We took the train from San Jose to San Luis Obispo once. (Final destination- Cambria.) We thought it would be a fun trip for the kids and help us avoid holiday weekend traffic. It’s normally a 3.5 hr drive door-to-door including a rest stop or two.
It took about 20 minutes to get to downtown San Jose, park and get on the train. We ended up in a dark, smelly car filled with numerous questionable characters. My younger son was fiddling behind a seat and came out with an empty whiskey bottle (we considered ourselves lucky he didn’t find a used hypodermic needle)
It took 8.5 hrs to get to San Luis, we then rented a car and drove 40 minutes to Cambria, our destination.
So we paid for parking in San Jose, 4 train tickets, a rental car for the weekend and it took a total of 10 hours one-way from start to finish. Does this make one bit of sense economically or time-wise??? NO!!
Today, if you plan ahead, you can purchase an $89 plane ticket to go from 5 different airports in No. Cal to ~9 different airports in So. Cal in less than 1 hr 15 mins, plus planes leave ~ every 30 minutes.
Only in screwed up California would anyone think that spending billions and billions of $$$ to replace plane travel with train travel makes sense. Of course these are the same stupid people who run empty light rail cars and buses all over the county so they can pat themselves on the back for saving the planet!!
“Stupid people are ruining this country.”
“Only in screwed up California would anyone think that spending billions and billions of $$$ to replace plane travel with train travel makes sense.”
Liberals are smarter than conservatives. They know FULL WELL that building train lines is a disaster, in nearly all cases. Conservatives are generally TOO STUPID to put up an effective defense against this crap, so we lose.
You are exactly correct on the question of demand. There are planes leaving all the time, and you can book a ticket even at the last minute on most days. So what does that say about the demand for a ticket? A few hundred a day maybe? Maybe 1000 a day?
High speed rail from So Cal to Nor Cal probably wouldn’t have a lot of demand especially in a state that doesn’t have very good local transportation. If you go to a city you need to move around that city too. You need buses that will accommodate luggage and run at late hours to all parts.