Libs & Progs get fixated on bright shiny symbols for which real-world usage does not matter.
"Bullet Trains" are the current fixation. Before that variously, were electric cars (twice), hybrid cars, solar power (twice), wind power (twice). Other than hybrids - which use various technologies that have been around for decades - all have been busts, due to limited utility or stupid utilization.
CA's "Bullet Train", if not euthanized, will be an example of the latter. Ignoring air travel, a high-speed route more or less direct from San Diego or LA to San Jose or SF could make sense, hypothetically. But there are three problems, even with that hypothetical direct route:
* Air travel is easy and well-established - from Lindbergh, LAX, John Wayne, and Burbank in the south to SJC, SFO, and OAK in the Bay Area;
* That direct route goes through mountains, parks, and former military bases, a geographic and regulatory nightmare;
* That direct route follows one or more of the faults in the San Andreas Fault System.
But bureaucracy being bureaucracy - i.e. inane & insane - a direct route is far from what is planned. The planned routing involves crossing the Tehachapi Mountains (Hello! Mountains! Earthquake faults!) going north through the Central Valley, stopping in mutiple cities, including Sacramento, and then turning toward SF (crossing multiple fault zones and either crossing over or under San Francisco Bay). IOW, lots of stops that defeat the "Bullet Train" concept, and consume enormous amounts of fuel, every time the train accelerates from a stop to whatever full speed it reaches before having to slow for the next stop. Even with regenerative braking on a massive scale, that's going to be a lot of wasted fuel!
