California's $128B "Train to Nowhere": The Bait-and-Switch Explained

How does a $33 billion project, due in 2020, turn into a $128 billion project with no completion date in sight? As someone with a construction and real estate background, I looked into the facts of the California High-Speed Rail project. This isn't a political post. It's a breakdown of a massive systems failure. The original $33B budget was a fantasy. The state's own Legislative Analyst's Office warned the 2008 plan had "significant omissions and deficiencies" from day one. This "violation of voter trust" has led to one of the biggest project failures in US history. Was this the worst engineering estimate in history, or an intentional bait-and-switch to pass a project that never would have been approved at its real price? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.