The case for California’s High-Speed Rail is a flimsy excuse for squandering public funds on an epic scale. Cost estimates have exploded from $33 billion to nearly $100 billion, with federal audits exposing gross mismanagement of $3.1 billion in taxpayer money. Waste, fraud, and abuse run rampant, yet proponents dare to call this a “worthy fight.” Prioritizing backwater stops like Merced and Bakersfield over San Francisco and Los Angeles mocks the project’s supposed vision. No amount of rosy talk about infrastructure, economic growth, or decarbonization can whitewash this fiscal disaster. Public good? Hardly. It’s a betrayal of public trust, bleeding money with no end in sight. Private investors might plug some holes, but they can’t undo the damage of a project rotten with incompetence. America deserves better than this shameful monument to reckless spending.
Hi Alex, I love this newsletter and I am a public-transit-first California progressive. This is a supremely bad take. No one has regretted high speed rail because no one else has spent a hundred billion dollars on a boondoggle of such proportions. This is sunk cost fallacy at its worst -- we came this far, spent all this money, so let's double down? It's time to give up unless the state starts making loud noises about eminent domain and aggressively cutting red tape, which won't happen.
The case for California’s High-Speed Rail is a flimsy excuse for squandering public funds on an epic scale. Cost estimates have exploded from $33 billion to nearly $100 billion, with federal audits exposing gross mismanagement of $3.1 billion in taxpayer money. Waste, fraud, and abuse run rampant, yet proponents dare to call this a “worthy fight.” Prioritizing backwater stops like Merced and Bakersfield over San Francisco and Los Angeles mocks the project’s supposed vision. No amount of rosy talk about infrastructure, economic growth, or decarbonization can whitewash this fiscal disaster. Public good? Hardly. It’s a betrayal of public trust, bleeding money with no end in sight. Private investors might plug some holes, but they can’t undo the damage of a project rotten with incompetence. America deserves better than this shameful monument to reckless spending.
Hi Alex, I love this newsletter and I am a public-transit-first California progressive. This is a supremely bad take. No one has regretted high speed rail because no one else has spent a hundred billion dollars on a boondoggle of such proportions. This is sunk cost fallacy at its worst -- we came this far, spent all this money, so let's double down? It's time to give up unless the state starts making loud noises about eminent domain and aggressively cutting red tape, which won't happen.