Just got back from a daylong trip to Sacramento, so this will have to be brief – and really, it speaks for itself, as Mike Rosenberg reports:

In a blow to high-speed-rail critics lobbying for the train line from Los Angeles to end in San Jose, Caltrain officials said Tuesday that the idea would require the same Peninsula track expansion while harming local commuter service and stripping the agency of funding.

For riders to take the bullet train from Southern California to San Jose and transfer to an express Caltrain to San Francisco — as some critics and planners have proposed — Caltrain would have to add tracks or eliminate commute service to accommodate them, said Bob Doty, Caltrain’s joint high-speed-rail program director.

As a result, whether high-speed rail runs to San Jose or San Francisco, the impact on Peninsula residents and businesses — namely property taking, noise and aesthetics — would be virtually the same. But were it to stop in San Jose, train service would be longer and less convenient, and Doty said the project would cost about the same but have fewer funding sources.

“I just think people think that if high-speed rail stops in San Jose, we can just use what we have today, and there’s just no way,” Doty said. “It’s one of these closed loop arguments; I just don’t know how you do it.”

In other words, stopping in San José would produce the same impact on the Peninsula while massively damaging the HSR system’s ability to be financially viable. Nothing at all is gained on the Peninsula, but the state loses quite a lot – potentially the ability of HSR to pay its own operating costs as mandated by Prop 1A.

Doty’s comments add to the extremely strong case against terminating HSR service in San José, to the point where you’d think that local governments would just drop this time-waster of an idea and focus on other aspects of HSR planning where their ideas can have better use. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, that’s not the case:

Burlingame Mayor Cathy Baylock, the city’s representative on the consortium, and [Palo Alto Mayor Pat] Burt said the Legislature should ask voters to revise Proposition 1A if planners determine that the stop-in-San Jose option is best. Baylock said much has changed since the proposition’s passage.

“I think they need to show some adaptability, too,” said Baylock, whose city has not taken a stance on the hybrid option. “I just think where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

But Doty said, “I don’t know of a vendor in the world” willing to invest money in a system that halts in San Jose.

I don’t know how much clearer to put it: Mayors Baylock and Burt are wasting everyone’s time flogging this non-starter of an idea. They’re wasting the time of their own constituents, who should instead be focused on the details of how the HSR/Caltrain project will be built in their communities. They’re wasting the time of the California High Speed Rail Authority and Caltrain, who have better things to do than spend time on this, even though they’re studying it anyway because they’re mandated to do so. And they’re wasting the time of Californians who want to see HSR built as planned and as approved by the voters, efficiently, on-time and on-budget.