> Thankfully California is, last I checked, in one country
You can replicate the experience between Caltrain and BART.
To my knowledge, the HSR will share tracks with other trains. That makes the sort of scheduling problems that make Amtrak a pain more of a possibility. Not a reason to shoot down the project. But a decent reason to take OP's concerns seriously.
Caltrain and BART are rarely delayed by a significant amount, and they run frequently enough. Not as much as I'd like, but frequently enough that you're not ever going to be waiting more than 30 minutes. I don't think it's comparable at all to a cross-country journey that may require switching trains and different jurisdictions. Heck, Caltrain shares its own track already and it does just fine, and HSR will mostly have its own track except when it needs to share with Caltrain.
30 minutes is a lot between just the Bay Area when the entire flight between LA and SF takes 90 minutes.
Not to mention, you have to get to and from the train station or airport.
For example from where I live in SF, it takes about 20 minutes (depending on traffic) to get to King St station. It takes about 30 minutes to get to SFO. If I was taking MUNI to king street, looking at like 40+ minutes plus walking.
I’m a seasoned traveler so I’ll get there JIT for my flight.
In LA, if I’m going to El Segundo or Santa Monica, it’s like 10-30 minutes uber. If I was going to Pasadena or La Canada I’d fly to Burbank.
So yes the train is a silly idea to start with, unless it would be direct from heart of LA to SF, going like 300 mph (it is not). Not to mention once you’re in LA you have to get to your final destination which might take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour or more. And LA has horrible public transit
This is of course a personal choice but I really can't understand people's insistence that a train that takes a single minute longer than a plane ride is inferior. I actually like planes, especially going down the California coast, which is pretty much every day of the year. But plane seats are cramped, and half the time you can't use your computer even if you wanted to. I usually fly from SJC if I want to go to LAX, and I think SFO and SJC are two of my favorite airports, but even then it's a bunch of walking to get to your terminal, and you're still going to be going through security. They're nothing like LAX, which is miserable in comparison, but an airport can only be so good.
But if we're going to talk about time: I don't agree with your numbers. SFO to LAX is like 50-60 minutes in the air. I feel like your 90 is a reasonable number for gate-to-gate. Arriving 30 minutes before departure at SFO will probably just get you to do your gate on time for last call on boarding. Add another 15 minutes to get out of LAX. Then, on both sides, whatever transportation you need to get to and from the airports, which I think is reasonable to cancel out when compared to the train.
For a train they're targeting a little over 2.5 hours for the journey. I can be outside in 5 minutes, and I can also feel comfortable arriving five minutes early. Let's be generous and say it takes 3 hours, curb to curb. The plane does the same in like 2-2.5 hours. I don't really see this being significantly different.
The train will use shared tracks. I will bet one million dollars it will run into scheduling issues and when you’re stuck on land it will suck. Source: former Amtrack customer. Same story, and I doubt a project that’s been mismanaged so far will fare any better if actually realized.
I take the Caltrain to work almost every day and it's on shared tracks (in fact it will the same shared tracks that HSR uses). It's rarely late by more than a few minutes.
