In 1993, California's legislature voted

to form the California Intercity

High-Speed Rail Commission, formally

starting the process to build a

high-speed railway to connect the

state's major cities. Today, three

decades on and six years past the first

planned completion date, the project is

seven times over budget, now devoid of a

planned completion date, and lacking a

single foot of laid track. But back in

2008, after a decade and a half of

study, California presented a detailed

plan for the railroad to its voters. On

the very same where Californians made

their choice between Obama and McCain,

they also marked their opinion on

whether the state should build America's

first true high-speed rail system. LA to

San Francisco, 2 hours and 40 minutes,

33 to 42 billion dollars, initial

operations by 2020. The voters' answer,

of course, was yes. With 52.6% support,

Prop 1A passed. But then they actually

had to go and build the thing, and this

[music] proved challenging.

The difficulty of building high-speed

rail is that it needs a continuous block

of geographically and geometrically

compatible land. Other railroads

typically run on tracks that follow

routes that have had trains for dozens,

even over a hundred years, but the

geometry of these tracks is too tight.

High-speed trains need long, gentle

curves to maintain their high speeds.

So, much of the work leading up to Prop

1A was determining where, in broad

strokes, it make the most sense to build

these tracks. Through years of debate,

environmental analysis, legal

proceedings, and study, they'd weighed

the tradeoffs and made selections of

which mountain passes, regions, and

cities the railroad should hit. But as

construction started, the planners

started to pay for their decisions. One

of their most difficult was how to leave

Los Angeles. You see, the sprawling

urban area is surrounded on all sides by

massive mountains. After all, it's the

city where one can drive from warm

weather surfing to high altitude skiing

in just an hour or two, traffic

permitting. The stakes of getting the

selection right were high as building

high-speed rail lines through these

seismically active mountains would

inevitably be one of the costliest and

most complicated sections of

engineering, not just of this project,

but of any high-speed rail project ever

attempted worldwide.

After preliminary study, there were

really two serious contenders: Tejon

Pass and the Palmdale alignment. At

first glance, Tejon Pass was the most

obvious. It's where Interstate 5 crosses

the mountains, meaning there's already

road infrastructure to allow for

construction access. There was already

power infrastructure to provide the

backbone of what's needed for electric

trains, [music] and there was already

environmental impact, easing the

environmental review process. Tejon was

also just quite simply the more direct

route. The system had to meet its wildly

ambitious voter-approved 2-hour and

40-minute trip time. It was literally

written into California law following

Prop 1A, meaning missing that target is

a violation of California law. Taking

anything but the Tejon Pass route would

force planners to find those minutes

elsewhere.

That made it surprising when the

California High-Speed Rail Authority

voted for the alternative, the Palmdale

alignment. This was and still is a

massively controversial choice.

Depending on who you ask, this detour

will add between 3 and 12 minutes to the

trip time, a massive penalty that will

drive up spending elsewhere to

compensate. On first glance, this

decision makes little sense, but some

theories have been put forward. Chief

among them, simple political cronyism.

In the early days of planning, there was

an LA County Board of Supervisors member

named Michael Antonovich who represented

the district that included Palmdale. He

believes a routing through Palmdale

would buoy the region both through job

opportunities during construction and

economic development once the train made

it a viable commuter town to LA.

Meanwhile, the Rail Authority's board

included a member named Jerry Epstein

who otherwise was a real estate

developer with major holdings in Marina

del Rey, which operated under a

long-term lease from the county. He was

looking for votes from the Board of

Supervisors to renew this lease, so he

allegedly struck a tit-for-tat deal.

Support from Antonovich for his lease

renewal in exchange for his support for

Antonovich's Palmdale alignment

ambitions. While the board encompassed

nine members, Epstein's influence was

reportedly enough to persuade the rest

to follow their lead. Detractors of the

project use this as example number one

of how corruption has brought California

HSR to its current state. But while this

story almost certainly has has some

truth to it, its frequent

characterization as a the deciding

factor for the Palmdale alignment is a

massive oversimplification of the

decision. You see, the Palmdale

alignment has some legitimate

advantages. To start, the economic

development opportunities that made it

so attractive for Antonovich were real

and could be a positive for the entire

housing crunched region. Unlike almost

everywhere in the LA Basin, where

additional housing stock primarily comes

through densifying, the Antelope Valley

has room to sprawl, the primary way

housing real istically gets built

[music] in the US. It could become an

attractive low-cost commuter town, which

would provide downward pressure on

housing prices for the entire [music]

region. Picking Palmdale also

represented some real foresight. Just as

California's HSR project was in its

planning phases, so too was what is now

known as a Brightline West, a privately

operated high-speed line now in

construction from Vegas to LA. It

started construction long after

California HSR and is expected to finish

far sooner, thanks in part to its

decision to not attempt [music] the hard

part, construction through urban areas.

They cover most of the journey, but stop

short of going to any major population

center in LA, rather terminating on its

outskirts at Rancho Cucamonga station,

about 40 miles or 65 km from downtown

LA. The thinking was that this would be

good enough to be competitive with

flying, since travelers could drive or

take local trains to get to this

station. But if California HSR were to

build through Palmdale, the two lines

could be connected by building a

relatively simple and low-cost 50-mi

[music] 80-km line across the flat open

desert. This would improve both

projects. California HSR trains from the

Bay Area could now run to Las Vegas, and

a likely sub-4-hour run time would still

be reasonably competitive versus air

travel. Brightline West, meanwhile,

would now have a route deeper into LA.

They could use California HSR's tracks

as a means to service LA Union Station,

likely making it a more competitive

service as well. While this

interconnection is not formally in

motion as a project, it's also far from

a pipe dream. In fact, California HSR

and Brightline West made sure that

they'd use compatible signaling systems,

track geometry, and standards to keep

the door open for this [music] ambitious

future.

At the end of the day, though, according

to the Rail Authority at least, cost was

the biggest factor. Once they looked in

detail at what it would actually take to

build each of these options, they

determined that Tejon Pass required

quite a lot of tunneling and earthworks,

leading to a price tag that was not

meaningfully cheaper than the Palmdale

alternative, despite [music] the far

shorter distance. Again, at least

according to their analysis. So, even

with a slightly longer trip time via

Palmdale, the Authority decided that the

development, connection, [music] and

cost-saving opportunities made Palmdale,

on balance, a better route. But plenty

disagree. Plenty call their

decision-making process

>> [music]

>> deeply flawed. You see, the alignment

study through Tejon Pass did not include

it taking the most efficient path

through this Tejon Ranch. Despite its

name, this massive tract of private

land, one of the largest in the state,

is hardly a ranch anymore. Rather, it's

a massive commercial enterprise traded

on the New York Stock Exchange with a

market cap of half a billion dollars,

generating tens of millions of dollars

of annual revenues by exploiting its

land for real estate development and

agriculture. The company is strongly

opposed to Tejon Pass alignment, as this

area is theoretically its highest value

land thanks to the connectivity

Interstate 5 provides. The company has

long had plans for a massive [music]

housing development in the area and a

high-speed rail line running through it

would only negatively affect the

theoretical value of this project. After

all, there never realistically be a stop

to serve such a small population center

and the noise pollution and visual

impact would likely [music] turn buyers

away. Compounding the difficulty, in

order to get approval for this

development, Tejon Ranch struck a deal

with a coalition of environmental groups

to put hundreds of thousands of acres of

its land into conservation status.

>> [music]

>> So, while California HSR does have

eminent domain authority, meaning it

could just take private land regardless

of owners' wishes, doing so would

inevitably set off a lengthy legal

battle both with this well-funded and

politically connected private company

and a coalition of powerful

environmental nonprofits. The state

didn't want to deal with that, so in its

alignment studies it always assumed that

a Tejon Pass alignment would include a

long stretch of tunnels to route around

the proposed development, even if it did

still pass through the ranch's land.

Independent analysis has suggested that

this inflated cost by as much as $6

billion

pushing the estimated price up to

roughly on par with Palmdale. Critics

suggest that the state should have

seriously considered an alignment that

did [music] take the most efficient

route through Tejon Ranch's land and in

doing so, there's every chance they'd

have selected that option given the

likely lower costs and faster trip

times. To this day, there remains a

vigorous debate over this decision and

many suggest that how nonsensical it

looks is, in fact, the most damning

evidence that the real reason behind

Palmdale's selection was, in fact, the

alleged political cronyism.

But after exiting the LA Basin, next the

project is to cross the flat

agricultural lands of the Central

Valley. This is by far the simplest

section of the line, but that doesn't

mean it's simple. There were really two

primary alignment options. One was, once

again, the I-5 corridor. Just as with

Tejon Pass, the fact that there was an

existing right of way was attractive.

The railroad could primarily route in

the median or alongside the highway. Few

bridges would have to be built and

little private land would have to be

acquired. In fact, this is the exact

strategy that Brightline West is using

for its Vegas service. It's building in

the I-15 median, enabling its

theoretical lightning-fast construction

timeline and lower cost.

>> [music]

>> I-5 is also the most direct alignment

for California HSR geographically,

allowing for 11 to 20-minute faster trip

times, once again, depending who you

ask, and was estimated as 5.6% lower in

cost by the High-Speed Rail Authority's

feasibility studies. The alignment was

so attractive, in fact, that France's

national rail operator, SNCF, was

briefly looking at partnering with the

state to build its system under the

condition that they chose this

alignment. But just as with Tejon versus

Palmdale, the more costly option had its

advantages. Particularly, essentially

every major population center in the

Central Valley is on its east side. The

corridor along I-5 is mostly bounded by

small agricultural communities and their

fields, meaning those in cities along

the east side of the Central Valley

would need to drive to pick up the

train, making their travel times longer

and the train less competitive versus

planes. [music] This would then push

down ridership, pushing down revenue,

and making the theoretical economics of

the railway more challenging. But more

importantly, in the eyes of [music] the

early planners, it would make the

politics more challenging. You see, the

constituencies in San Francisco and LA

were the easiest [music] to win over.

They had a lot to gain from the service,

and their left-leaning politics were

generally more compatible with big

public spending for public [music]

transport. Central Valley residents,

meanwhile, were the swing votes. The

rural areas were always going to vote

majority now. The project might be able

to sway some with the promise of jobs

during [music] construction, but the

easiest votes to pick up were those in

the urban areas to the east, like

Bakersfield, Fresno, and Merced. So, to

gain their support, the project had to

provide service to them, pushing it

towards a longer, costlier, and more

complex eastern alignment. Even if low

in density compared to LA or San

Francisco, there are still plenty of

obstacles in the eastern Central Valley.

While there is a state highway through

the area, it didn't make as much sense

to follow it. Its curve radiuses were

designed for 65 mph speeds, [music]

while the train needed gentler turns to

keep its target 220 mph speed, which

was, once again, necessary to meet the

legally mandated 2 hour [music] and 40

minutes timing.

While the railroad could theoretically

leave the highway's right of way during

turns, the amount of building and

infrastructure that had built up around

the highway through time made this

option more costly and complicated than

the alternatives. Too much would have to

get knocked down.

Also available were existing freight

railroads. Union Pacific and BNSF run

through the area, and they had enough

room alongside their existing tracks

[music] to fit more. The High-Speed Rail

Authority started with Union Pacific,

but they outright refused. They likely

viewed high-speed rails as a potential

obstacle to future development of their

capacity constrained, highly valuable

track. It's very possible they'll want

to build a more capacity through the

area in the future, and it'd be a lot

more difficult if there were all sorts

of high-speed rail viaducts and other

structures getting in the way. So, the

High-Speed Rail Authority went to BNSF,

which took a more cooperative approach.

For proper compensation, they were

willing to allow construction parallel

to their right of way. But, while this

acted as a massive shortcut, there were

still obstacles. For example, this,

Colonel Allensworth State Historic

[music] Park. This preserves the only

town in California that was founded and

run by African Americans, and it sits on

the National Register of Historic

Places. Federal law prohibits projects

with any federal funding, which the

railroad would be, from taking land from

sites in such status, so the high-speed

railroad had to deviate around it. That

meant, in this area, they did have to go

through the time-consuming process of

acquiring private land parcel by parcel.

If individual owners and the railroad

could come to an agreement, this was a

relatively straightforward process, but

if not, they'd enter a legal process

that would span 3 to 7 [music] years.

In other sections, the complication was

less so the obstacle, but more so the

solution. The town of Hanford, for

example, did not want the high-speed

rail running through it, even though the

freight railroad already did, and the

Rail Authority wasn't interested in

routing that way anyway, since the tight

geometry of BNSF's right of way would

force slower speeds. So, rather they

built a bypass around the town, but this

[music] turned into a whole saga.

Due to wetlands in the area, they'd have

to go through the US Army Corps of

Engineers and the EPA to get a permit.

The railroad initially preferred an

alignment east of the city, but to

properly evaluate, the federal

regulators forced us to do a feasibility

study on a western alignment. As the

study went on, the planners actually

started to favor the western alignment,

and locals started advocating for it,

too, preferring its lower impact on the

local area. The railroad was thinking

that rather than building a viaduct, as

they planned in the [music] east, they

could bury the tracks in a trench and

route roads, freight rails, and other

existing elements above it. But

eventually, after yet further study, it

became clear that the water table in the

area was uniquely shallow, [music]

10 to 15 ft, rather than the usual 30 to

40. With all the pumping and water

management infrastructure they'd need to

make this work, it was looking more

costly than their original eastern plan,

[music] so they went back to that. This

whole flip-flop cost them about 2 and

1/2 years in planning, but also soured

relations with the community,

contributing to the initiation of a

13-year lawsuit between a local

landowner, the County Board of

Supervisors, and the railroad. At every

step, small decisions led to long

delays.

But the last major routing decision

along the railroad span turned into one

of the most contentious of them all, how

to get into San Francisco.

>> [music]

>> Like LA, the Bay Area surrounded by

mountains on all sides, inevitably

forcing another complicated high-cost

section. After initial exploratory

study, two primary options were

identified, Altamont Pass and Pacheco

Pass. This northeastern route had a lot

of advantages. It would pass through the

growing population centers of Merced and

Modesto, adding potential riders to the

system. It would also follow the

existing rail and Interstate corridor,

once again making things easier through

using an existing right of way and

existing [music] power infrastructure.

But it had a problem, and in the eyes of

the High-Speed Rail Authority, a big

one.

Its northeastern entry to the Bay Area

meant San Francisco, [music] Silicon

Valley, and San Jose could not be served

by the same trains. Rather, they'd have

to split the track into two directions

and either split physical trains in two

after the pass to go the separate

directions, adding to trip times, or run

separate services for San Francisco than

San Jose, reducing service frequencies

for both cities and therefore limiting

the competitiveness of the network. This

pushed the authority towards Pacheco

Pass, and then other benefits stacked on

top of that, like the avoidance of

having to build an expensive new

crossing of the Bay itself, and the

routing through a less developed area.

The decision, however, was massively

controversial with NIMBYs and

environmental groups, setting off a

string of lawsuits which lasted for

years.

>> [music]

>> From top to bottom, from its earliest

days through today, in large ways and

small, the California High-Speed Rail

project has consistently chosen [music]

ambition over practicality. It chose to

run at some of the fastest speeds of any

rail line worldwide. It chose to service

essentially any population center along

its route. [music] It chose to build

through downtowns rather than around

them. It chose to build the absolute

gold standard of high-speed rail

services, but in doing so, might have

flown too close to the sun.

The The presented to the voters in 2008

was just an absolute fantasy. It assumed

costs on par with and a construction

timeline faster than European high-speed

systems, despite a complete lack of

experience in such construction and a

route [music] through seismically active

mountains and dense urban areas. It was

also presented despite a mere fraction

of funding actually secured, and now

with costs estimated as much as seven

times higher, funding has dried up.

That's why right now construction is

only in progress on the Central Valley

segment, the easiest segment to build

serving the least amount of people.

While this project is meaningful,

significant progress has been made, it's

still a small fraction of what's needed

for a full San [music] Francisco to LA

run.

Deep down, planners might have believed

that the fantastical budgeting was a

pragmatic necessity to get voter

approval for an ultimately worthwhile

system, but that decision now makes the

project look like an absolute farce.

While a closer look certainly finds

cases of mismanagement during

construction here and there, the larger

problem is a massive mismatch between

expectations and reality. Despite that,

the perception from a lightly informed

wider audience is that the way this

project has progressed since approval is

emblematic of corruption and

incompetence in state governance, even

though it was the planning phases where

things really went wrong. That

perception is making funding harder to

come by. The federal government is now

outright hostile to the project.

If built fully, the California

high-speed rail system will be one of

the most impressive, most transformative

rail projects ever constructed in the

entire world. [music]

It will be the crown jewel of American

rail infrastructure. But its future is

now in serious jeopardy. This is always

a debate in rail development, perfect

versus good enough. Pragmatism is often

what gets trains running in the 21st

century. It's not the heyday of rail

travel anymore. The economics are

challenging

>> [music]

>> and compromise is what gets it done.

Meanwhile, when perfect happens, it's

perfect, but it often [music]

doesn't.

As we've seen particularly in Asia and

Europe, high-speed rail can have a

transformative effect that improves the

lives of people across a whole region,

but transit accessibility can take

different forms that have similar

effects. Like, what if public transit

was free?

>> [music]

>> That's what Jason from Not Just Bikes

explores in his new series Day Pass

where he travels to Luxembourg, the only

country with completely free public

transportation. He rides every form of

public transit in the country as he

explores what that's like and if it's

worth it. I'd also recommend the other

episodes in the first season where he

goes to Nantes, the birthplace of public

transit, and Copenhagen, one of the best

cities in the world for biking. And this

is just one of plenty of Nebula original

series for transit lovers. There's also

Express where Live rides

trains way further than is sensible from

Europe to Asia and the Arctic to Africa.

And of course, Jetlag where in addition

to getting every episode one week early,

you also have access to the new outtake

channel Lost and Found and the Nebula

exclusive Layover podcast recapping each

episode. And beyond [music] these,

there's an ever-growing catalog of

Nebula original and exclusive content

from hundreds of your favorite

thoughtful digital creators, all ad and

sponsorship free. And not that this is

the single reason you should subscribe,

but it's worth knowing that a

subscription to Nebula helps support

Wendover and all the other independent

creators on the platform, providing us a

stable revenue source that isn't subject

to the ebbs and flows of YouTube views

and ad rates. But what really seals the

deal in my opinion is that the price is

abundantly reasonable, far lower than

basically any other streaming site at

just $6 a month or $60 a year.

>> [music]

>> But if you use my link

nebula.tv/wendover,

you'll get 50% off, meaning the cost

comes down to just $30 a year, breaking

down to a mere $2.50

a month. So, head over there to sign up

today, and if you do, thanks in advance

for your support.