The original 25+ year old dream was traveling from the bayarea to LA instead of flying. Existing rails, like Amtrak, already exist. But building from scratch just to experience high-speed is a no-no; it’s very cost-prohibitive. Replacement of existing rail is inefficient for high-speed trains because of the short distances between desired stops. The current goal now falls somewhere in a middle… build bits and pieces here and there, in the hopeful eventuality old rail systems needs their replacement. And the two systems eventually unify in the future, somehow.

The downside of the political support needed to find the project was to route the tracks through politicians’ constituencies or patrons at the expense of the most efficient, or the most useful route.

This greatly added to the expense of the tracks,.and now the rail authority is trying to claw some of those promises back.