The Little High-Speed Rail Engine that Could?
By: Vern Scott
Tags: High Speed Rail, Tunneling, Gavin Newsom, Rails, Caltrain

With Biden soon to be in charge and some design changes, Gov. Newsome may have CA High-Speed Rail saying “I think I can…I think I can…”

One evening, Prince Newsom settled onto a large comfy sofa with his four children Tessa, Hunter, Brooklynn, and Dutch, to read a bedtime story, “The Little High Speed Rail Engine that Could”. “Once upon a time” Prince Newson began, “in the fiefdom of California, there were two wise princes named Prince Arnold and Prince Jerald, who wanted to build a clean and fast choo-choo train from the magical city of San Francisco to the far-off and mystical lands of Los Angeles. These two Princes knew that it would take many coppers from the hard-working peasants, and much gold from the treasury vaults of the fiefdom of California to build this fantastic and whimsical train, but they promised that it would make the good people of the fiefdom of California happy, as it would be faster and cleaner and safer than any train ever built before. But Princes Arnold and Jerald then walked away to other business and entrusted the planning of this magical train to various knaves and jesters of the court who conspired to route the magical train through the uncharted and costly areas of the Valleys of San Joaquin through the out-of-the-way villages of the Fields of Baker and the Ceds of Mer instead of the friendly and inexpensive medians of center on the 5’s of Interstates, whilst hiring the roguish consultants of engineering who did not foresee the overruns of costs involving the technologies of tunnels and the domains of eminents through the twisted routes of expediencies of politics. Though the Nice King of all the lands had liked this plan and promised to send more gold to build it, he was in time replaced by the Dark King who didn’t like the plan and promised to take back much of the gold the Nice King had promised. At this point Tessa interrupted “but the Princes could have upgraded the Pacifics of Southern lines with concrete ties and banked turns at a much lower price!”, while Hunter belted out “and the 5s of Interstate’s median could have been used at a fraction of the price of exclusive Central Valley right of way!” just as Brooklyn yelped “or Elon Musk could have built a 5’s of Interstate’s Hyperloop, with a Tehachapi tunnel to Palmdale” while soon after Dutch barked out “and ACE commuter train tracks could’ve been used to facilitate a cheap and easy route from Los Banos to San Jose”!

“Verily, verily my children” replied Prince Newsom, somewhat wearily, as he set out to answer their questions as best he could. “Sometimes the most noble of plans go awry, so let me expel my breath thusly…a big expensive important train might be routed from Los Angeles through 20 miles of gilded tunnels of Tehachapi, through the Fields of Baker and the Ceds of Mer and 14 miles of silvery tunnels of Pacheco, to the Trains of Cal to San Francisco, but this train might cost 100 billion in coppers and gold, while saying ‘I am an important train…a train that can get from LA to SF in 2–1/2 hours…too important to save money for the good people of the fiefdom of California’, or we could keep the old trains running on the current tracks of the Pacifics of Southern, but that might say ‘I am an old train that belches toxic vapors whilst going from SF to LA in 7 hours, if you want me to go faster I cannot…I cannot…I cannot’ or maybe…just maybe, with a trimming of the gilded list of roguish engineers of consulting and demystification of the technologies of tunneling, we could bore through the 30 miles needed through the Mounts of Tehachapi more cheaply and efficiently, for $100 to $200 million in coppers and gold per mile, and then utilize the straightened Commuters of Altamont tracks and Medians of 120, connecting with the BARTs of Pleasantons and minus some of the bewitching Tunnels of Overruns, towards the Caltrains of San Joses, facilitating a future Unions of Pacifics spur to the Sacras of Mento. This way my dear children, we could have a little train that could, one that could go from the stations of trains in SF to LA in 3 hours for $65 billion, a train that might run cleanly and efficiently while telling the knavish kings in the Houses of White “I think I can…I think I can…I THINK I CAN!”

…and thus, said the good Prince Gavin as he put his now sleepy-eyed children to bed, our kingdom would depend less upon tunneling increments of technologies involving guidances of electronics, energies of savings, and bore sizes of optimals, and more upon right of ways of existings and bridge and tunnels structures of availables, which as Goldilocks might say, are “juuuust right”, but that is a bedtime story for another evening.

Like this article? Read more in Vern Scott’s new book “Civil (Engineering) Disobedience”, available on Amazon.com