No private capital investment in CA HSR can be expected given the size of the California system and the sparse development (i.e. online traffic potential) for much of it, and the major expense/uncertainties of building through the mountains and built-up urban area. Private investment requires capital recovery in less than 30 years (preferably less than 10) - unless you're Disney which can issue 100-year bonds. So it has to be built with government support, just like roads. Doesn't mean it can't be OPERATED using private organizations like many of the European and Japanese lines are now.

Musk's Hype-Loop is a wild card. We don't know if people would ride it because one hasn't been built yet, even on a Texas test track. Assuming it works and is acceptably comfortable/safe, with his money and maybe a dime or two from Bill Gates and others like them, it would make HSR for the 2-hour trip irrelevant. But it wouldn't affect the other markets HSR would serve because it would be a super-express - would have to be, to achieve the speeds hyped without punishing the passengers too badly. And I see it as much like a monorail in terms of a general system - too hard to switch if it's possible at all, so branches would have to be self-contained with passengers transferring; no through "trains."

I'm not going to defend Parsons - they're a big consulting firm and that's an inherent conflict of interest (you always need more studies...) in this kind of thing. I'm thinking of the concept - how do you integrate HSR into the TRANSPORTATION system to provide a useful service for people, which could eventually at least break even operationally if operated well? Full disclosure: I think CAHSR on the whole has made a fair stab at the first steps, though not a good one (remember Consumer Reports' old rating system? Excellent, Good, Fair, Not Acceptable?), but I don't see anybody else providing or even suggesting useful alternatives that, added to what we have now, don't leave us, in 20-30 years, with a 3rd world or worse transportation system. And economy. In a world that by then will be feeling the real effect of climate warming however it is produced. At least CAHSR tried, working within (and fiddling at times with) the constraints in the bond act.