In practice, flying to LA from Norcal (or vice versa) requires getting up at 3-4AM to get to the airport by 5ish for a flight leaving between 6-7AM. Improving airport connections to downtown and other major employment centers at the "other end" was always what was needed, and still is.

I voted for the HSR bonds because I expected most of the money to go toward "connections" work (more of it should have) and planning/environmental for things like connecting the Valley with LA (which is still needed, regardless of route and speed). I never expected serious HSR construction work unless additional money appeared - which did happen, but with political strings as documented that messed things up, though as a practical matter there never was enough money, even with Fed, to build anywhere but in the Valley.

And I laughed when people said it could be built for $30-40B; said it would be close to $100B by the time it was done, in inflated dollars, and would take 50 years to build. And that we needed *something* to improve passenger train service, making it more reliable and getting it off the freight tracks; true "high" speed was optional, but we had to start someplace.

Those who want to blame Brown ... the mess started way before Jerry's second reign, and way after the first. Arnold ... but of course once it started it developed a life of its own and the politicians went along with it. Frankly, Kopp is really responsible for making it impossible to design and build a system that might work for California, by adding various poison pills that, absent the federal money, would probably have killed the whole scheme leaving more for the regions at each end (the original intent, I believe). At this point, I expect the Valley tracks to, with a little extra money, be tied in to BNSF and serve Amtrak - the most expensive tracks Amtrak will ever run on, even counting the NE Corridor. What else are you going to do with it? Tear it down?