The South Bay gets it. California's High Speed Rail Authority picked the Pacheco Pass as the future route for the 200-mph train that will help you get from SF to LA in record time. According to SFGate, "without a vote, the authority accepted its staff's recommendation last month to run trains from the San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area over Pacheco Pass, east of Gilroy." Well then. After a four-hour meeting with Mayor......

Never having to drive through this again? Sob. The East Bay and South Bay (more or less) are vying to be one of the destination points that will send travelers from SF to LA in 2½ hours. (Can you imagine? You're watch HSM and HSM2 on your iPhone and -- poof! -- you're kicking it in LA!) Over 700 miles of track would be devoted to getting you from SF to LA in record......

We mentioned a few weeks ago that the funding for California's oft-proposed bullet train system is suspect. Things are looking up in a way, as the High Speed Rail Authority approved the project's first phase. However, the Fresno Bee recently reported another wrinkle: Since the management for San Diego, the Southern California Association of Governments, is pushing for "magnetic levitation trains," rather than steel-wheeled ones, that city may get left on the boarding platform. ...

You know how for all these years, people have been talking about having a bullet train that goes up one end of the state to another and make the commute from the Bay Area to LA that much easier? And you know how there's been talk about it but nary much in the way of action? Well, stay tuned for more talk. ...

As SFist Reader Marivi did in the past, SFist Reader Tim has some suggestions for Caltrain. Caltrain riding readers, any thoughts? Subject: Intuitive CalTrain Signage And Caltrain wonders why it is so hard to get riders. Maybe it is because they make it so hard to use their system. I ride Caltrain every day from San Carlos to San Jose and back. You would think that after doing this for a year, I would be......

When we lived on the East Coast, Amtrak was totally where it was at -- pick up an Au Bon Pain raspberry cheese croissant at Boston's South Station, emerge in Penn Station and pick up a Village Voice. So we're crushed to see that the California version of the Acela bullet train has run into some snags. Legislators are now balking at putting up a bond measure to fund the 220-mph SF-to-LA-in-2.5 hours rail program, saying they'd rather focus on transportation measures that could relieve vehicular congestion instead. Sure, it would take about $33 billion to build over a 10-20 year period (and we'd need to raise $1 billion in seed money now), but it would be so rad! We can't wait to get to these parties LAist is always talking about! Plus, if we don't get a high-speed rail, we'll just have to spend comparable amounts of money to expand highways and airports to accommodate intrastate travel anyways, right? And you know how we're getting the money to expand those highways? Bridge fare hikes. In 2007, all bridges are going up by another dollar. We saw some excellent interviews on the local news of stoically disgruntled commuters hearing the news. "Sure I'm unhappy, but -- well, how else you gonna get into the city?" one Emeryville driver grumbled, eyes squinting in repressed rage. ....So you spend all that money to get on the bridge in the first place, and then what? Yesterday afternoon, a truck heading into the city caught on fire. This morning, when you drove into SF over the weird new Fastrak lanes, you then promptly got stuck in traffic because Mission Street's closed down after a water main broke yesterday on Mission and Fremont. And if you were heading to City Hall, you got stuck in a bomb scare. (no, not at Starbucks this time, but the cops did shout "Fire in the hole!" before blowing it up, which is always cool.) ...