Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

You're not allowed to write on this topic if you fail to mention the freeway budget over a similar time horizon.

The entire CA transportation budget is $21 billion per annum (not counting federal funds, which were elevated at $8.8B in 23-24).

That includes DMV and CHP as well as the city/county road funds, state highways, transit programs, bridge retrofitting, general maintenance, and existing rail programs.

https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4804

Great. Can you get a job at KCRA?

It seems pretty clear what you were implying. I don't see a problem with their journalism.

I think I am being crystal clear. The government spending on the car transportation scheme costs so much that it spends every few years enough money to build a statewide bullet train system, even though the car system is only treading water and not adding capacity. That isn't even counting the private spending on the car scheme, which is far larger. HSR is the deal of the century.

This bullet train is absolutely not statewide. You can get from basically anywhere in California to anywhere else using the state highway system, and millions and millions of Californians actually do. (CA has 2,459 miles of Interstate highway and 11,982 miles of freeways and principal arterial roads; the final length of the HSR as planned is 800 miles)

This $100B is a marginal cost on top of what has already been spent, and does not include the cost to operate the system. It seems unreasonable to imply that the cost of the highways which actually connect the entire state, somehow dwarfs the cost of this project -- that's just not true. It's even more unreasonable to to imply that the journalism is flawed because it does not make that argument.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com