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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

In California, it's pretty clear it's Republicans to blame:

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/17/feds-delay-caltrain-el...

It's not so clear cut. The Republicans may be trying to put breaks on the never ending money drain that this project was. FWIW Trump looks to be very pro-High speed rail in general [1] esp as he is going to be pushing through his proposed 1TB infrastructure overhaul.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/02/03/abe-says-japan-to-show-u...

I would be very surprised if that 1T infrastructure spending bill ever sees the light of day.

Firstly, the US has a massive budget deficit and with upcoming corporate tax cuts the question will be where the money is going to come from. Secondly, the US is approaching full employment at ~5%. Now sure there is significant underemployment but you have to wonder if (a) there is enough people to build out all this infrastructure and (b) if the states even have enough shovel ready projects. Because they sure didn't during the GFC when Obama was looking for an infrastructure stimulus.

The republicans just busted the budget when bush 2 was president, so I expect that to continue. I figure this won't happen because they had the liberal states. But the employment situation is interesting, because we have multiple different worlds in the US. the coastal tech and big city tech economies are mostly great. It's the in between places that trump supports that are doing terrible. Those places need jobs, and there aren't any.

Except job wise, most of those areas have recovered, albeit with service industry jobs replacing industrial, but those jobs as they return to the US are nearly fully automated.

If Trump can stop kicking Boeing and others in the teeth we might even retain those jobs in the industrial sector that have remained thus far. Trump blowing up contracts Boeing has with airlines overseas bodes poorly for that though.

I predict we'll see another bubble since Trump removed most of the financial restrictions put in place by Dodd-Frank, lining us up for another 2007 bubble collapse all over again. Go Trump!

You are arguing they had good reasons. But it still seems pretty clear that it's a partisan issue.

You can blame Republicans for opposing it and blame Democrats for treating it like a gravy train and inflating the price, route, and build time, and cutting the speed. We are ten years into the project, and have nothing to show for it. This is how mega projects like this are run, it's hard to blame people for opposing them. Republicans could have been made to look like fools for opposing it if it was on time and on budget, and had a reasonable route. The original promise was $50 tickets & 220 mph speeds!!

Republicans have no power whatsoever at the state level in California.

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