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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

My assertion is most people arguing online about this do not live near the impacted areas. Happy to be proven wrong on this. I just have a lot of sour taste to the whole thing with how many people constantly harp on public transit, but then want me to see their brand new car.

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The SF-LA transit project isn't a replacement for driving, it's a replacement for flying. Cars are replaced by local transit, the CA high speed rail line goes through a whole lot of nothing (read: the worst farmland they could route through) between SF and LA. Are you sure you live around here if you're this off-base with the basic premise?

People have a habit of arguing online that this would replace people's commutes.

Which, to be fair, people online have a habit of just arguing past each other.

It might speed up the commutes of people coming into the bay from Gilroy, and it might make Madera a somewhat-viable commuter town (if you don't mind 2 hour commutes), but I can't imagine many people using it for daily travel who aren't already well-served by Amtrak/Caltrain

This is completely the wrong way of thinking about it. Long distance and short distance transport form a symbiotic relationship.

And in most countries we wouldn't call multiple cities of 100k+ population 'nothing'.

HSR is the spine of the transportation network, that local and regional traffic docks to making a greater whole. It increases the reach and power of public transport as a whole.

For HSR to be successful, you need people using the in-between station for regional trips, not just end to end airplane like trips.

Of course because more people live outside of CA then inside. And lots of people talk about transport policy. Lots of countries talk about high speed rail and California is known globally.

It isn't necessarily a problem one way or the other, I should add. The observation, though, is that people are far far more forceful and opinionated on the situation the further from the area that they are.

I'm not sure how you measured how far away everybody talking about it is. If seen more passion form Americans then from Europeans about HSR in California. And I don't think most people in China are hot on it.

I guess there are some very passionate rail fan liberals in the Eastern united states that hope for true HSR on the East coast that really root for HSR.

But then again I have heard plenty of Californians passionately denounce/advocate for the project.

So I don't think your observation holds.

Two things can be true:

1) I wish we had better rail transit in the bay area and to the areas surrounding the bay

2) I have to own a car to get to places in Northern California

These don't seem like remotely contradictory positions.

Largely fair. Ish. If you are dreaming of Tokyo level public transit, though, you are dreaming of far fewer cars for the people that live there.

It's a chicken and egg issue. We don't build dense, mixed-use housing and commercial, we don't build transit. There's no way to live a Tokyo-like lifestyle in 95% of California. And the places where you can are often exorbitantly expensive.

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