• RailLA, a new transit organization advocating for Los Angeles HSR, will host a workshop this Saturday in which the public can submit their own ideas for rail station designs. (LADowntownNews)
• Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says a new HSR link between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo should be ready in time for the 2016 Olympics. (AroundtheRings)
• Vinci SA, the world’s biggest construction company, has won a contract to build and maintain a $10.1 billion high-speed rail link in southern France — a 211-mile stretch of track that’s the biggest railway project in Europe. (BusinessWeek)
• Big week for Bombardier: The train giant scored a $761 million order for 40 new high-speed train sets from the Chinese Ministry of Railways. (RTTNews)
• Business leaders in the U.K.’s Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire are lobbying for a high-speed rail line to be brought to the region, on the argument that it could boost the economy by £4 billion and cut the travel time to London by 45 minutes. (BBC)
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• Public hearings have begun in North Carolina to discuss a high-speed rail segment that will stretch from Charlotte into Virginia. (WaPo)
Tags: Bombardier, France
Ummm…doesn’t Los Angeles already have a train station? Why do they need to design a new one?
LA shouldn’t push their luck. In the current political environment there is a real chance that LA-SF will get killed. If you don’t believe me, look into how the good squad is trying to derail things in WIsconsin. It could happen! LA should be modest in needs, just get the darn thing built first, then worry about the station!
LA only has a stub-end terminal. Even before HSR was on the ballot, there were plans, now made more concrete, to convert LA Union Station to a through-station. I think they’re actually funded, independently of HSR, but don’t quote me on that.
From what I understand, the HSR will not use any part of the current union station. It will be attached, but sit either elevated or underground to allows the tracks to continue to anaheim.
In fact, I dont think the HSR project will utilize ANY existing train station in california.
No, HSR is going to use an enlarged Diridon Station, and less enlarged stations at Redwood City (or Mountain View, or Palo Alto) and Millbrae.
Yes of course, why would they use any existing stations? There is no need! This thing is going to make a billion dollars a year without any shadow of a doubt, and there is absolutely no need to be frugal.
“From what I understand, the HSR will not use any part of the current union station.”
That’s the old plan. The new plan is to build the HSR tracks at the same level of the existing tracks. Since the LA-Anaheim version will be shared track (dedicated track WILL NOT happen between LA-Anaheim as that is grossly irresponsible financially), there is no reason to build a ton of new tracks over the existing platforms. That was always a stupid idea.
At LAUS, it may make sense to build a new station, because of the run-through track issue. The platform level will need to be remodeled anyway, so it might as well be remodeled to function as a high-throughput station. It’s elsewhere that new stations are stupid.
However, the HSR board isn’t the most cost-conscious outfit in the world. It plans to overexpand old stations for no reason other than ego. At San Jose, the plan is to rebuild Diridon Station, named after a current HSR board member, to 14 tracks; only 6-8 are needed. On the California blogs, we’re calling it Diridon Intergalactic. And for the LA-Anaheim, the dedicated track solution, which Spokker says is stupid and financially irresponsible, is so far still the official plan.