Neo Luddites come in all stripes these days....the "evil" train "syndrome" is just one example of that.

It has also been my experience that the Sierra Club is very supportive of these rail projects, since it is a fairly broadly based membership organization. That is not true of many a "front groups" for trial lawyers, deep cover political extremes, or Nimby groups, which so many pseudo-environmental sounding groups seem to be these days.

I've watched groups secretly funded by coal, attack fracking. I've watched wealthy folks who fund anti-vaxxer's fund opposition to freeways. I've seen trial lawyers gin up suits using these front groups under the guise of environmental "justice".

Hell, I've even seen public agencies and politicians who pander directly to that fear and ignorance, with deliberate misinformation and/or outright lies to increase bureaucratic power, advance careers, and for the votes of those who are prone and primed to believe nonsense. And, as we can observe in some of these posts, this dubious gullibility spans the full fringes of both political spectrums, depending on your "evil" conspiracy theory, du jour........

This is a tragedy, as our infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and many of these individuals and Nimby groups may some day come to wonder why their internet doesn't come on, the lights went out, and the toilet no longer flushes. And, on the other fringe extreme, it is now very unlikely that our grandchildren's grandchildren will ever see the Everglades......

There are also real and bad things out there, things that poison air, and poison water, and make us sick, and that we should get our act together and fix. And, these processes are designed to prevent that kind of stupid, and need, in many case to be strengthened. But, abuse of those processes has also grown to be a problem, too. Unfortunately, that is mostly a problem with lack of will in our political leadership, that become incapable of action in the face of controversy, be it real or perceived.

If we hadn't informed half of these morons about this extra "track", they would never have noticed, is the other thing I've learned in my career. The large naked chimps are not that rational to begin with, and are sometimes easily frightened, and then they become just like sheep, ready for the fear mongers to fleece.....

Which is why, if you don't like this kind of irrational nonsense stopping progress, and are okay with reasonable decisions based on sound science, reason, competitive costs, and real public benefit, we may occasionally need to get off our a$$es, quit bitc#ing about it, and contact some of those generally gutless politicians, and show you support these projects......

As to consultants, like anything else, you get what you pay for.... And, some folks would rather hire people to study something to death, than to reach any real decisions. Good planning is necessary if you want good and cost effective solutions to these problems, and safe and effective infrastructure. But often this is poor planning, done to avoid costly, difficult, or politically sensitive decisions, because increasingly we don't seem to have the balls to make decisions and stick by them these days.

Oh well.....?