“....... not one dime would have been spent because private funding never showed up.”.......
If Kalifornika, or any other state, wants such a boondoggle project, let them pay for it themselves. In this case, the American people have been throwing good money after bad to fund a project in a state most Americans will never set foot in. If the project was soooooooo important to that state, it should have been paid for by the people of that state, not the tax payers of the entire country. I can see funding projects that might improve transportation across the entire country and multiple states but the “Bullet Train” is not one of them.
The Feds should have a rule in place that any project that veers 10% either way from baseline generates an automatic audit. The audit gives the Feds the right to cancel the deal on behalf of the taxpayers.
By doing this, every project will have additional risks built in and the Project Management Office will have greater oversight.