The California HSR has a lot of problems not matched in Taiwan.
Firstly, once you get from San Jose to Bakersfield, then what? We don't have good public transit in LA, much less to Bakersfield. But even if the train went all the way to Union Station in Los Angeles, you'd still need to rent a car to get anywhere useful, or take Uber/Lyft. And same thing on the other end. What happens when you get to San Jose? You still need a car or another slow train.
If you want to get from San Francisco to Disneyland via HSR, the entire trip would probably take you about six hours with all the train changes and car rides and waiting. You could do the drive in six hours too and then have your car at the other end.
Even today, if I want to visit my parents in the suburbs of LA coming from the suburbs of San Jose, I can make the drive in five hours, or spend five hours getting there by plane, assuming someone picks me up at the other end. The only reason I fly is if I happen to be going somewhere right near the airport or it will be rush hour at one end or another when I arrive because I don't have scheduling flexibility.
Secondly, the original proposal was to build Stockton to Fresno first. That would be the least used section of the line. Not a lot of people move between Stockton and Fresno. The train would be bankrupt before it ever got to phase two. At least they finally changed their mind on that, but not for a much better route.
To be remotely viable, they need to build the most trafficked parts first -- San Jose to Stockton and Bakersfield to Los Angeles. But even those lines would still suffer from problem one unless/until the local transit was vastly improved.
I would love to see a viable HSR in California, but the current proposal is not that.
Let's build up our local transit first in LA and the Bay Area so that when we connect them with a high speed rail, the rail is actually useful.
