You missed my point, which wasn't that Shinkansen was bad. It's like you read up to the first command and stopped.
On your other point: how much incentive is there to get people from SF to Mountain View faster? HUGE incentive, is the answer to that question. What's the answer right now? 101 and 280, or a long slow train ride.
Aaron Patzer went into quite a bit of detail a year or two ago with a commuter medium speed Maglev concept. He since ditched it to focus on self driving cars because he felt they were more viable.
On your other point: how much incentive is there to get people from SF to Mountain View faster? HUGE incentive, is the answer to that question. What's the answer right now? 101 and 280, or a long slow train ride.