I was a big supporter of CA high speed rail until the mismanagement situation became clear, and the costs became apparent that the value for money was not mate

I was a big supporter of CA high speed rail until the mismanagement situation became clear, and the costs became apparent that the value for money was not materializing for this project. In the beginning, when I tried a back of the envelope calculation that the distances were just beyond economical for high speed rail systems (versus air travel), I was willing to support it. However, the gradual resistance to acquiring the right of way cheaply, and the financial mismanagement (along with engineering mismanagement) caused me to lose faith in the CAHSR leadership capabilities. And now honestly, I think the money would be much more efficiently spent to solve some of our other many traffic/transportation problems. One of the worst times that convinced me the management was not being honest (with themselves even) was when the linked reporter's story came out about the geotechnical problems about crossing the Tehachapi/San Gabriel range, and how this major (really major!) problem had not been solved yet. The CAHSR CEO kept on going on about how they'd saved $1B or something on the current Central Valley construction costs -- as if saving a few pennies on the cost of a bolt on the Space Shuttle they didn't know how to design the rest of, was a great achievement. Anyway, this is all wrapped up in the larger story of how major projects in the US simply cannot build things cheaply and efficiently any more. It's a big problem for our infrastructure in general... We are getting 1/3 to 1/2 of what we could build (or maintain properly) because it's so expensive to do this now.