So in summary, when the first phase of CA HSR opens, one will go nearly 3 hours by bus to the train, then 1 hour by train over the same distance, then 3 hours by bus again.
This phase's length is 165 miles, by bus 3h 40m, by San Joaquin train 3h 11m.
I'm reluctant to speculate on which part will be started next, though to please the people at each end, I'm thinking that the CHSRA will build both ends, the north one, Madera - Gilroy, and the south one, Bakersfield - Palmdale.
But these are only partial, and thus may not be very satisfying. It will be rather easy to go Gilroy - SJ, but not nearly as easy to go Palmdale - Burbank. Gilroy - SJ gets a connection to Caltrain, and that goes to the SF downtown station at 4th and Townsend Sts. There is a proposal for going further, to the Transbay Transit Center, about 1.2 miles of tunnel underneath SF city streets:
Downtown Rail Extension | SFCTA also
Downtown Rail Extension
The
Transbay Transit Center was originally the
San Francisco Transbay Terminal It was built in 1939 for the
Key System[wiki] and [wiki]East Bay Electric Lines and
Sacramento Northern Railway three long-gone light-rail-like electric-train systems.
The Key System extended into Oakland and Berkeley, the Southern Pacific's East Bay Electric Lines extended into Alameda, San Leandro, and Berkeley, and the Sacramento Northern from Oakland to Sacramento and Chico, to the north.
The trains ran across the Bay Bridge to the Transbay Terminal, and the connecting ramps were used by buses long after those trains were ended. I remember riding some of those buses and getting a great view from the Bay Bridge. I've also ridden buses across the Golden Gate Bridge.
But the trains did not last long. The Southern Pacific and Sacramento Northern ones were discontinued only two years later, in 1941, and the Key System ones in 1958, and after that, the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was made a road deck, like the upper deck.
In 2010, that structure was demolished and replaced by the
Transbay Transit Center which opened in 2018. It is officially the Salesforce Transit Center, from sponsorship by the
Salesforce corporation. It was built with a basement that can be used for a Caltrain and HSR station, and like the original, it has a bus deck that is connected to the Bay Bridge. Its roof, however, is a park.
