotype, or whatever you want to call it, of choosing roads over trains or thinking trains and transit are outdated, even though our country was first built on the latter and transit has become much more advanced, just as the car has. We can have both, and certainly should, but transit needs better funding so it can be a competitive alternative to driving, one that doesn’t necessarily always have to be faster, but needs to be convenient, with frequent, reliable service, and feel safe to use. Go to first-world nations in Europe or Asia and see it for yourself, and ask why the US, the self-proclaimed ‘greatest nation on Earth’, still doesn’t have some of the best transit in it, and that includes high speed rail. California is being a leader to help change that narrative, with not just HSR but also expanding and improving its local and regional transit networks.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc I think we're arguing the same side here. I'm basically saying that if you implement transit halfway you end up not creating much of a benefit or worse justify an argument for why transit doesn't work and doesn't deserve investment (politics).
LFG
California is $60 Billion dollars in debt right now.
😂 slow as molasses
So the orchards on either side of the right of way are dying because the irrigation system is destroyed. That is a major loss for the local farming communities !
is it being destroyed? sucks if thats the case
Give me a break. Both of those orchards are less than ten years old, both were planted well after the right of way was established. If they are withering now that is because the planters picked a poor site to try to cash in on nut bonanza. The sustainable groundwater act is going to see all of these orchards removed anyway.
Worst thing to ever happen in California
How many acres of California's fertile farmland have been destroyed?
@@jondurr how many acres did I-5 and Highway 99 destroy when they were being built? This train is taking up a fraction of the space needed for those while still being able to move the same amount of people, at higher speeds and with zero emissions.
A great public transport infrastructure project. However, oh, so slow! If Tesla was building this it would have either been completed or near completion by now.
Tesla, or any private company for that matter, would have had to deal with the same land acquisition and environmental review process. The key issue is funding. If this project had the funding it needed from the get go, it would be much further along by now.
Tesla would never build this
@@joxituk plus Musk’s hyperloop proposal was only meant to stop the California HSR project. He never had any intention of actually building it.
@joxituk Obviously not, but I was just making the point about efficiency and Tesla's general use of a first principles thinking approach.
You guys are so funny.
Cash Cow of historic proportions. As a California taxpayer I feel embarrassed that we were and are so easily conned by this endless boondoggle of a train to nowhere project.
So not even one third done?
The captions/description are incorrect. The only remaining portion of this structure is the clearly unfinished segment in the middle. I believe they have about 900 of them placed already.
Crews are hard at work to construct this. They only have ~1,500 construction workers covering 119 miles of guideway, which in the grand scheme of things is not that many. Besides, it only started construction in 2015. At the end of the day, if we want to finish sooner, CHSR needs more workers and more money.
@@AmpereBEEP What's going on with the gap where the pillars are very far apart? I don't see any construction on pillars in that section.
@@appalachianenthusiast9499that's funny. The banner in Fresno says 10,000 jobs created
@@TheRailwayDrone This drone footage is a bit outdated as they have been moving fairly quickly here, but there is another row of pillars being worked on on the north side of the tracks. As far as I can tell (from the latest Sentinel2 imagery) they have either already excavated and installed the pilings for that next row's foundation, or they've already put up the formwork for the concrete pour.
The south side is also missing a row of pillars, but once those are done, the structure will be finished with that phase of construction.
I am all for high speed rail, and by the time they finish this thing, teleportation will be a thing.
Seriously, The way the CA-HSR is being built is incomprehensibly expensive. France's SNCF did this decades ago, and with their immense experience, offered to help California, but they refused, and whilst the French are zipping about in a nationwide network of TGV's spiderwebbing out from Paris, California will not have their single HSR line finished, let alone connecting one of the states two major metropolitan areas.
That said, it is still less expensive than expanding the freeways, and whilst I left the state in the mid 90s (only returning for under a year a decade ago, in order to help out my father in Carmel), I do wish that HSR was taken seriously in the US.
On the other hand, I am 60 now, and after having to travel constantly for over three decades in my former career, I have zero desire to really go anywhere past the end of my front walk these days.
@@all4espi blame the slow pace on the lack of funding and all the frivolous legal attempts to slow and stop progress. Most of what has made things go so slowly are factors outside CAHSR’s control.
As for the SNCF thing, their’s was a very early proposal (with zero studies made) that wanted to follow I-5, which would have bypassed the major Central Valley cities and several million people living there, something California would always be against.
The route CAHSR is taking now will connect those cities to the Bay Area and SoCal, bringing all three regions closer together and providing a major economic boost to the Central Valley, a region that’s been historically underinvested in. And it’s already doing that with the over 14,000 construction jobs created, most of which have gone to locals, and over $18 billion generated in economic output. About $13 billion in total has actually been spent on the entire project so far, out of $28 billion available.