Regular HOTLINE readers know that our UP senior fellow Wendell Cox played a major role in exposing the high speed rail boondoggle in California, and hopefully killing it for good.

Now 60 Minutes has drawn on our UP revelations in its devastating segment on the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line, about 500 miles long. The train was approved in a 2008 referendum in which voters were assured that it would provide transit between the two cities in under three hours at a cost of $33 billion by the year 2020.

Now the cost estimate is $126 billion. Partial service could start in as little as seven years. In other words, not a single passenger has ridden a single mile while the cost has quadrupled.

Bakersfield Congressman Vince Fong told 60 Minutes: “I think that the California high-speed rail nightmare is probably the quintessential example of government waste and mismanagement.”