If a high-speed rail line would run long distances in the middle of nowhere, that's usually a sign that you should not build the line in the first place. There are rarely enough end-to-end passengers on any line to justify the investment.

The Central Valley is sparsely populated at the moment, but it doesn't have to remain so. Expanding the cities there by 5 or 10 million people might actually make the high-speed rail project sensible.

The I5 Tejon Pass goes up to an altitude of 1.2km with a 6% section [1]. From a quick search, it appears that the steepest gradients in France/Germany and Japan's Shinkansen are 4% [2]. I'm not certain about China but it appears that the HSR to Kunming (1.9km altitude) has a limiting gradient of 2.3% [3].

Maybe they could solve it with clever engineering. However, I don't think 20 minutes is a big deal, especially considering that the Japanese have put up with the humiliation of spending 2:21 instead of 1:07 to go from Tokyo to Osaka for the last few decades. I think focusing on only SF-LA also ignores long-term goals, like connecting with the Brightline from Victorville to Las Vegas. If you live in Fresno or Bakersfield and want to go to Las Vegas, your options are pretty ridiculously long bus rides, or long multi-legged flights. If both the CA HSR and Brightline succeed (I know, I'm hopeless optimistic), then it can be a pretty killer app.

* [1] https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/4366-tejon-... * [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steepest_gradients_on_... * [3] [Note that the gradient here is listed as per-mille] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanning%E2%80%93Kunming_high-s...

"I have a better but politically infeasible idea" is just sort of silly. This isn't Sim City. You need the voters.

To that point, in Prop 1A the voters approved a specific project: namely an SF-LA line with a travel time of 2 hours and 40 minutes. They did not approve a line hitting a string of cities in the Central Valley. To the extent that those alternate paths prevent this main corridor from hitting 2 hours and 40 minutes it is in conflict with the will of the voters.

Except they did. Prop 1A does specifically mentions the corridors that need to be built, including the cities that need to be served in section 2704.04 subsection (b)(3).

This is exactly right. All of these details were laid out at the time we voted for it! This is what we voted for. Newsom getting cold feet on it hasn’t helped, I’ve gotta say.

Worth looking at Japan’s Toukaidou Shinkansen. The route could take a direct path from Tokyo to Nagoya to Osaka, being super fast and hitting up only the main cities.

But it doesn’t. It hits up the southern coast through Shizuoka and a bunch of small cities.

That's also because the shortest path is basically a tunnel.

They're now building the Chuo maglev, which does take the shortest path and is currently projected at $65 billion and climbing.