People keep wanting these long as fuck HSR routes and, well, that’s really not the space HSR fills in transport infrastructure. HSR generally replaces short-haul airline trips, which is why it would be YUGE for LA-SF, the TX metros, etc. But it still tends to lose out to airlines on long-haul trips because, eventually, jets are just faster. China does do these crazy long routes, and I’m not really sure why, unless their air infrastructure is really whack or something. I THINK that their longest lines still fulfill the role of replacing short-haul flights, it’s just that it didn’t make sense to separate the alignments when it’s all along the same line anyway.
Basically, HSR is a huge PITA to build right, a well worthwhile PITA, but a PITA nonetheless. That makes it really expensive on the frontend, on top of not being competitive with air over very long distances. What would be more realistic for long-haul rail transit would be something closer to Brightline, which isn’t true HSR. They use a different FRA rail class than true HSR, and don’t achieve the same speeds, but it’s still reasonably fast (in the triple digits), doesn’t requires extremely specialized stock, and it’s a lot cheaper to build. Replacing Amtrak’s long-haul lines, like the Coast Starlight, with dedicated class six or seven alignment would mean that they could reasonably sustain about 125 mph. It’s currently a 36 hour trip (notably, 2x the time to drive from Seattle to LA), but that would bring it down to about (1,135 mi / 125 mph, mi cancels leaving us with) 9 hours. I can’t really set aside two days to take a train to Seattle, but I could plausibly set aside 9 hours, especially given that it’s a little over half the time to do the drive. Heck, you could even make it a sleeper train. I’d do that over an airline in a heartbeat. The California Zephyr runs from Sacramento to Chicago, IIRC, and takes about a week. On its own class 7 alignment, that would be (2045/125) just 16 hours. That’s a hell of a lot better than a week, and half the time of driving.
So, HSR for long distances isn’t really that good or valuable, IMO, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do highER speed rail for long distance travel.
There’s a few good videos on this, but the central valley isn’t nowhere. Along the central valley alignment, just talking about the cities where stops are planned, you’ve got a little over a million people who would be delighted to have an easier way to get to San Francisco or LA than a short-haul airline or a car, and that’s not counting people from satellite towns and cities that might use the rail as well. I live in Merced, where the central hub of the CAHSR is planned, so I feel that I can speak with a little authority here. Yes, outside of the metros, the valley is dazzlingly empty, but Bakersfield alone is basically the same population as Tulsa, OK. Fresno is the 33rd most populous city in the country. It’s not exactly like they’re trying to connect to Nome, Alaska here.
If you’d like to watch something a little more entertaining than me, banksrail did a pretty good video on it here: https://youtu.be/66CO4bHFlqY
There’s also a political question that can’t be ignored. The valley is really, really conservative. Building the rail through the valley second gives fox news time to rile up the conservatives here and mount resistance to the project, which already saw quite a lot of resistance as-is. This is a case of swallowing your frogs first; once the valley’s out of the way, building in the metros will be politically easier, and the conservatives now have a stake in the venture’s success unless they really just want the San Joaquins part 2: Going Past Cows Fast As Fuck. There’s also the question of political will in the cities. San Francisco and LA politicians in the state legislature have made it abundantly clear that they want theirs and couldn’t give a fuck if the valley gets a goddamn thing. One of the loudest efforts to torpedo the CAHSR recently was led by politicians from SF and LA that wanted to divert all CAHSR funding meant to benefit almost the entire state into their own local transit authorities. So, it’s as likely as not that once LA and SF got what essentially amounts to high speed commuter rail segments, they’d brush their hands off and say “good job, team” and either lose interest in or try to nuke the remainder of the project.
Valley metros are still bigger than a lot of ‘large’ metros in the rest of the country. Fresno and Bakersfield are 500,000 and 400,000 people, respectively. Visalia and Merced are around an additional 100,000 each. The central valley is hugely car dependent, even our airports tend to be on the pitiful side, and driving from the valley to LA or San Francisco fucking s u c k s. Currently, the only alternative is taking the San Joaquins, which runs about once every 2 hours and roughly travels a little slower than a car anyway, due to its shared alignment. Amtrak is doubling the service frequency this fall, but as it stands, that’s what it is. Cutting out the valley metros would have been basically leaving ridership (money) on the table and forcing valley citizens to continue on with car dependency for long trips or building a bunch of bullshit spur lines that people likely wouldn’t have messed with.
Mostly, the attitude in the central valley is just one of beleaguered exhaustion with the construction. These contractors have left a lot to be desired, and construction is proceeding at a pitiful pace while contractors keep spamming the HSR authority with bullshit overages (one submitted a six-figure cost overrun for long distance calls in 2017. Like, wtf, no, caveat emptor motherfucker, it’s not our fault you’re too stupid to use Skype). We just want to see the train roll before we all die of old age.
Better urban environments is a fight that’s going to have to happen (and currently IS happening under Newsom) all along the HSR alignment, including LA and SF. Central valley cities tend to look like a bomb went off that decapitated any building taller than two stories, but that’s something that can be changed with consistent effort over time, and I believe that it will. One of Newsom’s top priorities right now is housing affordability and homelessness, and his administration’s been fighting with (mostly bay area) NIMBY cities that are desperate to keep their densities low and their housing supply slim. YIMBY movements are starting to spring up all around California, and I’ve got hope that reforms to promote better, denser urbans are coming down the pipe. What’s more is that CAHSR, in addition to several other bills, are helping to find more robust transit and transit oriented development across the state.
As-is, yes, travelling by public transit in central California blows ass. The only saving grace, really, is that CAHSR actually goes THROUGH the cities (for the most part, I think Visalia is the exception), so that you’re automatically at your destination when you step off. This is compared to riding the San Joaquins, where it’s a total crap shoot whether you’ll get dumped in the middle of nowhere (Turlock, Modesto, Madera I think, probably a few others) or somewhere actually kind of useful. So, if our cities can get their shit together, and I think they can in time before the rail opens, then it could actually be a pretty nice experience.