I'm not familar with Robert J. Samuelson but his piece in Newsweek titled "High Speed Pork: Why fast trains are a waste of money" is, well, right on the money. Here's one pointed excerpt:
Obama calls high-speed rail essential “infrastructure” when it’s actually old-fashioned “pork barrel.” The interesting question is why it retains its intellectual respectability. The answer, it seems, is willful ignorance. People prefer fashionable make-believe to distasteful realities. They imagine public benefits that don’t exist and ignore costs that do.
He runs through real numbers and focuses on California specifically. It's a quick must read.
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