So now, already wayyy behind sched and over budget, and IIRC with the technical jobs going to out-of-state and out-of-country (think china) companies, we are now told that by 2022, the thriving California financial centers of Madera and Bakersfield will (about 120 mi apart) be the first places linked by the new bullet train.
Think of this. The once-Golden state is spiraling toward financial ruin, yet we are spending billions and billions to link Madera and Bakersfield, which happen to already be connected by a very nice freeway..
Now who would not want to pay (lots) more $$$, wait around in an icky train station (and do the security xray) to go to Madera (ugh) and not even have a car when you get there?
I have no plans to ever ride this hideous waste of my money. Further, I know lots and lots of liberals and progressives (hey, this is California), and I have yet to hear from even one that he or she looks forward to taking the bullet train.
So, when this electrified choo-choo finally takes to the rail, I expect no riders after the first few days of operation. There is no genuine demand for this service. None.
And, relating all of this to the topic of the thread, one hopes that the remainder of the 57 states can observe the bullet-train-induced, job killing, capital-draining financial wounding of California before wanting such a platinum-plated loser of their own.
(Just noticed the length of my post. Can you guess that I get a little wound-up about this topic?)
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The first sections of the Interstate Highway System were built in rural parts of Missouri and Kansas and they linked rural communities with rural communities. No major cities of any kind benefited from these first sections of road.
And that was by design.
See, the US route system was supposed to provide for four-lane highways all over the USA but after the cities got their parkways built the politicians never quite got around to funding the rural sections that would link the cities.
To make sure that the rural sections of the Interstates got built the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 required that rural sections of highway were finished before the urban sections were finished. Otherwise the Interstate System would have just ended up as a series of regional super-highways linked by two-lane roads.
High speed rail systems that are being built with Federal money are required to use the same proven method to make sure that they get finished. Otherwise all that would be built would just be the urban sections and they’d never link up. This was the urban sections have an established rural section to immediately connect to when they eventually start service.