We should let Californians vote for the route, it's our money we paid for, not the Rail Authority, they are bunch of corrupted officials.

Those Rail Authority Officials may received bribes from airline industry, and auto industry to build a "NOWHERE Bullet Train" that will be useless and cannot compete with airline and auto industries. I'm living in San Jose and witnessed friend of mine bribed a city councilman in San Jose in order to win a contract fund by the city, therefore there are no surprise to see most officials in power received bribes known as lobby money, but only us, a regular citizen paid tax to feed all of them....Sorry guys, it's life....LOL !!!!

What the hell? I had to look up Borden and Corcoran. They want to build the first leg between two suburbs of Fresno?!

Corcoran's biggest claim to fame? Corcoran State Prison, home of Charles Manson. So, instead of dubbing this boondoggle, "The High-Speed Rail Line to Nowhere", we can just call it the "The High-Speed Rail Line to Charles Manson." Wonderful.

It's more of a Shelbyville idea, Web Link

Indeed, USA. Indeed.

You do know that high speed rail cost effectivness ought to be considered by the pricy even more land invasive airports and highways we won't need to build. Last I checked the equilalent in transportation capacity the cost of which was more than double the cost of highspeed rail at minimum. So if anyone else have different data I'd like to hear it.

Kristine, what airports and highways were we planning to build?

Mike,

That is the big point. Unless you assume that for the next 50 years Californians will not need more transportation capacity, we will need to build something, or suffer the economic and environmental losses associated with delay and congestion.

We voted to build this, we have to start somewhere, USDOT is paying 20% for us to start here and now,

AND in neither the Bay Area or Los Angeles, can folks agree on what to build anytime soon.

There's a problem with justifying building a real, very expensive public project because it is cheaper than a hypothetical, more expensive public project(s): you can always make the hypothetical project bigger and more expensive. Seems to me you need to demonstrate solidly that the project you're really going to build will be used enough to justify building it.

Caltrain's experiment with weekend trains is a better approach to improving rail service and increasing ridership vs. cars.

Web Link

It is a better investment to spend even a fraction of the monies approved for HSR to subsidize Caltrain and other existing mass transit agencies to determine what new programs can be funded to encourage higher adoption of mass transit, instead of driving.

Clearly, people asked for the weekend trains, and if mass transit, along with city planning helps to make this mode of travel not only incrementally convenient, but also incrementally competitive to the costs of owning a car, then we'll have made real progress.

Baby steps, millions of them, will give us a better solution, than one big leap of faith.

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