“There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”—The New York Times on California's likely terminally dysfunctional high speed rail project.
Basically, the French state owned railway, which developed what was then the fasted train in the world, found California's political environment too toxic and too corrupt for them to do business there, so they went to that paragon of good governance ……… Morocco. ("Morocco," needs to be said with the same mania as the punchline for that (in)famous joke, "The Aristocrats.")
As you read the article it becomes clear that the problem is not bribery, but rather extortion by political bad actors to throw bones to their supporters and their constituents, so the route went out of its way to go through a LA County Commissioner's district, is being forced to tunnel through a mountain because the tech bros in San Jose wanted it in order to bring in cheap labor, etc.
A mass transit project should be about mass benefits, but the American polity is so morally bankrupt, even in "Socialist" California, that the idea of doing something simply for the public good
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