I would agree that having two major city termini is a huge determinant of demand. I definitely wouldn't suggest starting with one city, although branch lines ca

I would agree that having two major city termini is a huge determinant of demand. I definitely wouldn't suggest starting with one city, although branch lines can definitely be built at lower risk levels once you have a strong backbone. I've seen overviews of the LGV models to know that they aren't making decisions on where to stop based purely on politics (I'm sure there are some politics involved, but the schedule optimization models are very objective). Those optimization models take into account things like cannibalization, where most riders from two close small towns can be served by one station in between them, only losing a small percent over a situation with two stations. But mostly the model is an LP of the total revenue lost from removing a station vs the total revenue gained from adding a station, and the revenue projections obtained from a forecast model that predicts the cartesian set of all possible orig-dest pairs of a line. And these models have resulted in stops in tiny towns like Loche (pop 35k), Macon (pop 35k), and Le Creusot (pop 22k). > It could happen, but I'm not betting on it. So this: [...] doesn't seem as clear to me as it does to you. In France, the outlying towns are not much different from California. They may not be as car-centric as places like Madera or Merced, but they are at least as car-dependent. Density is low enough that cars are still a necessity. And while some of these stations avoid going directly through the towns they serve, very few are more than a 3-5 km from the town center. From the perspective of someone who grew up in Stockton, I'd say that concerns about car dependency are still overblown outside of intra-SJV trips in general. If the destination is a line terminus, transit/taxis are abundant enough to use easily, and that leaves the trip to the station as the only deterrent. But getting a ride isn't that big of a deal. Living there, you almost always have access to someone that can give you a ride to the airport 45 minutes away if you need it...a trip across town should be pretty easy. Taxis are available on a scheduled ride basis, and most businesses with regular travelers maintain a list of van services that handle trips to and from airports. The concern is real, but I think most valley-dwellers have adapted to their situation quite well. I'm not an expert on property values in the valley (haven't lived there for 2 decades), but I can imagine the possibility of it being cheaper to build through the cities simply because they already have freight ROWs running through them. Getting a ROW easement on an existing un-partitioned property tends to be fraught with peril. It is easy for a large land owner to hold a line hostage for higher prices if they know that one "no" ruins an entire plan. Buying up existing freight ROW (which I believe is part of the plan) would definitely be easier and faster...it might also end up being cheaper. And no worries about being confrontational. I wasn't trying to, and I didn't interpret your response as confrontational either.