Opinion: Gov. Brown is risking his historical reputation over the bullet train. He should let it go.

To the editor: As a civil engineer and career construction manager, for most of my life I had never seen a large public works construction project I didn’t like. But one also develops a nose sensitive enough to smell boondoggles and money pits.

When articles like those on bullet-train cost overruns appear, I console myself that I didn’t vote for the original bond issue in 2008. (“Massive cost overruns threaten to derail the bullet train. Here’s what has to change,” Jan. 21)

I have supported Gov. Jerry Brown throughout his political career, but now I fear that he has lost his mind by continuing to support the California high-speed rail project. He is about to leave a legacy of billions of dollars in stranded assets and essentially useless bits of “bullet train.”

Noel Park, Rancho Palos Verdes

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To the editor: The biggest cost increase that seems to be ignored by the media in its coverage of the California High Speed Rail Authority is the ongoing litigation over the parcel acquisition that must take place before construction.

I have worked in the appraisal industry for clients on both sides of the transaction. Land owners that don’t want to see the project built continue to extort the taxpayers by requesting extensions on their litigation and rejecting fair market settlement offers on their property. Every time this happens, the authority has to redo its appraisal.

Every time land owners exercise their constitutional right to dispute an appraisal, that costs us, the taxpayers. If there should be any outrage over the project, it should be over this.

David Goldberg, Van Nuys

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To the editor: I am simply “shocked, shocked” that the bullet train is coming in way over its budget. Who’da thunk it?

Everybody but the politicos who are pushing it, that’s who.

I am a big fan of Brown, but I am astonished and dismayed that he remains committed to this folly of a project, a complete waste of taxpayer money and resources. Pull the plug now, before this becomes (if it hasn’t already) the “Money train to nowhere.”

Roy Friedland, Los Angeles

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