[rayiner]

> Only now, though, is it becoming apparent how costly the political choices have been. Collectively, they turned a project that might have been built more quickly and cheaply into a behemoth so expensive that, without a major new source of funding, there is little chance it can ever reach its original goal of connecting California’s two biggest metropolitan areas in two hours and 40 minutes.

I received some good advice a long time ago, which is that don’t spend too much time beating your head over your weaknesses, because then you’ll be spending your life focusing on what you’re bad at instead of what you’re good at.

I feel like Americans should do this about trains and transit. We can’t do it. Just let it go. Find some other outlet that harnesses our strengths as a society instead of playing into all of our weaknesses.

[elgenie]

Being able to build infrastructure is a core state/social capacity that has to be improved; there's nothing special about trains. There's also no alternative, because roads, bridges, pipes, water filtration plants, transmission lines, fiber, power plants, refineries, etc. are all impacted by the exact same forces.

America did a spectacular job of redesigning society around maximizing car usage and continues to subsidize that pattern of land and resource use.