Oversize Expectations for the Airbus A380

Depends on the definitions you choose. If you define an "ordinary traveler" as "one who doesn't care what type of plane they're on", then no, an ordinary traveler doesn't care what type of plane they're on.

Speaking for myself: the A380 is much quieter than any other plane I've been on. For 15-hour trans-Pacific flights, that's a big deal.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft

When you deploy bigger planes you also need bigger infrastructure: The A380, for example, has had some delays due to new requirements. [0] And the A380 itself is not the largest plane ever built [1] - the sizes we've standardized on are an economic tradeoff of land availability, energy consumption, and carrying capacity.

Finally, it's not just planes that a train competes against, but automobiles; simply, if more people drive, we waste more energy. The state's planners have run the numbers and determined that HSR will diversify the transit capacity cost load and make it less risky to hit capacity targets 20 years out. [2]

In current urban planning practice, rails are preferred as a way to encourage dense and sustainable development; when you go downtown-to-downtown, the land value around those hub stops skyrockets. The Japanese rail system was built around this principle, encouraging the rail companies to be real estate investors as well as transportation companies - as a result, the trains go to nearly every major destination. In the case of CA HSR, the stops in the Central Valley will become secondary hubs for businesses that want equal transit times between SF and LA. This puts the Central Valley towns on a more stable economic footing and is good for the overall welfare of the state.

[0] http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/re...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_aircraft

[2] http://www.transformca.org/sites/default/files/moving_ahead_... (page 31)

No, it's quite rational (whereas knee-jerk calls for trains to adopt airport-style security theatre are not). High-speed trains and airplanes are very different in their "exposure" to terrorist activity, and in their operating environment.

For instance:

(1) Airplanes are, relatively speaking, very fragile; a relatively small bomb can bring one down, and if one goes down, 99% of the time, all on board will be killed. For a terrorist, it's a tempting target.

Trains, on the other hand, even high-speed trains, are relatively quite robust, and even severe train accidents typically only kill a small fraction of the passengers. Trains are extremely long (and the passenger density of high-speed trains relatively low compared to local trains), and the direct effect of a blast would be limited to those in the immediate vicinity. The most you can hope for is to derail the train (which is not at all a given), and even a derailing passenger-train is likely to have many survivors. The worst train accidents in terms of deaths have been due to the effects of extremely specific locations.

(2) As famously shown in 9/11, airplanes can be used as (extraordinarily effective) missiles; if you manage to take one over, you can aim at a wide variety of targets. Trains basically cannot be used this way. So if you attack a train, you basically are limited to killing passengers—and as point (1) noted, even that is fairly difficult.

(3) Once an airplane is in flight, they're pretty much out of reach. Trains, on the other, because they travel on the ground, are exposed to trackside attack. If you want to attack a train (for whatever reason), your best bet is to place a large bomb by the side of the track, not to try smuggling one on board. [That this has, mostly, not been done is probably more a testament to the low "terrorism yield" from attacking trains than to the difficulty of doing it.]

Because of this, the benefit of securing passengers is far lower for trains than it is for airplanes.

(4) Because one of the big advantages of trains is easy and fast boarding and disembarking of passengers, at multiple points, with relatively minimal infrastructure and staffing, the costs of extreme security would be far more prohibitive for trains than for airplanes. Given that the advantages of such security would be, at best, very dubious, the costs obviously tend to dominate the discussion.

Attacking a train, even a high-speed train, is much more akin to simply attacking any crowded location—a club, a restaurant, a theatre—than it is to attacking an airplane. [Because of this, an attack on a crowded local train is likely to be more effective than an attack on high-speed rail.]

You can cause economic effects by damaging infrastructure, but even that is unlikely to be significant.

So basically, (a) trains are just not that attractive a target for terrorism, and (b) the (extreme) costs of airport-style security would not justified by the (very minimal) benefits. Despite the overlap in the service they provide, airplanes and trains are simply very different in many ways.