I started attending CHSRA meetings right after this fiasco began in the mid nineties, until I retired, and a couple of more after I retired and was doing some part time consulting. I don't ever recall Quentin Kopp ever giving a rats ass about whether or not this fiasco ran down the 5 or through Tejon, or any particular route, other than with going via San Jose and Pacheco, which appeared to be favored early on, by San Jose political interests.

I have also known the "evil" Mike Antonovich personally for nearly 30 years. I've worked with him on transportation issues, and even served with Mike on a public funding agency governing board. And, as I seem to remember it, he had no involvement with the decisions at CHSRA in developing the route alternatives. When an alternative via Palmdale was included in the alternatives, he naturally supported that because it could be a potentially beneficial project for his half million or so North County/Antelope Valley constituents, who now make a horrific commute down the 14.

I do know that Kopp and company refused to even look at more direct route options between Palmdale on Bakersfield, refused to look at more cost effective and cheaper High Speed Rail technology options than Super High Speed, I do know from going to those meetings that early on had decided to make this the most expensive and gold plated project they could conceive of, and then kind of "made up" whatever self serving "analysis" they needed to justify the most expensive train that contractors could build.

So that line of crap about the "evil" Antonovich, who was actually looking out for his constituents, is just more of your usual line of fairy tale fantasy about the vast evil all encompassing conspiracy, in other word it's bull$hit.