If he was serious as you state then he's a moron. Allow myself to quote... myself:
THIS rail project is not needed because aside from being overpriced it doesn't fix a single damn problem. As I stated earlier, traffic in the bay area and LA is a problem. The way to fix it is to spend 1/10th of the money on local infrastructure, create more jobs faster, and create a system that helps out everyone. A "high-speed" train from Stockton to Modesto, which itself is only a 40 minute drive, doesn't affect daily commute traffic in LA. An "express" route from San Jose to LA doesn't "spread out the population" because not only will the tickets be too expensive and the trip too long to shift the population, you'd be theoretically encouraging people to go from one high-density region to another. The "local" routes might (I stress might) help but you can make better, cheaper improvements than $90 billion in "high-speed" rail to help out locally.
His specific quote was
sactoking, i think we need it so we can spread out our population more and lower the cost of living.
Connecting two densely populated areas with high speed rail doesn't change the cost of living except to increase it by the cost of train travel versus car travel. Likewise, your solution doesn't reduce the cost of living, although it might be very desirable and arguably a smarter use of money, more bang for the buck. Connecting one densely populated area to a low density and therefore cheaper area with high speed rail DOES have the potential to reduce the cost of living by allowing people to live at a distance not currently practical, thereby taking advantage of the cheaper housing. In other words I was validating Bfdd's concept while simultaneously pointing out that this particular project probably wouldn't do that, that in fact you would almost have to design the entire region from scratch to make it practical. But the concept Bfdd was advocating, lowering the cost of living through high speed rail, is imminently practical. The questions of whether this particular project is practical, or whether there can be a practical system of this sort in a given area considering the population, cost of living, and cost of land, are of course different.
SNIP
150 miles? Who lives 150 miles from LA and commutes there to work daily. No one except people in SimCity games.
High speed rail will never be practical over the distances people commute today, because the time required to detour to the train station, board the train, debus, and take alternate transportation to your original destination cannot be made up by traveling more quickly over such short distances. High speed rail can be practical only where there is significant travel over distances where driving time is equal or more but flying time is also equal or more, or for purposes such as Bfdd proposes - expanding the available area for a practical commute.
Incidentally I've met a couple people within the past two or three years who are commuting almost 150 miles. If you lose a job in one city and can't find another nearby, but you can find one very distant, and you have a house that you either can't or won't sell (whether it's actually under water, you don't want to take the hit, or because of kids or spouse), a responsible adult will commute long distances to have work.
If it did that, then it no longer should be called High Speed Rail.
What's the point of calling something "High Speed Rail" if it takes you 4-5 hours to get to your destination which is 100 miles away because the train has to stop at every little town for 15-20 minutes?
Might as well take a flight and you'll get to wherever you want in California in 1-2 hours tops. For cheaper also even if you take the airline subsidy into account.
And this is why I said 150 miles and mused that it would probably only be practical if one could redesign the entire region around the system. Every community is going to want a stop, yet every stop increases the minimum total distance traveled for the system to be practical. Only if there is a spoke type system with no or very few stops over a fairly large distance can I imagine a high speed rail system practical for commuting, otherwise the stops will make the system impractical. (It might still be practical for other reasons, such as a faster trip between two densely populated areas, just not for daily commuting.)
There really ought to be a way to co-locate interstate and/or other major highways and high speed rail. By reducing land acquisition costs, high speed rail for any purpose would be much more practical.