Musk has nothing to do with the woes of the California High Speed Rail project. He’s just commenting from the peanut gallery and getting picked up by the news. He admitted hyperloop was never a serious proposal and it never factored into the actual decision making process for the project.
The reason the project is so delayed is because of democracy. It’s a long distance route so it crosses many different county lines and properties along the way. Each of those counties have their own municipal governments involved and there are lots of private property holders along the way too. Couple that with the public consultations, the bidding for all the contracts, the environmental assessments (which are the bane of every construction project in California), and the high cost of labour for workers in California (and USA generally).
All of this comes long after the US had engaged in the process of outsourcing manufacturing and importing (in the form of undocumented workers and other low-skilled migrants) its construction workforce. This has left the US very badly equipped to handle large construction projects even after finally approving them. The US is a very different country, skill- and education-wise, from the New Deal era of the 1930s.
It’s our court system specifically. Anyone can sue for anything, and litigation is used to solve the problem. It takes forever and billions are wasted on lawyers. That’s a big reason. Also the fuck-you-I-got-mine culture (NIMBYs) that use the courts disingenuinly.
A good listen that explains a lot of the reasons is The Big Dig, about Bostons huge infrastructure debacle.
Musk has nothing to do with the woes of the California High Speed Rail project. He’s just commenting from the peanut gallery and getting picked up by the news. He admitted hyperloop was never a serious proposal and it never factored into the actual decision making process for the project.
The reason the project is so delayed is because of democracy. It’s a long distance route so it crosses many different county lines and properties along the way. Each of those counties have their own municipal governments involved and there are lots of private property holders along the way too. Couple that with the public consultations, the bidding for all the contracts, the environmental assessments (which are the bane of every construction project in California), and the high cost of labour for workers in California (and USA generally).
All of this comes long after the US had engaged in the process of outsourcing manufacturing and importing (in the form of undocumented workers and other low-skilled migrants) its construction workforce. This has left the US very badly equipped to handle large construction projects even after finally approving them. The US is a very different country, skill- and education-wise, from the New Deal era of the 1930s.
Next four largest high speed rail networks are in Spain, Japan, France, and Germany… which might not be perfect democracies, but are certainly far from the worst.
Democracy isn’t the problem, and you certainly don’t need to be a dictatorship to get things done.
It’s our court system specifically. Anyone can sue for anything, and litigation is used to solve the problem. It takes forever and billions are wasted on lawyers. That’s a big reason. Also the fuck-you-I-got-mine culture (NIMBYs) that use the courts disingenuinly.
A good listen that explains a lot of the reasons is The Big Dig, about Bostons huge infrastructure debacle.