[strongpigeon]

Sometimes it feels like the US has lost its appetite for grand structural projects like that. Maybe it’s just that I’m unaware of them and that impression is the result of survival bias, but given how impossibly hard it is to just build anything where I live (Seattle), I’m not so sure.

[com2kid]

Seattle just got done building light rail tracks over a floating bridge.

It is an insane engineering achievement. A train literally running on tracks on a road that is floating on water!

[strongpigeon]

Fair. Maybe I'm too much if the weeds of this because all I can think of is how much of a fight it was to pass ST2 and ST3 and how we haven't even started on the Ballard line despite voting for it in 2016 (10 years ago!) and how it might be delayed forever.

[coryrc]

No, it's not an insane engineering achievement. It's just a normal one, because nobody else has floating bridges, nobody else needed it. It's also years late and costs 10x more than it should.

It's also the wrong stupid technology. The trains are constrained on space because of the low-floor bullshit. It's the longest light rail in the country, it's too fucking long and slow. Even if we fully built out ST3 it can't handle more than ~20% of commuters. It can't be expanded with express tracks because it's built deep underground, so the commute is so much slower than the equivalent in other countries and will NEVER compete with the automobile except during peak rush hour. The northern stations are next to the freeway so over half the land that could be transit-oriented development can't be, and then what's left is devoted to parking anyway. Complete, total waste of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, built and planned by people who don't and won't ever use transit.

That 10x cost directly makes it so we can't build out our system properly and we keep building out car infrastructure because people would rather have a car and save 2 hours a day commuting.

[com2kid]

> No, it's not an insane engineering achievement. It's just a normal one, because nobody else has floating bridges, nobody else needed it. It's also years late and costs 10x more than it should.

Your other points aside -

Doing something no one else has ever done is the definition of an engineering achievement.

There isn't a set of best practices. There aren't a bunch of off the shelf parts, there aren't any contractors who can help you out because they've done it a dozen times before. It is an original engineering challenge.

Pulling it off is by definition an achievement.

That said, 100% agree about the station placement. Heck the stations that are well placed were poorly designed, they should be profitable by including commercial real estate and residences, with the revenue from both going to Sound Transit to pay for the system.

But no, we didn't do that and I can't even get a cup of coffee, in Seattle, at our light rail stations.

[coryrc]

I said it was, just not an "insane" one. It's not the Hoover Dam. Trains get on to boats all the time. It's innovation.

Oh yeah, and we hamstring ourselves because every extra property can only be used for "affordable" housing and we paid top dollar for it, then limit how much it can be used and tie up prime property which could have been used for more purposes. Gee, why is everything so expensive!?

[com2kid]

> Oh yeah, and we hamstring ourselves because every extra property can only be used for "affordable" housing and we paid top dollar for it, then limit how much it can be used and tie up prime property which could have been used for more purposes. Gee, why is everything so expensive!?

Yeah everything surrounding what sound transit was forced to do with their finances sucks, which is why I have a lot of sympathy for the people trying to run ST and maintain its budget.

Everyone complains ST is bleeding money but the voters passed the laws forcing the finances to be terrible.

But every time I post that Seattle needs to dramatic loosen up building restrictions, it pisses everyone off.

Everytime I say things like "we should just do what cities running a good budget and that have affordable housing are doing" people get upset.

The curse of being an engineer. "Do the thing that makes the numbers work out" is rarely a popular opinion.

[Aloisius]

The achievement is the speed the train can run at. Trains going over the old floating railway bridges that were part of the Milwaukee Road had to slow down dramatically to, iirc, 6 mph.

Of course those were first built in the 19th century.

[dclowd9901]

I get that it is neat but it's hardly the Hoover dam is it?

[darknavi]

It's not exactly brain surgery, is it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I

[dontlikeyoueith]

No, it's significantly more complex.

[thaumasiotes]

More complex for less benefit is just losing two different ways.

[_2d30]

May be more complex but it's less audacious.

The water systems for LA and San Francisco are really quite audacious even if they have less technical complexity than floating rail.

I've built ML systems way more complex than any of these but it's still way less ambitious and audacious.

[BryantD]

I don't think you're wrong. Every time someone says we can't do high speed rail it makes me very sad. And as far as Seattle goes... my commute is substantially affected by the I-5 closures. It's somewhat shocking to me that we allow infrastructure to decay as much as we do.

I'd be happy about the light rail expansion if they weren't talking about delaying the Ballard line indefinitely. :(

[zardo]

Can't do highspeed rail because it's too impractical and expensive, while we're spending a west coast highspeed rail network worth of money on the least popular war in US history.

[mlrtime]

There are no environmental impact studies on wildlife when you drop a bomb.

[coryrc]

California is spending the money and what they're building is useless (oh big passenger demand from Merced to Bakersfield, fuck right off with that) and costs 10x what China, France, Japan, etc pay.

[coryrc]

The commute is slow because the light rail is slow. It's the wrong technology for commuter rail and there are too many stops. (I'm assuming you live north).

(more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47457884)

[BryantD]

My commute is via car. The light rail will not speed it up, but I may do it anyhow because it's more relaxing.

My point is that closing two lanes of the interstate for over a year is a failure of maintenance, rather than anything about light rail vs. driving.

[amanaplanacanal]

Evidently tax cuts for the wealthy are more important than infrastructure.

[jcranmer]

You mean, like NYC Water Tunnel #3? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No....

[schlauerfox]

We're literally right now building a huge high speed rail project that is planned to link san diego to san francisco through LA, bakersfield and fresno. Progress is made on it daily. https://www.youtube.com/CAHighSpeedRail

[jimbokun]

And when did that project start and how much has it cost and how far can you ride on what they've completed up until now?

[baggy_trough]

That may be true for some twisted definition of "building". Most people would say the money is simply being wasted by bureaucrats, consultancies, etc.

[testing22321]

Rejoice. It will be the world’s slowest and most expensive “high speed” rail.

So slow, in fact, many countries have faster regular rail.

[AnimalMuppet]

Progress is made on it daily? Great. How soon can I ride it?

[ianburrell]

The initial segment in Central Valley has current date of 2032. It depends on if federal government restores funding or if California has to fund itself.

Phase 1 from SF to LA is estimated for 2035-2040. They might do end-to-end service before that with existing tracks and slower speeds, especially from Palmdale to LA. The SF and LA segments require tunneling to get over the mountains.

[labcomputer]

What's notable about the initial segment is that it parallels (and thus duplicates) an existing Amtrak service between Bakersfield and Merced. So the initial operating segment gives us zero new destinations by rail.

But, hey, you'll be able to go really fast between California's 6th and 80th largest cities!

[Animats]

Caltrain, from SF to SJ, is part of the California high speed rail system, and you can ride it right now. It's now electrified at 25KV, welded rail, concrete ties, and compatible with high speed rail. The Stadler trains are capable of 125MPH but are run slower because there are so many stations.

[bobanrocky]

If you are claiming that Caltrain is part of the grand high speed rail system, you are literally being taken for a ride

[Animats]

The track is. That's how the SF connection is supposed to be made.

[bobanrocky]

This is a joke, right?

[johntarter]

Comments like these make me think, wow this place is no better than Reddit

[rabid_0wl]

Those projects would literally be impossible today with the environmental regulations in place, especially in California.

[kibwen]

If you watch the OP, you'll see that the construction of this aqueduct caused billions of dollars worth of environmental devastation. Rail all you want against regulations, but when an argument boils down to "I wish we didn't have to internalize all these costs and could just push them off on someone else", I'm not especially sympathetic.

[rabid_0wl]

LA has paid billions to remediate, but the actual cost is incalculable. Not sure who is "railing against regulations" but there are obviously downsides to heavy environmental regulations. Debatable if CA is striking the right balance.

[OskarS]

Certainly that’s part of it, but also just NIMBYism. Los Angeles were able to defeat the Owen’s Valley farmers back then, I don’t think they would be now.

[dogemaster2025]

It’s too complicated to corruptly make money off of a large project like that. It’s much easier to just buy a bunch of drugs and needles and give it to the methheads, or spend money on homeless while building zero homes.

[oatmeal1]

The grand projects the US has embarked on have been completed using unethical means and without regard for real environmental consequences.

[stringfood]

also they were completed during a time of much less housing density and eminent domain laws were more powerful - even getting a railroad setup nowadays costs billions because of land purchasing

[phyzome]

This particular grand structural project was never a good idea, as the video describes. So it might not be the best basis for comparison.