So awesome seeing the guideway take shape over the last several years. Can’t wait to start seeing tracks being installed in another year or two, and the first trains start rolling in 2028.
Fingers are crossed that they can keep to that schedule. Slow as it is. For all the tax-payer money they have thrown at the project, it should've been done by now.
There’ll be a short window between the alignment being completed and before track and electrical gets underway. It’d be a feat to mountain bike the route over a long weekend, similar to the 2008 kayaking of the LA River.
@@spencerjoplin2885 The world's most expensive mountain bike trail. Maybe I shouldn't announce this to the whole world but last summer, I did ride My ATV from my house near the SJVR at the Hanford Viaduct all the way to the Kings River and back :-)
@@mb_1024 2 days ago, Saturday the 10th. For these high-speed rail videos, I knew this would be a question that would come up. So, I've been putting the date in with the text overlays while editing the video. The dates in the first few seconds of the video, inside the video
Great progress going on here and not a nimby in sight. i'm from the UK and we are building HS2 between London and Birmingham to make our lives better to end overcrowding on the West Coast trains and we have nimbys cruelling out of the wood work.
There are plenty of NIMBYs. I guess I'm glad that you don't see them as much as I do. What's funny is that my brother lives in Tampa. They are making a HSR/commuter train between Tampa and Orlando. As my brother tells it, the locals seem to love the idea and the governor hates it. Here in California, the governor loves the idea but the locals seem to hate it :) Here in Central California, we are a red island in a blue state. Tampa is a blue island in a red state. That may be the difference.
Thanks again for bringing us more updates. You've filled a gap that I thought needed to be filled. Are Minnewawa and Nebraska Aves going to become overpasses? Looks like they've been working on that Peach Ave bridge for a while. I wonder when that area will be finished.
I don't know for sure, I'm just a guy with a drone lol. I would say Minnewawa is probably going to get an overpass. They just haven't started it because they're using that triangle area for a staging area. I'd imagine if they did not plan on putting in an overpass, they would already built cul-de-sacs like Clovis Ave. As for Nebraska, I would say probably not getting an overpass and it will be just like Conejo when it's done, going under the HSR viaduct but still has a level crossing for BNSF.
Clearing for a Nebraska Ave. overpass did occur at one point, around 2018. I don't know if plans have changed. It appears that Minnewawa and Clarkson will be joined on the west side of the HSR alignment, base on the land clearing, meaning these would not get a crossing. Also, there are grade separations nearby at Peach and Elkhorn, so I don't think Minnewawa is necessary.
I'm so looking forward to the day when I can travel to Bakersfield. Srsly, it will be interesting to see the direction future economic growth takes. So far 95% of California's population lives within twenty miles of the ocean. High speed rail could potentially lead to population growth east of the San Joaquin Valley. That would be cool.
@@331SVTCobra the Central Valley is the fastest growing part of the state as many leaving the Bay Area and SoCal move to more affordable housing there. It makes the concept for a fast, frequent transit option between the major coastal and Central Valley cities all the more appealing, especially given the alternative is a 2-3 hour drive. CHSRA estimates a travel time of just under an hour between Fresno and San Jose, and about that for Bakersfield to LA.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc I hear you and hope for the best, but keep in mind that the time from the San Jose terminal to wherever they work will be another ninety minutes. LOL, Bay Area traffic is the worst.
Look at the massive displacement of land for this monstrosity. I thought this was a "green" project. And I wonder if it will ever carry any trains. All we see are videos and promises.
The Bakersfield to Merced section is projected to be complete in 2030. CP4 is ready for track and systems, today. This is where they will put the first two train sets and do testing and training in late 2028.
from the East Coast.....whose land was it that the train is taking? Was it a utility right of way all along? Did they have to buy land from various land owners? What is the destination of the rail, Northern California? What is the beginning and end points of the rail? What is the project cost when all is said and done?
@@patrickwhelan5703 The Central Valley is very productive farmland. The majority of it does split up farms except for the few instances to where It is going directly north or south or paralleling BNSF. I might be wrong here but I think it's supposed to end to the north somewhere near San Francisco where it will meet up with the BART system. Down south, it's supposed to go over Tehachapi Pass to Barstow where it will meet up with a future high speed rail that's going in between Los Angeles and Las Vegas
@@jasondroninaround bart is wide gauge subway, This will meet up with caltrain, a commuter line that is already running electric trains. They will share the the tracks with CAHSR from san jose to SF, where all the infrastructure is up and running
@@patrickwhelan5703 I'm glad you commented on this because my comment about this is wrong about the south direction as well. It is going over Tehachapi but from there it's turning directly south through Lancaster and Palmdale and going to downtown LA.
@@cadespencer6320 I take all that back. I was thinking about the wrong section. What I think is going on there is they are moving the BNSF lines a little bit to the east, straightening the curve, so the HSR can parallel them with that straightened curve
@@KameraChimera for now, the majority of the contruction is in the middle of the valley. All you could really do is just pull up Google maps, switch to satellite view, and just zigzag crossing all the places you can. Most of the crossings are open. There will be a overpass already built, an overpass under construction with a bypass, or the road bed is still there with an overpass not even started. There are a few closed roads like the one where this video ended at Nebraska Ave. For me, Google maps has been pretty accurate and representing which roads are actually closed. Just don't let it turn you down a dirt road trying to get to a place lol. Around here pretty much every dirt road is private property.
I think the two most beautiful finish structures that I've seen personally so far or at both ends of Fresno, where it crosses over highway 99 on the south side of Fresno, and the structure where it crosses over the San Joaquin River on the north side of Fresno. I'm sure there are prettier ones but that's the prettiest ones that I have personally seen. I bet the Hanford viaduct is going to be beautiful when it's finished. It's so long and it's going to include a station :-)
@@jasondroninaround yeah the Cedar and San Joaquin River Viaducts are by far the most signature structures on the entire project, and seen by the most people.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc The Cedar Ave structure is the planned end point of my video in 2 weeks. Next weekend I'm going south from Lansing Ave to possibly as far as the Tule River Viaduct
@@povertyspec9651 Yes it is :-) I think it is because Davis Ave is such a lightly travel road. You would think they make them all the same no matter what.
I see that the embankment already has bushes that have grown..... Question if this is the case, does that mean that the embankment has existed for at least 1 year, right?....So why aren't the work stages done simultaneously?...For example, laying the ballast and the tracks, then the overhead line. When the bridges are finished, we'll finish these small sections.... I would like to remind you that laying 200 km of track (or 400 km for the two tracks) takes 1 and a half years of non-stop work.
Yes, a lot of the embankment has been in place for a year or more. I think they want a large continuous chunk of roadbed ready before starting the track laying. (That contract is going to get signed, soon, I believe.) It's more efficient if they can start at one end, so they can access everything by the rail they are laying. (No islands.)
@@mb_1024 Very possible! But this requires very specific railway equipment, especially for laying the rails and the OLE. Bringing ballast by truck would save time, even if it were islands.
A byproduct of making the HSR ballast is "3/8 base rock" or really nice "Blue DG". We sell this really nice blue DG at our yard. Here's a good satellite view of one of the places that has been making the ballast. P.S. This is also where they filmed the reenacted Killdozer scenes for the documetary "Tread" earth.google.com/web/@35.91296225,-118.91250815,264.63961759a,2411.41208563d,35y,358.79792608h,0t,0r/data=OgMKATA
@@Lodai974 Even doing segments with a lot of manual or only semi-automated trackwork, like FEC and Brightline did on the FEC doubletrack and the Orlando-Cocoa connection is nice to do in larger sections--one rail train carries about enough for 7 miles of track, if I recall, and you need a tie-in to freight rail to do that, so it's a lot easier to lay 10-20 miles from one temporary cross-connect with the freight rail lines than to lay three or five segments of only a few miles, and far, far harder to do small sections that can't be immediately connecting to freight rail.
All of this in only fourteen years at a cost of $11,000,000,000, we now have 1,600 feet of track on the ground, just for perspective that is the length of 1/4 mile drag strip with the run off area. Absolutely an unmitigated success story worthy of celebration, kinda like Olympic Break Dancing.
There are several dozen miles of track. Caltrans, the San Francisco regional trail operator, has electrified the tracks from San Jose to SF with California High Speed Rail money. These are the rails CAHSR will use.
Hooray! So now by 2030-2033 (assuming no further delays which is quite unlikely) the state of high speed rail in the US will be at the level that China was at in 2009! We'll definitely catch them soon!
It's too slow. You should vote for more funds, California. Way too slow. Britain will have theirs done before that. China is a different animal. Why on earth would you try to think about China, when Europe is a few thousand miles away and has HSR down?
The Chinese Communist Party uses the high speed rail as a propaganda tool. They have built a lot of routes that make no economic sense. We don't want to do that.
@@DanEakes-xm6xw they're working on it everyday. I just have a Monday through Friday construction job myself. I can only go out there on the weekends. Occasionally when I get off work early enough I'll go out there and catch some workers. Not in the summer though. It's too hot. They start early and finish early and they're usually finished by the time I get off work. I drive under the Hanford Viaduct everyday on the way to work. I'll come there at 4:30 in the morning and they're already working.
They get about $1B every quarter from their portion of California Cap and Trade. The federal government has contributed a few billion here and there. The CAHSR can only build what they can afford.
Progress is slow, but the fact is that California is the only state currently moving forward with high-speed rail. Even states like Texas have high latent demand for high-speed rail, but they haven't found out how to even get started just yet.
@@bobjones2240 the interstate was a net positive to the USA, but imagine how much better it would have been if they built it with steel and gravel instead of with asphalt.
How so if it’s upgrading our infrastructure in this country ? We need high speed rail desperately here in nyc. I rode one from Paris France 🇫🇷 to Brussels Belgium 🇧🇪 and it was awesome
It's about a 50 ft wide right of way, over 119 miles on the initial segments under construction now and 172 miles total Merced to Bakersfield, which is about 720 acres or 1042 acres. Overpasses and such would add a bit to that, but the right of way also passes through places like downtown Fresno that were not recently prime farmland in any case, so "under a thousand of the 40 million acres of farmland in the state" feels like a good estimate.
So awesome seeing the guideway take shape over the last several years. Can’t wait to start seeing tracks being installed in another year or two, and the first trains start rolling in 2028.
Fingers are crossed that they can keep to that schedule.
Slow as it is. For all the tax-payer money they have thrown at the project, it should've been done by now.
@@pauld6967 At least taxpayer money is being thrown at something to make OUR lives better.
@@TheRailwayDrone Yes, that is a positive aspect.
They said will be done 2033
It’s great to see the progress. Apparently, no one builds railroads as fast the Chinese construction companies. Am I right?
No matter what. Hold your head up and persevere till it's completed. This will be a historic moment...
Awesome, nice video, thanks for the great updates.
There’ll be a short window between the alignment being completed and before track and electrical gets underway. It’d be a feat to mountain bike the route over a long weekend, similar to the 2008 kayaking of the LA River.
@@spencerjoplin2885 The world's most expensive mountain bike trail. Maybe I shouldn't announce this to the whole world but last summer, I did ride My ATV from my house near the SJVR at the Hanford Viaduct all the way to the Kings River and back :-)
I really do enjoy riding that river bottom but it's kind of tricky, especially getting to and from the river bottom.
Great drone work. Well done.
Thanks for the update. Great stuff! Looks like they are staging rails near Mountain View for the BNSF realignment. What day did you record this?
@@mb_1024 2 days ago, Saturday the 10th. For these high-speed rail videos, I knew this would be a question that would come up. So, I've been putting the date in with the text overlays while editing the video. The dates in the first few seconds of the video, inside the video
I've never been that far north before. I didn't know they were doing that. It was a pleasant surprise when I saw that on the screen :-)
@@jasondroninaround I totally missed that. Now I know where to look. Thanks!
Nice video 👍
Great progress going on here and not a nimby in sight. i'm from the UK and we are building HS2 between London and Birmingham to make our lives better to end overcrowding on the West Coast trains and we have nimbys cruelling out of the wood work.
There are plenty of NIMBYs. I guess I'm glad that you don't see them as much as I do. What's funny is that my brother lives in Tampa. They are making a HSR/commuter train between Tampa and Orlando. As my brother tells it, the locals seem to love the idea and the governor hates it. Here in California, the governor loves the idea but the locals seem to hate it :) Here in Central California, we are a red island in a blue state. Tampa is a blue island in a red state. That may be the difference.
Thanks again for bringing us more updates. You've filled a gap that I thought needed to be filled. Are Minnewawa and Nebraska Aves going to become overpasses? Looks like they've been working on that Peach Ave bridge for a while. I wonder when that area will be finished.
I don't know for sure, I'm just a guy with a drone lol. I would say Minnewawa is probably going to get an overpass. They just haven't started it because they're using that triangle area for a staging area. I'd imagine if they did not plan on putting in an overpass, they would already built cul-de-sacs like Clovis Ave. As for Nebraska, I would say probably not getting an overpass and it will be just like Conejo when it's done, going under the HSR viaduct but still has a level crossing for BNSF.
Clearing for a Nebraska Ave. overpass did occur at one point, around 2018. I don't know if plans have changed. It appears that Minnewawa and Clarkson will be joined on the west side of the HSR alignment, base on the land clearing, meaning these would not get a crossing. Also, there are grade separations nearby at Peach and Elkhorn, so I don't think Minnewawa is necessary.
I'm so looking forward to the day when I can travel to Bakersfield.
Srsly, it will be interesting to see the direction future economic growth takes. So far 95% of California's population lives within twenty miles of the ocean. High speed rail could potentially lead to population growth east of the San Joaquin Valley. That would be cool.
@@331SVTCobra the Central Valley is the fastest growing part of the state as many leaving the Bay Area and SoCal move to more affordable housing there. It makes the concept for a fast, frequent transit option between the major coastal and Central Valley cities all the more appealing, especially given the alternative is a 2-3 hour drive. CHSRA estimates a travel time of just under an hour between Fresno and San Jose, and about that for Bakersfield to LA.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc I hear you and hope for the best, but keep in mind that the time from the San Jose terminal to wherever they work will be another ninety minutes. LOL, Bay Area traffic is the worst.
I thought the trolls said we weren't making any progress? Hunh. Of course, if it had been properly funded, we would be much further along by now.
Look at the massive displacement of land for this monstrosity. I thought this was a "green" project. And I wonder if it will ever carry any trains. All we see are videos and promises.
When finish building?
The Bakersfield to Merced section is projected to be complete in 2030. CP4 is ready for track and systems, today. This is where they will put the first two train sets and do testing and training in late 2028.
from the East Coast.....whose land was it that the train is taking? Was it a utility right of way all along? Did they have to buy land from various land owners? What is the destination of the rail, Northern California? What is the beginning and end points of the rail? What is the project cost when all is said and done?
@@patrickwhelan5703 The Central Valley is very productive farmland. The majority of it does split up farms except for the few instances to where It is going directly north or south or paralleling BNSF. I might be wrong here but I think it's supposed to end to the north somewhere near San Francisco where it will meet up with the BART system. Down south, it's supposed to go over Tehachapi Pass to Barstow where it will meet up with a future high speed rail that's going in between Los Angeles and Las Vegas
@@jasondroninaround bart is wide gauge subway, This will meet up with caltrain, a commuter line that is already running electric trains. They will share the the tracks with CAHSR from san jose to SF, where all the infrastructure is up and running
@@patrickwhelan5703 I'm glad you commented on this because my comment about this is wrong about the south direction as well. It is going over Tehachapi but from there it's turning directly south through Lancaster and Palmdale and going to downtown LA.
What is going on with Nebraska avenue?
@@cadespencer6320 I take all that back. I was thinking about the wrong section. What I think is going on there is they are moving the BNSF lines a little bit to the east, straightening the curve, so the HSR can parallel them with that straightened curve
I'd like to come down from SF to see the route. Is there like one or a two good viewing spots that anyone can recommend?
@@KameraChimera for now, the majority of the contruction is in the middle of the valley. All you could really do is just pull up Google maps, switch to satellite view, and just zigzag crossing all the places you can. Most of the crossings are open. There will be a overpass already built, an overpass under construction with a bypass, or the road bed is still there with an overpass not even started. There are a few closed roads like the one where this video ended at Nebraska Ave. For me, Google maps has been pretty accurate and representing which roads are actually closed. Just don't let it turn you down a dirt road trying to get to a place lol. Around here pretty much every dirt road is private property.
@@KameraChimera Highway 43 between Shafter and south of Fresno will take you past a number of structures, including the Wasco and Hanford Viaducts.
I think the two most beautiful finish structures that I've seen personally so far or at both ends of Fresno, where it crosses over highway 99 on the south side of Fresno, and the structure where it crosses over the San Joaquin River on the north side of Fresno. I'm sure there are prettier ones but that's the prettiest ones that I have personally seen. I bet the Hanford viaduct is going to be beautiful when it's finished. It's so long and it's going to include a station :-)
@@jasondroninaround yeah the Cedar and San Joaquin River Viaducts are by far the most signature structures on the entire project, and seen by the most people.
@@ChrisJones-gx7fc The Cedar Ave structure is the planned end point of my video in 2 weeks. Next weekend I'm going south from Lansing Ave to possibly as far as the Tule River Viaduct
1:48 The shoulders on that new roadway overpass are too narrow.
@@povertyspec9651 Yes it is :-) I think it is because Davis Ave is such a lightly travel road. You would think they make them all the same no matter what.
I see that the embankment already has bushes that have grown.....
Question if this is the case, does that mean that the embankment has existed for at least 1 year, right?....So why aren't the work stages done simultaneously?...For example, laying the ballast and the tracks, then the overhead line. When the bridges are finished, we'll finish these small sections....
I would like to remind you that laying 200 km of track (or 400 km for the two tracks) takes 1 and a half years of non-stop work.
Yes, a lot of the embankment has been in place for a year or more. I think they want a large continuous chunk of roadbed ready before starting the track laying. (That contract is going to get signed, soon, I believe.) It's more efficient if they can start at one end, so they can access everything by the rail they are laying. (No islands.)
@@mb_1024 Very possible! But this requires very specific railway equipment, especially for laying the rails and the OLE.
Bringing ballast by truck would save time, even if it were islands.
A byproduct of making the HSR ballast is "3/8 base rock" or really nice "Blue DG". We sell this really nice blue DG at our yard. Here's a good satellite view of one of the places that has been making the ballast. P.S. This is also where they filmed the reenacted Killdozer scenes for the documetary "Tread" earth.google.com/web/@35.91296225,-118.91250815,264.63961759a,2411.41208563d,35y,358.79792608h,0t,0r/data=OgMKATA
@@jasondroninaround It's possible they will use concrete instead of ballast, though. We'll see.
@@Lodai974 Even doing segments with a lot of manual or only semi-automated trackwork, like FEC and Brightline did on the FEC doubletrack and the Orlando-Cocoa connection is nice to do in larger sections--one rail train carries about enough for 7 miles of track, if I recall, and you need a tie-in to freight rail to do that, so it's a lot easier to lay 10-20 miles from one temporary cross-connect with the freight rail lines than to lay three or five segments of only a few miles, and far, far harder to do small sections that can't be immediately connecting to freight rail.
All of this in only fourteen years at a cost of $11,000,000,000, we now have 1,600 feet of track on the ground, just for perspective that is the length of 1/4 mile drag strip with the run off area. Absolutely an unmitigated success story worthy of celebration, kinda like Olympic Break Dancing.
There are several dozen miles of track. Caltrans, the San Francisco regional trail operator, has electrified the tracks from San Jose to SF with California High Speed Rail money. These are the rails CAHSR will use.
Hooray! So now by 2030-2033 (assuming no further delays which is quite unlikely) the state of high speed rail in the US will be at the level that China was at in 2009! We'll definitely catch them soon!
It's too slow. You should vote for more funds, California. Way too slow. Britain will have theirs done before that.
China is a different animal. Why on earth would you try to think about China, when Europe is a few thousand miles away and has HSR down?
china uses slave labor to build their trains
@@tonyodoul5679 UK doesnt have any HSR routes within their country. US has HSR on the east coast
The Chinese Communist Party uses the high speed rail as a propaganda tool. They have built a lot of routes that make no economic sense. We don't want to do that.
road to nowhere
Fresno and Bakersfield are large cities. Merced may grow a lot, once it is the tie between high speed rail and BART and ACE. That is hardly nowhere.
Sad to see all the wasted tax payers money sitting dormant with no current construction. Wish they would finish it
@@DanEakes-xm6xw they're working on it everyday. I just have a Monday through Friday construction job myself. I can only go out there on the weekends. Occasionally when I get off work early enough I'll go out there and catch some workers. Not in the summer though. It's too hot. They start early and finish early and they're usually finished by the time I get off work. I drive under the Hanford Viaduct everyday on the way to work. I'll come there at 4:30 in the morning and they're already working.
They get about $1B every quarter from their portion of California Cap and Trade. The federal government has contributed a few billion here and there. The CAHSR can only build what they can afford.
biggest financial boondoggle in US history
Progress is slow, but the fact is that California is the only state currently moving forward with high-speed rail. Even states like Texas have high latent demand for high-speed rail, but they haven't found out how to even get started just yet.
They used to say that about the Shinkansen as well…
That term is getting more and more useless nowadays.
Nah, the interstate freeway system was the biggest
@@bobjones2240 the interstate was a net positive to the USA, but imagine how much better it would have been if they built it with steel and gravel instead of with asphalt.
Shameful waste of money
Shameful, waste of money
How so if it’s upgrading our infrastructure in this country ? We need high speed rail desperately here in nyc. I rode one from Paris France 🇫🇷 to Brussels Belgium 🇧🇪 and it was awesome
How many acres of prime California Central Valley farmland have been lost forever?
Not a lot
You'd lose even more if this was a _good ol'_ freeway/expressway instead. How many lanes do you think it'd need to match train/railway's capacity?
A lot less than the neighborhoods and lives that were destroyed by the interstate highway network.
It's about a 50 ft wide right of way, over 119 miles on the initial segments under construction now and 172 miles total Merced to Bakersfield, which is about 720 acres or 1042 acres. Overpasses and such would add a bit to that, but the right of way also passes through places like downtown Fresno that were not recently prime farmland in any case, so "under a thousand of the 40 million acres of farmland in the state" feels like a good estimate.
What an absolute waste of our tax dollars!
Then move to another state
@@williamcondon7729 Don't feed the troll.