[alephnerd]

Sofia to Bucharest is approx 400km.

San Francisco to Los Angeles is approx 630-700km.

Sofia to Bucharest is largely flat.

San Francisco to Los Angeles requires building rail lines in multiple mountain ranges that rival the Carpathians.

Imagine having to build a 600km high speed railway line through 3 mountain ranges the size and height of the Carpathians, oh and almost nobody lives in between the two metros.

It does not make financial sense.

[KeplerBoy]

We have railways across and through the alps. Look up the Brenner Base Tunnel or Gotthard Base Tunnel.

Somehow Europe builds those things even across national borders. To be fair, there's not really an alternative if one wants to connect southern and northern Europe.

[alephnerd]

> We have railways across and through the alps. Look up the Brenner Base Tunnel or Gotthard Base Tunnel.

Absolutely, and those were multibillion dollar projects that could be justified to help connect 4-5 different heavily populated regions - Vienna, Innsbruck, Veneto, and Milan.

In between the Bay Area and Los Angeles Metro there are only 2 metropolitan areas (Fresno, Bakersfield), and they have a combined population less than 20% of Veneto.

[KeplerBoy]

Oh, it's much bigger than just connecting Austria to northern Italy. That project is about connecting Germany (and Scandinavia) to Italy.

[alephnerd]

BUt that's my point. It's integrating two extremely dense regions with multiple large cities in between. Between the Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles, all you have is Fresno and Bakersfield.

That's it.

[KeplerBoy]

I agree, just wanted to point that out.

If the californian high speed railway would be the right thing to build, it'd have been built 60 years ago. Maybe it will be viable one day, but apparently it has not been so far.