From downtown to downtown in two and a half hours: that's a refrain often bandied about when our forthcoming high-speed rail comes up in conversation. That's why it might come as a bit of a rude awakening to anyone who doesn't quite consider the train station at Fourth and Townsend "downtown." But the honorable Judge Quentin Kopp, chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority, has apparently decided that's a non-issue. Traversing almost 400 miles in under three hours is cake, but going that extra mile (literally) is just way too much of a hassle: "We do not need First and Mission. I am satisfied with Fourth and Townsend. We are not going to pay an extra billion-plus dollars to take the high-speed rail an extra 1.4 miles." Tell that to the Transbay people, who are kind of planning on having both high-speed rail and Caltrain in their brand new terminal. Then again, who knows? Maybe by 2020, Fourth and Townsend will be the new downtown...
· Transbay Transit Center going off track [SF Examiner]
· Train Dude, Libertarian Go Off the Rails on Prop. 1A [Curbed SF]
· Visualized: High Speed Rail Meets the Transbay Terminal [Curbed SF]
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