The ink is barely dry on California legislation to start building high-speed rail, and now they reveal a $2.5 billion hidden cost that wasn’t included in previous estimates, that being the cost of tunneling the final mile into San Francisco. It shouldn’t really matter, as they don’t have the money to build the last 130 to 150 miles of rail from the Central Valley to San Francisco anyway.
On top of that, California residents are discovering that their high-speed rail authority has been keeping controversial aspects of the planned route as secret as possible, at least until it is too late for people to do anything about it. For example, the plan calls for running the track 75 feet above the city of Alhambra, which is likely to be a major eyesore.
