Japan to begin huge sales push to sell bullet trains to United States cities

FWIW, when I was working in the Bay Area, the difference in time between driving vs. trying to take mass transit wasn't that far off from what the article cites. I posted about it at http://priuschat.com/forums/environ...rains-united-states-cities-5.html#post1027026.

Public transit in much of the Bay Area is crap. I've taken BART and Caltrain numerous times to go to SF and yes, you wait for BART for a long time outside peak hours. Yes, it's true about the 1 hour between trains for Caltrain outside peak hours.

Don't believe me about the crap transit? Try going to Transit.511.org and putting in this:
Start: Harry Rd & Camden Ave City: San Jose, CA
End: Macon Ave & La Avenida St City: Mountain View, CA
When: Arrive By 10:00 am and put in a weekday

The resulting trips are ~3 hours and 20 mins! Put the same points in maps.google.com and the time estiamte is 30 mins by car.

BART fares are getting to be outrageous. You can take a look yourself at BART - Fare Calculator. Example: Daly City BART station (the closest one to SF on the Peninsula w/a park and ride lot) to Powell St. station is $2.95 one way. The driving distance is only 8.4 miles. Milbrae (closest station to where I lived that made sense to use in order to visit SF) to Powell is $4.25 one way. Milbrae station was a 46.5 mile drive from home!

When I went to China in September 08, the Beijing subway was only 2 yuan per trip to go anywhere == $0.30 USD. Shanghai's subway was IIRC 3 to 9 yuan depending on distance, but usually never more than 4 yuan for me.

 

Actually LA -> NY City is 2446 miles.

 

I didn't mean to imply that SF-area transit is perfect. I don't live there, so I wouldn't know. What I took issue with was the examples chosen by the newspaper.

There will always be trips where a given transit system is not the ideal mode of travel.

To put the Beijing subway fare into proper terms, the average worker in Beijing makes 45,000 yuan (2008). According to the BLS, the average SF worker makes $54,000. So as a fraction of average daily income, the fare in Beijing is 1.62%, and your DC-Powell example is 2%. FWIW, the IRS estimates the total cost of driving a mile at $0.50.

 

La. = Louisiana

 

If you lived there, esp. in the South Bay (where much of Silicon Valley is), the Peninsula, or the southern part of the East Bay and you'd understand that it does not serve a very large part of it well at all. There's no reason that a local newspaper needs go into exhaustive depth in stating the obvious for that region. I've taken subways and commuter rail in Tokyo, between various cities in Japan, Beijing, Seoul, Shanghai, NYC and Washington DC for comparison.

The only major rail lines that were of even marginal use to me are caltrain.com - General Info: System Map, BART - Station List and 4 the light rail lines at Schedule by Route - Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.

The closest Caltrain station to where I lived in San Jose was a 10 mile drive. Even if I drove there, once I take the infrequent train, I'd have to take a shuttle (that runs only limited hours) from the train station to my work. I got moved at work to Sunnyvale for a year and there's no shuttle for that location. Caltrain sometimes has delays (sometimes for hours) due to idiots who like to commit suicide by getting in front of the trains since Caltrain crosses at the street level.

VTA light rail is crap since it runs in the middle of city streets and is subject to the bad traffic, is slow and stops at every stop. The VTA bus the comes near where I lived only comes by ONCE an hour. When I was in middle and high school, it was more frequent but sometimes the bus wouldn't even bother stopping to pick up people waiting at the stop. It's happened to me more than once.

BART is useless because the because the stations are well past my commute to work and nowhere near it.

 

agree 100%. sure it takes more time, but most do not have that time penalty. i rode BART back in the mid 80's when it was not nearly as good as it is now.

now, dont get me wrong, if you worked off hours it SUCKED. trains once an hour. wait times up to 20-45 mins if transferring etc.

but at the same time, it was the chance to sit down, relax, read the paper and so on. for me going from San Jose to Redwood City, it was a lot longer, but if going to San Fran, the time difference was not so much.

but correct me if i am wrong, but is the point of this disscussion to diss a system that has received little or no support? a system that must compete against a well established transportation system that has received a hundred TRILLION dollars more support?

with those kinds of odds, how could ANYONE be happy in any way with a system that has so much going against it??

 

It really depends on where you live and work. If both points are close to transit that comes often, hopefully doesn't require many/any transfers, and is rapid/equally as fast as a car driving the same route, then it's ok. Those are big ifs. In San Francisco, traffic is pretty crappy but it seems that the bus system is fairly extensive and frequent except late at night.

San Jose, part of the South Bay has a much larger area and larger population than SF. Much of the Bay Area is NOT well covered by the above, esp. the South Bay and the Peninsula. It's only home to companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, at least 2 IBM facilities, Lockheed Martin, Intel, Facebook, Cisco, Juniper Networks, Oracle, Apple, Intuit, etc.

 

(sorry, double post due to server errors, can't delete this one)

 

We're getting a bit off topic with the transit vs intercity train but one rule works for both in some degree.

With transit, you can't be "late" for a train/bus etc) you can only be a bit early, if you wish the system to work effectively for folks. Frequency and reliability is the key.

And to a degree, intercity trains are the same way. One train a day between Seattle and Vancouver makes it impossible to use except for recreation. Two trains allow you to do some business, but 4 or more trains, or ideally hourly trains from early morning until late evening allow all kinds of flexibility for those that use it.

As I understand, it works quite well in other parts of the world, why not here? (Hint: we don't pay the full cost of our car habit, and we rail against subsidy of mass transit for a lot of reasons) (no pun intended!)

 

The schedule has recently been increased to twice a day, so it's now possible for someone in Vancouver to make a day trip to Seattle by train.

As for the subsidy issue, yes, true full-cost pricing is the only way we can make intelligent, informed decisions.

 

For the Olympics there was talk of adding a third train, but I don't think it happened. I heard a story last night suggesting that bookings on train during the Olympic weeks were getting nearly full! If they had put a 3rd or even a 4 train on, or even increased the number of cars, think of the revenue.

 

a bunch of people commenting on california when almost nobody posting lives here anymore?... ah.. priuschat.

When we get our bullet train, it will be a huge suscess. it doesn't replace amtrack or any other train services. it runs along amtrack and goes a lot faster. (new rails for the bullet train)

once it's up, people in L.A. will no longer have to drive back and forth. (i know a good couple dozen people who would use it really frequently)

as for the peninsula... sf bay area. it's only scheduled to stop in a few places. it's basically a strait shot from san jose to san francisco with 1 or two stops in between.. our current trains only do half the speed this bullet train will achieve. i think we'll cap it around 150mph as it has been pre determined by the engineers.

i'd say my mind to a few of you but i'd be kicked from this wonderful website.

 

Sorry, when exactly are you getting the bullet train? is there a website explaining the project? when will it be in operation and on between which cities?
as far as I know from SF to LA you still need to drive 6hrs+ on HWY5, still since 2002 last time I did it. And it still takes you 1hr+ from SJ to (outside) SF with the "baby bullet". Or something changed in the past 8 years?

 

Are there no railroad crossing between SJ to SF?
I don't know how speed limit is set in the US, but we have a certain speed limit in Japan.

They are...

• 130 km/h (81 mph) where railroad crossings exist
• 160 km/h (100 mph) technical limit on normal train
• some over 300 km/h (186 mph) technical limit on bullet train

Ken@Japan

 

Saw following news.
Obama to reveal fate of Midwest high-speed rail corridor - Chicago Breaking News

"President Barack Obama will announce tomorrow the award of $8 billion in stimulus funds to develop high-speed rail corridors."

Ken@Japan

 

a good start, great intentions, but must continue much much further than this. i am afraid we will be faced with rapidly escalating gas prices and a huge percentage of the population being left out in the cold with no options available.

 

That pre-historical train service is now broke per Caltrain goes broke, will likely wipe out weekend, night and midday trains - San Jose Mercury News.

 

a mistake to let the train service go down. big mistake

 

Back to what I might've talked about before, now there's Effort under way to repeal high-speed rail bond measure - San Jose Mercury News.

For those unfamiliar with the Bay Area, Menlo Park, Atherton and Palo Alto are home to very expensive houses (look them up at DQNews - San Francisco Chronicle Zip Code Chart).

 

Those aren't nearly as expensive as I thought. What's really remarkable is the change in value - some as high as 130% last year! Talk about a volatile market.

There was a lot of nimbyism about commuter rail here years ago, but most of the naysayers have found their property values have risen, not fallen.