California’s Ambitious High-Speed Rail at a Crossroads | Hacker News Reader

California’s Ambitious High-Speed Rail at a Crossroads

nytimes.com

8 pointserex786 comments

Maybe I’m just being too cynical about Merced as a future growth center, but to me the California high speed rail project is the textbook example of sunk cost fallacy. At present, it mostly serves to signal the level of corruption (or ineptitude) of anyone shameless enough to publicly support it. If one day it should actually connect Fresno and Merced, with a 100 billion dollar (and counting) price tag, what’s the cost per rider?! And they’ll probably vote the guy in again!

That's one interpretation of this article, but the other is that we can't really build anything big in this country anymore because of red-tape, regulations, and competing government fiefdoms.

From the article: "They point with frustration and embarrassment to successes in countries around the globe — particularly China, which has built more than 20,000 miles of high-speed rail in about two decades."

Sure - nobody wants a $100B high speed rail line between Fresno and Merced. But why can't we build what everybody actually wants - a high speed rail between SF and LA with a reasonable price and timeline? This isn't an issue of engineering, it's an issue of management.

Because voters naturally want what is impossible. The answer is educate voters, but voters label efforts to educate them about such realities as rank partisanship and continue to vote for the same people who promise them high speed rail will be completed in 3 more years, ad infinitum. IMO of course.

unfortunately, any propose to educate or "responsibilize" voters in today climate can be seen as racist/bad, expecially if "progressives" turfs are at stake. Wrong?

Simpler than that, fiscal responsibility should not be a partisan issue. A 100 billion dollar train from nowhere to nowhere means 100 billion taken away from efforts to address homelessness, fight childhood poverty, safeguard community health, improve fire management, address environmental concerns, etc.

If the citizens of California want this so bad, then let the pay for it. Making the entire US pay for a project that affects two cities is unjust.

This is not to mention this project has spent millions and done nothing except line the pockets of people that have close personal relationships with the Pelosi's.

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