The $15 mandate will have a greater effect outside California’s major coastal cities. Employers in high-cost areas must pay higher wages to attract and retain their workforce.[8] The California legislature, however, imposed the same minimum wage statewide. Thus, employers in Fresno will pay as much as employers in Los Angeles. As a result, the mandate will impose higher real minimum wages in rural and inland California than in California’s major cities.
Some areas of California, especially San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, have well above-average living costs. Other regions, such as the Sacramento metropolitan area, have living costs close to the U.S. average. More rural regions, like the El Centro metropolitan area (Imperial County), have below-average living costs.[ 9]
Map 1 shows the real minimum wage in 2023 across California’s metropolitan areas. The map shows the minimum wage adjusted for inflation (in estimated 2016 dollars) and also adjusts for the difference between local and average U.S. living costs.[10]
Accounting only for inflation, California’s minimum wage in 2023 will stand at $13.39 an hour in 2016 dollars. Relative to average U.S. living costs that figure is only $11.92—a consequence of California’s higher living costs. Within California, however, the real minimum wage will vary from a low of $11.04 an hour in San Jose and Silicon Valley to a high of $14.69 an hour in El Centro and Imperial County. The wage mandate will have a much greater effect on California’s less-developed regions than on its prosperous cities.
IMO, NO. He is for local jobs and local infrastructure. IMO, he will be supportive of HSR.
I recently traveled Hongkong from airport to main island through train. We are far from good infrastructure even though US was innovator for many decades !
HSR will give better appreciation for Gilroy, Fresno and Bakersfield.
I am pessimistic on HSR. I think California people do not want it unless HSR is given for free. Even if Trump likes it, it needs to be paid by California. Do you expect other 49 states paying for California’s HSR?
Maybe someday when HSR can be built at a much lower cost, when libertarians take over the state government and when population density is higher in urban centers and commuting transit is really good.
We should make Bay Area and LA 5 times denser and forget about Fresno and stop sprawling in Central Valley.
We should expand BART and make it possible for 80% of the commuters to abandon cars. Expanding BART and Caltrain would be 1000 times more important than HSR. HSR is Obama’s silliness in display. He wanted the whole country to build HSR to get us out of recession. What a silly idea! A total waste of people’ time.
WASHINGTON — High-speed rail was supposed to be President Obama’s signature transportation project, but despite the administration spending nearly $11 billion since 2009 to develop faster passenger trains, the projects have gone mostly nowhere and the United States still lags far behind Europe and China.
Why commute from Fresno or Bakersfield. .Stockton is much closer…Running Bart to Stockton and Sac make much more sense than HSR, which was sold as a way to make the SF to LA run cheaper than flying…which of course turned out to be a lie. .
Just think why interstate highway was made in USA after looking at autobahn. HSR is infrastructure plan for California. Single owner or single company can not do such infrastructure project. This is what a big government needs to do and CA government is right on track, but way behind many countries.
Infrastructure is a backbone for economic development for any country, state, city or town.
Both Obama and Trump are behind local development, local economic improvement and they won’t let it down, but to continue.
IMO, Our motive, as an individual, is to get know to ahead and benefit !
To me HSR was just a subsidy to business people flying to LA…Families will keep driving…The government needs to put its limited resources into helping commutes and dealing with unaffordable housing. .Local commute rail lines make more sense than HSR…Maybe it would work in the East coast from NYC to DC, but in the West it just doesn’t make sense…only 24% of the federal buget is discretionary…Trump wants to spend $100b a year, 10% of the $1 trillion discretionary money, on infrastructure. .that isn’t even enough to just repair the broken down stuff we have… $3 trillion worth of old broken down systems…No money for new HSR toys…
China had really good commuting transit for 60 years with no HSR. HSR happened after 60 years of really good commuting transit. Even today, China’s HSR usage is still low.
California needs to have really good commuting transit first. After that, wait for decades to the HSR demand to grow.
It’s like building a Hyperloop to the Moon, but most people can not even get to the station. It may take 3 hours to go from SF to LA, but it takes 2 hours to get to the SF HSR station from your home and with another 2 hours of waiting for buses.
If you look at CA economies, there are four major centers.
Los Angeles
San Francisco(includes SJC)
San Diago
Sacramento
I have included Sacramento as this is capital of CA. Other than this, I really do not see any economical advantage.
Anything transportation connecting these major cities along with local cities (like Fresno, Bakersfield) will help economy grow.
IIRC, initial plan was to connect LA-SFO within 4 hours, just like a daily commute 6AM-10AM and 6PM-10PM. With today’s economic growth, HSR will be running with full strength.
Bakersfield person can reach SFO for work and go back home same day with monthly pass. Similarly, Gilroy person can reach Los Angels and come back same day.
One way from San Jose to LA is a little bit over 2 hours. SFO to SJ is 30 min. So on HSR total one way travel time would be around 2 hr 40 min.
The main benefit would be a fast transport link within Northern California itself. Think of people commuting from Merced to Sacramento, or Stockton to San Francisco. That would be 1hr ride one way and not that different from the current Caltrain going between San Jose and San Francisco, and tons of people commute to work on Caltrain.
HSR effectively expands the Bay Area all the way to Central Valley and pretty link the Sacramento region to ours as well.
If the Chinese can do it, so can we. Boy, talking about reduced expectation. We used to land people on the moon. Now we are doubting whether we can build a freaking railway?!
China can do many things USA can not. HSR is one of those.
China has population density and government efficiency. They have a highly efficient government with severe corruption. But their corrupted officials can get the job done. We have a highly inefficient government with smaller scale corruption. Our slightly corrupted officials can’t get the job done.
HSR does not make a lot of sense. It’s simply a dumb idea that’s not ready for its time.
Why not extend BART, Caltrain, muni and show me you can get to work by transit before pushing HSR?
IMO, it is wrong. It is equal to telling waste of money to spend on Highways 1, 101, 80, 880, 680, 580 etc.
When time reduced, businesses improve. Trains are common people commuter access. There is no one hour wait time like airports…etc. HSR is pure infrastructure. Once it is implemented fully, you will see the benefits.
In future, If one day HSR stops, thousands are people will get affected. Those days are not far away.
For real estate purpose, all HSR station cities spike in home values soon. It is better to strategically position on HSR station city locations.
Let’s be honest. What percentage of Chinese commuters commute 600 miles to Shanghai and Beijing?
Paris to London is under 300 miles. What percentage of people commute from Paris to London?
I looked up. China’s Beijing to Taiyuan, Shanxi is only 300 miles, that’s shorter than SF to LA. What percentage of people commute from Taiyuan to Beijing?
Why don’t you build a HSR from SJ to SF first? I would support it. Even a regular 30-45 minutes commuter train from SJ downtown to SF downtown would be really good.
How many jobs are located around the HSR station? How far is the commute from the HSR station to your office?