>>2022270
The lag time between proposal and shovels (and the ballooning cost) basically comes down to the following
>environmental protection laws weaponized by the wealthy and car lobby against anything other than road widening
>environmental protection laws, while written with good intentions, drastically extend the time needed to actually start work on a project, which makes everything cost more
>balkanization of US state, county, and city governments into dozens upon dozens of petty fiefdoms that rarely cooperate with each other
>California, and the US for the most part, have privatized all state capacity for these kinds of projects to the point that the various governments can't even manage them effectively, leaving the door open for both insane project requirements from government and insane levels of private contractor grift
>for California in particular, and partially covered in the last one: Tutor Perini

In California's defense, they did eventually realize how out of their depth they were and began hiring back skilled project managers, which is why construction is proceeding as well as it is now that we're past all the lawsuits and environmental box checking. It's dumb that we haven't learned from Italy, Germany, or Spain, all of whom actually keep design teams and project managers on staff full time so that they don't lose all that institutional knowledge after each project. This also provides more accurate cost estimates, and these experienced teams can tell when a contractor (e.g. Tutor Perini) is bullshitting them. But maybe we'll finally learn from our CAHSR case study.

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>California Citizens: We want affordable high speed rail from SF to LA!>State Government: No problem! Give us $10 Billion and we will do…

>California Citizens: We want affordable high speed rail from SF to LA!
>State Government: No problem! Give us $10 Billion and we will do…