• A meandering route through the Central Valley devised to win support at the ballot box, locking planners into a scheme that took the route away from its goal of connecting the state’s biggest cities.
• A mad rush to begin construction without knowing the route, acquiring the right of way, studying the geology, or securing the funding.
• An irresponsible partner in the federal government that rushed California to get going and encouraged the state to proceed with half-baked plans.
• A balkanized planning process teeming with eager private-sector beavers who were afraid to report how flawed the enterprise was, a system that Naik called “no consultant left behind.”
• The determination not to engage French and Chinese engineers who offered to just build the damn thing for us. “The equivalent of Bangladesh saying they’d go to the moon with indigenous technology” is how Perl describes the general attitude. “We excluded all the learning and tech that happened elsewhere.”
But after all that, the thing that wasn't said was "by how this was done, one would deduce that no one really cared whether the project succeeded or not."
Which is to say that if another project of this sort is attempted, creating an institutional imperative to succeed from the start is crucial.
And as far as popular support goes, it seems reasonable to make it clear to the voters that the project didn't die by accident but that it was killed. Of course, with all parties conveniently culpable, it's hard to say what a concerned citizen is to do.
Sadly, corruption tends to be a part of any large scale infrastructure project. The trick is creating a situation where the forces involved have incentive not to eat the golden goose. And this incentive basically has to come from the top. Obviously, it didn't this time.