Right, but we also spend billions on automobile infrastructure and nobody complains at nearly the levels they do about one high-speed rail project. It's clearly not just the money. People are particularly critical of rail projects and particularly unconcerned about the cost of new highways.

Consider for example that every single American (at least) on this forum has heard about California high-speed rail and how much it costs, but I had never heard of this $8-billion highway project until I just googled "LA highway projects":

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-high-desert-fr...

Projects like that one are running all the time and nobody cares or complains.