High speed rail for the I-5 corridor?

Oh man if this happened I would cry tears of joy. Between my family in Bakersfield and tons of friends in LA and San Diego I would kill to have high speed rail as an option as opposed to driving, taking slow amtrak or flying.

I spent some time in Japan last summer and the trains there are amazing, anyone can get around the country quickly and for a reasonable fee.

I don't know much about the I-5 corridor in California, but I spent three years in Seattle and it seemed like two of those years were spent stuck in traffic jams on I-5! In addition to the terrible inconvenience and frustration, it is also dangerous to the point of being deadly. Being able to kick back with a newspaper and let someone else do the driving would be GREAT!

Perhaps it is my imagination, but people also seem a good deal friendlier on the mass transit systems near Seattle than was my experience back East. It is not as important that you wear "the face" -- you know, the one that says "if you are a big-time predator, I am not worth your time, and if you are a small-time predator, I am just neurotic enough to maybe go apeshit on you, so go pick an easier target and save yourself the trouble..."

I assume there will a tremendous energy savings. The biggest question I have is whether they have solved the problem of delay when the train stops to pick up passengers -- lost time and wasted energy...

I live in Hoquiam Washington which is pretty much in the middle between eugene and vancouver. a high speed rail along i-5 would be amazing. gridlock sucks horribly, and i guarantee it would be used by pretty much everybody in between. Honestly though , I'm a scaredy cat when it comes to earthquakes etc, so I don't know how they could create one that would be easy to maintain if it ran all the way down the coast. But I'm sure they can figure something out.

This is definitely a great idea. I have driven to Sacramento and San Francisco from L.A. and I hate those long drives. A high technology railway system, ei. MAGLEV would get America back on track. And not just passenger trains but high speed freight lines as well, spanning across the entire continent. That would not only reduce damage and congestion on highways but create real work and a real economy for the population while at the same time fill the human spirit with a long lost sense of real hope and inspiration we have not seen this since the days of FDRoosevelt and JFKennedy. We would need a highly efficient and reliable energy source such as nuclear energy to power such a project. Not only does America need this type of outlook but the entire planet needs us to go in this direction.

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