Opinion: Jerry Brown is a governor, not an emperor. He is not entitled to an expensive bullet-train legacy.

To the editor: With cost overruns in the paper all the time now, it’s time to abandon this bullet train to nowhere, which is touted as Gov. Jerry Brown’s legacy. (“Massive cost overruns threaten to derail the bullet train. Here’s what has to change,” Jan. 21)

To hell with this legacy nonsense. Where’s my billion-dollar legacy? Are we kidding? Is Brown an Egyptian emperor in California? No, he’s just a guy on the way out. We owe him nothing.

Expenditures of this magnitude need to produce revenue and jobs and boost the economy. Who rides this ghost route in the Central Valley everyday anyway? No one does.

Stop this idiocy, this Seward’s Folly, and instead seed the hills above Montecito or create some helpful industries.

Philip Palermo, Corona

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To the editor: Brown should not throw good money after bad by continuing the bullet train project. By the time this multibillion-dollar system is completely finished, assuming it ever will be, self-driving cars will be generally available.

So let’s assume my wife and I want to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco. We could take the bullet train and drive to a rail station, buy expensive tickets and pay for parking. We’ll hope the train is on time while we struggle with our luggage. Once we arrive in San Francisco, we’ll have to hail a ride to our final destination.

Or, we can put our luggage into the trunk of our autonomous car, which we can program to drive straight to our final destination. The total time will be less or about the same as a trip on the bullet train.

I wonder which we will choose.

Marty Plost, Rancho Palos Verdes

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To the editor: The problem with California’s high-speed rail, besides being massively over budget, is that it won’t go where people want to travel.

Anyone who has flown to or from Las Vegas on a Friday or Sunday night knows where the demand is: between L.A. and Vegas. The right-of-ways, near the 15 Freeway and other highways, are already there. The demand is there. The technology is available in Japan and Europe.

It seems simple. The Vegas train would make enough money to eventually pay for the L.A.-San Francisco leg.

Darcy Vernier, Marina del Rey

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