Readers may be familiar with the humiliating saga of California’s bullet train project, which was successfully sold in 2008 as a project to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco via high-speed rail.  Voters narrowly approved the plan on the same day Barack Obama was first elected president. Its total projected budget was approximately $33 billion, spanning roughly 800 miles of track. Its completion date was slated for 2020. Eight years of Obama’s presidency elapsed. Then four years of President Donald Trump.  Then four years of President Joe Biden. 

We are now in the second year of Trump’s second term. Not one foot of track has yet been laid.  Proponents have openly abandoned the “LA to SF dream,” instead vowing to connect smaller cities far away from the original hubs. And the budget has exploded to “as much as $128 billion,” according to the New York Times, and is now “scheduled for completion at some unknown future time.”