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by dekhn 930 days ago
I've tried to figure out the logisitics of having Caltrain and Cal HSR sharing two tracks in the SF Bay Peninsula corridor and I simply can't figure it out. There's no way you can get the Cal HSR at speed through the corridor with bidirectional Caltrain non-high-speed traffic, and there's no room to build more track. So the HSR would have to slow down to Caltrain speeds or they would have to modify the Caltrain schedule (this is all speculation; I haven't seen any plans to address this, other than the ongoing grade separation and electrification).

Combined with the route (which takes a big detour, increasing the ride between the termini), it seems like we're going to pay a lot of money to have something that can sort of get you between northern LA and southern San Jose in a not-very-short amount of time. Hard to see the attraction.
2 comments
aerostable_slug 930 days ago
What's insane is the fact that the issues you bring up could have and should have been hashed out via a whiteboard months or years before the first shovel hit the dirt. Figuring out how to solve fundamental architectural issues shouldn't be postponed until development has started, unless of course the real priority was getting dollars to the beneficiaries of taxpayer largesse — and looking good for the next election cycle.
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eitally 930 days ago
What I anticipate is that it will require a transfer in Diridon, which is suboptimal but it's also unrealistic to think of HSR going directly to SF (seriously, what route would be conceivable that could support actual high speed rail?). However, Caltrain just issued this press release today, which indicates that one of the results of electrification is going to be an ability to run more trains and increase the speed of SF<-->SJ bullets to accommodate 30min end-to-end travel time. If it's a 2hr30min HSR ride from LA to Diridon, then a transfer to 30min Caltrain to SF, that sounds more than acceptable, and still far faster and more convenient than flying LAX<->SFO.

https://www.caltrain.com/news/caltrain-announces-exciting-ne...

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