Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated

In 2008, when the state originally put Prop 1A to voters to build a high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the expectation was that the $9.95 billion in state bonds voters approved would be matched or exceeded by federal funding (as is normally the case for highway projects), and perhaps further complemented by private funding (as with the Brightline West project between Las Vegas and Los Angeles). It passed with 52.6% of the vote. All of these challenges are real. What critics miss is that many of them have already been overcome. What they ignore is the reason they exist in the first place. The story of CAHSR is not about a state trying and failing to overcome its own bureaucracy and broken political process. It’s about a state that barely tried. If there is one subject liberals and conservatives can agree on, it might be their shared hatred for California High-Speed Rail. Today, the project is under investigation by the Trump administration and is facing a possible ... Read full article.