
California bullet train headed first to San Jose – a big Bay Area win - superfx
http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_29529618/california-bullet-train-headed-first-san-jose-big
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iokevins
As a primer, I highly recommend The Atlantic journalist James Fallows' deep
dive, on California HSR:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/the-
cali...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/the-california-
high-speed-rail-debate-kicking-things-off/374135/)

Note: this article contains links to the subsequent articles, which, as of
this writing, number 14.

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dmishe
So... what do you do when you arrive in Bakersfield, take a car to LA?

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iokevins
Given current Bay Area rental rates...maybe go home (?)

From the article: "We are talking about a trip from Madera taking 40 minutes
to downtown San Jose...." Note: Madera, on the map:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Madera,+CA/](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Madera,+CA/)

Note: obviously, so much unknown, impossible to say whether 40 minutes
represents reality, at this point.

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tzs
In the '80s I did a back of the envelope calculation on living in Merced and
commuting to Silicon Valley.

It looked like that for less than the cost of owning a small house or condo in
SV, one could get a big house near Merced, on several acres of land, buy a
private plane such as a Mooney M20 (about 50% or more faster than a common
Cessna), buy a car to keep in SV at an airport, and pay the operating costs
and parking costs and such for the plane and the second car.

That would have given something like a 40-60 minute commute between Merced and
an SV office (depending on just where the office was relative to a general
aviation airport in SV).

If a train will let one get a similar commute without the need to buy an
airplane the numbers will be even more favorable. Madera is not as cheap as
Merced, but a quick check on Redfin turns up a lot of houses that are large
and almost trivially affordable by even entry level bay area tech workers.

