The folks who remain pro-train (THIS train, anyway) are those who corruptly stand to benefit, and/or those who “ain’t payin’ much in taxes ANYway, so why not.” What a waste of MY money.
The White Elephant Express now crossing the Taxpayer Memorial Bridge...
Not exactly. The kind of riders attracted to this train are likely to be well-heeled professionals. That underscores what’s wrong with the assumption behind it: massive ridership. The ridership has to be artificially inflated to make the huge costs of constructing and operating it appear superficially plausible. But if the ridership is way below projected levels, its going to operate at a loss and not pay for itself from Day One. Oops! The market wouldn’t build it because it knows the bullet train is not a financially viable proposition. Politicians can and do disregard market realities because if it goes south, those who sponsored the project will be long dead and buried and the taxpayers can be expected to pick the tab for it. That’s exactly why its the wrong thing for California, given its current fiscal straits.