High speed rail is a fine investment to make to a railway network that is even somewhat competently put together, but California currently only runs one train a DAY between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Coast Starlight, which takes about 12 hours.

The San Joaquins is the inland train from Oakland to Bakersfield, and has 6 trains a day, which is shit, but better than the Coast Starlight. From Bakersfield, there is a timed bus connection to Los Angeles, which makes San Francisco-Los Angeles take about 9.5 hours. This is a solution, but not a good one.

Why doesn’t the train continue to Los Angeles, you ask?

WELL…

It's not like there aren't tracks there. Before Amtrak, the San Joaquin Daylight was a train ran by Southern Pacific Railroad, and it's what Amtrak inherited. It ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles by way of Merced, Bakersfield, and the Tehachapi Pass.

The Tehachapi Pass is a remarkable pass and a major bottleneck for train travel in California. There are only two north-south routes for trains to Los Angeles in California. One is by the coast, which is what the Coast Starlight uses, and the other is Tehachapi Pass, a single-track mountain pass with a famous loop. The Tehachapi Pass is shared by BNSF and Union Pacific railways, and is extremely well used.

Intent readers may note the following passage from the Wikipedia article:

Although Southern Pacific ran passenger trains on the Loop for years, it banned passenger service there soon after handing its trains to Amtrak in 1971. Union Pacific has maintained the ban since taking over Southern Pacific.[3] As a result, Amtrak's San Joaquin train is unable to directly serve Los Angeles until a bypass is constructed or the federal government of the United States or the California State Legislature compel the railroad to allow passenger service to resume.[3] Amtrak operates Thruway Motorcoach buses for passengers wanting to travel between the Central Valley and Los Angeles.

:agony-consuming:

Capacity has recently increased on the Pass as several passing loops have been added, using state bond money. Are passenger trains allowed? Nope.

The high speed line opening in 2029, if it ever does open, will only extend as far as Bakersfield. This means that people who want to continue on to Los Angeles will still have to transfer to A BUS while the rest of the line is being built, because of the Tehachapi passenger train ban.

Endpoint: Until California gets the guts to let passenger trains use the pass and thus allow trains to use the high speed alignment as soon as possible, California is a failed state and does not deserve high speed rail.