Interesting counter-move from Xpress West. Could put the FRA and the administration on the spot about whether they are willing to take the political heart and approve the loan. The odds of actually getting the approval? Beats me.
28 sets for Palmdale-Victorville-Vegas? Wow. That's more than the Acela has, and the Acela covers a lot more ground in terms of both time and distance WAS-BOS. Assuming 90 minutes Victorville-Vegas and another 30 Palmdale-Victorville, you're looking at 120 minutes each way. Hourly service would require six sets plus spares (allowing an hour to turn the train). Service every 30 minutes would require twelve sets. So...they seem to be looking at service every 15 minutes (at least, near peak hours) with less frequent service to Los Angeles (which makes sense, as they would presumably run transfers with CAHSR for some frequencies).
Maybe something got lost in translation? It depends for example how you would define a set.
Basically, either the plan is to run a lot of 8-car trains or there would be some plan to 16-car trains as a double set. However, given that there haven't been corridor trains that long with any regularity in a long time, I'd be a bit surprised. Also, there's this:
That implies pretty strongly that you wouldn't be able to "pop" two sets together to become one train.
The number of trainsets is a lot, but the route will not an evenly distributed NEC travel pattern with AM and PM peaks in both directions. The peak periods will be from LA region to Vegas on Friday late afternoons and evenings, then Vegas to LA region on Sunday afternoons and evenings. The plan may be to build storage tracks, first at Victorville, then at Palmdale and have a large number of trainsets stored there on Fridays. Then send them every 20 or 30 minutes for the peak Friday period. Then store the extra trainsets at Vegas for the return surge on Sundays (or Mondays of holiday weekends). Not the most efficient use of equipment, but they should have accounted for this in their business model.
I think construction may at best start in 2013. I don't think anything will be finished that quickly.
Poor equipment utilization is also poor personnel deployment. There aren't that many train engineerts who are willing to sign up for part-time jobs. And all the equipment sitting at one end of the line waiting also means all the staff is there, clocking up costs staying in hotels or whatever. It would be much more sensible to arrange shifts sô staff can return to their home station on the same day. So economically, both in terms of equipment utilization and staff effectiveness it would make sense to run trains both ways even if the demand only goes one way. Cheap and attractive offers can help fill seats the other way and at least provide some income to offset costs.
On the trainsets, I have not looked deeply enough at the publicly available documents to see if there is in-depth info on the trainset specifics. XW may leave that open to the companies that respond to the RFI and RFP who are willing to assemble the trainsets in the US. XW will presumably lay out specs such as platform height, power, clearance envelope that match the CA HSR.
You keep asking questions that can't really be answered by anyone here. Or sometimes, by anyone anywhere. On getting a RRIF loan approval, I doubt if even the FRA, XW, US DOT minders could tell you that. The FRA staff will have to be very careful to make sure that ALL of the decisions and numbers are documented, justified, and the i's dotted & t's crossed if they are going to approve the lean. Odds are good that if the loan is approved, the House will haul the FRA staff and managers in front of a committee or two and go over every detail, with the Republicans accusing them publicly of wasting $X billion of government money. If you are a mid to upper level federal employee, there is no career benefit from being called to testify in front of a hostile (or 1/2 plus 1 hostile) Congressional committee. Which would make the reviewers reluctant to recommend approving the application. AAF will have an easier path.
The High Desert Corridor (HDC) is primarily a highway project with a ROW component suitable for a 180 mph railroad corridor. My first thought was that the FRA would not have much of a say in the DEIS because XW would have to submit their own followup EIS for the specifics of the railroad line. However I found this July 2013 Open House presentation (~2.5 MB PDF) which states that they are also performing a rail alternative analysis which shows example images of alternate routes for a connecting Wye, routes and speeds. So the HDC DEIS and FEIS will include a substantial HSR route component.
I would never put it past FRA to do absolutely any weird thing. They have been sitting on the NY State EIS now for 14 months with no action. It took them over a year to give a ROD on the ARC SEIS.
