The California HSR plan begs to differ.
>Since HSR works in France to connect those cities, it should generally work equally well in the US to connect those cities.
Only if people routinely travel to those cities rather than further away cities.
>Only if people routinely travel to those cities rather than further away cities.
They do. People naturally travel more to places closer to them than further away. There is a strong correlation here. When you’re hungry and want to go out, do you go to a food place 5-10 minutes away? Or a place hours away? Or 3 Michelin starred place on the other side of the planet.
The regions targeted for HSR often have significant auto traffic on the highways connecting them, and short haul flights between their airports. HSR hits a sweet spot for trips that are long drives and short flights. Cost and time competitive, while also being more comfortable.
This is only true in a vacuum without our political and legal environment. If you could make the project immune to CEQA, eminent domain challenges, and union pressure, then you have a much more viable railway. If you could at least brush off two of those three and one of them was the union pressure, then it might actually get built in the manner it was intended to be linking San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego. At this point we’ll be lucky to get a line that doesn’t share tracks with freight between SF and LA.
Do you still think that qualifies as "empty spaces"?
Fresno is a county seat and there's Cal State. That's it.
Same in France, every local baron wanted his dedicated HS line, so now we got plenty but only one is profitable.