We’re a long way from the transcontinental railroad.
We built the iconic American infrastructure project in the 1860s in about six years, putting down 1,776 miles of track and blasting 15 tunnels through the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Granted, working conditions back then didn’t exactly meet OSHA standards.
Yet, if today’s rules and practices applied, the project would have been stalled for years somewhere outside Sacramento, Calif., caught up in endless environmental lawsuits.
The Golden State’s emblematic, modern infrastructure project was supposed to be a high-speed rail link between its two largest cities.
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Don’t expect, though, to see the equivalent of the Golden Spike any time soon, or perhaps ever.
The high-speed rail project has been agonizingly slow: After about 15 years of grinding delay and cost overruns, not one piece of track has been laid, a record of