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Comment by spinlock | Hacker News Reader

The route is a pretty poor outcome of special interests. I recall reading that the best engineering firms in the world said that we should essentially have a hub and spoke approach (i.e. you have a very straight high-speed line from LA to SF and then you have spurs that connect all of the small towns to that main pipe). Instead, the route curves around to get to every small town that wanted a whistle-stop.

I would personally love to see high-speed rail. SF->LA feels better to me but your observation that San Jose is connected to the bay area already and makes a great terminus is really good. Plus, I live in Oakland so I'd like it even more if it came right into my backyard :)

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This is mostly inaccurate. The final route chosen is mostly a straight-line path (as in no undue detours) through the Central Valley, and in fact attempts by the city of Visalia to get a station were rebuked [1][2][3], as it was out of the way. Instead, it was routed through neighboring Kings county which opposed HSR from the beginning.

Other strange 'curves' in the path are for cost reasons: it's cheaper to crest the Tehachapi mountains southeast of Bakersfield than to follow I-5 up the Grapevine through Tejon Pass and through difficult terrain down to Santa Clarita. Similarly, both the Altamont and Pacheco passes were considered to cross from the Central Valley into the greater Bay Area, with the Pacheco Pass (Gilroy - Los Banos) having won out because it was a more direct path between LA and SF.

[1] http://hanfordsentinel.com/news/local/kings-tulare-counties-... [2] http://www.mercurynews.com/california-high-speed-rail/ci_248... [3] http://www.cahsrblog.com/tag/visalia/

This is the proposed route map, from the official HSR website:

http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Newsroom/Multimedia/maps.html

and this is a badly-shaded topographic map that shows the geography of the route in context:

http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/newsroom/maps/Statewide_Topo_2016...

How much more would it cost to build it in a very straight line from Burbank to Gilroy, roughly parallel to Highway 101, right through the coastal mountains?

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