The shovel will cost 5 billion dollars alone. Then, it will be halted by environmental protestors who will demand that an EIS be performed on the dirt the shovel will turn over at the ceremony. The ceremony location will be on critical habitat of the 4 speckled bilge toad that ONLY lives on that one spot of ground. This will delay the project another 8 years and cost 20,000,000,000 in fees and delays. When the ceremony is resumed in 2026 the shovel will reveal an ancient indian bone and the whole process will start over again and cost another 40,000,000,000 to relocate the ceremony.
Yes, this boondoggle will never get done and will cost zillions. We don't need high-speed rail between SF and LA. It's easy to hop on a plane, I've done it many times between SF and LA, takes an hour.
Government can't give us high-speed roads here in the SF Bay Area; main corridors like 880 always move at a crawl approaching the cities. Same goes for LA region. We've got a highway to nowhere, 380, just south of SF. It was envisioned as going from the Pacific coast through the SF peninsula and across the Bay. It's only a few miles long between 101 and 280, the wide roadway deadends into a mountain. Been that way for decades, blocked by environmentalists and other reasons. We really need another bridge across the Bay because existing bridges are jammed and traffic crawls. But they won't extend 380 with a bridge as originally envisioned.
We're no longer the can-do nation for what is critically needed. We're a banana republic that builds to enrich a few idiots.