On Nov 26, 2011, at 10:28 PM, Jordan Hayes wrote:
> 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.
A high speed rail line would make much more sense if it were designed to move migratory labor from our southern border to agricultural centers on the west coast. This could include stops in Livermore (to tie into BART) and Sacramento for business travelers. It seems to me that this would provide much better arguments for system value (control of immigration, dependable delivery of labor) than other perceived benefits.