As a primer, I highly recommend The Atlantic journalist James Fallows' deep dive, on California HSR:<p><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/the-california-high-speed-rail-debate-kicking-things-off/374135/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/the-cali...</a><p>Note: this article contains links to the subsequent articles, which, as of this writing, number 14.