Taking the High Speed Rail from Phoenix to Los Angeles in the future


As of this writing, Fall of 2016, you can't take a "Bullet Train" from Phoenix to Los Angeles. But I know that it will happen, so I'm planning ahead.

I live in Phoenix, and I love visiting LA, but it's miserable getting there. I've driven it (which is boring and awful), and nowadays I fly (and dealing with airports is miserable and awful). And while the future of high speed transportation when I was a kid was in the air, now it's on the ground.

If you've ever flown on a commercial plane from Phoenix to Los Angeles, you know that you barely have time to eat those delicious honey-roasted peanuts before you hear the pilot saying "We're about to land..." So the time time in the air is short, but the time at the airport is ridiculously long. And that's because it's an old, antiquated, adapted system that took into account the convenience of airplanes, but forgot all about how people move. You have to arrive at an airport an hour or two before the plane takes off, and then stand in line, herded like cattle. I know that they're doing the best they can, but it still sucks.

I'm sure that future generations will wonder what people nowadays were thinking.

In my fairly long lifetime, I've never ridden on a train. I've seen people do it in movies, and I've read about it in books. It works like this, you go to a station, buy a ticket, and get on the train. Actually, I've been on the Light Rail here in Phoenix, and it's just amazing. You just walk on, with your ticket in hand, and the train takes you somewhere. You don't stand in line, you don't have to have a "boarding pass", you don't have to look at what number you're supposed to be, you just go. There are multiple doors that open wide so that a lot of people can get on and off at the same time.

It seems like a wild fantasy for me to imagine getting into a train like that in Phoenix, and riding all of the way to Los Angeles. No boarding passes with the number and section that I need to figure out, no need to arrive two hours before the train arrives (although I'd get there early to get a good seat), no stopping at every little town along the way (like Greyhound buses do - yuk!).

I'm looking forward to riding the train to Los Angeles. I'm practicing here in Phoenix by riding the Light Rail, and the Sky Train.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

  1. William D. P.July 9, 2019 at 3:06 AM

    I'm an autistic Tucson resident as of 2002 and love trains, one reason I left Sierra Vista and moved to Tucson as a matter of fact! I've ridden trains since I was 2 and living in Germany but first rode Amtrak from Benson when I was 5. I like trains way more than plans and now automobiles!

    It would be great to have a high speed train from Phoenix to Lis Angeles, especially on the line Amtrak used to run between Phoenix and Yuma, and I hope they save that track and use that!

    I never rode the Light Rail in Phoenix and have been wanting to and still want to. Thankfully we now have a Streercar system. It's only 3.9 miles but it's a start and I hope it gets expanded throughout Tucson, to the Tucson Mall, along Broadway to the Park Place Mall if it can go that far, and South on 6th Avenue to the Roy Laos Transit Center. They say they also want it to go to the airport.

    What I really want is passenger rail between Tucson and Phoenix, and something other than Amtrak. If I could I'd totally take the train from Tucson to Phoenix, I won't have to be stuck using I-10, especially with the dust storms that get people killed on that part of I-10! There needs to be passenger rail between Tucson and Phoenix, using both local trains and express trains, and on a separate track than Union Pacific's, which is supposed to have an increase in freight train traffic!

    And although I'm asking for too much, it be nice to ride trains from Tucson to Sierra Vista and through Benson! Likely never going to happen but a train would get me back to Sierra Vista, not to live though, to visit. New track would have to be built though. Then maybe from Sierra Vista to Bisbee and or Douglas.

    There should also be passenger rail from Tucson to Sahurita, Green Valley, and perhaps Nogales!

    But much of this if not all of it is just a fantasy and may never happen!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more