The dumbest idea since the "Bullet"Hydrogen Dirigible and the "Bullet" Ocean liner Titanic. Have you seen any business people in dirigibles or ocean liners, in the last 30 years?

1. Most do not know this is a passenger-ONLY train system.
2. It will be twice as costly as passengers flying in Boeing 737 airplanes, at twice the speed in a route about a Third shorter than the Bullet Train and at half the cost.
3. The fuel costs will affect airplanes and trains as much and the airplane advantage in efficiency will continue, regardless the price of oil.
4. There are about 40 flights a day between the Bay Area and Los Angeles/Long Beach and, at best, there will be about five trains a day. Would you wait an hour for one? New Security people and facilities will be needed to screen train passengers in this high price symbolic train -at great cost to taxpayers. Does anybody care?

For lack of passengers Aloha, ATA and Skybus Airlines went broke for lack of passengers, just this week, will there be enough passengers for airlines and Bullet Trains between SF Bay Area and Los Angeles/Long Beach, 10 years from now?

• The question ought to be, how to keep airlines from shutting down and leave cities, like Honolulu, Bermuda, Las Vegas and other remote mostly-tourist destinations without service, people out of work in those cities and, unable to keep making house payments. How will those cities deal with their unemployed?
• The Bullet Train will cost $30 Billion to construct and Billions in subsidies to keep running. This money could take care of our current school deficit to be competitive in the future and begin to reduce the 100,000 trained engineers and doctors we must bring from overseas. It would pay for a rail cargo tunnel from Port of Oakland to the rail lines East of the Altamont hills and other improvements urgently needed, like extending BART to San Jose, building the Transbay Tunnel II, enlarging Byron runway to 12,000 ft to provide an alternative to SFO if there is an emergency or Global Warming proves true, etc.
• How many Boeing 737 cancellations will arrive in Renton WA next month, now that too many of them will flood the market at liquidation prices?
• How many jobs in California will be lost by Boeing supplier companies as the Recession deepens?.

Oblivious to this coming Economic tsunami, we want to build a Bullet Train?

Sure, train companies are willing to help finance purchase of their products, and collect even more profits (guranteed by the state, no doubt) and want to invest in our trains but they will not help make the tickets competitive to the airlines.

Perhaps, their plan is to buy the Bullet Train, at liquidation price, after it is build and proves to be the tax-fund sink-hole expected, and convert it into a Freight-Only train. If they can buy the approved and build rail lines, they could make some profits in their investment. THAT, would make sense -to them. Of course, if a barrel of oil reaches $150 Dlls each, even cargo will not be enough. But, in the mean time, since Aloha Airlines was followed by ATA and Bus