Sounds good to me. If nothing else, it directly and forcefully answers the know-it-alls who condemn the first stage of work in the Central Valley (Fresno, etc.) as "middle of nowhere."
The high-speed line is going to eventually enter San Francisco from the south and terminate at a new Transbay Terminal, and it's eventually going to stop at Los Angeles Union Station. Building that new San Francisco terminal and electrifying/otherwise improving the Caltrain* line sooner rather than later fits the Federal requirement that the work be useful in and of itself, as would "scores of grade separations, new signals, bridge replacements, track additions, station improvements and faster locomotives for conventional passenger service." Conventional service near L.A. includes not only Metrolink but the Pacific Surfliner corridor, which since HSR will take an inland route is not going to be high-speed either north of L.A. or between Anaheim and San Diego but is still a busy, even vital, service.
Work on the urban "bookends" of the HSR system, as the article puts it, would provide serious benefits to tens of thousands of commuters in, and travelers to, two major metro areas even before the HSR line reaches those areas -- or, god forbid, even if HSR never reaches them.
And while the Japanese Shinkansen enters city centers on its own separate lines (and IIRC Chinese HSR avoids the city center in many cities), the French TGV and other European systems make their final entry to cities on conventional tracks alongside commuter and regional trains, so I don't think entering S.F. alongside Caltrain or entering L.A. alongside Metrolink would make California HSR "not really high-speed".
*Am I the only one who finds the name CalTrain confusing, like it
should be the name for the California-sponsored Amtrak corridors?! IMHO, Caltrain service will need a new name when it's running alongside intercity trains. Maybe Peninsula Area Rail Transit (PART) to match BART? :lol:
