Article originally appeared on amgreatness.com.
It sounded too good to be true, and it was. Travel from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in two hours via high-speed rail. California voters in 2008 approved Proposition 1A, authorizing $9.95 billion in general obligation bonds to build this so-called “bullet train.” They were told not only that the total cost would only be $33 billion but also that the entire 500-mile system would be running by 2030.
Fat chance.
In March of this year, the California High-Speed Rail Authority released its latest progress report. The project is now projected to cost $127 billion, and there is no longer a projected completion date. The initial stretch of track, a 171-mile segment across the sparsely populated, pancake-flat San Joaquin Valley, is projected to be done by 2030 at a cost of $35 billion.
These are staggering numbers, a testament to a staggering waste of financial and material resources. For this first segment …
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