The Caltrans Division of Fail has done very little true planning analysis of this corridor that I have yet seen, lately Nor, did CT do very much "modeling" on any of the other state supported now local JPA operated corridors that I recall. The JPA Capitol Corridor did some of this work that I recall, which resulted in their plan to operate lots of service early, a decision which has shown that wisdom.

Ironically, some of the best work over the last 40 years had come from academics and advocates, going back to Ron Scheck's work out of University of New Mexico Las Cruces who showed Amtrak system growth based on increased system structure "connectivity" and "frequencies" using a simple population based "gravity" model travel model, similar to the one used by Irish State Railways for intercity service planning. And, much of this has been forgotten and/or ignored... Anderson still doesn't get it.

If there is no train between A and B, you can't take a train between A and B. And, if the train only goes between A and B every other day, or only once a day, you're going to take it a lot less than if the train between A and B come every hour.... It's not that hard to model, we only have 50 years of real CA rail data to do the regression analysis... But, as we saw with CAHSRA, we don't use much analysis like that to plan projects like the "runaway money train" because if we did, we might have had to design a system that would really work for real "observed CA travel behavior, and better meeting their travel needs...

I've been away from the Coast planning, and maybe, in the last 3 or 4 years the JPA's and/or CT have done more work. I am familiar with work done by the advocacy groups, using string lines and string line passenger ridership graphs to identify the "service" ridership "multiplier" effect on LOSSAN north ridership. It also showed the effects of more service on the through trips generated to LOSSAN south. I've kept and made copies of those string line analysis to show students (or the occasional rare "smart" elected official) when I teach the occasional transportation planning class, as an example of using data collection, displaying data in these kind of visual formats, and what that data can tell us.

This load factor ridership analysis, using ridership load factor string lines showed a problem with both connectivity (direct service through LAUPT without changing trains) and with the scheduling of some low performing in as been done, that I've seen is years old. Analysis of LOSSAN data, and ridership data from the Starlight, does give us a pretty good indication of demand changes by station, as service levels have increased. Which could be used to interpolate for the kind of "through" trip connectivity to and from stations serving the significant population on the Coast north of SLO.

Current LOSSAN north levels are still low, and some trains still underperform, especially the segment, due to poor timing and lower service levels between SLO and Goleta, with lower arrival and departure availability. As the trains go past Goleta, north they "empty out", and leaving SLO they only slowly "fill up" with passengers, leading to way few passengers per train mile, creating an empty tail. More service to and from SLO would help with part of this, but lack of further destinations limits utility of such service to the large population centers in North Santa Barbara and southern SLO counties.

Any through Coast line service would/should also be part of an "integrated" rail passenger service to fill those LOSSAN north gaps and "reload" the trains, for trips to and from Paso Robles, King City, Salinas, Castroville, Gilroy, San Jose, Palo Alto, Redwood City, SFO, or the City, and/or service to East Bay end points.

As was noted with the criticisms of Mr. Anderson's failure to understand the "end-to-end" "load factor" versus the "refill" the train seats over and over model on Amtrak's long distance trains, the Coast line would act as a connection into an out of the end points (as the current corridors do quite successfully) and "turning over" seats with intermediate distance trips, throughout the entire length of the Corridor (eg. Santa Barbara to Paso Robles, or Gilroy to SLO, or Grover Beach to SFO...).

This kind of "overlapping" all day rail passenger service with mid point trains originating in Goleta, SLO, and Salinas, would help eliminate the "tail effect" where the trains to SLO "empty out" as the seats are not "refilled" for trips further north, which is very apparent from the actual LOSSAN data, and the history of service level and additional connectivity passenger miles growth multipliers on LOSSAN, the Capitol corridor, and the San Joaquin corridor.

I thought this hype sounded vaguely familiar and I missed that date... This was the predecessor to the "we're just gonna run a train to Vegas on the UP" hype of a similar vein a few years back. These have always struck me as a variation on the Iowa Pacific/Inland Eureka/CAHSRA business model, mostly aimed at looking for investors, or to fleece taxpayers, based on a rather vague "vison" and lots of hype. I note, that this was unlike the kind of due diligence I've seen first hand in my encounters with the folks who developed the Virgin Las Vegas/ project.