This emperor has no clothes on, and is a real rip-off artist. CA HSR is really a very effective Money Train that has transported billions of dollars from the public to wealthy consultants and real-estate interests and land speculators and major contractors and Big Business and politicians.

Here is the LA Times article, published back on Jan. 12, 2016 (!!):

"Costs rise for moving utility lines in construction of bullet train"

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-costs-rise-for-utility-lines-20160112-story.html

The cost of relocating the underground utilities -- gas and water and sewer lines -- is 6 times as much as they had said it would cost! The CHSRA has no business being in charge of anything. I am sure high-school students of average intelligence but with good hearts and some enthusiasm could do a much better job. The CHSRA emblem should be in the dictionary next to the word "incompetent".

To those who support this project:
Please follow the money. That will show just exactly who is benefiting from this giant waste of taxpayer state monies: real-estate interests and land speculators, and the usual overpaid consultants. Certainly not the people of California, who are being ripped off -- again -- by Big Business and the politicians they control.

And the practicality and worth, or lack thereof, of CA HSR has absolutely nothing to do with BART, which is an urban mass transit rail system. CA HSR is a corridor rail system, and absolutely must have superb mass transit and regional rail systems that feed into it. Which do not exist yet, and will not for a long, long time, thanks to CA HSR using up (ripping off, really) 90% of the funds needed to build those superb mass transit and regional rail systems.

As I have said before, building CA HSR now is very much like trying to put the glaze on the icing on a cake that does not really exist.