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> More importantly, tying Bakersfield, Merced and Fresno into the Bay Area and LA regional economies would be great for all three. One the one hand, that's tru
by tom_mellior 8y ago
> More importantly, tying Bakersfield, Merced and Fresno into the Bay Area and LA regional economies would be great for all three.
One the one hand, that's true. On the other hand, the more stops you add to your high-speed train, the less high-speed it becomes. One of the great things about the Paris-Lyon TGV mentioned in the article is that it was very purposefully built to bypass all other settlements. Slowing down, stopping, letting passengers disembark and board, and starting up again would really eat into the time budget.
- gumby 8y agoNot every train has to stop at every station.
- tom_mellior 8y agoTrue, but just passing through stations often means slowing down to less-than-blazing speeds. Also, you must account for the possibility of the faster trains needing some way to pass slower ones. This might mean more track infrastructure to allow the slower ones to pass to a side track. It might also mean that the slow train's having to wait slows it down further, making running them on high-speed infrastructure a questionable idea. I trust that the French made the right decision. Germany has fast trains that stop at more places than the French, and in my experience they don't have the theoretical fast trains that just pass through almost all stations with very few stops. Presumably because it's hard to make it work.