You may believe what you wish, of course, but I wouldn’t be so quick to fully trust the Authority, as your words make it clear that you do. Quite correctly remarked above: read the EIR. There was an agenda to meet, and they were successful in casting the EIR so as to support that agenda.

While I’ll readily acknowledge that Amtrak probably shouldn’t be a model for anything, the Northeast Corridor is a good example of a corridor that tries to do this – it supports “high speed” Amtrak service making limited stops as well as slower Amtrak services and more localized services in commuter markets throughout the corridor, which actually carry a lot more people and operate a lot more trains.

To me, it seems that the Altamont option is clearly superior; even if you ignore the more localized commuter markets, the lack of Bay Area-Sacramento service on the southern route alone should disqualify it. I agree with others also in saying that a project of this magnitude is very rare, very unlikely to ever happen, and is one shot – it HAS to be done right from the beginning. As for the issue of service, once the tracks are in place running enough service to satisfy everyone will be significantly easier than answering why many logical trips/routes are not possible.

I think that perhaps the better question to ask is: why does the virtually uninhabited Pacheco Pass route need HSR? ACE doesn’t serve its corridor adequately, and as mentioned in the post, HSR on Altamont would upgrade ACE, in addition to obviously doing much, much more. As for why Stockton needs HSR — take a look at the population stats I put in an earlier comment. The north Central Valley is home to some two million people, all of whom would be given a circuitous route to the Bay Area through Pacheco. This is an important regional market where Altamont is superior to Pacheco, hands down.

HSR isn’t HS if it tries to stop every mile for a commuter dropoff/pickup.
This is an important point that I think a lot of Pacheco-supporters are missing, and it’s crucial: not every train will stop everywhere. World-class rail networks do not subscribe to BART’s every-train-is-local model. With HSR, we can have quite a bit of service diversity, including both local and express trains. Building stations does not imply that every train will stop at every station. However, by placing stations in an already urbanized corridor, we increase the number of people who can easily access the system.