Because let’s be serious - California doesn’t actually need high speed rail.
No one sane wants, or needs, to rock the boat - especially since doing so just gets a giant eye of Sauron pointed at them. Extra bonus? Turning the crank endlessly on this while everyone complains gets them rich.
Also HSR is something that a large contingent of people in CA have been kvetching about for decades, not sure your "everyone is afraid to say anything" holds water here.
Yeah but they don't want this bullshit route. They want to go from LA to SF and MAYBE go through Santa Barbara, or go to Las Vegas or San Diego.
Plus, Even with inflation, it's super cheap to fly from SF to LA. Who is going to pay more than airfare to go between those two cities in a longer amount of time?
Stopping burns a lot of energy and time.
I said folks are afraid to cut through the BS - by telling people with less important kvetching to sit down and shut up. Because if they do, the how dare they outrage will follow them around forever and make their life hell.
You know, so it can be built now, and actually solve a problem, instead of it costing 50x times more than is reasonable and be done decades from now.
Because let’s get real - people have been kvetching while driving their cars on I5 and flying for decades, and even with this approval will continue to do so for at least a decade more. And will likely kvetch about how it sucks and that is why they don’t use it later.
> No one sane wants, or needs, to rock the boat
That's generally what this idiom means. What did you mean?