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Train stations tend to be located right downtown whereas airports, for various reasons, far outside. You can't exclude that delta. SFO is in San Mateo, the next county over -- almost 15 miles away. Oakland airport is closer to 20 miles away. A minimum of 30 minutes by car, 40 minutes by Bart from downtown SF. On the other hand, the high-speed rail link would pick up at the Salesforce Transit Center (Embarcadero Station) at the corner Howard and Fremont, stopping at San Jose Diridon station. Yes plaines are fast in the air, that's not a surprise. However, they're epically slow when parked at the gate while you clear security, epically slow as they taxi, dead stopped as they wait to take off due to ATC hold and weather issues, and similarly dead stopped when they're waiting for the previous plane to clear the gate at the destination airport, while you wait in line to get off, and while you wait for your bags, and while you wait for your taxi. C'mon now. "Plane go fast" is just a small part of the story, and I'm an AA EXP. Again, I think the infrastructure costs in the US tend to be massively overinflated due to graft instead of actual cost. |
It's not viable to build a long-distance rail line given the same total time (even if more comfortable since people want cheap and fast), especially not at the cost of $100B+.
If you want to call it inflated prices because of graft then fine, but that means you need to solve that first. Which goes back to my original point that there are many other obstacles that need to be overcome before high-speed rail makes sense here.