Yeah, if.

I get that HSR will be a benefit to those cities over time, but a lot of that initial benefit would come from connecting a car dependent area to a car hostile area to encourage people to start to take the train. Being close to the train could then spur increased density in housing, which could provide a nucleus for mass transit.

I would definitely go south of the Merced Y before going north, but I feel like the value of HSR to those communities is connecting them to either Los Angeles or San Francisco, not to other Central Valley cities.

I agree that battery trains would be useless.

The whole point of this project is to connect San Francisco with Los Angeles, so you are going to need to build through the Central Valley to do so. I don’t see SF and LA giving up on the project after they get better commuter rail. It is really more trying to build more useful initial operating segments first.

And the Central Valley cities are car dependent cities with poor mass transit. There is a good reason to take the train into SF or LA, but why take it into downtown Fresno? Even when you get to the train station, are you going to be able to get to the building you want to go to? I can easily see operations start on the first segment and there are tons of stories of empty trains used to try to kill the rest of the project.

And as for the politics, it seems like it would be a better political sell to Fresno to get them to agree to a train going to San Francisco than it would be for a train to Bakersfield.

And if the project stalls, it is better that it stalls out with useful track.

The initial segment is a train to nowhere which won’t provide any real destinations.

The system should have been built in two segments. The north segment should have been to leave San Francisco and make it past Gilroy in order to provide connectivity with a major city. The south segment should have been the Phase 2 segment connecting LA to San Diego, including a connection from Union Station to LAX in time for the 2028 Olympics.

That way, the north section sees ridership as a way to access SF while the Amtrak line between LA and San Diego can fall into the ocean after the replacement is finished. This could also possibly help with Brightline West as it could connect to the south segment through the Cajon Pass, making the system more valuable.

I hope they plan the segments better than California’s HSR.

I also think they should plan it to also be a backbone to regional rail as well. For Portland, you could put stations in Vancouver, WA and some locations south.

Hopefully Oregon participates as well to extend the system to Eugene.

Are they typically seen as joined or not? If not, do others try to sacrifice a lone Red Demon to the Zephyrhills to make it normal? Is this something people would think of doing?