If there really was a market for HSR, and environmentalists would get out of the way, it would happen without the federal feed bag as well.
But HSR is like a mantra for some folks.
Yes, but the fundamental problem is contempt for TRUTH = REALITY.
The people who are chanting these mantras refuse to accept REALITY.
The REALITY is that they can have some of what they want but not all of it.
Obviously--as I say--they have made the choice collectively that they would rather have illegal-immigrants-on-welfare than high-speed-bullet-trains.
Also behind this is another dishonesty: They believe somehow that they can have both. That they can have illegal-immigrants-on-welfare and at the same time force the rest of America--which they dismiss as "the rich" but is in REALITY the hard-working-American-taxpayer--to pay for their high-speed-bullet-trains.
Leftists have California in a death-grip, and Leftists are dishonest, parasitic, willfully delusional, and intellectually and morally sloppy, and they have a fundamental and profound contempt for TRUTH, REALITY, logic, and intellectual clarity.
They are the descendants of the spoiled brats of the 1960s counter-culture movement, who sashayed onto the world scene chanting "Sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll!" and "If it feels good, do it!"
They are basically spoiled brats who think they can have everything--never mind that somebody else has to pay it--and a tantrum for anybody who says they can't!