> It's mind boggling to me that the California HSR isn't being built from DC to Boston instead.
Upgraded high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor (where the US's only existing HSR is located) is being planned. [1] California HSR being built in California doesn't preclude HSR from being built/upgraded in other parts of the US.
There are actually some serious efforts in place to get sanity back into urban planning, but (predictably I suppose) this is regarded as an attack on freedom and the lawsuits have already begun to fly.
Uhm, LA alone has more people than DC and Boston combined. Plus another 9 million living in the Bay Area. This is far and away the most obvious candidate for direct HSR in all of North America.
The core cities on the DC BAL PHL NYC BOS route total 11.5 million, while LA + SF is only 4.5 million. Thats arguably the more important figure because the relative advsntage of rail diminishes if you have to drive in from the suburbs. Also, four of those five cities have well developed public transit systems centered around the rail station. Metro area total for the five cities is not including any other regions in the path is almost 40m versus about 20m for SF and LA.
> arguably the more important figure because the relative advsntage of rail diminishes if you have to drive in from the suburbs.
A major premise of the California HSR plan is that it isn't just about the main HSR lines, but upgrades, improvements, and new lines for connecting conventional regional and commuter rail, light rail, and other public transit.
Unless you'd like to go from Boston to DC without making four stops along the way. In California you have two of the largest metropolitan areas in the country separated by 400 miles of nothing (with apologies to the Central Valley). HSR wins big when it goes fast without stopping, which is exactly the case out here.
NYC CSA is bigger than LA CSA, and DC CSA is bigger than "Bay Area" CSA. It seems weird, then, to argue it makes more sense to connect LA and SF just because in the northeast you can also hit two additional CSA's (Philadelphia and Boston, which are each about the size of the Bay Area), while you're at it.
Perhaps, but with New York and Philly in between, you're hitting four major population centers:
Boston (4.5M metro area)
New York (8-20M depending on how far you stretch the metro area)
Philadelphia (6M metro area)
Washington D.C. (5.7M metro area)
It's mind boggling to me that the California HSR isn't being built from DC to Boston instead.