what would you do with $100 billion in public money? Fight homelessness? Fund public schools? Give everyone a tax break?
Instead California is spending $100 billion dollars on high speed rail. The project has been scaled down to a line between Bakersfield and Merced. These are two small towns that no one ever really goes to. No one has ever said, “we need a high speed link between Bakersfield and Merced.”
I guess the idea that it is a starter piece of the puzzle. But if your starter piece costs $100 that is a pretty big starter piece. I mean how much will the next piece cost.
Even if you love trains, hate global warming, whatever, this endeavor is ridiculous. It always was and always will be. No one will ever ride a high speed train between Los Angeles and San Francisco because that train will never exist.
The only advantage is that it is a make-work project. In Europe, cathedrals took hundreds of years to build and employed many people in town. It is important to provide jobs I guess. And is it possible that there is a political advantage to spending billions in the middle of the state… I mean the logical thing would be to improve public transit in LA or SF. But instead we get a high-speed train in Bakersfield.
Unfortunately projects get a life of their own and apparently no one has the guts to kill this turkey.