Letters to the Editor: Don’t let a setback distract us from California’s need for a high-speed rail

To the editor: While I don’t defend the actions of a few individuals for excessive or prohibited travel expenses for those involved in high-speed rail project, the good news is, due to the audit, the state should be able to go after those involved and reclaim the funds (“High-speed rail authority wasted money on first-class flights, trips to nightclub, report finds,” Sept. 17). The bigger picture here is that we need high-speed rail in our state.

It will connect the Central Valley towns to the larger economic centers in San Francisco and L.A. This will open up low-cost housing to thousands of commuters in Northern and Southern California, and boost local tax revenues from Bakersfield to Merced. It will also help unify our state in ways we never have imagined. Anyone who has been fortunate to travel overseas, especially to Japan, would understand the economic upside.

Can we stop hating on this project and pull together and finish it already?

Robert Davis, Tarzana

..

To the editor: There is an easy solution to the funding problem of transit for the Olympics (“L.A. struggling to get Olympics transit money from Sacramento,” Sept. 22). Cancel the high-speed rail project. Use the funding for that for the local Olympic issues over the next few years, and then let the rest of the state use the funding for a number of years subsequent to that.

Win, win, win. We stop wasting money on a costly project that is never going to be completed, we bolster the transit for the Olympics and have long-lasting improvements in the L.A. area, and then have long-lasting improvements in the rest of the state.

Andrew Bressler, Culver City