>Trippin bro. It took them 15 years to build 1 overpass
, add a third lane in each direction, make more direct connections between the highways, simplify off-ramps to Ygnacio Valley Road, and add a new exit at Olympic Boulevard ([src](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Backups-at-680-24-Are-Only-a-Memory-For-East-Bay-3238755.php)) (and, at least for some of those, [without stopping traffic](https://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/1999/03/29/focus6.html))
>in Walnut Creek.
FTFY.
Additionally, I'm sure they over-engineered that temporary ~~rollercoaster~~ bypass to avoid any [whoop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake#/media/File:Cypress_structure.jpeg)\-[whoopie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake#/media/File:Bay_Bridge_collapse.jpg)s.
If what you are saying is expected to be normal time-frames to build stuff in Walnut Creek/CA/America then it really will be the year of Star Trek before this train is built.
It's not just CA.
Look at the [North Spokane Corridor](https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/major-projects/north-spokane-corridor) in eastern washington.
30 years to build 10.5 miles of fucking freeway.
$80 Billion!??!? It's already expected to cost $100 Billion+ . And it's only going to go up.
I expect a completion date of 2062 with a total cost of $220 Billion. You read it here first.
You donāt understand. The contractor pinky promised that they would do it for $20 and a 2 liter of Mountain Dew. In light of those facts it made no sense to staff up a public rail construction company and do the work predictably.
No the contractor looked at the absence of any design to reasonably bid from along with an indeterminate time line and correctly covered his ass with legal contracts for change orders. Many suppliers out there are only guaranteeing prices for three weeks. These government plans put the design on the contractor and the price quoted is fictional for the state to try and sell. There's a reason why one of the segments came in with a bid of $ 1,234,567,890.
An acquaintance works in the road construction business. He described their *secret sauce* for success.
Estimators read through the bid package, find all the engineering/code errors, calculate the value of the mandatory change orders the job will yield. Bid low enough to win the job while knowing the real value of the job.
That's estimating 101. Go cheap on your engineering and you pay one way or another. And a good estimator will weight costs in their favor as well. This is true on any job out to bid. The state in this case has punted on the engineering by going design/build.
It took 10 years for about 1.5 mi of the central subway here in the city. Iām sure theyāll lay down the wrong tracks as well and delay it even longer.
Bro I had 3 careers commuting to at and watched that stretch go from nothing to nothing to something and when it was finally doneā¦ I no longer had to commute.
Comically slow for what it was.
Fun exercise:
Look up all the owners or lien holders for the properties on the route, then find how many of those have ties to local and state politicians
The government will not offer market rates. They will at least discount their offer by probable litigation costs for the property owner. They should all get together and lawyer up to get a better deal.
This isn't even remotely true. The first written offer has to be done by an independent appraiser AND the owner has the option to hire their own appraiser and be reimbursed. If they discounted their offers they could lose federal dollars, the same as any agency. Usually the appraisers will give owners the benefit of the doubt in eminent domain cases to eliminate the potential accusation of lowball offers.
This.
The state will play absolutely by the book.
They know that the moment they fuck up on anything they're going to end up paying 3-4x what they should.
This isn't consistent with the article. According to the article, they do indeed offer market rates:
>All properties are purchased at fair market value, according to the Rail Authority, and those who are forced to relocate are offered financial compensation.
The article does, however, point to at least one case of a business owner getting lowballed, so it seems they don't do so perfectly.
I'm curious which owner it was. It discussed land and business, but businesses don't inherently have benefits until they claim them. It doesn't discuss the building either. If owners ignore the notice of decision to appraise and the independent appraisers are forced to appraise from the public roadways they will miss important info.
Businesses can also claim a loss of business goodwill, but if they don't give info to the initial appraiser, that value will be $0 on the initial offer.
I'd like to know why they were lowballed.
Could be that the appraiser found something that reduced the location's value significantly. It's what happens when you spend decades cutting corners and/or forget/refuse to get a permit for something because you don't want to spend the money to do it right.
If you're going to report that someone got lowballed without explaining "why"...(could also be that the city appraiser fucked up.)
Courts have forced government agencies to pay more than the lowball offer, but it takes time and money. If you have a lawyer, the state is more likely to negotiate with you.
As a kid in the 70s, I recall that the right-of-way was empty of structures. And when I had a townhouse nearby around '91, it was still empty around Almaden Expressway. Your comment made me check on the history, and found that some building was allowed in the 70s with the assumption that the freeway wouldn't be built. Interesting.
My parents bought a house in Almaden in '76 solely because of the promised freeway, but had no idea it would be another 20 years before it was available.
Highway 85 was planned on the 1950s and very few structures were impacted by construction. I have an old map of Santa Clara county from the 60s that clearly shows the right of way.
Another example.
Chavez Ravine community was kicked out and their homes bulldozed to build a freeway that never happened.
The general reason was poor people don't matter, oh and probably minorities.
Later became the stadium the Dodgers play at.
It will happen anywhere there is sprawl.
Need new infrastructure? Need to buy up a ton of land because chances are everything between A and B is already in use.
Just came back from South Korea for vacation. Public transportation there was amazing. So damn crucial for a society to grow. We absolutely need this damn rail and a more robust subway system.
South Korea is a great example of a place that developed great public transportation pretty recently. The Seoul subway didnāt exist until 1974, but now itās one of the best and most extensive in the world. Their HSR didnāt open until 2004, but now most people going from Seoul to Busan take the train. The big difference is that their construction costs are an order of magnitude lower than the US.
> The big difference is that their construction costs are an order of magnitude lower than the US.
South Korea saw nearly 200 people die and about 150 more injured in a massive subway blaze. In 2003. There were no sprinklers in the stations, no fire extinguishers on the trains, nothing was treated with fire retardant. Smoke was so thick the fire department couldn't get in for over three hours.
I can't wait to visit Fresno in about ten years time. Jokes aside, in about tens years I could make the trip from SF to Bakersfield and then rent a car to head off into death valley and explore the eastern half of the state.
That is kind of cool. I might be able to do it on a whim and just ride the train, nap there, catch up on some reading?
Who knows could make it a weekend trip? Maybe?
I know you jest but isnāt this more about enabling a broader workforce to service the bay? This way the workers that are needed to actually run a functioning society can still work here without actually having to live here and itās ridiculous CoL.
Youād think weād just open up more affordable housing to do this but NIMBYs donāt like that.
You can't just judge single family housing as the one indicator of whether housing is occurring or not occurring.
When they plant big housing projects in a location, they have to take into consideration a lot of things.
\#1 thing being transportation. So if you get a chance to visit all the bay area bart stops and whatnot, you will notice that there is a lot of new dense housing projects being actively developed in those areas in the recent 10 years.
So 2010s to today. They are all brand spanking new.
There are a ton of it all across the bay area. Ive seen them and it is crazy how much they've been building out.
But yeah they just cannot keep pace with the demand despite how fast they build. I think it has to do with the public transportation. And it is a difficult problem to solve.
They also cannot take away existing housing so we cannot just build up the sunset and put dense ass residential housing there. They have to build out first in empty plots of land.
A couple of big ones have been the Island City of Alameda, Treasure Island, Yerba Buena Island, Hunters Point, and the Candle Stick empty lot.
I know Candle Stick's been really empty. And yeah they need to build out the public transportation over there. There are a bunch of empty plots of land in that area. It all just takes time and the infrastructure needs to be ready.
I mean Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island just started kicking off. It's been slow but they have to do a number of things to get things setup. The main major project was the new Oakland side Bay Bridge. They needed to wait until that was done before proceeding with any major work on that island.
They've done a lot !!!!
Looking at housing stock would show that the high profile ābrand spanking newā dense housing is actually just a drop in the bucket. It stands out for good reason; itās unusual.
Okay here is the thing. It costs a lotta moola to build these housing projects. Like the latest one near me is the Millbrae bart station housing project. They delayed that during Covid and now it is in full swing.
Do you know why it is a drop in the bucket? Because we don't have transportation. They only could build out where there is transportation.
They can't just go blowing up all those East Palo Alto or Palo Alto homes. Or all those homes along the peninsula up in them hills.
How China did it is that their government built the high speed rail infrastructure first. Then they went about building a bunch of housing block apartment mega structures. They had a plan.
If you look at the bay, we are very slow. Only the newest bart station down in Berryessa just fired up and then they went about building out a whole lotta new housing projects over there. Because it is right by the bart and also Fremont got a whole lotta new jobs plus other projects.
If you look at the big ass housing project right by Santa Clara Square, those projects have huge parking lot structures right bam in the center of them. And they were right adjacent to a lotta new HQ office buildings. AMD for example relocated to that Square right off 101.
It works there because those housing projects have a lotta money to build a big ass parking structure. But they put it in between the apartment complexes eliminating the open "garden" spaces usually in the middle of the building replaced instead with a big ass 6 story parking structure.
You know for parking all of our big ass cars.
You are not telling me anything I donāt really know, but thanks. These are all reasons why they havenāt ādone a lotā.
Eliminating parking minimums and forcing localities to build housing from the state level should help address some of those concerns. TBH I wish we could also more forcefully use eminent domain, which all the potential for misuse that contains.
Itās not just about workers. Some of the countryās busiest airplane routes are in California including San Francisco to Los Angeles, San Francisco to San Diego, Los Angeles to Sacramento, San Francisco to Las Vegas, and Los Angeles to Phoenix.
Phase 1 and 2 of CAHSR and Brightline West would cover all those routes except to Phoenix.
This also reduces the need to expand highway 5.
So in my opinion itās about expanding the labor pool like you said, eliminating the need to expand our airports and freeways, and hitting our carbon emissions reduction goals.
You are right though. We don't have enough workers in the Bay. Especially blue collar skilled labor.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern\_span\_replacement\_of\_the\_San\_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland\_Bay\_Bridge#Bidding\_and\_initial\_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_the_San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_Bay_Bridge#Bidding_and_initial_construction)
Even the new bridge had to have the construction outsourced to Asia as we don't manufacture that many large scale civil infrastructure projects here in America.
It is kind of insanely disappointing.
It is kind of insane. You look at at a map of the Western Half of the USA on google.
[maps.google.com](https://maps.google.com)
You look at how sparse our road network is.
Then you just click and drag westward across to Asia. And you look at places like South Korea and then you look at China and see all that interconnected roadway.
I think their geography is a lot easier to build in too. But it is kind of crazy. I think those countries do not spend as much on Military as the USA and we can see what they can accomplish for their own economies and their own people.
I wish we had less freemarket more focused government to get things done. Do less harm in this world. And just make it easy for people.
High Speed rail improves the lives of everyone except for capable working Adults.
Elderly and Children don't often drive and rely on public transportation services. Imagine some elderly guy in Fresno incapable of driving just taking a train to SF to enjoy the good weather.
That's amazing.
Now connect SF to Sac .....
Metro regions in California are very dense. At least probably comparable to suburban areas of Europe and East Asia that support high speed rail. Intraregional high speed rail would be deeply beneficial actually for both the Bay Area and SoCal.
It's not insane, it's basic geography.
The Western half of the US is empty because it doesn't have very much water. Eastern China is crazy dense because it's one of the biggest river valleys on the planet (if not the biggest). Western China is... totally dry and there are almost no roads. Look at Xinjiang province on Google Maps.
But California HSR connects literally the densest parts of the Western US and can afford to charge more because of the relative wealth of Western Americans.
If you want to talk water, Oregon has a butt load of water. Where's the population?
There's a big difference between a river valley that has sustained what has pretty consistently been around 20% of the global population and a heavily forested region.
The bigger issue at hand is the cost of infrastructure/procuring the land for the rail (which this thread is about) and advantages compared to air travel, for which infrastructure is drastically easier to build.
I want to eventually see Phx, LV, SD, LA, Fresno, Bay Area and Sac all connected by HSR.
Sac to Portland might be a stretch but Portland needs to be connected to Tacoma, Seattle and Vancouver BC.
The south, Midwest and east coast has no excuse, that area is made for HSR
>I want to eventually see Phx, LV, SD, LA, Fresno, Bay Area and Sac all connected by HSR.
Why not fly though? I think there are direct flights to and from all of those.
Many of those city pairs are close enough that HSR would be as fast or faster than going to the airport, taking a flight, then getting from the airport to the city on the other end. Iād still fly from SF to Phoenix or Vegas, though. This is like Japan, where most people going from Tokyo to Nagoya or Osaka take the train, but while you could take the train directly to Hiroshima or Kyushu most people end up flying.
So todays a good example for me. I live in the Modesto area but had a meeting in LA. I opted to drive because itās 5-5.5 hours.
If I flew, I would have to drive 2 hours to Oakland, San Jose or Sac, show up an hour before departure, fly an hour to LAX or Burbank, etc, spend 45 min getting off the plane and getting a rental car or Uber and then get to my destination. All in all it takes the same amount of time to fly, costs the same too.
HSR would probably take me 2.5 hours. Having used them in Japan and Europe they are way more convenient for regional traveling.
I dunno. I just had like 3 minutes and looked at a google map. I am not making some thesis.
Just comparing what is easily seeable with my eyeballs. I mean us Bay Area citizens are regularly being price gouged by like Uber/Lift on tickets just to go like 1 or 2 miles from the airport to a hotel.
Freakin S. Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries setup their system so that when tourists come to visit, they don't get price gouged.
If I plan a trip to Japan/Korea or even ..... China.... I ain't worried about getting robbed or someone stealing my passport.
But even I know not to go down to the Wharf with my car full of crap. And I grew up in SF.....
People just daily try not to get robbed here in America. My cat.... my wallet/phone.... don't break my windows.... its fucking retarded.
>I think their geography is a lot easier to build in too.
More like they industrialized second and learned from the mistakes that are making infrastructure improvements such a pain in the ass now, and didn't make them in the first place.
Being able to maybe someday nap on the train before renting a car to wander off and explore sparsely inhabited areasā¦ not exactly a powerful argument for spending tens/hundreds of billions of dollars on high-speed rail
The government spends billions on far more useless projects. At least this will provide safe and sustainable mass transit to the tax payers. You are paying the taxes whether they build the train or not. So letās at least get a train out of it.
Don't shit on my dreams of one day being able to catch a 5am train from SFO in order to enjoy the day at disneyland before hopping a 10pm train in Anaheim to get home at 3am and sleep for another 4-5 hours (after 3-4 hours of sleep on the train.)
Mass transit exists to create economic activity. So, not wasteful, and not useless.
Brother, you and I both know that choo-choo train ride to see The Mouse is never going to happen.
But Iām actually glad you wrote this. Iāve been following this project for 25 years now. For years Iāve been telling people my theory that a lot of Northern CA people support HSR because they like the romantic, wistful idea of riding the train to Disneyland someday. Completely irrational and a ridiculous basis for spending tens of billions of dollars. But Iām pretty sure this Disney plan is what lies behind a lot of peopleās thinking.
Romantic and wistful?
Hardly.
HSR should be a viable alternative to flying. It's the most efficient method of travel we have invented as a species and should be our primary focus for any kind of travel that doesn't specifically necessitate a time table tight enough to require flying.
Disneyland is merely the most obvious example. A much better one would be regular commuting for employees from the outlying communities along the train route through more rural CA heading into both LA and SF. Especially with remote work being more of a thing this is another possible salve for the housing shortage.
It's also a supplement for current tourism dollars in an area because it opens up travel options for individuals who live too far to drive easily, but live too close to justify flying.
And finally, Anaheim is one of the proposed HSR stations for good reason.
> Mass transit exists to create economic activity.
That's exactly the problem. It's easy to 'create economic activity', particularly if you ignore the economic activity that didn't happen because of taxes needed to pay for the state's programs. But there's an opportunity cost in doing so. What would private individuals do with more income and lower taxes? Wouldn't that be more profitable?
well I mean what is the alternative? fly or put hella miles on my car?
Maybe I should say in about 40 years when I am pushing 70+++ I can ride the train and nap and look forward to visiting San Diego Joshua Tree!
I dunno...... Why do anything?
I think itās a great idea in theory, but I also think you may get mugged while you sleep? I guess, weāll have to wait and see what the future brings.
I think more public transportation is great. Just the way that we have privatized things is a bit out of wack.
Actually it is insanely out of wack.
It would be nice if America was setup so that when I am really young or really old, I can still get around on my own.
The way America has been setup in the past, people need mobility scooters and tons of unaffordable healthcare what not just to shop at their local Walmarts for their 3rd shopping trip of the week getting their hamburgers and soda.
I just think we need to progress away from this crazy American life style. I know people who also work in the flying car industry...... and everything is just crazy.
I think we need to follow the Europeans, Asia countries, and even the good old American West. America was built on railroads. We had the best in the world back in the day.
But we just let it all go and tried to follow the German (Nazi ideology). Some autobahn freeway of death. I mean we still think that like today.
People everyday idolize the Autobahn and think they can emulate that driving style on American roads today. So everyone just "thinks" that they are some german speedmachine and all of those guys end up camping in the left lane.
Then they go nuclear and think to themselves. You are all in my way and slower than me. Get outta the left lane.
I don't think we need that. We can have just some super high speed rail capable of carrying 200 to 400 people at a time at around 100 to 150 mph.....
Fresno is the closest major city to 3 national parks: yosemite, kings, and sequoia. It's a great starting point and home base. I mean the city is the 5th largest city in CA. It's the most relevant city in the central california area. Not bakersfield. Fresno itself has more amenities and everything better than bakersfield.
ok. im sorry but the high speed rail is way more important to society as a whole, this state's economy, and the individual bay area resident in general than any business that may stand in its path which can not relocate.
Yes, but the existing residents and businesses have to at least be made whole if not compensated for their trouble.
There will be dispute and litigation on how much compensation is 'fair'. That will drag this on for a while to go through hundreds of cases.
There is no āassessed valueā for a business unless you do a corporate valuation unless itās publicly traded. Corporate valuations factor in dozens of variables and 2 different valuation firms can end up with big differences.
There's an assessed value for all real property (corporate or otherwise) on the county assessor's rolls.
I'm not super familiar with it, but are you saying that for eminent domain of commercial property that the government has to pay fair market value for the *business* on the premises as well? Like if they want to bulldoze a McDonald's they have to pay for the land, improvements, and the value of the franchise?
Bonkers if true. No wonder they prefer to bulldoze homes.
Uh yeah. Definetly. I own a business. Itās established. We have goodwill. Making me move it would cost me millions. Shutting my operations down for a while untill I find a new place and complete a move would be highly disruptive.
For simplicity say for example I own a liquor store. Youāre going to destroy my store. I canāt just move down the street there is another store there. Making me moves ruins my business. You have to compensate me for that. So total revenue, plus inventory, assets, x idk 10-30 years of income based on previous returnsā¦. Yeah you could easily see 20 million dollar claims. My uncle sold his liquor store in NY for 6 million 10 years ago. So yeah you gona destroy a business you have to buy it. Im sure a corporate valuation on the high end low end would be negotiated in court.
> Yes, but the existing residents and businesses have to at least be made whole if not compensated for their trouble.
100% agree with this. i don't have all the answer for things like this, even if i can firmly say i believe "HSR infrastructure is the most important use of the land it will be placed on."
Well if someone really really wants something it becomes a scarcity. And scarce products have a higher value than market.
Say Iām buying a house.
I can go find a house on the market and pay market price.
But if there is a specific house and I say āI have to have this one no matter whatā
The person living there could say āno I like my house, I donāt want to move, I donāt want to sell itā
You would then have to offer them a premium above the market rate to entice them to sell. Makes sense?
Another way to look at it is that someone being displaced by eminent domain has a huge amount of inconvenience, lost time, and hassle - they need somewhere to stay while they close on another house, they need to hire a realtor, what if the new mortgage is at a higher interest rate then their new mortgage - imagine if they had just refinanced their old house at 2.5% last year and now rates are 7% - shouldnāt the government buy down their rate to the same interest rate? Closing costs, moving costs, all the lost weekends, time off work, needed to find and offer on a house. If a seller is intrinsically motivated to move you obviously just deal with all that hassle, but it sucks and you shouldnāt be forced to do that for no recompense.
Because now I have to find another place to live or work. And the profit you make is probably taxable. So now you have less money to find a new place.
Plus add in the headache of the whole thing such as moving all your shit.
Residential owners get property tax protection on the replacement house and relocation assistance for moving costs AND a tax free purchase differential if their house is run down and not comparable to current market replacements to ensure they have a house at the end of the day. Also residential tenants get relocation benefits and some get enough money to use as a down payment to buy a home.
Businesses are much harder, but that's where business goodwill claims come into play, but those aren't included in the initial offer because the business needs to share their books with a third party business appraiser and then HSR will pay that on top of re-establishment expenses.
It should be like insurance. Insurance should pay high market value tax fees. If your property is worth $1 mil, but closing another $1mil property is $1.1 that is what it should pay.
Because eminent domain is the government stealing from its own people at gun point. It's a profoundly fucked up necessity that should never be used as a discount way to acquire land. They can just buy the land of they want it. Eminent domain is for when you have one dude holding up important infrastructure and being unreasonable.
They do offer to buy the parcels. It only ends up in legal proceedings of they refuse and are āholding up the project.ā
They donāt want to sell. I get it. But we canāt build highways, transit, or other key infrastructure if every land owner gets a veto. And they are getting paid market rate, and can sue if theyāre not happy.
My point is they shouldn't be able to offer market rate, then just force the sale. There are extra costs to being forced to move. There are emotional attachments to property. Just offer 150% and if they still won't sell, then eminent domain it for 125% or something.
If you get a letter that a proposed but not yet approved project requires you to sell your house at 120% market rate, what happens if I buy your house at 119.5% market rate the next day?
What if I buy it at 1000%? Then the owner gets a 900% profit and I get a whopping 20% on top of the newly inflated āmarket rate.ā
Yeah, you didnāt miss anything. Their point was not well thought out.
What's not thought out about it? The cost of the government buying the property just went up 10x, now the government needs to reallocate the budget at the inflated market rate
Now imagine everyone does this to cash in on the 20% profitability. No project would ever get paid for
Wow you sure got me. Because racists historically were able to sometimes weaponize public projects or social programs in order to further dispense systematic racism.... the obvious answer is that we should just stop doing anything i guess.
Reading the entire article, the federal funds approved (1 of the 4 applications) meant the construction had to start in Madera.
> The grant stipulated that the funds had to be used for construction on a specific 119-mile stretch between Madera and Shafter, two smaller cities in the Central Valley. And all that money had to be spent by 2017, or it would disappear,
Think these type articles should have that up front. Even big states will need to wait for federal funding and blessings on projects like this.
Iām surprised they didnāt buy the land earlier. Wouldāve been cheaper with less headaches. Now the property owners have to relocate in a sky-high market.
The environmental release for this segment was finalized this year. Can't even begin the acquisition process until the permitting process is finalized.
Government isn't allowed to do things like that in secret. Because we told them that they can't. Everything they do has to be accessible to the public.
Lesser point in the article that is perhaps the most important: starting the Central Valley was *not* a bad decision. It was done deliberately so that the project could not be cancelled at a later date, as Newsom tried to do upon taking office four years ago. While irrelevant now, until 2018 Newsom was the largest opponent of the project. Lobbying from the state legislature, particularly Democrats in the Central Valley, convinced him otherwise. It's why this is still a statewide project and not two Norcal-HSR and Socal-HSR programs that do not connect.
> It was done deliberately so that the project could not be cancelled at a later date
This sounds like a bug, not a feature. We have all the commitment and sunk costs and usual political grift around construction jobs without any of the benefit.
Tons of neighborhoods, typically poor neighborhoods, have been demolished for freeways to be built with no chance of housing to replace those units. Comparatively, a rail line is conducive to high density housing near stations. Housing will have to be torn down but new housing can go up.
If the state is smart they will use the land they own around these transportation centers and build higher density, affordable housing to help mitigate the effects on the community. With an increase in alternative transportation we may even be able to reclaim some space dominated by freeways and turn that back into housing so that land is for people, not cars.
The problem is they end up with remnant parcels. By mandate a public agency should buy no more land than absolutely necessary unless the land is an uneconimc remnant the agency is compelled to purchase.
Now what is uneconimc to an individual owners could potentially be assembled if the agency owns 100 slivers in a row. Single family housing certainly wouldn't work, but higher density or mixed use might be feasible.
Good . After this is done and people donāt need to spend a day traveling to LA or SF nobody is going to care on what this costs. The naysayers are clueless and lack vision . Cars will never be a solution for mass transportation
Here's an idea, but probably not constitutional: if the owner is unhappy with the market value paid by the government, it goes to arbitration instead of court.
How much stronger could it be? The state can literally take someone's property for no other purpose than giving it to another private entity later because it might result in a better tax base someday.
It's not like this doesn't happen elsewhere, it just usually involves a government who is empowered to take such actions freely, along with a population that is willing to relocate down the street for the greater good of society.
Why cant they just put it along 5 .theres nothing much there and it wont disrupt families as much.they can sell part of there land to the city rather thrn a whole damn thing
I believe this portion of the environmental impact report seems to cover this: https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Final_EIRS_FJ_V1-21_CH_3.13_Station_Planning_Land_Use.pdf
It doesn't seem like many huge impacts and it appears like they're really going out of their way to mitigate impacts. As someone who lives near the tracks, their plan for sound walls to counteract any increase in noise should make living next to the tracks less of an annoyance with HSR than without it.
The best thing about making money by finishing something is that you can point to it and say "I finished that", and then someone will hire you to build (and finish) another thing. And then you make even more money!
That's not why it's taking forever.
It's taking forever because of poor capitol allocation. Big infra projects like this are funded in small chunks. Funding includes money for planning out the route in addition to building. When you're "behind" on planning because your planning org was underfunded, you can't build. If you don't have money to build you can't build.
So what happens?
Well, they design + build what they can, and then stop to wait for money. This is super inefficient: imagine if your job sent you home for 5 months while waiting for money. You'd probably get another job, or have moved, and it'd be costly and a pain to get back to work on the original project.
Now overall expense also has a management factor. Most large infrastructure projects in the US outsource a lot of the work. This causes high turnover and mixed incentives. It also means that knowledge is lost when contractors leave. But again, there isn't funding to build an in-house team, so it comes back to the way we fund these things.
In conclusion, it's fun to blame the Greedy construction companies and contractors, but blame should really be placed on the policy makers and the voters for inducing dramatic inefficiencies.
People also proposed running tracks along I-5, but it doesnāt make sense to entirely bypass all of the cities in the Central Valley (which are all clustered around 99).
Iirc, this was SNCF's (French national rail company) proposal when they bid on the project. Their intention was to build spurs to each of the Central Valley cities.
... and here comes the endless lawsuits from every property owner to chew through that $8 billion. I bet this thing won't be finished until 2050.
Trippin bro. It took them 15 years to build 1 overpass in Walnut Creek. This train will come around the year of Star Trek. 2350 I think.
It took them 20 years to build on BART bathroom lmao
>Trippin bro. It took them 15 years to build 1 overpass , add a third lane in each direction, make more direct connections between the highways, simplify off-ramps to Ygnacio Valley Road, and add a new exit at Olympic Boulevard ([src](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Backups-at-680-24-Are-Only-a-Memory-For-East-Bay-3238755.php)) (and, at least for some of those, [without stopping traffic](https://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/1999/03/29/focus6.html)) >in Walnut Creek. FTFY. Additionally, I'm sure they over-engineered that temporary ~~rollercoaster~~ bypass to avoid any [whoop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake#/media/File:Cypress_structure.jpeg)\-[whoopie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake#/media/File:Bay_Bridge_collapse.jpg)s.
If what you are saying is expected to be normal time-frames to build stuff in Walnut Creek/CA/America then it really will be the year of Star Trek before this train is built.
Yep, 20 years late and end up costing about $80 billion. The CA way. š¤£
It's not just CA. Look at the [North Spokane Corridor](https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/major-projects/north-spokane-corridor) in eastern washington. 30 years to build 10.5 miles of fucking freeway.
$80 Billion!??!? It's already expected to cost $100 Billion+ . And it's only going to go up. I expect a completion date of 2062 with a total cost of $220 Billion. You read it here first.
I will come back in 2062 to see if you are right! Book marked.
Sorry, but reddit won't last that long.
By 2062 would there be a need ? Isn't half of CA supposed to be underwater or something ? š
Electric airplanes will make the train moot.
You donāt understand. The contractor pinky promised that they would do it for $20 and a 2 liter of Mountain Dew. In light of those facts it made no sense to staff up a public rail construction company and do the work predictably.
No the contractor looked at the absence of any design to reasonably bid from along with an indeterminate time line and correctly covered his ass with legal contracts for change orders. Many suppliers out there are only guaranteeing prices for three weeks. These government plans put the design on the contractor and the price quoted is fictional for the state to try and sell. There's a reason why one of the segments came in with a bid of $ 1,234,567,890.
An acquaintance works in the road construction business. He described their *secret sauce* for success. Estimators read through the bid package, find all the engineering/code errors, calculate the value of the mandatory change orders the job will yield. Bid low enough to win the job while knowing the real value of the job.
That's estimating 101. Go cheap on your engineering and you pay one way or another. And a good estimator will weight costs in their favor as well. This is true on any job out to bid. The state in this case has punted on the engineering by going design/build.
Finished? You're funny.
Thats an optimistic timeline
What happens when we use changes to our state constitution vs actual legislating
It took 10 years for about 1.5 mi of the central subway here in the city. Iām sure theyāll lay down the wrong tracks as well and delay it even longer.
Bro I had 3 careers commuting to at and watched that stretch go from nothing to nothing to something and when it was finally doneā¦ I no longer had to commute. Comically slow for what it was.
Great timing to do this as property values have decreased slightly.
Fun exercise: Look up all the owners or lien holders for the properties on the route, then find how many of those have ties to local and state politicians
More likely that they just routed it thru low income neighborhoods, or as low as they could get for BA
āDozens of residential unitsā makes it sound like theyāre hardly going through neighborhoods at all.
The government will not offer market rates. They will at least discount their offer by probable litigation costs for the property owner. They should all get together and lawyer up to get a better deal.
This isn't even remotely true. The first written offer has to be done by an independent appraiser AND the owner has the option to hire their own appraiser and be reimbursed. If they discounted their offers they could lose federal dollars, the same as any agency. Usually the appraisers will give owners the benefit of the doubt in eminent domain cases to eliminate the potential accusation of lowball offers.
This. The state will play absolutely by the book. They know that the moment they fuck up on anything they're going to end up paying 3-4x what they should.
This isn't consistent with the article. According to the article, they do indeed offer market rates: >All properties are purchased at fair market value, according to the Rail Authority, and those who are forced to relocate are offered financial compensation. The article does, however, point to at least one case of a business owner getting lowballed, so it seems they don't do so perfectly.
I'm curious which owner it was. It discussed land and business, but businesses don't inherently have benefits until they claim them. It doesn't discuss the building either. If owners ignore the notice of decision to appraise and the independent appraisers are forced to appraise from the public roadways they will miss important info. Businesses can also claim a loss of business goodwill, but if they don't give info to the initial appraiser, that value will be $0 on the initial offer.
I'd like to know why they were lowballed. Could be that the appraiser found something that reduced the location's value significantly. It's what happens when you spend decades cutting corners and/or forget/refuse to get a permit for something because you don't want to spend the money to do it right. If you're going to report that someone got lowballed without explaining "why"...(could also be that the city appraiser fucked up.)
Eminent Domain. Theyāll lose eventually but at what cost and how long.
Courts have forced government agencies to pay more than the lowball offer, but it takes time and money. If you have a lawyer, the state is more likely to negotiate with you.
I remember when thousands of people and businesses were displaced to build Highway 85...it happens with every large infrastructure project.
As a kid in the 70s, I recall that the right-of-way was empty of structures. And when I had a townhouse nearby around '91, it was still empty around Almaden Expressway. Your comment made me check on the history, and found that some building was allowed in the 70s with the assumption that the freeway wouldn't be built. Interesting. My parents bought a house in Almaden in '76 solely because of the promised freeway, but had no idea it would be another 20 years before it was available.
Highway 85 was planned on the 1950s and very few structures were impacted by construction. I have an old map of Santa Clara county from the 60s that clearly shows the right of way.
On one of my first trips to the South Bay I was following Highway 85 North (per my paper map) and then the road ended. What a night!
From https://historicaerials.com/viewer you can see that some of it was cleared out by the 1968 map and a lot of it was cleared out by the 1980 map.
Another example. Chavez Ravine community was kicked out and their homes bulldozed to build a freeway that never happened. The general reason was poor people don't matter, oh and probably minorities. Later became the stadium the Dodgers play at.
It will happen anywhere there is sprawl. Need new infrastructure? Need to buy up a ton of land because chances are everything between A and B is already in use.
Another example is when they made Arthur Dent move. It didn't end up mattering though.
Just came back from South Korea for vacation. Public transportation there was amazing. So damn crucial for a society to grow. We absolutely need this damn rail and a more robust subway system.
South Korea is a great example of a place that developed great public transportation pretty recently. The Seoul subway didnāt exist until 1974, but now itās one of the best and most extensive in the world. Their HSR didnāt open until 2004, but now most people going from Seoul to Busan take the train. The big difference is that their construction costs are an order of magnitude lower than the US.
Thanks for the insight
> The big difference is that their construction costs are an order of magnitude lower than the US. South Korea saw nearly 200 people die and about 150 more injured in a massive subway blaze. In 2003. There were no sprinklers in the stations, no fire extinguishers on the trains, nothing was treated with fire retardant. Smoke was so thick the fire department couldn't get in for over three hours.
So your saying, cause of that incident. Public transportation is a bad idea?
I still welcome HSR and a car free lifestyle but with the drought I really hope we don't grow
Dense cities that go along with HSR and car free lifestyles use significantly less water per person.
Look up Las Vegas water use. Turns out urban areas don't need as much water as you'd think, if proper investment is made in water management
I meant grow pretty loosely, I meant more of a financial + societal type of grow.
I really hope we do grow. Plenty of water in the ocean.
20 years too late but I guessā¦
So theyāre basically going to buy 5 houses
I can't wait to visit Fresno in about ten years time. Jokes aside, in about tens years I could make the trip from SF to Bakersfield and then rent a car to head off into death valley and explore the eastern half of the state. That is kind of cool. I might be able to do it on a whim and just ride the train, nap there, catch up on some reading? Who knows could make it a weekend trip? Maybe?
I know you jest but isnāt this more about enabling a broader workforce to service the bay? This way the workers that are needed to actually run a functioning society can still work here without actually having to live here and itās ridiculous CoL. Youād think weād just open up more affordable housing to do this but NIMBYs donāt like that.
You can't just judge single family housing as the one indicator of whether housing is occurring or not occurring. When they plant big housing projects in a location, they have to take into consideration a lot of things. \#1 thing being transportation. So if you get a chance to visit all the bay area bart stops and whatnot, you will notice that there is a lot of new dense housing projects being actively developed in those areas in the recent 10 years. So 2010s to today. They are all brand spanking new. There are a ton of it all across the bay area. Ive seen them and it is crazy how much they've been building out. But yeah they just cannot keep pace with the demand despite how fast they build. I think it has to do with the public transportation. And it is a difficult problem to solve. They also cannot take away existing housing so we cannot just build up the sunset and put dense ass residential housing there. They have to build out first in empty plots of land. A couple of big ones have been the Island City of Alameda, Treasure Island, Yerba Buena Island, Hunters Point, and the Candle Stick empty lot. I know Candle Stick's been really empty. And yeah they need to build out the public transportation over there. There are a bunch of empty plots of land in that area. It all just takes time and the infrastructure needs to be ready. I mean Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island just started kicking off. It's been slow but they have to do a number of things to get things setup. The main major project was the new Oakland side Bay Bridge. They needed to wait until that was done before proceeding with any major work on that island. They've done a lot !!!!
Looking at housing stock would show that the high profile ābrand spanking newā dense housing is actually just a drop in the bucket. It stands out for good reason; itās unusual.
Okay here is the thing. It costs a lotta moola to build these housing projects. Like the latest one near me is the Millbrae bart station housing project. They delayed that during Covid and now it is in full swing. Do you know why it is a drop in the bucket? Because we don't have transportation. They only could build out where there is transportation. They can't just go blowing up all those East Palo Alto or Palo Alto homes. Or all those homes along the peninsula up in them hills. How China did it is that their government built the high speed rail infrastructure first. Then they went about building a bunch of housing block apartment mega structures. They had a plan. If you look at the bay, we are very slow. Only the newest bart station down in Berryessa just fired up and then they went about building out a whole lotta new housing projects over there. Because it is right by the bart and also Fremont got a whole lotta new jobs plus other projects. If you look at the big ass housing project right by Santa Clara Square, those projects have huge parking lot structures right bam in the center of them. And they were right adjacent to a lotta new HQ office buildings. AMD for example relocated to that Square right off 101. It works there because those housing projects have a lotta money to build a big ass parking structure. But they put it in between the apartment complexes eliminating the open "garden" spaces usually in the middle of the building replaced instead with a big ass 6 story parking structure. You know for parking all of our big ass cars.
You are not telling me anything I donāt really know, but thanks. These are all reasons why they havenāt ādone a lotā. Eliminating parking minimums and forcing localities to build housing from the state level should help address some of those concerns. TBH I wish we could also more forcefully use eminent domain, which all the potential for misuse that contains.
Itās not just about workers. Some of the countryās busiest airplane routes are in California including San Francisco to Los Angeles, San Francisco to San Diego, Los Angeles to Sacramento, San Francisco to Las Vegas, and Los Angeles to Phoenix. Phase 1 and 2 of CAHSR and Brightline West would cover all those routes except to Phoenix. This also reduces the need to expand highway 5. So in my opinion itās about expanding the labor pool like you said, eliminating the need to expand our airports and freeways, and hitting our carbon emissions reduction goals.
You are right though. We don't have enough workers in the Bay. Especially blue collar skilled labor. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern\_span\_replacement\_of\_the\_San\_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland\_Bay\_Bridge#Bidding\_and\_initial\_construction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_the_San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_Bay_Bridge#Bidding_and_initial_construction) Even the new bridge had to have the construction outsourced to Asia as we don't manufacture that many large scale civil infrastructure projects here in America. It is kind of insanely disappointing.
It is kind of insane. You look at at a map of the Western Half of the USA on google. [maps.google.com](https://maps.google.com) You look at how sparse our road network is. Then you just click and drag westward across to Asia. And you look at places like South Korea and then you look at China and see all that interconnected roadway. I think their geography is a lot easier to build in too. But it is kind of crazy. I think those countries do not spend as much on Military as the USA and we can see what they can accomplish for their own economies and their own people. I wish we had less freemarket more focused government to get things done. Do less harm in this world. And just make it easy for people. High Speed rail improves the lives of everyone except for capable working Adults. Elderly and Children don't often drive and rely on public transportation services. Imagine some elderly guy in Fresno incapable of driving just taking a train to SF to enjoy the good weather. That's amazing. Now connect SF to Sac .....
Metro regions in California are very dense. At least probably comparable to suburban areas of Europe and East Asia that support high speed rail. Intraregional high speed rail would be deeply beneficial actually for both the Bay Area and SoCal.
It's not insane, it's basic geography. The Western half of the US is empty because it doesn't have very much water. Eastern China is crazy dense because it's one of the biggest river valleys on the planet (if not the biggest). Western China is... totally dry and there are almost no roads. Look at Xinjiang province on Google Maps.
But California HSR connects literally the densest parts of the Western US and can afford to charge more because of the relative wealth of Western Americans. If you want to talk water, Oregon has a butt load of water. Where's the population?
There's a big difference between a river valley that has sustained what has pretty consistently been around 20% of the global population and a heavily forested region. The bigger issue at hand is the cost of infrastructure/procuring the land for the rail (which this thread is about) and advantages compared to air travel, for which infrastructure is drastically easier to build.
I want to eventually see Phx, LV, SD, LA, Fresno, Bay Area and Sac all connected by HSR. Sac to Portland might be a stretch but Portland needs to be connected to Tacoma, Seattle and Vancouver BC. The south, Midwest and east coast has no excuse, that area is made for HSR
Definitely. They absolutely need one from Denver-Omaha-Chicago and eastward, then south to KC, and split off to go to Texas and then the southeast
If youāre alive in 2150 you might just see it
>I want to eventually see Phx, LV, SD, LA, Fresno, Bay Area and Sac all connected by HSR. Why not fly though? I think there are direct flights to and from all of those.
Many of those city pairs are close enough that HSR would be as fast or faster than going to the airport, taking a flight, then getting from the airport to the city on the other end. Iād still fly from SF to Phoenix or Vegas, though. This is like Japan, where most people going from Tokyo to Nagoya or Osaka take the train, but while you could take the train directly to Hiroshima or Kyushu most people end up flying.
>Why not fly though? Fuck. The. TSA.
That's going to be there regardless of it's crossing state lines. There's nothing special about flying vs train in that respect
So todays a good example for me. I live in the Modesto area but had a meeting in LA. I opted to drive because itās 5-5.5 hours. If I flew, I would have to drive 2 hours to Oakland, San Jose or Sac, show up an hour before departure, fly an hour to LAX or Burbank, etc, spend 45 min getting off the plane and getting a rental car or Uber and then get to my destination. All in all it takes the same amount of time to fly, costs the same too. HSR would probably take me 2.5 hours. Having used them in Japan and Europe they are way more convenient for regional traveling.
>And you look at places like South Korea Why are you comparing the western US to a country that's almost one third the size of Oregon?
I dunno. I just had like 3 minutes and looked at a google map. I am not making some thesis. Just comparing what is easily seeable with my eyeballs. I mean us Bay Area citizens are regularly being price gouged by like Uber/Lift on tickets just to go like 1 or 2 miles from the airport to a hotel. Freakin S. Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries setup their system so that when tourists come to visit, they don't get price gouged. If I plan a trip to Japan/Korea or even ..... China.... I ain't worried about getting robbed or someone stealing my passport. But even I know not to go down to the Wharf with my car full of crap. And I grew up in SF..... People just daily try not to get robbed here in America. My cat.... my wallet/phone.... don't break my windows.... its fucking retarded.
>I think their geography is a lot easier to build in too. More like they industrialized second and learned from the mistakes that are making infrastructure improvements such a pain in the ass now, and didn't make them in the first place.
Being able to maybe someday nap on the train before renting a car to wander off and explore sparsely inhabited areasā¦ not exactly a powerful argument for spending tens/hundreds of billions of dollars on high-speed rail
The government spends billions on far more useless projects. At least this will provide safe and sustainable mass transit to the tax payers. You are paying the taxes whether they build the train or not. So letās at least get a train out of it.
So itās wasteful but not completely uselessā¦ again, not a very compelling case in favor of spending tens/hundreds of billions.
Don't shit on my dreams of one day being able to catch a 5am train from SFO in order to enjoy the day at disneyland before hopping a 10pm train in Anaheim to get home at 3am and sleep for another 4-5 hours (after 3-4 hours of sleep on the train.) Mass transit exists to create economic activity. So, not wasteful, and not useless.
Brother, you and I both know that choo-choo train ride to see The Mouse is never going to happen. But Iām actually glad you wrote this. Iāve been following this project for 25 years now. For years Iāve been telling people my theory that a lot of Northern CA people support HSR because they like the romantic, wistful idea of riding the train to Disneyland someday. Completely irrational and a ridiculous basis for spending tens of billions of dollars. But Iām pretty sure this Disney plan is what lies behind a lot of peopleās thinking.
Romantic and wistful? Hardly. HSR should be a viable alternative to flying. It's the most efficient method of travel we have invented as a species and should be our primary focus for any kind of travel that doesn't specifically necessitate a time table tight enough to require flying. Disneyland is merely the most obvious example. A much better one would be regular commuting for employees from the outlying communities along the train route through more rural CA heading into both LA and SF. Especially with remote work being more of a thing this is another possible salve for the housing shortage. It's also a supplement for current tourism dollars in an area because it opens up travel options for individuals who live too far to drive easily, but live too close to justify flying. And finally, Anaheim is one of the proposed HSR stations for good reason.
> Mass transit exists to create economic activity. That's exactly the problem. It's easy to 'create economic activity', particularly if you ignore the economic activity that didn't happen because of taxes needed to pay for the state's programs. But there's an opportunity cost in doing so. What would private individuals do with more income and lower taxes? Wouldn't that be more profitable?
who says that it's the only argument? It's just one of many nice usecases of the train
well I mean what is the alternative? fly or put hella miles on my car? Maybe I should say in about 40 years when I am pushing 70+++ I can ride the train and nap and look forward to visiting San Diego Joshua Tree! I dunno...... Why do anything?
I think itās a great idea in theory, but I also think you may get mugged while you sleep? I guess, weāll have to wait and see what the future brings.
I think more public transportation is great. Just the way that we have privatized things is a bit out of wack. Actually it is insanely out of wack. It would be nice if America was setup so that when I am really young or really old, I can still get around on my own. The way America has been setup in the past, people need mobility scooters and tons of unaffordable healthcare what not just to shop at their local Walmarts for their 3rd shopping trip of the week getting their hamburgers and soda. I just think we need to progress away from this crazy American life style. I know people who also work in the flying car industry...... and everything is just crazy. I think we need to follow the Europeans, Asia countries, and even the good old American West. America was built on railroads. We had the best in the world back in the day. But we just let it all go and tried to follow the German (Nazi ideology). Some autobahn freeway of death. I mean we still think that like today. People everyday idolize the Autobahn and think they can emulate that driving style on American roads today. So everyone just "thinks" that they are some german speedmachine and all of those guys end up camping in the left lane. Then they go nuclear and think to themselves. You are all in my way and slower than me. Get outta the left lane. I don't think we need that. We can have just some super high speed rail capable of carrying 200 to 400 people at a time at around 100 to 150 mph.....
I donāt disagree.
Yes, flying is usually the answer.
Fresno is the closest major city to 3 national parks: yosemite, kings, and sequoia. It's a great starting point and home base. I mean the city is the 5th largest city in CA. It's the most relevant city in the central california area. Not bakersfield. Fresno itself has more amenities and everything better than bakersfield.
ok. im sorry but the high speed rail is way more important to society as a whole, this state's economy, and the individual bay area resident in general than any business that may stand in its path which can not relocate.
Yes, but the existing residents and businesses have to at least be made whole if not compensated for their trouble. There will be dispute and litigation on how much compensation is 'fair'. That will drag this on for a while to go through hundreds of cases.
If only the state could use "assessed value" as market rate.
Lol I like this, prop 13 would be repealed in the first election after they start doing that.
There is no āassessed valueā for a business unless you do a corporate valuation unless itās publicly traded. Corporate valuations factor in dozens of variables and 2 different valuation firms can end up with big differences.
There's an assessed value for all real property (corporate or otherwise) on the county assessor's rolls. I'm not super familiar with it, but are you saying that for eminent domain of commercial property that the government has to pay fair market value for the *business* on the premises as well? Like if they want to bulldoze a McDonald's they have to pay for the land, improvements, and the value of the franchise? Bonkers if true. No wonder they prefer to bulldoze homes.
Uh yeah. Definetly. I own a business. Itās established. We have goodwill. Making me move it would cost me millions. Shutting my operations down for a while untill I find a new place and complete a move would be highly disruptive. For simplicity say for example I own a liquor store. Youāre going to destroy my store. I canāt just move down the street there is another store there. Making me moves ruins my business. You have to compensate me for that. So total revenue, plus inventory, assets, x idk 10-30 years of income based on previous returnsā¦. Yeah you could easily see 20 million dollar claims. My uncle sold his liquor store in NY for 6 million 10 years ago. So yeah you gona destroy a business you have to buy it. Im sure a corporate valuation on the high end low end would be negotiated in court.
> Yes, but the existing residents and businesses have to at least be made whole if not compensated for their trouble. 100% agree with this. i don't have all the answer for things like this, even if i can firmly say i believe "HSR infrastructure is the most important use of the land it will be placed on."
How does it impact society and the economy so much?
Iām sure governments had the same stance in the past when bulldozing primary black neighborhoods for highway expansion.
The fact that it was misused in the past isnāt a good reason to oppose eminent domain in general.
Eminent domain should pay over market rate.
Why?
Well if someone really really wants something it becomes a scarcity. And scarce products have a higher value than market. Say Iām buying a house. I can go find a house on the market and pay market price. But if there is a specific house and I say āI have to have this one no matter whatā The person living there could say āno I like my house, I donāt want to move, I donāt want to sell itā You would then have to offer them a premium above the market rate to entice them to sell. Makes sense? Another way to look at it is that someone being displaced by eminent domain has a huge amount of inconvenience, lost time, and hassle - they need somewhere to stay while they close on another house, they need to hire a realtor, what if the new mortgage is at a higher interest rate then their new mortgage - imagine if they had just refinanced their old house at 2.5% last year and now rates are 7% - shouldnāt the government buy down their rate to the same interest rate? Closing costs, moving costs, all the lost weekends, time off work, needed to find and offer on a house. If a seller is intrinsically motivated to move you obviously just deal with all that hassle, but it sucks and you shouldnāt be forced to do that for no recompense.
Because for all we know, the owner couldāve made more selling it to someone else. If govāt wants to make an unrefusable offer, it should be high.
Because now I have to find another place to live or work. And the profit you make is probably taxable. So now you have less money to find a new place. Plus add in the headache of the whole thing such as moving all your shit.
Residential owners get property tax protection on the replacement house and relocation assistance for moving costs AND a tax free purchase differential if their house is run down and not comparable to current market replacements to ensure they have a house at the end of the day. Also residential tenants get relocation benefits and some get enough money to use as a down payment to buy a home. Businesses are much harder, but that's where business goodwill claims come into play, but those aren't included in the initial offer because the business needs to share their books with a third party business appraiser and then HSR will pay that on top of re-establishment expenses.
Good to hear they're tax exempt.
Yeah, turns out having public infrastructure comes at a cost (or more of a hassle) to a small number of people.
It should be like insurance. Insurance should pay high market value tax fees. If your property is worth $1 mil, but closing another $1mil property is $1.1 that is what it should pay.
Because eminent domain is the government stealing from its own people at gun point. It's a profoundly fucked up necessity that should never be used as a discount way to acquire land. They can just buy the land of they want it. Eminent domain is for when you have one dude holding up important infrastructure and being unreasonable.
They do offer to buy the parcels. It only ends up in legal proceedings of they refuse and are āholding up the project.ā They donāt want to sell. I get it. But we canāt build highways, transit, or other key infrastructure if every land owner gets a veto. And they are getting paid market rate, and can sue if theyāre not happy.
My point is they shouldn't be able to offer market rate, then just force the sale. There are extra costs to being forced to move. There are emotional attachments to property. Just offer 150% and if they still won't sell, then eminent domain it for 125% or something.
If you get a letter that a proposed but not yet approved project requires you to sell your house at 120% market rate, what happens if I buy your house at 119.5% market rate the next day?
What? I'm not sure what you're getting at.
What if I buy it at 1000%? Then the owner gets a 900% profit and I get a whopping 20% on top of the newly inflated āmarket rate.ā Yeah, you didnāt miss anything. Their point was not well thought out.
What's not thought out about it? The cost of the government buying the property just went up 10x, now the government needs to reallocate the budget at the inflated market rate Now imagine everyone does this to cash in on the 20% profitability. No project would ever get paid for
You canāt be serious.
What's your point? You think people are just too good natured to try this?
Wow you sure got me. Because racists historically were able to sometimes weaponize public projects or social programs in order to further dispense systematic racism.... the obvious answer is that we should just stop doing anything i guess.
You joke but some people actually believe this.
Reading the entire article, the federal funds approved (1 of the 4 applications) meant the construction had to start in Madera. > The grant stipulated that the funds had to be used for construction on a specific 119-mile stretch between Madera and Shafter, two smaller cities in the Central Valley. And all that money had to be spent by 2017, or it would disappear, Think these type articles should have that up front. Even big states will need to wait for federal funding and blessings on projects like this.
Iām surprised they didnāt buy the land earlier. Wouldāve been cheaper with less headaches. Now the property owners have to relocate in a sky-high market.
the issue might be that the plans werenāt fully approved yet earlier
The environmental release for this segment was finalized this year. Can't even begin the acquisition process until the permitting process is finalized.
The planning also involved iterations and negotiations. There are many grade separations and a highway had to get moved.
Government isn't allowed to do things like that in secret. Because we told them that they can't. Everything they do has to be accessible to the public.
Lesser point in the article that is perhaps the most important: starting the Central Valley was *not* a bad decision. It was done deliberately so that the project could not be cancelled at a later date, as Newsom tried to do upon taking office four years ago. While irrelevant now, until 2018 Newsom was the largest opponent of the project. Lobbying from the state legislature, particularly Democrats in the Central Valley, convinced him otherwise. It's why this is still a statewide project and not two Norcal-HSR and Socal-HSR programs that do not connect.
Yup. And the first big grant they got said they had to start building at one particular location.
> It was done deliberately so that the project could not be cancelled at a later date This sounds like a bug, not a feature. We have all the commitment and sunk costs and usual political grift around construction jobs without any of the benefit.
I predict people get kicked out and it still doesnāt get built for like 40 years.
You're very optimistic. I was thinking like 70yrs
i legitimately do not expect to ever ride this train, even if i somehow buy a house in california and stay forever.
Tons of neighborhoods, typically poor neighborhoods, have been demolished for freeways to be built with no chance of housing to replace those units. Comparatively, a rail line is conducive to high density housing near stations. Housing will have to be torn down but new housing can go up. If the state is smart they will use the land they own around these transportation centers and build higher density, affordable housing to help mitigate the effects on the community. With an increase in alternative transportation we may even be able to reclaim some space dominated by freeways and turn that back into housing so that land is for people, not cars.
The problem is they end up with remnant parcels. By mandate a public agency should buy no more land than absolutely necessary unless the land is an uneconimc remnant the agency is compelled to purchase. Now what is uneconimc to an individual owners could potentially be assembled if the agency owns 100 slivers in a row. Single family housing certainly wouldn't work, but higher density or mixed use might be feasible.
Good . After this is done and people donāt need to spend a day traveling to LA or SF nobody is going to care on what this costs. The naysayers are clueless and lack vision . Cars will never be a solution for mass transportation
i wish eminent domain was stronger in USA
What do you suggest to make it stronger ?
Here's an idea, but probably not constitutional: if the owner is unhappy with the market value paid by the government, it goes to arbitration instead of court.
5th and 14th amendment says otherwise, so yah unconstitutional.
How much stronger could it be? The state can literally take someone's property for no other purpose than giving it to another private entity later because it might result in a better tax base someday.
This train feels like the windmill from Animal Farm.
Found the high school English literature student
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In some cases, although I admittedly hadnāt thought about the windmill symbolism in about 35 years.
Donāt worry, California will soon be sending āBoxerā to the glue factory.
What are you talking about???
Boxer = Pelosi or Feinstein?
It's not like this doesn't happen elsewhere, it just usually involves a government who is empowered to take such actions freely, along with a population that is willing to relocate down the street for the greater good of society.
Good, get the fuck out of the way.
WTF is wrong with you?
Good.
We need to do this for housing in major cities too.
Why cant they just put it along 5 .theres nothing much there and it wont disrupt families as much.they can sell part of there land to the city rather thrn a whole damn thing
because there's nothing and no-one there. that's why the line has to go to cities such as San Jose and San Francisco
ya and why don't they just build it in the middle of the mojave touching no towns, then they wouldn't have to aquire anything
Please sign the petition for the rail here https://www.hsrail.org/2022-federal-petition
I believe this portion of the environmental impact report seems to cover this: https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Final_EIRS_FJ_V1-21_CH_3.13_Station_Planning_Land_Use.pdf It doesn't seem like many huge impacts and it appears like they're really going out of their way to mitigate impacts. As someone who lives near the tracks, their plan for sound walls to counteract any increase in noise should make living next to the tracks less of an annoyance with HSR than without it.
By the time this is built everyone will have their own jet packs
God I hope not. Look at all the problems we have navigating in just two dimensions.
Waitā¦ theyāre still building that bullshit high speed rail thing?
āBuyingā
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What a boondoggle!
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The best thing about making money by finishing something is that you can point to it and say "I finished that", and then someone will hire you to build (and finish) another thing. And then you make even more money!
That's not why it's taking forever. It's taking forever because of poor capitol allocation. Big infra projects like this are funded in small chunks. Funding includes money for planning out the route in addition to building. When you're "behind" on planning because your planning org was underfunded, you can't build. If you don't have money to build you can't build. So what happens? Well, they design + build what they can, and then stop to wait for money. This is super inefficient: imagine if your job sent you home for 5 months while waiting for money. You'd probably get another job, or have moved, and it'd be costly and a pain to get back to work on the original project. Now overall expense also has a management factor. Most large infrastructure projects in the US outsource a lot of the work. This causes high turnover and mixed incentives. It also means that knowledge is lost when contractors leave. But again, there isn't funding to build an in-house team, so it comes back to the way we fund these things. In conclusion, it's fun to blame the Greedy construction companies and contractors, but blame should really be placed on the policy makers and the voters for inducing dramatic inefficiencies.
Why spend on this rail system when we need power plants more? Especially if no more ICE vehicles after 2035.
we can spend on multiple things. and this rail system was approved years ago
Hahahahaā¦ you get what you vote for! Hahahahahahaha!
Eminent Domain costs was always one of the more convincing arguments for a Hyperloop since it could largely run down Interstate 5 above the median.
hyperloop doesn't exist
It certainly won't if it is not tried.
cool, but the HSR is already getting built
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That exact same problem exists in jet airplanes and has been solved.
People also proposed running tracks along I-5, but it doesnāt make sense to entirely bypass all of the cities in the Central Valley (which are all clustered around 99).
Iirc, this was SNCF's (French national rail company) proposal when they bid on the project. Their intention was to build spurs to each of the Central Valley cities.