[captainperl]

For the people reading these postings, I noticed there's some misunderstandings about California HSR ...

1) It's not for transportation. It's a jobs and pension program for appointees. State leaders are willing to spend $100 billion (or more) of taxpayer money for $1 billion of pork.

2) The state cannot even manage Caltrain well, which is only 50 miles long (SF to Gilroy.) There's no way they can manage a route 400 miles long.

3) Domestic airlines do a good job of intra-state travel already.

4) There was never an affordable model for building HSR. It never made any sense financially for California.

5) Residents of Palo Alto and Atherton will sue the state into oblivion if they don't bury the HSR. And the state won't because tunnelling is $2 billion per mile.

[scarejunba]

I think most people on HN don’t realize one thing, though: most Americans are very much in favour of this sort of pork barrel funding. They may say otherwise but when it comes down to it the operative reasoning is “everyone else will get the pork barrel but me so I need to get in on it”. Revealed Preferences are pro-pork.

[ArchTypical]

> It's a jobs and pension program for appointees > There was never an affordable model for building HSR

If someone isn't aware of how these free money contracts were awarded, they really don't understand the depth of the fantasy ...which Jerry Brown is almost single-handedly responsible for.

> The state cannot even manage Caltrain well

Yup. There are trains that go from San Diego up to San Fran, with transfers, mostly along the coast. It's so expensive to ride with EXISTING rail that it's running on subsidy.

Some of the comments on these multi-billion dollar scams are ridiculously positive for no apparent reason.