>>2049197L take.
I'm all for trains, but you have to ask yourself if it's still worth it to go the HSR route in the US, considering that trains are a residual form of long-distance transportation, that public transit usage even in cities (esp. LA) is low anyway, which hurts the potential of HSR, and that the US has a hard time carrying out large public infrastructure works.
Long years ago the US decided to go the way of air travel, think of that what you will but that's how it is. Even though CAHSR as a project makes sense, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's a lone outlier with no larger rail system of modern capacities around it (the odd regional train and long distance boomer cruiser doesn't make a difference), nor is there any project to establish this in some way.
Maybe if the whole country had decided on a hybrid air-HSR system wherein you combine both forms of travel and see to it, that airports are connected to HSR and so on, then it could have made sense. But as it is? No chance. That's why the project isn't even getting off the ground, it doesn't really have a conceptual backing, it's just the pipe dream of a few politicians, lobbyists and rail aficionados; again, notwithstanding that it isn't in and of itself a reasonable project.
tl;dr CAHSR would of only made sense within a larger intercity transportation policy which included it, not by itself.
