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Alto - High Speed Rail (Toronto-Quebec City)

nfitz said:
A law? When has any country passed such a law?

And why would it be a law? It would be a regulation, surely.

But still silly - when has a country had such a regulation - other than as a maximum speed.
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The text of proposition 1A (2008) is not a law, meaning that it does not prescribe a particular way in which CAHSR has to be constructed. However, it is worse than a law in the sense that it attaches strings to the conditions under which the funding appropriated through that ballot initiative ought to be used. If we read its fine print:

2704.09. The high-speed train system to be constructed pursuant to this chapter shall be designed to achieve the following characteristics:

(a) Electric trains that are capable of sustained maximum revenue operating speeds of no less than 200 miles per hour.
(b) Maximum nonstop service travel times for each corridor that shall not exceed the following:

  1. San Francisco-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40 minutes.
  2. Oakland-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40 minutes.
  3. San Francisco-San Jose: 30 minutes.
  4. San Jose-Los Angeles: two hours, 10 minutes.
  5. San Diego-Los Angeles: one hour, 20 minutes.
  6. Inland Empire-Los Angeles: 30 minutes.
  7. Sacramento-Los Angeles: two hours, 20 minutes.

(c) Achievable operating headway (time between successive trains) shall be five minutes or less.
(d) The total number of stations to be served by high-speed trains for all of the corridors described in subdivision (b) of Section 2704.04 shall not exceed 24. There shall be no station between the Gilroy station and the Merced station.
(e) Trains shall have the capability to transition intermediate stations, or to bypass those stations, at mainline operating speed.
(f) For each corridor described in subdivision (b), passengers shall have he capability of traveling from any station on that corridor to any other station on that corridor without being required to change trains.
(g) In order to reduce impacts on communities and the environment, the alignment for the high-speed train system shall follow existing transportation or utility corridors to the extent feasible and shall be financially viable, as letermined by the authority.
(h) Stations shall be located in areas with good access to local mass transit or other modes of transportation.
(i) The high-speed train system shall be planned and constructed in a nanner that minimizes urban sprawl and impacts on the natural environment.
(j) Preserving wildlife corridors and mitigating impacts to wildlife novement, where feasible as determined by the authority, in order to limit the extent to which the system may present an additional barrier to wildlife's natural movement.

The worst, however, is what it doesn‘t include. The preceeding section finishes with the following clause:

(i) No failure to comply with this section shall affect the validity of the bonds issued under this chapter.

Section 2704.09 unfortunately does not include such clause, meaning that the price of trying to reduce the scope and thus the staggering price tag would automatically lead to the loss of the $9 billion appropriated by Proposition 1A (2008) and trigger the reimbursement of any funds already disbursed. And this is how CAHSR is held hostage by a comparatively small part of its own funding…
 
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Urban Sky said:
The text of proposition 1A (2008) is not a law, meaning that it does not prescribed the way CAHSR might be constructed. However, it is worse than a law in the sense that it attaches strings to how the funding appropriated through that ballot initiative might be used. If we read its fine print:

2704.09. The high-speed train system to be constructed pursuant to this chapter shall be designed to achieve the following characteristics:

(a) Electric trains that are capable of sustained maximum revenue operating speeds of no less than 200 miles per hour.
(b) Maximum nonstop service travel times for each corridor that shall not exceed the following:

  1. San Francisco-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40 minutes.
  2. Oakland-Los Angeles Union Station: two hours, 40 minutes.
  3. San Francisco-San Jose: 30 minutes.
  4. San Jose-Los Angeles: two hours, 10 minutes.
  5. San Diego-Los Angeles: one hour, 20 minutes.
  6. Inland Empire-Los Angeles: 30 minutes.
  7. Sacramento-Los Angeles: two hours, 20 minutes.

(c) Achievable operating headway (time between successive trains) shall be five minutes or less.
(d) The total number of stations to be served by high-speed trains for all of the corridors described in subdivision (b) of Section 2704.04 shall not exceed 24. There shall be no station between the Gilroy station and the Merced station.
(e) Trains shall have the capability to transition intermediate stations, or to bypass those stations, at mainline operating speed.
(f) For each corridor described in subdivision (b), passengers shall have he capability of traveling from any station on that corridor to any other station on that corridor without being required to change trains.
(g) In order to reduce impacts on communities and the environment, the alignment for the high-speed train system shall follow existing transportation or utility corridors to the extent feasible and shall be financially viable, as letermined by the authority.
(h) Stations shall be located in areas with good access to local mass transit or other modes of transportation.
(i) The high-speed train system shall be planned and constructed in a nanner that minimizes urban sprawl and impacts on the natural environment.
(j) Preserving wildlife corridors and mitigating impacts to wildlife novement, where feasible as determined by the authority, in order to limit the extent to which the system may present an additional barrier to wildlife's natural movement.

The worst, however, is what it doesn‘t include. The preceeding section finishes with the following clause:

(i) No failure to comply with this section shall affect the validity of the bonds issued under this chapter.

Section 2704.09 unfortunately does not include such clause, meaning that the price of trying to reduce the scope and thus the staggering price tag would automatically lead to the loss of the $9 billion appropriated by Proposition 1A (2008) and trigger the reimbursement of any funds already disbursed. And this is how CAHSR is held hostage by a comparatively small part of its own funding…
Click to expand...
Thanks for digging that up
 
Just to put things into perspective, the distance covered by a LA-to-SF train is 438 miles (705 km), which is equivalent to taking the VIA Rail train from Montreal to Toronto, transferring onto a Windsor-bound train and triggering the emergency break halfway between Ingersoll and London. All of that in no more than 2:40 hours, implying a minimum average speed of ... *drumroll* ... 264 km/h...
 
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nfitz said:
I didn't think they'd be building the Montreal to Quebec leg and the Montreal to Toronto leg at the same time.
Click to expand...
As we‘ve discussed before: Construction is supposed to last from 2031 to 2037 for Phase 1, from 2032 to 2039 for Phase 2 and from 2033 to 2041 for Phase 3 - so construction for Phase 3 is supposed to start 6 years before that for Phase 1 ends:
Urban Sky said:
If their plan was to actually build and open Phase 1 (almost definitely: Montreal-Ottawa) relatively early and then to spend much more time on the tougher nut (Ottawa-Toronto) and (even later) the impossible one (Montreal-Quebec) to crack, I could take ALTO seriously, but instead, they plan construction of the three segments to start only 1 year apart from each other and operations to start only 2 years apart:
View attachment 634741
Source: Groups.io

There are only 3 explanations as to why ALTO claims that such a timeline is anything else than completely fanciful and doomed to fail - and I don't know which one (they are too incompetent to know better, they haven’t told the government yet, or the government decided to keep the illusion against better knowledge) is the least troubling.

Anyways, if this project is going to get built and look anything remotely like what is currently promised to us, we will have nobody else than King Donald I. to thank, as without him, the project would have been dramatically curtailed by the (until a month ago: near-certain) change of government before the end of this year…
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Needless to say this is absolutely bonkers, like the UK building HS1 and all 3 Phases of HS2 at once or Germany building the entire HSR Corridor Berlin-Munich in a single project (rather than in six very distinct projects: upgraded line Berlin-Leipzig/Halle, HSL Leipzig/Halle-Erfurt, HSL Erfurt-Ebensfeld, upgraded line Ebensfeld-Nürnberg, HSL Nürnberg-Ingolstadt and upgraded line Ingolstadt-Munich)…
 
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Urban Sky said:
Rome wasn’t build in one day and neither was any HSR network built in a single project. CAHSR is the first attempt at doing so and, well …
Click to expand...

And actually, CAHSR is being planned and built in segments, the emphasis on end to end completion is simply optics for public consumption and to ensure the funding continues to flow until it's done.

- Paul
 
Urban Sky said:
As we‘ve discussed before: Construction is supposed to last from 2031 to 2037 for Phase 1, from 2032 to 2039 for Phase 2 and from 2033 to 2041 for Phase 3 - so construction for Phase 3 is supposed to start 6 years before that for Phase 1 ends:
Click to expand...
I still don't think they'll be building it at the same time.
 
crs1026 said:
And actually, CAHSR is being planned and built in segments, the emphasis on end to end completion is simply optics for public consumption and to ensure the funding continues to flow until it's done.

- Paul
Click to expand...
CAHSR is planned as a single project, though in stages, and it has to, because Section 2704.09 of Proposition 1A (2008) acts as a de-facto constitution (but one which can’t be amended to align with reality!) and insists that there is a single project (“network”, opening sentence) and that it encompasses SF-LA (clause b.1), LA-San Diego (b.5) and branches to Oakland (b.2) and Sacramento (b.7). And there is of course an extreme interdependence between each segment, as any minute of minimum achievable travel added on one segment needs to be compensated on another segment. Which is why Proposition 1A (2008) is such a monument to the dysfunction of California’s overdependence on Ballot Initiatives…
nfitz said:
I still don't think they'll be building it at the same time.
Click to expand...
They absolutely won’t be able to stick to this timeline (unless Phase 1 is Montreal-West Island, Phase 2 is West Island-De Beaujeu and Phase 3 is De Beaujeu-Ottawa), but as I wrote here 2 months ago:

There are only 3 explanations as to why ALTO claims that such a timeline is anything else than completely fanciful and doomed to fail - and I don't know which one (they are too incompetent to know better, they haven’t told the government yet, or the government decided to keep the illusion against better knowledge) is the least troubling.
 
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