Quote:
Originally Posted by 202_Cyclist
Yes, I think people are just being purposefully obtuse. Here in Washington, DC, when people take the train through the Northeast Corridor, they don't just go from Washington to New York or Washington to Boston. Passengers go to Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton, etc... Some passengers will travel the entire corridor but many others will go to intermediate stations.
This is entirely similar to how CA high speed rail will operate. Some passengers will go from LA - San Francisco but some will go from Irvine to Palmdale, LA - Bakersfield, Fresno - San Jose, etc...
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That's actually not true, though. Most Acela traffic is NYC-DC. There aren't particularly high Amtrak volumes anywhere but NY Penn, Philly, and DC.
And the CA corridor isn't analogous. The NE Corridor only works because NY is at the center, and NY is primarily transit-oriented. And the secondary CA cities are extremely sprawly and car-oriented, and impractical for HSR. There's no real market for Bakersfield, which doesn't have a corporate base, strong core, or transit orientation, where someplace like Wilmington or New Haven has all three attributes.