Picture BART-MTC and its many allies, such as SPUR and SLVG, suddenly announcing one monday morning they have a new plan, replacing Caltrain with BART. Convert to 5-6 and 3rd rail and dangle the carrot to the enroute burgs of extensive undergrounding in their downtowns and direct connection to Market St. SF. The BART Empire has the deep pockets to accomplish exactly that.

Outrageous to tear out new overhead? The Bay Area historically has done it many times. Think Key System and others before that.

Alternately the mere threat of killing Caltrain could cinch the really dumb Gilroy-Merced Pacheco route with all its exorbitant tunneling. Argument being BART-Caltrain, no matter how powerful and malevolent, could then not stop the connection to SF prescribed in Prop 1a.

However if the SF end of CAHSR were dropped that would mean no expensive Caltrain extension to TTC and would likely seal the 2nd BART tube scheme.

On the southern end all roads always lead to Palmdale. With no northern tier to spend billions on there would plenty now for the base tunnel Burbank to Palmdale. You could probably even forget the line thru Tehachapi to Bako; they could just say - eh - we're going straight to SinCity now.