High-speed rail: Massive prog intellectual failure

Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny

Today's headline in the Chronicle about Judge Kenny's decisions against the high-speed rail boondoggle (Bullet train's future in peril) is no surprise to readers of this blog. Almost three years ago I wrote:

The high-speed rail fiasco is part of the anti-car movement, the assumption being that if it isn't a car it must be good! The folks over at Streetsblog support HSR. Like all good progressives, the Bicycle Coalition supported high-speed rail in 2008. High-speed rail is just more evidence showing that progressives are dumb and not doing any homework on another important issue.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones is one of the few progressives in the country that understands how bad this project has always been.

Martin Engel was important early on in informing people about this looming fiasco, as was Mark Powell.

Randal O'Toole gets it. Spur doesn't. Neither does Mayor Lee, the Bay Guardian (Steve Jones, Tim Redmond) the Chronicle, Willie Brown, Governor Brown, the Examiner, Scott Wiener, the SFCTA (Where does this leave the Transbay Terminal project?), and Streetsblog. Just a massive intellectual failure by all concerned. Must have been a big dog that ate all that homework!

Gavin Newsom gets it. Debra Saunders is the only local journalist who gets it, rightly calling the project the Democrats' version of the Bridge to Nowhere.

The folks at the Community Coalition on High-Speed Rail have been trying to warn the public for years by providing the best in-depth analysis of the project's many shortcomings.

Thanks to Kathy Hamilton for links to Judge Kenny's decisions here and here.

An early post on the intellectual failure of the city's left.