[wahern]

You don't need to hypothesize what the alternative to HSR would be. It was well researched. The alternative, expanding highways and airports, was more than 2x the cost of HSR. Of course, the costs of HSR have grown, but so would the highway and airport costs.

The biggest cost to HSR is acquiring and developing property in developed areas. But this is significantly more costly for highways and airports.

The solution to the bloated HSR budget is to improve the process, not to switch to another alternative mid-stream that both theoretically and in practice would be at least as bloated and even more costly.

[CalRobert]

I'm unusual, but I think it might have been better to focus on better medium speed rail instead of HSR. I still support HSR, but honestly even if a train from SF to DTLA were 6 hours it would be superior to driving or flying, and if the extra funds made it available in 2020 instead of a million years from now, and that we could service Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, etc. (the Coast Starlight route) that would be a pretty huge plus.