It's my opinion, and that of others, that the HSR for California is a huge scam....check the sleazy connections with DiFeinstein, her husband's (Dickie Blum's Catellus Group) land holdings, Rep Jim Costa's new district, HSR Vice-chair Richard's land holdings and the vast array of union interests that will put hundreds of thousands of dollars in union dues back to the politicians (strangely, mostly Liberal Democrats...gee!)and an increase in cost to $98 Million versus the original $42 Million or so, and you have a monsterous ponzi scheme to be paid for by the California tax payer. Even Quinten Kopp says what passes for high speed rail between NorCal and SoCal is not what even he envisioned. The latest California Rail News (December, 2011) has a fine expose of the whole mess. All these clowns need do is take a trip on their own dollars to Japan and see how the JR Shinkansen lines are laid out.....at grade, very few eleveated sections, and tunnels to go through mountains....evidently these dolts with the HSR cannot figure out that there are no, real population centers between SanFran or Sacto and Los Angeles....there is only one tourist destination point of note and that is Yosemite via Merced. California is not Japan, France or Germany or Taiwan or China....there, cities and population demographics make the use of HSR for commuting a viable alternative...but not for California where there are just too many miles and too few jobs between commute stops.

And, even if the HSR trains stopped at each town....the transport infrastructure within California is to poor that no one would want to risk making appointments given the abject lack of convenient and reliable bus service..it truly is a joke when compared to the systems in even the small towns of Japan, where you can go just about anywhere in the country on a bus, train or taxi.

Even if the line would attract families to travel to say, Dinseyland, the HSR will end up where? How will travelers and their luggage get from the HSR station to Anaheim....by bus?

If a HSR line was to be built, and it made sense, private investors would flock to the opportunity. But, it does not and they are not. To make the line worthwhile for folks from Sacto and San Fran areas, the line should go directly down the I-5 corridor, burrow through Tejon Pass and into the LA basin....but that would be too simple. The money saved with a direct line versus the Gerrymandered and politically-drawn cicuitous route now envisioned would pay for both SF and Sacto lines with convergence somewhere around Lathrop/Manteca/Tracy.