Mikhail A. Raklov from Menlo Park has a pointed letter to the editor in today's Daily Post.  Here is the first half of it:

There is a famous French saying, that of three ways to financial ruin, the most pleasant is women, the quickest is gambling and the surest is technology.  The last part of this saying is especially true if the technology is obsolete.  Applying this concept to the hotly debated proposition of building high-speed rail through the hearts of several peninsula cities, one wants to ask:  Did proponents of this project hear anything about telecommuting?  And what will be the percentage of people preferring telecommuting rather than real commuting in five or 10 years?

And who will be these mysterious millions of riders who will commute day after day, month after month, year after year between Los Angeles and San Francisco?

Everyone is still waiting for the next three shoes to drop as the ridership forecasts are cut, cut and cut again.  One of the main reasons the hybrid solution of a cross-platform transfer in San Jose wouldn't require as much right-of-way up the Peninsula is the ridership forecasts into and out of SF are pure fiction.

By the way, according to Wikipedia the population of SF in 1950 was 775,357.  In 2000, Wikipedia lists the population as 776,733.  That growth of 1,376 people is 1.8% in 50 years.