San Francisco, in fact California more generally, in fact America more generally, are all hamstrung by their existing politics, bureaucracy, and lack of skill retention in government.

https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/06/09/why-america-cant-bui...

> Construction projects are undertaken within a legal and regulatory system that presents persistent, costly obstacles, while projects are being overseen by agencies who lack the resources and in some cases even the expertise to manage them.

> The NEPA/CEQA process incentivizes the public agencies to seek what is often termed a “bulletproof” environmental compliance document to head off future legal challenges. This takes time, with the average EIS taking 4.5 years to complete.

> At its peak, the agency responsible for the project, the California High-Speed Rail Authority, had fewer than 30 permanent employees managing the $105 billion project. Instead of hiring staff, the Authority relied heavily on outside consultants.

Certainly, the exact route of an electric train needs to be questioned - but it has been questioned for decades, all the while people are using planes spewing CO2 like there's no tomorrow, and all those environmentalists objecting to the train going through this parcel of land or that parcel of land are willing to keep delaying the project more and more, keep stopping there being a lower-impact way get between the two most common destinations in the state, causing more and more wildfires due to global warming. When does the madness end?

Any if the government only has a bare-bones staff, none of which are rail experts, they are going to get taken to the cleaners by everyone any anyone they consult or employ.

Also, it would help if they listened to bona-fide experts rather than pander to pork-barrel politicians:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-... (https://archive.is/iXgxH)

> SNCF, the French national railroad, [...] came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system. The company’s recommendations [...] were cast aside [and] the company pulled out in 2011. [...] “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.” Morocco’s bullet train started service in 2018.

San Francisco can't even install a premade public toilet for less than 1.7 million dollars due to its bureaucracy and politics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_Valley_public_toilet

Meanwhile in New York City, they pay 900 people to do what they need 700 people for, and they don't even know why:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-... (https://archive.is/O8O4V)

> The budget showed that 900 workers were being paid to dig caverns for the platforms as part of a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting the historic station to the Long Island Rail Road. But the accountant could only identify about 700 jobs that needed to be done, according to three project supervisors. Officials could not find any reason for the other 200 people to be there. [...] The workers were laid off, Mr. Horodniceanu said, but no one figured out how long they had been employed. “All we knew is they were each being paid about $1,000 every day.”

> The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively.