It’s because California land is locked up by either entrenched farm families or corporations so building any new infrastructure means buying extremely overpriced land from people who don’t want to sell it. Now you know why all budgets for CA rail explode: owners are jacking up the price of empty land to soak up as many billions as can be offered for the entire project. Farmers are greedy by nature and try to extract as much as they can from everything and everyone, including government budgets.

The only solution for now is to use existing infrastructure until the land can be sold for fair market value or imminent domain. And imminent domain would ruin a political career in the state with fuel for the right wing propaganda machine to smear nationwide.