[spoonman]

Originally Posted by electricron

How much is much?
Let's take a fresh look at CHSR project. It only goes very fast in the Valley. In Southern California and San Francisco Bay Area, where it will share the corridor and the tracks with local regional slower trains, it only goes the slower speeds so it would not run over or through (crash) into the slower trains.
It's 473 rail miles between downtown S.F. and downtown L.A. You can drive it in 382 miles, 91 miles less, but the fast train is taking the long way and not the shortcut. It'll go slow the 62 or so miles between L.A. and Palmdale, and the 83 or so miles S.F. to Gilroy. That's 145 miles of the 473 miles it will not be going fast, therefore it can only go very fast over 328 miles. But then it will have to slow down to a stop, and accelerate from a stop at intermediate stations.
How many HSR stations will there be between L.A. and S.F?
(1) Transbay (2) Millbrae (3) Diridon (4) Gilroy (5) Merced (6) Madera (7) Fresno (8) Hanford (9) Bakersfield (10) Palmdale (11) Burbank, and (12) Union Station. Every stop at a station along the way will cause the average speed of the train to be slower. So the train will not be going very fast over that entire remaining 328 miles.
And please do not suggest the HSR trains will not be stopping at these intermediate stations, I know better because CHSR is building the longer route to get to them. What's the purpose getting to them if you're not going to stop at them?
So what do we have, we have a train that will probably take 3 hours or more to run between downtown L.A. and downtown S.F. with a technology that could do it in less than 2 hours - and that will be celebrated as a success.

I'm not certain, but I would expect that there would be some level of express service similar to the NYC subway and other transit services. Essentially you have local and express trains. The local trains hit each stop. The express trains only stop at major destinations. Provided this is the scenario, someone in DTLA could go to DTSF in 2 hours. Someone in Palmdale going to SF would presumably be a "local" stop and would stop at each station, resulting in a longer trip. It could also be possible to transfer from a local train to an express train, though I'm not sure if the tracking would support the logistical challenges associated with this approach. This is all speculation, but it seems likely that every train will not have to stop at every locale along the way.