California progressives attempted to build a European-style high-speed rail network,

angering the French in the process.

The New York Times reported that the French, who wanted to work with California,
decided the state was just too dysfunctional and left to help complete a high-speed
rail line in Morocco instead.

The ongoing unraveling of California’s railroad plan is a textbook lesson: if

transportation is conceived as a means of saving the planet and fulfilling a deep-
seated, quasi-religious fixation, rather than a means of moving people more
efficiently, it is bound to fail.

No matter how high California estimated the cost of the project, it was not enough,
although almost nothing was built. It started in 2008 with $33 billion. It’s now $113
billion and no one knows where the funding will come from.

Not that the California experience detracts from progressive zeal for bullet trains.

President Barack Obama proposed an 8,600-mile high-speed rail system, and

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg wants the US to become the “world
leader” in high-speed rail. Progressives think of bullet trains like windmills on rails, a
symbol of enlightenment and modernity, a way to free ourselves from the selfish,
narrow-minded tyranny of the automobile and embrace a leaner, greener, more
virtuous future.