I have expounded upon this subject before, but a little duplication is in order. I also find the HSR critique to be essentially sound. Where it resonates with my own philosophy is that if they route the HSR near any quasi-metropolitan area or larger, there will ultimately be political pressure to stop there. Before you know it, it will be impossible to call the system "High Speed". One of my chief points was that there needs to be parallel medium speed systems to feed HSR, and a few orthogonal connectors. By MSR I mean 125 mph systems, which could be upgraded existent branch or main lines. Any municipality that wants access to HSR should have to financially participate in the construction/upgrade of feeder lines, whether parallel or orthogonal. There should be perhaps one midpoint stop in the entire length of the Central Valley section. Metropolitan transportation agencies could/should particpate in designing, funding and constructing shorter regional HSR or MSR links to connect to the primary Central Valley backbone. To me, the former West Valley line of the SP would make a good general corridor from Altamont, leaving open the possibility of a Pacheco Pass route from San Jose. The line should be kept west of Fresno. There are plenty of branch lines in the area that could become MSR links to Fresno. The line could then slowly merge with the general alignment of the BNSF south of Fresno. Take the line SOUTH of Bakersfield, and again use the Lamont/Arvin or Buttonwillow branches to upgrade to MSR to connect to metro Bakersfield. As much as I like the idea of another rail route through Tehachipi, the Tejon route probably does make more sense. Metrolink has a good network of existing lines for general area interconnection. Upgrading a few of these lines to MSR or even HSR could go a long way toward offsetting the enormous construction costs identified by Mr. Waller of a totally new HSR in the LA and Bay Areas. A longest possible maximum-speed middle section with 125 mph endpoint sections would still give us a probable 3 hour end to end solution. I agree that the proposal as it stands does not appear to be able to deliver the promised 2.5 hour trip. The message is: Stay away from direct metro contact, to save both capital construction costs and time constraints. Keep the design of the project away from politicians and closer to engineers and rail planners.