>>990618You've got to be crazy if you think HSR is going to do anything for the utterly car dependent, depopulated, and crime ridden cities in the central valley. You can go take the bus to the HSR station in Fresno, but I wouldn't feel safe walking to the end of the parking lot in that shithole.
I know where the long term ROI is. It's in LA and the bay area, where the traffic is fucking bad, and we won't have the money to address our immediate needs for a long, long, time. LA's transportation plan goes has a 50 year schedule, but we need all of it now.
So yeah, we'll build a train line through a place with zero demand, that won't be competitive with air travel for end to end trips, and hope that it will somehow magically "encourage patterns of use," and watch LA and the SF bay area burn because they have no money to solve their pressing immediate problems.
If you want to "encourage patterns of use" I hear that subways are quite good at that.
