California high-speed rail

Elon Musk: A Mission to Save the World

by Anna Crowley Redding  · 1 Jul 2019  · 190pp  · 46,977 words

thing while visiting the team behind the online learning nonprofit Khan Academy. In an interview with Sal Khan, Elon said, “I was reading about the California high-speed rail, and it was quite depressing. Because California taxpayers are going to be on the hook to build the most expensive high-speed rail per mile

American Made: Why Making Things Will Return Us to Greatness

by Dan Dimicco  · 3 Mar 2015  · 219pp  · 61,720 words

NextGen 2012 Implementation Report, http://www.faa.gov/nextgen/media/executive_summary_2012.pdf. 21. “2009 Infrastructure Report Card.” 22. “Connecting California 2014 Business Plan,” California High Speed Rail Authority, April 30, 2014, http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/BPlan_2014_Business_Plan_Final.pdf. 23. “2011 Statewide Transportation System Needs

Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work

by Iain Gately  · 6 Nov 2014  · 352pp  · 104,411 words

, where building work on a high-speed commuter train service between Los Angeles and San Francisco looks set to commence after years of wrangling. The California High Speed Rail (CHSR) is budgeted at US$68 billion and projected to be in operation by 2029. The journey time between its headline destinations will be about

The Great Railroad Revolution

by Christian Wolmar  · 9 Jun 2014  · 523pp  · 159,884 words

as Seattle–Portland and Chicago–St. Louis, but the biggest chunk of money has been allocated to the development of the controversial nearly $100 billion California high-speed rail scheme linking Los Angeles and San Francisco and eventually intended to connect several other major cities. Strong initial support for California’s ambitious high-speed

Abundance

by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson  · 18 Mar 2025  · 227pp  · 84,566 words

real. And the federal government was adding billions more. It is hard to imagine a more favorable climate for the project. A spokesman for the California High-Speed Rail Authority joined a call-in radio show and told listeners that they’d be “able to ride that train from San Francisco to LA in

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rail.48 In October 2023, one of us—okay, it was Ezra—went to Fresno, California, and toured the miles of rail infrastructure that the California High-Speed Rail Authority has built.49 The project is caught in a strange limbo between political fantasy and physical fact. The agency doesn’t have anywhere near

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, STV, Sener, and Parsons Corporation. The outsourcing “proved to be a foundational error in the project’s execution—a miscalculation that has resulted in the California High-Speed Rail Authority being overly reliant on a network of high-cost consultants who have consistently underestimated the difficulty of the task,” reported Ralph Vartabedian in the

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State of the State Address,” February 12, 2019, https://www.gov.ca.gov/2019/02/12/state-of-the-state-address/. 45. “2022 Business Plan, California High-Speed Rail Authority,” February 8, 2022, https://hsr.ca.gov/about/high-speed-rail-business-plans/2022-business-plan/; Ralph Vartabedian, “Costs of California’s Troubled Bullet

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Build Again,” Business Insider, November 16, 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/america-build-infrastructure-transportation-housing-regulation-environment-2023-11. 49. Eight months later, the California High-Speed Rail Authority “approved a contractor to begin designing track and overhead contact systems (OCS) for the initial 171-mile passenger service connecting Merced to Bakersfield,” press

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release, June 26, 2024, https://hsr.ca.gov/2024/06/26/news-release-california-high-speed-rail-authority-approves-contractor-moves-design-of-track-and-overhead-electrical-systems-forward/. 50. Here and below, Brian Kelly in conversation with Ezra Klein, October 2023

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.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2024/04/19/Amended%20CHIPS-Commercial%20Fabrication%20Facilities%20NOFO%20Amendment.pdf. 31. Klein, “The Problem with Everything-Bagel Liberalism.” 32. California High-Speed Rail Authority, “Central Valley,” n.d., https://hsr.ca.gov/high-speed-rail-in-california/central-valley/. 33. John J. DiIulio Jr., Bring Back the Bureaucrats

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’s Faltering High-Speed Rail Project Was ‘Captured’ by Costly Consultants,” Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-high-speed-rail-consultants-20190426-story.html. 35. Ezra Klein, interview with Brian Kelly. 36. BART, “Best Scoring Bid to Build BART’s Fleet of the Future,” April

How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, From Home Renovations to Space Exploration

by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner  · 16 Feb 2023  · 353pp  · 97,029 words

, and get on a plane to queue on the tarmac, waiting for departure. The cost of the train ticket was $86. The project was called California High-Speed Rail. It would connect two of the world’s great cities, along with Silicon Valley, the global capital of high technology. Words such as visionary are

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not remotely normal. As we’ll see, the data show that big projects that deliver as promised are rare. Normal looks a lot more like California High-Speed Rail. Average practice is a disaster, best practice an outlier, as I would later point out in my findings about megaproject management.7 Why is the

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done. “Think fast, act slow” is. The track record of big projects unequivocally shows that. PROJECTS DON’T GO WRONG, THEY START WRONG Look at California High-Speed Rail. When it was approved by voters and construction started, there were lots of documents and numbers that may have superficially resembled a plan. But there

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researched, and thoroughly tested program, which is to say that there was no real plan. Louis Thompson, an expert on transportation projects who chairs the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group convened by the California State Legislature, says that what California had in hand when the project got under way could at best

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fallacy is politically safer than making a logical decision. It’s a safe bet that when California governor Gavin Newsom decided not to scrap the California High-Speed Rail project, only curtail it, he and his aides were thinking very carefully about how sunk costs would weigh on the public mind, and they knew

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with no structure behind it. Governments and bureaucratic corporations are good at churning out this sort of analysis. It is a major reason why the California High-Speed Rail project was able to spend more than a decade “in planning” before construction began, producing impressive quantities of paper and numbers without delivering a plan

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“who gets what” is the core of politics, there is politics in every big project, whether public or private. This fact helps explain why the California High-Speed Rail project became such a mess. There is no real high-speed rail in the United States, which suggests how much experience US companies have building

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keep sliding into the future. And we absolutely cannot have projects that never deliver what they promise. There is no room for more Monjus or California High-Speed Rail. In our present situation, wasted resources and wasted time are a threat to civilization. We must build huge and fast. Fortunately, we have a strong

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supervisor, supported every major decision and publication in my academic career, including the present book. Unexpectedly, Marty died in the middle of us factchecking the California High-Speed Rail case in the introduction, on which he was an expert. I didn’t understand why his emails suddenly—and uncharacteristically—stopped. Then I got the

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.625 billion. See California High-Speed Rail Authority, Financial Plan (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority, 1999); California High-Speed Rail Authority, California High-Speed Train Business Plan (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2008); Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century, AB-3034, 2008, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=200720080AB3034. 2. California High-Speed Rail Authority, California High-Speed Rail Program Revised 2012

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Business Plan: Building California’s Future (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail

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Authority, 2012); California High-Speed Rail

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Authority, Connecting California: 2014 Business Plan (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority

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, 2014); California High-Speed Rail Authority, Connecting and Transforming California: 2016 Business Plan (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2016); California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2018 Business Plan (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2018); California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2020 Business Plan: Recovery and Transformation (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2021); California High-Speed Rail

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Authority, 2020 Business Plan: Ridership & Revenue Forecasting Report (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2021); California High-Speed Rail

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Authority, Revised Draft 2020 Business Plan: Capital Cost Basis of Estimate Report (Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority, 2021). 3. California High-Speed Rail Authority, Revised

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and appendices by Hugh Tredennick, introduction and bibliography by Jonathan Barnes (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Classics, 1976). 2. Author interview with Lou Thompson, chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, June 4, 2020. 3. Lee Berthiaume, “Skyrocketing Shipbuilding Costs Continue as Estimate Puts Icebreaker Price at $7.25B,” The Canadian Press, December

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. California High-Speed Rail Authority. 1999. Financial Plan. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority. California High-Speed Rail Authority. 2008. California High-Speed Train Business Plan. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority. California High-Speed Rail Authority. 2012. California High-Speed Rail Program, Revised 2012 Business Plan: Building California’s Future. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority. California High-Speed Rail Authority. 2014. Connecting California: 2014 Business Plan. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority. California High-Speed Rail Authority. 2016. Connecting and Transforming California: 2016 Business Plan. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority. California High-Speed Rail Authority

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. 2018. 2018 Business Plan. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail

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Authority. California High-Speed Rail

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Authority. 2021. 2020 Business Plan: Recovery and Transformation. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail

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Authority. California High-Speed Rail

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Authority. 2021. 2020 Business Plan: Ridership and Revenue Forecasting Report. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority. California High-Speed Rail

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Authority. 2021. Revised Draft 2020 Business Plan: Capital Cost Basis of Estimate Report. Sacramento: California High-Speed Rail Authority. California Legislative

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, ref46, ref47, ref48, ref49 Buehler, Roger, ref1 Buffett, Warren, ref1 building phase, ref1 Caesar Augustus, Emperor, ref1 Cahill, Joe, ref1 California High-Speed Rail, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group, ref1 Cambridge Analytica, ref1 Canada, ref1, ref2 Capitol, Washington, D.C., ref1, ref2 carbon capture, ref1 Caro, Ina