exactly who is supposed to ride this thing when built? probable cost more than a plane ticket,take longer to get there, and break down more.
“exactly who is supposed to ride this thing when built? probable cost more than a plane ticket,take longer to get there, and break down more.”
Southwest Airlines alone has dozens of daily flights from 4 or 5 different airports in Southern California that fly to Northern California for reasonable fares. However, if you want to visit Charles Manson at the prison in Corcoran the low speed bullet train will come in handy.
Anyone who ever travelled up or down I-5, or any other freeway of such caliber, can easily identify one more problem with the train: you cannot haul stuff. The train is only good for lawyers who need to go from SF to LA with just a briefcase, for a meeting, and be back home by dinner time. That is, assuming that the promised deal on travel time - 2 hours from SF to LA - that had been already changed to 2 hours and 40 minutes - won't be changed any further.
Unfortunately, the lawyer's time is expensive, so no lawyer will ever take the train. No farmer with a truck full of grain will take the train. No rancher with a trailer full of cattle will take the train. No business traveler will take the train because he uses airplane to come here from NYC or wherever. No experienced traveler in an RV will take the train. Locals won't take the train because they have cars, and the train stations are too far apart.
Trains are designed only for passengers with little luggage. This leaves only young and poor tourists, students perhaps, with only backpacks, who will certainly be glued to windows, eagerly watching the moon-like landscape of the water-starved Central Valley. That would be their trip of a lifetime - simply because they will never make that mistake again.