Supporters warn that without high-speed rail, California would need to build 3,000 new miles of highway lanes, 60 new airline gates and five more runways to meet the transportation needs created by the state population growing from 35 million to 48 million over the next 25 years.
How exactly will a high speed train connecting Northern and Southern California relieve the state of the need to build more highways to reduce congestion? Last time I looked, all those cars on 101 at 8am were not heading to LA. I would support turning Caltrain into an extension of BART. I would also support any measure that makes airports more convenient, especially LAX.
BTW, I read an interesting article a couple of months ago, unfortunately I am unable to find the link now. Basically what it said is that as the air travel market in Europe has been deregulated and new low fare operators have prospered, rail ridership has taken a big hit. Train proponents like to say that the notion that people will choose air travel because of the shorter time to travel is a myth and point to Europe as exhibit A, but it may not be such a myth after all.