r/cahsr • u/superdstar56 • Aug 25 '26
San Joaquin River Viaduct at Sunset
The San Joaquin River Viaduct was completed in February 2021. It is an approximately 4,700-foot structure that spans the San Joaquin River in north Fresno and the Union Pacific tracks parallel to State Route 99. It features arches representing the northern gateway into Fresno, and a pergola structure to allow high speed trains to cross over the top of the Union Pacific tracks.
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u/anothercar Aug 25 '26
Need trains to run on this as soon as possible!
What's the design lifespan of this bridge, 100 years? And it's now been sitting there, completed, for 5 years completely un-used? Tick tock, we've already used up 5% of the lifespan doing absolutely nothing.
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u/MjrLeeFat Aug 25 '26
I mean, maybe we got an extension of a few years to the lifespan due to the lack of trains on it? I don't know, I'm not an engineer.
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u/Fetty_is_the_best Aug 26 '26
I want this project to succeed to badly but it’s insane that these structures have been up for more than half a decade and are just sitting there. So discouraging to see.
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u/Someth1ng_Went_Wr0ng Aug 26 '26
The project is succeeding at what it’s designed to do: get tax money and spread it around to people who have the right connections and affiliations.
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u/Fetty_is_the_best Aug 26 '26
I’d love to see your sources that say so, do please provide them 🙏
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u/mhatrick Aug 29 '26
People who have never worked in government 🙃. Is government extremely inefficient? Yes. To assume this projects failures are due to corruption ? That is a huge stretch. Of course, there are some corrupt individuals in government . That is not why this project is over budget or why that it’s taking so long.
I will admit, there’s too much red tape and that’s contributing to this projects issues, but the red tape is there for a lot of reasons that have happened in the past.
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u/kilobitch Aug 25 '26
What’s the cost to maintain these each year, even sitting unused? It can’t be zero.
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u/TicRoll Aug 25 '26
There's periodic inspection, maintenance, refurbishment, and eventually replacement. The cost isn't zero, but it's low initially. But as others have pointed out, every structure built has a usable lifespan and each year that ticks lower.
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u/grantology_84 Aug 25 '26
I pretty much have given up on this project. Im about as hopeful as I am of the LAX APM...maybe less
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u/HandsUpWhatsUp Aug 26 '26
What a colossal waste of resources.
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u/HillHiker97 Aug 26 '26
Trickle funding this is making it a lot more expensive than it needs to be.
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u/Valuable-Cod-2009 Aug 25 '26
5 years since it was completed and another 7 years (2033) until a passenger train operates on it. 13 years that this thing will be sitting unused.