California High Speed Rail Thread

[edale]

Originally Posted by LAsam

If you were to wave a magic wand and have all this work completed, we would now live in a world where San Fran, Sacramento, LA, San Diego, and Las Vegas are all connected by HSR. Looking at the map, I struggle to see another city that makes sense to connect to this system via further expansion. Does anyone see the system moving further beyond the existing cities?

It'd be cool to see HSR connect to Palm Springs/Coachella Valley. From there, I guess it could theoretically get extended to Phoenix, but that might be pushing it a bit given the distance and literal nothingness in between the low desert CA cities and Phoenix.

[LAsam]

^ Would be nice to be able to access the Coachella Valley via rail. Probably could be handled via electrification and expansion of Metrolink.

[TWAK]

I think continuing HSR up the Valley Subdivision would be good and service the population centers. It could end in Redding and link up with HSR in Oregon if they ever have plans on doing it for the PNW. Electrifying the other lines that aren't upgraded to HSR would be a good trade-off.
There's the ROW along 5 too, but again the same issue is there's just not as many population centers.

[LAsam]

Originally Posted by TWAK

I think continuing HSR up the Valley Subdivision would be good and service the population centers. It could end in Redding and link up with HSR in Oregon if they ever have plans on doing it for the PNW. Electrifying the other lines that aren't upgraded to HSR would be a good trade-off.
There's the ROW along 5 too, but again the same issue is there's just not as many population centers.

That makes sense. If the PNW were to create a HSR connecting Vancouver to Portland we could eventually link that up with CAHSR.