It was never a question whether the planned high-speed rail system connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco would be a boondoggle.  Given the history of government infrastructure projects, massive cost overruns and long delays were to be expected. But I don't even think the fiercest critics of the project expected things to get this bad. Los Angeles Times: The price of the California bullet train project jumped sharply Friday when the state rail authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would be $77.3 billion and could rise as high as $98.1 billion – an uptick of at least $13 billion from estimates two years ago. The rail authority also said the earliest trains could operate on a partial system between San Francisco and Bakersfield would be 2029 – four years later than the previous projection.  The full system would not begin operating until 2033. That first 114-mile leg from nowhere to...(Read Full Post)