> Governments have very strong eminent domain powers. There’s a political cost but operationally it shouldn’t take long to acquire the land. Just expensive. We

> Governments have very strong eminent domain powers. There’s a political cost but operationally it shouldn’t take long to acquire the land. Just expensive. Well... not in California, apparently. Caltrans recently abandoned the I-710 to I-210 connector in LA, after 50 years of trying to finish acquiring the land. Some people just don't want to sell for any price. Maybe it's the house they grew up in or maybe it's ideological. If choosing a more direct route delays the project for 50 years, that's effectively the same thing as blocking it. That's why I say they made the right call on re-using Caltrain and Metrolink for the Peninsula and LA, respectively. > The core problem though, and I hope we agree strongly here, is that they’ve spent a shit ton of money on the easiest parts of the project vs getting things operationally as fast as possible and also focusing on completing the most difficult parts first. I agree that is an important problem, but not the core problem. The core problem, as I see it, is that purists demanded a 220 mph system from the start, and that caused a cascade of decisions that delayed operations. If CAHSR could be built with a max speed of 160 mph instead of 220 mph, almost all of the land acquisition in the Central Valley goes away. If 110 mph were acceptable in urban areas (including cities in the Central Valley), most of the grade separation work goes away. If even lower speeds were acceptable in mountain sections, CAHSR could have used the sinuous ACE commuter rail line through the Altimont pass. Do that, and all the challenges and costs of building across the Pacheco pass go away (there's a reason no railroad tried to build that route in the 1800's). The only new thing you need to build in that scenario is a new route through the Tehachapi pass. Sure, it doubles travel time, but the first trains would be running already.