how pointless that the state is spending decades and tens of billions on HSR from SF to LA for a hypothetical sub-3 hour journey, while it still takes 1.5 to 2.5 hours to get between various important locations in the Bay Area by public transit.
Caltrain electrification is a comparatively small project and seems will happen quickly regardless of HSR.
the Bay Area provides 40% of state tax revenue and, even worse, externalizes the costs of its awful development policy on a large chunk of Northern California population in form of increased housing and transportation costs.
Well, public transit in the rest of the state is in an even worse condition than public transit in the Bay Area. HSR duplicates the functionality now provided by planes. The umpteen billions being demanded for HSR hypothetically could provide decent bus service across the state. But given the current bureaucracy, the situation feels more like "how much money would like us to embezzle and what story would you like to hear while we're doing?"
Which isn't to say I'm pro-car or pro-private-instead-of-public. If anything, a spot light needs to be shown on the clot of public-private corruption apparently controlling US transit decisions.
You don't need to hypothesize what the alternative to HSR would be. It was well researched. The alternative, expanding highways and airports, was more than 2x the cost of HSR. Of course, the costs of HSR have grown, but so would the highway and airport costs.
The biggest cost to HSR is acquiring and developing property in developed areas. But this is significantly more costly for highways and airports.
The solution to the bloated HSR budget is to improve the process, not to switch to another alternative mid-stream that both theoretically and in practice would be at least as bloated and even more costly.
I'm unusual, but I think it might have been better to focus on better medium speed rail instead of HSR. I still support HSR, but honestly even if a train from SF to DTLA were 6 hours it would be superior to driving or flying, and if the extra funds made it available in 2020 instead of a million years from now, and that we could service Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, etc. (the Coast Starlight route) that would be a pretty huge plus.
Long-term, we need to switch from planes to HSR for trips of 400 miles or less, unless someone can come up with a carbon-free alternative to jet fuel. Americans tend to have a warped perspective because our trains are so crappy compared to what is standard in Western Europe or east Asia.
If the option was one versus another, then the question may be valid on why that one is chosen (I don't know, I don't have the full background). If you are suggesting that both could be done with the same money, that's a completely different story. What is your point?
