I was just in South Florida, and they have one of the few good setups in the US for this with Miami-Ft Lauderdale-W Palm Beach being close, but far enough that

I was just in South Florida, and they have one of the few good setups in the US for this with Miami-Ft Lauderdale-W Palm Beach being close, but far enough that getting on the hellscape of I-95 is daunting. The train is fairly slow by HSR standards, but the routes are straight, and there are only 3 stops total (they are adding Orlando for the 4th). By contrast, the CA HSR is connecting two dense areas with not much in between. Because of all the “stakeholder” negotiations, it is not straight, and there are far too many stops. There is no need for a stop in LA and Burbank and Palmdale. The Palmdale stop is a bit mindblowing. There are 170k people in Palmdale. You don’t need a stop in Anaheim and Fullerton and Norwalk. I could keep going This was a real lost opportunity. There should have been 4 stops total: Anaheim-LA-SJ-SF. The result of all this is that the trip is going to take too long to make sense vs a 45 minute flight