[niftich]

People who think the US needs high-quality commuter rail much more so than fast long-distance rail have the right idea.

Long-distance intercity rail is for the incidental traveler who travels occasionally, and this traveler has many competing choices for their journey.

Meanwhile, the typical commuter rail passenger will ride day after day, both ways, and often their only alternative is an arduous commute in a car -- or moving closer to their job, where their cost of housing would be higher.

Most commuter rail systems in the US suffer from the lack of agency-owned dedicated passenger tracks, and from poor integration into the metropolitan area's cohesive transportation fabric (of which both personal cars and downtown public transit are an inseparable part).

Much success could be achieved by (1) increasing the average speed of commuter transit, (2) investing in reliability, predictability, and frequency of service, (3) investing in Park-and-Ride hubs near certain stations, (4) looking for synergy with freeways and exits, (5) promoting transit-oriented development by both developer incentives and by land purchase and direct investment. The resulting changes would create a culture of transit use for commuting, which will go on to enable the eventual connection of the rail transit networks of neighboring city-pairs.

As for California, an Altamont Pass segment to their High Speed Rail project ought to have been one of first things built. A faster 'Altamont Corridor Express' would have created a ~1-hour link between Stockton and the Bay, integrating the corridor's economy further beyond its current role as an overlong exurban commute. It would've also provided for an alternate rail routing between Sacramento and the Bay that'd be competitive with the Capitol Corridor.

After the initial push towards a 'Super ACE', Altamont lost in the planning to Pacheco Pass; this increased linearity and reduced distance in the SF-SJ-Fresno axis, but in my opinion it was the wrong move. Fresno's accession to the economic continuum of the Bay is far less likely than that of Stockton or Modesto, and the increased linearity doesn't confer a meaningful benefit. Travelers are far more likely to travel between SJ and SF than between SJ and Fresno (or any point further south), so there's little operational benefit to having both SJ and Fresno accessible from San Francisco with no transfers from the same Fresno-bound train. The choice of the Pacheco Pass route is one of the several facepalm-worthy decisions made by CAHSR or by others early on in the process, like an extremely sweeping curve on a long, expensive viaduct just outside of Fresno station [1], or the barely-realistic journey times written into legislation that drive up cost.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16172313

[clairity]

you’re basically just wanting to solve the suburban/exurban commute problem, but that only exacerbates sprawl. that saps away resources and spreads it much thinner than creating denser, mixed-use neighborhoods in urban cores and developing inter-city high-speed rail for commerce.

LA to SF is one of the most travelled corridors in the country and rail can legitimately compete with air here. the decision to put it through the central valley was politically motivated rather than utilitarian. the coastal route up through san jose and silicon valley would have been more utilitarian (which is not to say that serving the central valley is unworthy, just less utilitarian).

[niftich]

I see why you'd say that, but the difference between (a) commuter rail lines between the urban core and every suburban edge city [1] vs. (b) high-speed intercity rail between high-population city-pairs ~300 miles apart [2] is one of scale.

The commuter rail operates on the scale of the primary city's own metropolitan area, encouraging activity nodes around those stations that are better placed than others. The idealized role of commuter rail is to provide reliability, predictability, and throughput, so that travelers want to concentrate their trips to the same transportation modes and nodes.

Meanwhile, intercity rail must balance its need to compete with air travel [3] with its desire to serve larger towns along the line. If it opts to serve fewer intermediate stops, it can deliver a better value proposition for long-distance city-to-city travelers, assuming there's transit or car rental options on the other end, like airports have today.

But if it opts to serve more stops along the route, those towns may turn into far-flung exurbs themselves, since they offer quick access to much larger job market. If that happens, you will get sprawl anyway [4]-- the spread of low-rise development on greenfield land as a "cheaper now, don't think about later" response to increased housing demand -- but you'll get the kind of sprawl that's typical of a bedroom community, instead of the kind typical of a mixed-used edge city. This is because the rail will out-range the reach of personal cars from the commuting zone, so the economic integration of the town into the adjacent metropolitan area will be be partial and asymmetric.

In California, the decision to route the SF-LA high speed rail through the Central Valley was a sensible one, because the terrain in the Central Valley is more conducive to high speed rail than up the coast through Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, and the Valley has significantly larger metropolitan areas than the locales along the coast. Both options require multiple challenging mountain range crossings. It's the SF-LA link itself that's tenuous to justify, because there's perfectly fine airports available today to anyone who wants to hop between the two.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city

[2] The approximate distance of Chicago-Detroit, Chicago-St Louis, Chicago-Cincinnati.

[3] Air travel is the most direct competitor of intercity rail, because both will discharge you at your destination with no car, and compared to a commuter scenario, the intended destinations of passengers will vary greatly within the broader geographical area.

[4] Sprawl spreads because cheap greenfield land exists at the momentary edge of all but the most geographically-constrained areas, many developers prefer these these cheap-to-build sites, and many people do prefer low-rise single-family homes with yards. Sprawl will always spread if housing demand outpaces supply unless you forbid it by law or ordinance, because new construction on greenfield land confers tangible benefits to those who can afford it.

[clairity]

sure, the difference is one of scale, but it's also one of purpose. the purpose of commuter rail is to be a spoke in a hub and spoke model. the purpose of intercity rail is to connect the hubs themselves. these superficially similar modes of transportation really shouldn't be contraposed, but if they were as in your argument, we should pick intercity rail over commuter rail because it tends to support density and walkability over sprawl (with all the environmental, health, and quality of life benefits that entails).

availability of land is a lesser factor for sprawl compared to reach. practically no one lives in suburban lands (like intraurban mountainscapes) unserviced by roads. sprawl is directly correlated to where we put roads, and less so to where there is open land. further, roads (and other infrastructure) are heavily subsidized, both directly and due to uninternalized externalities.

internalize all those externalities and we'd have much less debate on this topic. folks could simply choose what they prefer relative to actual costs.

[BelenusMordred]

> Long-distance intercity rail is for the incidental traveller who travels occasionally

US domestic air travel is growing at 5% a year, compound that over a decade or two and it's hardly "incidental" travellers anymore, it's everyone flying whenever they can. It is a major contributor to greenhouse emissions and is not easily replaced.

https://www.bts.dot.gov/newsroom/2018-traffic-data-us-airlin...