This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchler. Here's John Batchler.

California, Victor Davis-Hanson of the Hoover Institution, writing most recently at American

Greatness in the list of large projects committed projects by California that have not come

to fruition. They're not successful. And why is the big question? We begin with high-speed rail.

Victor, a very good day to you. I've often reported on this as a train not to know where but to the

state prison. What is the high-speed rail to the governments, these different governments in

Sacramento, Mr. Brown and Mr. Nussam, most pointedly? Good evening to you.

Good evening. I think it's generally considered a failure. It was, as early as 1996, it was

envisioned, but they created an authority that they passed a bond that would give the first $10

billion of envisioned $33 billion in 2008. We've gone through that. So from the very idea of the

rail authority, John, to now, we're looking at really almost 30 years, and we haven't laid one

foot of track. And the cost now is envisioned over $100 billion. I think most people think it'll

be $300 billion if it's ever finished. It'll never go from San Diego all the way up around

to Hatchapy and to Bakersfield, up to Sacramento, with a lateral over Pitchaco pass to the Bay Area.

The people who dreamed this up in the Bay Area almost summarily decided to try it down here,

where I live in the San Joaquin Valley that was economically depressed because they did not want

the conundrum and people coming into their Silicon Valley enclaves. So where it would have been

helpful because of the traffic congestion, of course, is in the Bay Area, but not very many

people think that you're going to pay $86 for an envisioned ticket to travel 200 miles an hour

from Bakersfield to Merced. There's no ridership potential there. So it joins a long list of

projects in California, the Bay Bridge Eastern span effort to be built that took 11 years and

6 billion and new forestry policies. We've had a lot of these projects and policies that have

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