The people of Fresno are simply not numerous enough to justify a major infrastructure project to get them to SF and LA.

Not yet.

But if you built a major infrastructure that could make SF or LA a morning commute, it'd sure do some interesting things to population distributions and land prices.

This. Take a look at the Rhine Ruhr region and you'll see a vibrant place with high standards of living where you don't need to sell a kidney to buy a house.

Which explains why after almost two decades of Acela, Wilmington is booming!

This is what the folks behind the HSR are banking on, and also why I voted for it

There are 7 million people who live in the Central Valley who do not have adequate and affordable air travel, the population centers of the stops Fresno, Merced, Kings/Tulare are justified, even more, if you account how much cheaper it would be for people to commute to urban areas, and how many people can move to these cheaper areas to live.

The demand between SF and LA is simply not big enough either. Luckily there are 27 planned stations on the line allowing for 351 possible origin/destination pairs, which added up accounts for way more demand than SF-LA.

That's exactly what's ruining the entire effort. 27 stops turn this high speed train into a slog. 27 multi-minute waiting periods for boarding. 27 times decelerating and accelerating. When exactly is this high speed train gonna go full speed?

This is what we are competing with: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KM7B_auaBgE/UNr_iYv1v-I/AAAAAAAAAY... This is unlikely to get us there: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Fresno_C...

Every train doesn't have to stop at all 27 stops. You can run a super-express that stops at 5 stops every 30 minutes, an express that stops at 10 stops every hour and a regular service that stops at every station every 2 hours. The schedule is constructed in such a way that the faster train passes the slower one while it's stopped at a station.

Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka is the busiest rail line in the world and there are a lot of stations between these two cities. The fastest train, Nozomi only has 6 stops and runs every 15 minutes.

And yet every successful high speed rail system out there has stops in small towns and cities, many of which are much smaller than Fresno or even Merced...like Verdun, Atami, or Montereau. They're successful because of these stops, not in spite of them.

The market size for SF to LA and back is not large enough to justify rail with no stops. Its not even close, even assuming monopolistic market shares. And airlines have shown extreme willingness to compete with rail on price grounds, and they could take half that market easily even with trains going top speed.

Sorry if that burns your dreams of fast rail to the ground, but it is objectively the most financially responsible way to build. It can actually pay for itself that way, whereas it would be America's biggest boondoggle if they took your advice.

Look at this, and click "stops/details" on a few.

https://traintimes.org.uk/KGX/EDB

These are high speed trains, but Britain hasn't upgraded the tracks, so they run at less than full speed. But the door design and number of passengers is what matters for the duration of a stop at a station, and as you can see, it's around 1-3 minutes.

It's certainly a factor, but it's not like the long distance Amtrack train I once used, which stopped for 5-15 minutes at most stops.