When I was a young intern at California’s Department of Finance, working on the California Economic Recovery Task Force in the wake of the Great Recession, I watched David Crane, then a special economic advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger, hold court with his usual mix of verve and vigor. One day, offhandedly, he asked another intern a deceptively simple question: What are the five things you would need to build high speed rail in California? That question stuck with me. Not because it has a cle...

When I was a young intern at California’s Department of Finance, working on the California Economic Recovery Task Force in the wake of the Great Recession, I watched David Crane, then a special economic advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger, hold court with his usual mix of verve and vigor. One day, offhandedly, he asked another intern a deceptively simple question: What are the five things you would need to build high speed rail in California? That question stuck with me. Not because it has a cle...