The SF area already has rail corridors that ran from all major cities (San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz, etc) to Los Angeles. Most of that project is over farm land, where right of way / imminent domain should be straightforward.

Instead, we get the redundant Bart to San Jose (Amtrak has been continuously providing that route for a century or something.), and SF to SFO (caltrain covers that already).

They need to pick one rail technology and move the entire region to it, then dictate the legacy systems operate in a unified way (allowing regional, independent rail authorities to completely override city councils, sacramento and DC), with the understanding that they will be fired if the transition to a unified system takes more than 5-10 years.

Instead, they are doing the exact opposite of everything I just recommended, and all the systems are falling into disrepair.