>>1020329>Seattle and Sacramento are much too far apart to justify an HSR connection, roughly 750 miles by land. Even Portland is outside the useful range being ~580 by land from Sacramento. But even just aside from the distance, the fact is that there are no metropolitan areas between Sacramento and Portland. That's why there has been talk of a separate HSR line in the Pacific Northwest between Vancouver, BC, Seattle, and Portland with a possible extension to Eugene.Well there would be more stations (connections) than just Seattle-Portland-Sacramento. It would most likely be Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia-Portland-Salem-Eugene-Redding-Sacramento.
The goal of CAHSR isn't only to connect and serve the major cities of San Francisco,Los Angeles,Sacramento, and San Diego. But also to service the cities of the Central Valley and help their economies grow.
>There are not gaps in the phase 1 route of CAHSR. It will go from downtown SF to Anaheim via downtown LA. If you want to split it up, "phase 1a" technically goes from San Jose to Burbank and "phase 1b" extends from SJ to SF and from Burbank to Anaheim via downtown LA. There is nowhere along that route where there will be a physical gap in separating different sections of HSR service. Phase 2 will extend to Sacramento via Merced in the Central Valley and from LA to San Diego via the Inland Empire.The main gap in service I was talking about was the Central Coast (Ventura,Santa Barbara,San Luis Obispo etc). Any good rail plan would include these communities in their scheme. The state needs to buy/build an electrified right away on the coast for Amtrak;or the Feds need to do it themselves.
>>1020451>It has less than half as many passengers as the Sydney to Melbourne route.That's because most people take the Interstate 5 between the two, and part of the purpose of the High Speed Rail Plan is to reduce the number of people that would drive.
