A slew of older links that have been sitting in my queue on the California High Speed Rail initiative:

• Daniel Mitchell gives his take on the California High Speed Rail project with some quotes from the Wall Street Journal.
• Daniel Michell also highlights the general boondoggle nature of high speed rail on the whole.
• Although Californians initially gave the Los Angeles to San Francisco high speed rail plan a go in a 2008 state ballot measure, the majority were against it by 2012.
• In spite of significant budget problems in the state of California, the initial 130 mile section (at a cost of $5.8 billion) was signed into law in the middle of 2012.

I’m extremely pro-train. I’m a hopeless railfan. However, California is going about this all wrong. I’d love to see a successful commuter rail line between LA and San Francisco, but I doubt we’ll see that outcome under this current plan.