How California’s SFO to LA Bullet Train Went Off the Rails

How California’s SFO to LA Bullet Train Went Off the Rails

It’s not just during the project construction period that problems can occur, as this article on California’s High Speed Rail shows. “Political compromises, the records show, produced difficult and costly routes through the state’s farm belt. They routed the train across a geologically complex mountain pass in the Bay Area. And they dictated that construction would begin in the center of the state, in the agricultural heartland, not at either of the urban ends where tens of millions of potential riders live.”

Costs have increased from $33bn in 2008 to $113bn this year with no identified source for the funds needed to complete the project. The original project objectives seem to have fallen prey to political considerations and hugely increased costs and only the central section looks likely to be built missing out the main population areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html?smid=li-share