There California High-Speed Rail is an ambitious infrastructure project, consisting of the construction of first high-speed rail network in the USA. An ambitious project, full of engineering challenges, and which, like any mega project, has been the subject of much criticism. Let’s look at it more closely.
The California High-Speed Rail project
California High Speed Rail will be the first high-speed rail network in the United States of America. An ambitious infrastructure project that involves the construction of a railway line that will allow the transit of railway trains up to 350 km/h and that will connect San Francisco to the basin of Los Angeles and Anaheim in less than three hours. The total railway network foresees the construction of well 1,249 km of railwayexpanding northward to Sacramento and southward to San Diego.
The reasons that pushed the institutions and the California High-Speed Rail Authority to carry out this project are need to reduce emissions resulting from other transport systems. This objective will be achieved thanks to a reduction in highway and air traffic congestion that characterizes the Californian territory.
The engineering challenges of California’s high-speed rail network
First of all, the current phase of project implementation is focusing on Initial Operational segment in the Central Valleywhich will connect the cities of Merced And Bakersfield. In particular, the construction of the railway is currently underway on a stretch approximately 200km. It is expected that on the Initial Operational Segment, full operation of the railway is expected between 2031 and 2033.
Going into more detail, we can state that the stretch that connects the city of San Francisco to that of Los Angeles is certainly not a flat stretch, but entails, for the designers, the need to proceed with the design of engineering solutions in order to overcome two important mountain ranges. First of all, it is necessary to create galleriesparticularly through the Diablo Range to the north and Tehachapi Mountains to the south, to connect the Central Valley to the more densely populated coastal areas. The construction of tunnels is a notoriously expensive operation, in economic terms, but also purely engineering, and requires significant investments in terms of resources and workforce…