California Finds Economic Gloom Starting to Lift(nytimes.com)

  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/us/california-rail-project-advances-amid-cries-of-boondoggle.html?pagewanted=all

  The first phase would be a 130-mile stretch from 
  Bakersfield to just south of Chowchilla in central 
  California, at a cost of just over $6 billion; of that, 
  $2.6 billion would come from a $9 billion high-speed rail 
  bond passed by California voters in 2008, and $3.5 billion 
  from federal stimulus money.

  ...

  The authority said it chose the relatively remote section 
  in the Central Valley as the first leg to be built, even 
  though few people there are looking to use a railroad, so 
  that construction could begin next year and meet deadlines 
  for using federal money. But critics suggest that the real 
  motivation was to get the spur in place, calculating that 
  future legislatures would not be able to abandon the 
  project before it reached major population centers.

  “What they are hoping is that this will be to high-speed 
  rail what Vietnam was to foreign policy: that once you’re   
  in there, you have to get in deeper,” said Richard White, a 
  professor of history at Stanford University. “The most 
  logical outcome to me is we are going to have a white 
  elephant in the San Joaquin Valley.”

  There is no plan on how to finance the project once the 
  bond and federal money is exhausted, beyond a hope of 
  private investment and public money during flusher times. 
  ... Beyond that, several experts suggested that the train 
  would never attract the promised ridership, in no small 
  part because unlike, say, the Amtrak Northeast Corridor, 
  the bullet train would go into cities that do not have 
  particularly extensive public transit networks, forcing 
  people to rent cars once they arrived. Low ridership would 
  undercut the economic and environmental benefits that are 
  part of the argument for the project.