Maybe the secret conspiracy running BART will ask the Martians on the spaceship to finance a Mexican electification of HSR? This will be done by placing us and our grandchildren in eternal debt to these secret alien invaders, who will want all of our bodily fluids?

Dang, I always thought everything in life was free and money grew on trees!

But, it is more likely that the same people who subsidize the portion of uncompensated damage done by the trucking industry to our highways that they don't pay for it in user fees-like maybe taxpayers? Or maybe the same folks who are stuck in traffic jams this morning losing time and money? Is it worth doing? How much should we spend? What will we get for it? That's why we should have these debates.......

There are real opportunities to use private financing for some of this infrastructure investment, and much more opportunity to use private investment to finance rebuilding our worn out highway system. But unfortunately, industries like trucking oppose any "market based" investment mechanisms that use public or private tolling to recoup costs.

And, the truckers want still bigger public subsidies by allowing larger more damaging truck weight limtits, where they pay even less per ton mile for the damage they do to our roads. And, these same folks have also opposed rail access to guaranteed loans or other tax benefits mechanisms to improve either freight or passenger services, even when privately financed.

Why? Because so many Americans have come to believe that everyone else should pay for the unlimited public services that they will inevitably use, except them, because they're "special"......

Thus, our dysfunctional Congress has still not passed a new transportation bill, since the last one lapsed five years ago! So you can blame a truly "bi-partisan" Congressionl leadership fail for the complete dysfunctionality on this one.

As Rosanna Rosannadanna used to say: "It's always something?"

Or, as an old Swiss banker told me long ago when I was visiting Zurich, amazed at the standard of living and infrastructure in such a very small country with no significant resources except a hard working well educated populace: "it costs more to live better".....

In this case, maybe it could all be part of the secret BART conspiracy to enslave mankind? Or maybe, there are real explanations, not necessarily good explanations, but at least real ones?