Moving where though? Most families need decent schools and reasonable work commutes - not everyone can work remotely. Retirees need safe neighborhoods and good stores/medical facilities within reasonable distances. It limits geographical freedom/choices.
I know because raising your family in a 20 story high apartment building next to public transportation...sounds amazing. Right?
Oh, I didn't realize we were also talking about California High Speed Rail. The more you know about the details for that project the worse the project appears to be. Voters were promised a straight shot, Los Angeles to San Francisco, with eventual extension to San Diego and Sacramento, total SF to LA cost $33 Billion. What we are getting is Bakersfield to Merced, with 3 intermediate stops. All of those stops are as you described above. The CAHSR will only reach top speed between Bakersfield and Tulare - a distance of 63 miles. If it ever completes the segment between Los Angeles and Anaheim (both stations are already complete-ish), it will have an average speed of only 45 mph for that stretch. Station work for the initial operating segment is not even scheduled to begin until 2028 - no tracks, no trains until years after that. Good news! It's all under budget. Oh, no, wait a minute - check that, it's on target to be OVER budget >$100 BILLION - assuming it ever gets built.
No, it will be it's own rail line - but they could have done that routing it up the 5 corridor instead of the much more populated 99 corridor - that already has a rail line. The route was chosen so that CAHSR could get support from the representatives of those communities. But that created its own problem - they still need to accommodate the heavy rail - so they had to build the grade separations. Permitting, ROW acquisition, and lawsuits also resulted - and, if the train stops at those intermediate stations (it won't always which is how they are calling it "high speed rail", but then how does that benefit the communities it was routed to serve?), it won't be anywhere near the design speed. Not only that, but you can find videos on YouTube - the stations they are proposing are exactly as NotUrsula described.
You are correct that it isn't as nice as living in a 5,000 sq. mansion overlooking the Pacific in San Francsico. Still if you are working in the east bay living in an apartment building next to a rail station is far superior than having to commute from Merced even if that allows you to live in a single family house.
Isn't a long commute sacrificing safety? Driving is the most dangerous thing you do on a daily basis.
Agreed but that is why you would want to live in Berkeley rather than a far distant suburb that is far more dangerous.
I am amazed at how it seems so many think building a train track is such a difficult task. You look at all the amazing roads in California and now we can't build a train track. When we talk of the cost, it is not like it is in one year, spread over 20-30. What is real expensive is the freeway widening projects, no one seems to complain about those. Billions for a couple of miles of lanes. Really hope the Vegas track gets built just to show it can be done. California is not out of land, we have plenty, what we don't have is land you can build houses on with access to jobs.
We recently took the high-speed Barcelona-Madrid train both ways. The 385-mile trip would take 6-1/2 hours to drive, and the train took less than 2-1/2 hours. And cost us $19 per person each way. There are four different companies/trains that do that route, dozens of times a day. And there are always lots of people on them. Americans just don't demand rail travel, and don't like public transportation or to walk anywhere.
