California Hits the Brakes on High-Speed Rail Fiasco

From Bloomberg News via H/T at Instapundit:

From Virginia Postrel

The total construction cost estimate has now more than doubled to $68 billion from the original $33 billion, despite trims in the routes planned. The first, easiest-to-build, segment of the system — the “train to nowhere” through a relatively empty stretch of the Central Valley — is running at least four years behind schedule and still hasn’t acquired all the needed land. Predicted ticket prices to travel from LA to the Bay have shot from $50 to more than $80. State funding is running short. Last month’s cap-and-trade auction for greenhouse gases, expected to provide $150 million for the train, yielded a mere $2.5 million. And no investors are lining up to fill the $43 billion construction-budget gap.

Creating the High Speed Rail was more inportant to Moonbeam than fixing everything else in California Government priorities.

With a lot of crony capitalists involved too, it was doomed from the start.