> I love the idea of high speed rail, but the timing of the
> project makes no sense.
I agree: it should have stated 25 years ago.
> Because funding for the project is not yet available, the idea
> is to build part in an area with relatively little need for high
> speed rail.
I think this is a cunning move. If you build the easy part, it will probably force concensus on the hard parts. To wit:
> Part of the reason is that the train is supposed to go through some
> expensive real estate in silicon valley. I don't expect that to
> happen.
Exactly. There's a faction that says: it *has* to go to downtown San Francisco. But in order to do that, they will have to face off against Atherton and Palo Alto. Which will never happen. But: there are already trains that go to downtown San Francisco, so the trick here will be to just run to San Jose, Livermore, and Richmond, and let the existing trains carry the load to the downtown area[*]. Fix up CalTrain, fortify BART ... forget the idea of sending the new train all the way to the core.
Once this project gets going, all kinds of compromises will be made to complete it.
/jordan
[*] The projection for the "last mile" of San Jose to San Francisco is something like 25 minutes; Caltrain does it presently in 36 minutes, and could easily do a skip-stop service in 29. $8B for a 4 minute decrease in running time?