Re: Poor Mojave............etc
Author: mook
Date: 10-05-2015 - 10:48
So let's modify that. HSR is not a commuter train as they are conventionally defined. That's what Coaster, Metrolink, BART, and Caltrain are for.
HSR may end up as a state-scale commuter train (SF-LA in less time than it will take on SMART and a ferry, or for that matter a GGT commute bus on 101, to get from SR to SF), and certainly will be used for that: when it's faster to get from Fresno to San Jose or San Francisco, or Bakersfield to LA, than it is to use BART from Livermore or Pittsburg (assuming some connection allowing Livermore-SJ trains is eventually built), or Metrolink from Lancaster, is there any doubt about what will happen on the cheap land and to the cheap housing in Fresno and Bakersfield? Regardless of water issues.
But Mojave as a stop *by* HSR just makes no sense. If an expanded Metrolink might want to *use* HSR tracks (as would XpressWest for a Las Vegas connection) to run its own trains in between the HSRs, and extend to Mojave in the process, that's a different story, but it would funded from a different pot and run by different people. Think MBTA/MN/NJT/SEPTA/MARC running on the Amtrak NEC.