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Comment by culi | Hacker News Reader

The exact problem of California's High-Speed Rail is that individuals (as well as local municipalities) keep suing them. The original timeline and budget would probably not have been too far off if it weren't for this

The current route has been modified a bunch to appease local municipalities that want, or don't want, part of the tracks or a stop near them. Maybe that can be stopped by voting, but the wealthy individuals will continue to sue and force more expensive litigative battles like the one that resulted in this environmental assessment needing to be cleared

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I don’t think that is the only thing that is keeping this slow and expensive. I think the first estimates were way to optimistic (especially in terms of costs and funding opportunities).

I think the main thing that has been slowing things down is severe lack of funding, both from the state of California, and especially from the federal government. This is probably due to the fact that there was a lack of experience (both from the rail authority and especially from the legislator). Thankfully it looks like they have stopped withholding funds and at this point they have gained some experience. I doubt there will be another doubling of cost estimate nor much more delays (perhaps a year or two more at most).

Legislators can pass laws which make lawsuits easier or harder.

> The exact problem of California's High-Speed Rail is that individuals (as well as local municipalities) keep suing them.

No, it's funding.

The switch to exclusive focus on environmental clearance outside of a particular area of focus was based on funding, not lawsuits. HSR has always relied on massive additional funding besides it's dedicated bond fund, much of which was expected from the federal government, and which has not materialized.

You can actually see that in action. The day before this EIS was cleared it was announced that contracts for advancing designs on the two remaining sections in the Central Valley (Madera to Merced and Shafter to Bakersfield; essentially preparing for construction packages 5 and 6, if I understand correctly). This news came just days after the federal government granted them 25M USD from the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

It is not even 4 years since Gavin Newsom ordered the stop on any new construction packages (which ironically made this a train from nowhere to nowhere) because there simply wasn’t enough funding to finish anything that hadn’t already started. Thankfully it looks like this era is over now, and we can finally start seeing things get the funding it needs and deserves.

> individuals (as well as local municipalities) keep suing them

OK, so do you have a solution to that?

Pass laws which provide less grounds for suing these kinds of projects, or at least group them into one class action lawsuit instead of a smattering of actions. Provide abridged proceedings for infrastructure projects so judgements can be rendered more quickly. I'm thinking things like judge only trials, etc.

I think these are great ideas, with not much chance of passing. Imagine all the environmentalist groups screaming that they're going to silence legitimate criticism, shut off debate, push through poorly thought-out projects, destroy our environment, etc. etc.

I said "not much chance" rather than "no chance." Eventually, some watered-down version of a law like that might pass.

In my experience, pro-environmental regulation is always passed over a chorus of screaming capitalists pointing out that it makes it very expensive and difficult to build things. There is a reason that China is the factory of the world - it is legal in China to build things cheaply. There are only a tiny handful of people who know how to build things that are compliant with the regulation (& demonstrate that compliance).

So while the last step in the sequence of events is wealthy people suing, the actual problem here is probably that the CHSR may be illegal to construct and there are people with an interest in testing that theory.

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