"Pacific Coast High Speed Rail" is the general term for proposed High Speed Rail lines through the Pacific Coast states of Washington, Oregon and California. Depending on the plan, it can even extend to Vancouver, British Columbia and Tijuana, Mexico. One of the main ideas of connecting California and the Pacific Northwest by High Speed Rail is that both areas are population dense, "high tech" areas and that it makes sense for people to zip between San Francisco and Portland at 200+ mph so we can have high tech synergy between high tech areas and so on. While some advocates of Pacific Coast High Speed Rail are just crayoning, I have seen it mentioned as a serious proposal in legitimate news outlets, like The Guardian
I am a train enthusiast, and I have ridden the current Amtrak train, the Coast Starlight, between Oregon and the San Francisco Bay Area many times. And the idea of a faster connection certainly is appealing. But realistically, building a High Speed Rail line through the area would be very difficult, and anyone who is familiar with the area would recognize that immediately. The two problems are population, and terrain. Between Sacramento and Eugene, it is about 470 miles, or 800 kilometers, and the largest towns are Chico, pop. 100,000, and Redding, California, population 90,000, and Klamath Falls, Oregon, population 20,000. And along that route, the train currently crosses to the east, over the Sierra Nevada, near Redding, and then back over the Cascade Mountains near Eugene. While it is true that a route closer to I5 would go through the slightly more populated Medford, Oregon metropolitan area (about 250,000), it still is a complicated route. Without going into great detail about the geology of the Siskiyou Mountains and the demographics of Jackson County, Oregon, there is no easy way to make a train route through this area of low population and rugged terrain. I am not saying that it is totally impossible, just that it is a lot harder to link the two areas than drawing a line on a map. Especially given the difficulties in completing California High Speed Rail over mostly flat terrain in a highly populated region, high speed rail connecting towns like Yreka, California and Roseburg, Oregon seems...rather fanciful.
I also feel annoyance at the idea for two other reasons. First, it seems to come from a shallow and stereotypical knowledge of the region. Mountain View, California and Beaverton, Oregon both have lots of high tech stuff, but there are also hundreds of miles between them. The idea that they are immediately close to each other seems to focus on a gee whiz factor of the two areas being technoutopias, undisturbed by a real knowledge of the Pacific Coast, and its physical and human geography. Secondly, focusing on plans like this seems to distract from actual improvements that can be made right now. While in my dreams, I would love to have High Speed Rail between Oregon and California, it would also be helpful to have a second Coast Starlight, better on-time performance, more guaranteed connections and station improvements...all things that can be done without spending hundreds of billions of dollars. So why I understand why people like the idea of Pacific Coast High Speed Rail, right now the idea is more of a distraction than a plan.