For a grading analogy, an area like that is level 4 minus, but "coast-to-coast" is level 4 plus. You don't need coast to coast to be "real". If they manage to cover 90% of a metro area, I'd be happy to call it a "real" level 4 service. Right now I'd want an explanation for why they're not adding blocks all the time.
Except that the end to end points are not connected directly by a highway. They do have to move in the cities as well, so they need to optimise for that anyway.
It's not really a fair comparison. For long stretches of the route, it's just an orange line painted on an existing path. On some stretches it doesn't even have a line on there.
A lot of the expensiveness of freeways also has to do with completely grade-separating it from other traffic. This route has several grade crossings at busy intersections.
I do not believe this is true. The way they arrive at such numbers is to assume that a highway between San Francisco and Los Angeles is there for the benefit of people in the Central Valley. It's not. There are significant services built outside urban cores for the benefit of people in urban cores.
I'm pretty sure they will do some sort of service entrances which could be used in an emergency.
I also doubt they will actually be able to do a 1000 mile long section. If they actually think they can cross a state without putting at least one station in, they are blissfully unaware of state politics.
> Building the middle part where no one lives is easier and will make a lot of jobs in a lot of poor areas
The planned initial operating segment has one endpoint in the third largest city in the state, and passes through the fifth largest city in the state, so the idea that it's in a place where no one lives is, well, what recently has become known as an "alternative fact".
While this is a great visualization, I think that it is missing the traffic volume, which would paint a much more accurate picture of how cities actually work. I say this looking at San Diego where if you want to know how the city is designed and how traffic actually flows, there should be 3 big lines running from south south east to north north west (or similar) because those are the 3 major freeways. Instead you have a big north south signal which is not actually reflective of how any traffic flows.
"infrastructure, technology, regulatory environment and transportation concerns"
I assume the BosWash Acela corridor isn't on there because any potential route would require digging through numerous suburban neighborhoods, each of which has individual property owners that need to be eminent-domained and compensated.
Have you ever visited an urban area that has been cut up by a highway? I've never seen one that wasn't a dodgy neglected hellhole, even in traditionally denser east coast cities. The affected communities end up disconnected rather than connected to elsewhere, and the outlying areas that do end up being connected could just as well have been connected by a highway routed around the urban area.
There's an argument to be made for cut and cover construction and then putting in a park or newer homes or something, but surface highways through cities are not a goal to strive for.
The route makes fine sense. It passes through every significant city in the state and travels between the principal urban areas in a time competitive with air travel. If it did not serve Fresno, Bakersfield, etc then it does not accomplish the decarbonization goals of the project.
All those routes could be made faster and it also had routes running down the front range too. Either way traffic on 70 into summit county is stupid and this is the salve. Already exists. Already graded. Already set up to serve vail and many other destinations that people rent a car from DEN to reach today.
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