California lawmakers are proposing a tax on water bills

The question is in subsidies on water for farming; without them, much of the ag on California would become unsustainable, or, hopefully, would turn to modern practices that allow to grow vegetables in places like Middle East with very moderate water supply.

If you believe the earthquake risk, land area, and roading are reasons enough that urban intensification has not occurred, then adding (more) rail doesn't really make sense. On the other hand, you could regard lack of rail as being the only thing holding back urban intensification, and the lack of it being the very reason for LA's current sprawl. Providing you don't regard the other factors as hard limiters, of course.

So in one school of thought: there's nothing really stopping the rest of LA intensifying in the same way as downtown (and the airport area), other than a lack of suitable transport infrastructure to facilitate it. So assuming intensification is a thing you want, there is the argument to invest and deploy the trains; in a few years you should see a great intensification of the new corridor areas of LA where it previously didn't make sense.

Personally, I'm not on board with the idea - The quake hazard alone is reason enough to keep things flat and wide. I might be somewhat conservative in that regard of course - Continually echoing in my mind is that statement from 'the really big one' article a few years back that said 'everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast', as far as how I judge LA's realism on earthquake risk.

The nature of that kind of long-term infrastructure investment won't show itself for ten years.

Neither do New York State or France.

The Mission in San Francisco is a great example of a neighborhood with many transit connections that supports a large number of residents who do not own cars. The need for things to be walking friendly creates the charm of the neighborhood.

You mention BART, but not Caltrain. Cities with stops (e.g. Mountain View) end up being much more vibrant than communities a bit further away (e.g. Sunnyvale, Cupertino) as more of the restaurants and other businesses congregate where there is an influx of people.

I don't know which areas of California you're thinking of but you seemed to acknowledge that the cities that invested in trains benefit from them so maybe the problem is that the other areas just didn't invest and are now strips of fast food restaurants and chain retail in strip malls built for cars.

LA has a fairly extensive and rapidly expanding network now, including expo line which goes all the way to santa monica. like most people who don't actually live here, you're working with decades-old information.