[Busy Bee]

Everyone is severely underestimating how many people would prefer to stay on the ground especially if offered a valid option that allowed travel at a comparable amount of time and comparable cost to air travel between two points like SF-LA. There are many many closeted and uncloseted people who simply do not like to fly. So when a very fast alternative is developed within an endpoint-endpoint (and intermediate stops ) range like the California program, I believe you will see a very healthy ridership baseline that would make the line a success. Also with all this talk of how people choose to drive the journey or to destinations in between, no one ever, ever, says anything about what other motives may be at play besides economic. This is a large oversight in the data that's always being thrown around. Everyone seems to assert that the only reason for making the decision to drive vs fly or vs taking a train or bus is for simplistic economics. Set aside the fact that all the hidden cost of auto travel never seem to make it into the equation - that's been reminded time and time again. People, most people I would say, make decisions for more reasons than just economic. While many will in fact choose to drive because the costs after considering multiple passengers in the vehicle, are in fact the lowest. But that does not account for all those that wind up flying when they would actually likely choose the high speed train if it existed and was very compaetitive in cost and time. And this is true of everywhere, not just the California program.