Explore the California High Speed Rail route from above in an airplane to not only see how construction is coming along, but also to observe all of the terrain standing in the way of finishing one of the largest engineering projects in the world. Starting in downtown Los Angeles, we fly 270 miles north along the route through the Mojave desert and Central Valley.
I think the rail will only succeed if funding for it is conditioned on actual delivery of rail services to paying customers, instead of funding it up front like a foyer bathroom remodel with shady contractors and no accountability.
The central valley deserves train stops imo, definitely including Bakersfield. There are a lot of people living there and it’s an area of relative housing affordability, something which greater California could not enable enough.