California’s ‘Train To Nowhere’
When California voters passed the proposition to fund a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, my first reaction was this: “that’s really dumb. We already have a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
“It’s called Southwest Airlines!”
Southwest flies between the two cities about a dozen times a day (and so does United) as well as to and from the other Bay Area airports, Oakland and San Jose. Who would take a train for five or so hours when you can fly and be there in one hour and often at around $150 round trip? A train could never compete with the airlines.
It was always the transportation equivalent of trying to put a square peg into a round hole.
Yet politicians moved forward with it and this $77 billion project – you read that right, seventy-seven billion dollars – until mid-February when first-year governor Gavin Newsome put the breaks on it.
Well sort of, anyway.
He canceled most of the project but kept alive a section from Bakersfield and Merced. Other than being hometown of Buck Owens and the “Mears Gang” of racing fame, Bakersfield has little to hang its cowboy hat on and Merced, well, let’s just say you won’t put it near the top of your California “must places to visit” list.
Both are in the central, deserted part of the state and why those two towns need to be connected by a train is a mystery to me. If you’re going to have a bullet train with only a couple of destinations, make it from San Francisco to Sacramento (a highly-traveled business route on the airlines) or to connect two top travel destinations, Los Angeles to Santa Barbara.
Imagine being able to avoid the freeways for a weekend escape to Santa Barbara in two hours or so; that would a highly popular train. Especially if you make it a wine train.
Of course, if anyone had any sense about bullet trains in California, you would make it from Los Angeles to Vegas. Get us to Sin City and back in two to three hours (instead of the five-hour drive) and put in a large bar car and even a gambling car when it hits the Nevada state line, and you’ve got yourself a winner of a train.
But of course, that makes too much sense ever to get done, so instead we’re stuck with a train to nowhere.
Cheers!
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