This is awful and perhaps what is most awful is that this is the headline folks see, then they have a gut-reaction that because this project is so fucked up that all transit projects must be like this. And of course, there's the fun fact that many highway and road construction projects come in way over budget too.

If you don't live in California, the lesson to take away here is to figure out what the transportation departments and highway lobby did to secure the space needed for highways, and copy those tactics, not to look at California's failure and believe that extrapolates to your state or area.

In Central Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to fund bus transit and dedicated lanes in high-density corridors in Columbus. Now the project is already being set back perhaps as long as a year and a half, because the Ohio Department of Transportation is concerned car traffic may be negatively affected and wants a new traffic study. Huge waste of time, the exact kind of thing you would have wanted a DOGE in its most idealized form to nuke. You have to imagine these kinds of tactics x1000 because once California and others see the success of rail the jobs programs that are most state DOTs are going to be in serious trouble.

We'll get there, it's just going to be a long battle against entrenched lobbying and special interest groups (highway departments, construction companies, auto manufacturers, &c.) which need to profit off of your requirement to have a car to participate in society.

By the way, I'm not "against" cars or anything. Have one and love it. But the primary mode of transportation in our more dense areas has to change.