GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM CURTAILS PLAN FOR HIGH-SPEED RAIL, PLANS TO ONLY BUILD BETWEEN MERCED AND BAKERSFI

[SunSeeker]

18. If you have to take the bus, it will make the train untenable.

Taking the Greyhound bus from LA to Bakersfield takes 2-3 hours. It's 4-6 hours for the bus ride from Merced to SF, depending on time of day. The bus ride from Merced to Bakersfield is only about 4 hours, so turning that into a one hour bullet train ride does not shave off that much of your total trip time.

The bullet train promised a cheap two-hour-and-40-minute ride between San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal and LA’s Union Station. https://sf.curbed.com/2017/9/19/16331308/high-speed-rail-california

Now, having to take the bus to complete the journey, we're talking anywhere from 12 to 15 hours of travel time from LA to SF, and that's assuming no down time waiting for your connecting buses/train, and one hour bullet train travel time between Bakersfield to Merced. Realistically, the LA to SF bus-train-bus trip would be closer to 18 hours. No one would do that. They would just take the Greyhound directly from LA to SF, which takes about 8 hours. Or the Amtrak from LA to Oakland, about 11 hours. Or fly, for one hour 30 minutes.

A bullet train between Merced and Bakersfield will be a train to nowhere with no riders, just a pork barrel construction project for the Central Valley. Our only hope is that a future Governor(s) will have the guts to complete the line.