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Comment by dawnerd | Hacker News Reader

LA already has a pretty large rail network. Problem is when they try to build new subways it takes many many years to go even a mile and is met with the same lawsuits Elon faced. Fact is, California culture wants it but doesn’t want it at the same time.

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> Fact is, California culture wants it but doesn’t want it at the same time.

That applies to every culture, ever, and I have a hard time identifying some "California culture" that encompasses the state. The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places.

> The difference is that in California, the people who don't want it largely outnumber the people who want it more than in most places.

Measure R (2008, 67% in favor) and Measure M (2016, 71% in favor) both passed with supermajorities and raised Los Angeles taxes by billions to pay for rail and other public transit options. To me, that seems to indicate that the majority wants these kinds of projects.

The majority may want a few projects that cost relatively little, but they clearly don't want as much as people in other cities that spend more on public transit and have more public transit infrastructure per capita. In other words, I'm sure the majority is in favor of some public transit as an alternative, but the bar is far lower for being an alternative.

Also, it goes without saying that LA County is not representative of "California culture."

Measure M is a 120 billion dollar measure, one of the largest regional transit initiatives ever in the history of the united states. The only real problem with it is that LA has to rework itself around transit oriented development for both residential and office space for it to really work.

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