The whole damn Sacramento project was a complete Super-Set of missed opportunities and bureaucratic and developer bungling.

So many problems could have been completely solved, or at least mitigated, with a somewhat elevated trackway, on a new alignment, including a higher elevation replacement for the I-street bridge. Among them are reduced conflict with river traffic, rails and platforms above street level, direct ramp access from station concourse to each platform, grade separated access between CSRM and the still standing part of the SP shop area, etc, etc.

Final height of the grade might be somewhat limited by clearance under the freeway (at a new alignment), but it is still tall enough to make significant improvement possible, without the complication of rebuilding the I-5 over-crossing. But hell, even that was possible - indeed easier and cheaper, than moving the massive masonry depot building, which was considered (have lost track of whether that is still in the plan).

But Noooooh! Not any of that, nor any of dozens of other opportunities, were ever even thought of! Not by those college trained (read that as "put in a square box") so-called planners, that insist on doing everything blindly, by rote formula.

So has every visionary already departed (or passed on to heaven) before this project was even started? Sadly, this sort of thing now seems to so typical of anything public, in that Great State of Confusion (Kaliphonyia) that I retired from. - - - Seems so already? ? ? Well, it is about to get much much worse!

I hear from several of my old friends still there, that the BRAIN DRAIN from a number of public agencies in California, and certain municipalities too, is now GOING CRITICAL; -- enough to begin threatening real collapse of these agencies, and anything they try to do. If this is true, then the absurdly high costs already extant in California, are nevertheless about to skyrocket, even if they are still able to do anything at all.

They tell me that all the years of frozen pay (up to 8 in some places), forced furlough days, political bullcrap and yellow journalism, dished out to public employees over the last few years, including the blatant invasions of personal security and privacy by those same yellow journalists; has finally began to have its predictable effect.

Those who can (the best and brightest) - are now (after the election) quitting in droves and hiring on elsewhere - many at considerably higher compensation. Some already had departed while I was still working; but now - it is apparently getting critically extreme. So what the hell happened in the Caliphony election to finally trigger that, I wonder! (I don't actually know, as I was not there)

Glad I retired!
Glad I left!