Following on April 30's "In Case You Missed It: The Cost Of California's High-Speed Rail Project Is Now Approaching A QUARTER-TRILLION Dollars" and May 21's "Absurdistan: The California High Speed Rail Story Is Somehow Getting More Ridiculous".
From The Anti-Planner, May 18:
Another Boondoggle for California
Fifteen years ago, the Onion reported that the Obama administration was replacing its high-speed rail plans with plans for high-speed buses operating on existing freeways at speeds of up to 165 mph. Instead of spending $17 billion on high-speed rail projects, the administration proposed to spend $46,000 on an equivalent high-speed bus network.
Now humor has become reality with the twist that California is considering building both high-speed rail and high-speed bus lanes. Under the proposal, the uncompleted high-speed rail line would be supplemented by 140-mph high-speed buses running on new lanes built in the median strips of existing freeways.
This would be technically feasible in some places, such as the portion of Interstate 5 shown above. It wouldn’t work in cities where the median strips shrink or disappear or in the mountains where interstate highway grades are too steep and curves are too sharp for 140 mph vehicles.
The real question (which is the same question for high-speed rail) is “why?” Why spend billions of dollars on highway lanes that would only be used by a few buses each hour? If such highway lanes were to be built, why not open them up to all vehicles? For safety reasons, the state might require drivers using the lanes to have passed a course in high-performance driving, and the state may want to collect electronic tolls to prevent congestion, but otherwise there should be no problem opening the lanes to more than just buses....
....MUCH MORE