You should try riding real HSR, like Madrid to Barcelona. Superior to flying in every way.
I’m sure Europe has nice trains. I’ve rode the best trains in the world in Japan.
America is a completely different dynamic and is not at all comparable to Europe nor Japan.
The culture here has always revolved around cars (objectively better IMO for ME, I don’t like tiny cramped cities like in EU or Japan), and our roads are big and our buildings are large and really nice. New builds especially in cities like SF or LA.
SF to LA is about 400 miles. Going from LA to SD is another 120 miles. Spain by itself is like 150 miles wide and 500 miles long. It’s about the same distance, sure, but totally different dynamics. It’s hard to explain unless you’ve been here.
Besides, nobody really has a need to travel between LA and SF that regularly unless it’s for business. People might visit their families every month or two. But most of the travel is for business.
Comparing Europe and America is apples to oranges.
I much prefer riding a spacious train to riding in a cramped airplane. I like to be able to get up and walk around while the train is traveling. I prefer the minimal security processes on a train to an airplane.
Driving 6-10 hours is pretty miserable. I would much rather take a train or fly unless there are specific reasons why I need to drive.
It may be like comparing apples and oranges, but some people prefer apples. The good thing is that you can still eat oranges if you like.
My whole point was about business flight. Sure for leisure I’ll take a train. But if I’m flying for work I’d rather deal with a consistent (mostly, compared to any rail I’ve taken) experience.
I've heard that the flight delays cascade throughout the day. So if the first flight is 10 minutes delayed, all SF-LA flights are delayed for the rest of the day. Since SFO has a lot of fog, my understanding is that it's often delayed.
Maybe it's okay coming from Burbank, but I live on the Westside so I have to take LAX.
I would love to have another option. Ideally, a train would decrease the load on the airlines so that they could handle delays better.
To answer your question directly, no I don't have to do work trips every couple of days, but I do have work trips from LA to SF every couple of months.
Within countries, yes. Between countries, never again. Italy <> France sort of worked, but the UK and Germany consistently ruined everything.
You can replicate the experience between Caltrain and BART.
To my knowledge, the HSR will share tracks with other trains. That makes the sort of scheduling problems that make Amtrak a pain more of a possibility. Not a reason to shoot down the project. But a decent reason to take OP's concerns seriously.
Not to mention, you have to get to and from the train station or airport.
For example from where I live in SF, it takes about 20 minutes (depending on traffic) to get to King St station. It takes about 30 minutes to get to SFO. If I was taking MUNI to king street, looking at like 40+ minutes plus walking.
I’m a seasoned traveler so I’ll get there JIT for my flight.
In LA, if I’m going to El Segundo or Santa Monica, it’s like 10-30 minutes uber. If I was going to Pasadena or La Canada I’d fly to Burbank.
So yes the train is a silly idea to start with, unless it would be direct from heart of LA to SF, going like 300 mph (it is not). Not to mention once you’re in LA you have to get to your final destination which might take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more. And LA has horrible public transit
It’s far more convenient to fly.
But if we're going to talk about time: I don't agree with your numbers. SFO to LAX is like 50-60 minutes in the air. I feel like your 90 is a reasonable number for gate-to-gate. Arriving 30 minutes before departure at SFO will probably just get you to do your gate on time for last call on boarding. Add another 15 minutes to get out of LAX. Then, on both sides, whatever transportation you need to get to and from the airports, which I think is reasonable to cancel out when compared to the train.
For a train they're targeting a little over 2.5 hours for the journey. I can be outside in 5 minutes, and I can also feel comfortable arriving five minutes early. Let's be generous and say it takes 3 hours, curb to curb. The plane does the same in like 2-2.5 hours. I don't really see this being significantly different.