The latest proposal making the rounds: a high-speed bus service connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles at speeds up to 140 mph. Because if there's one thing California excels at, it's announcing ambitious transportation projects.

Let's back up. We're still waiting on that high-speed rail project — you know, the one voters approved in 2008 with a $33 billion price tag that has since ballooned to well over $100 billion and currently connects... Bakersfield-adjacent to Merced-adjacent. Seventeen years later, and you still can't ride a train from SF to LA. But sure, let's talk about a magic bus.

In fairness, a dedicated high-speed bus corridor could theoretically be cheaper and faster to deploy than rail. Buses don't require the same infrastructure as trains, and the technology for guided rapid transit on dedicated lanes isn't science fiction. But "could" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence when we're talking about California, a state that treats infrastructure timelines the way the rest of us treat gym memberships — full of good intentions, light on follow-through.

The real question isn't whether a 140 mph bus sounds cool (it does). It's whether taxpayers should take any of this seriously when the state has burned through billions on high-speed rail with virtually nothing to show for it. At what point does the pattern become the point? Every few years, Sacramento dangles a shiny new transit concept to distract from the fact that existing projects are over budget, behind schedule, and nowhere close to delivering on their promises.

Here's a radical idea: finish something first. Prove you can deliver one major transit project on time and on budget before asking voters to buy into the next moonshot. Californians aren't opposed to better transportation — they're opposed to being treated like ATMs for projects that never materialize.

A 140 mph bus from SF to LA would be genuinely transformative. But until Sacramento develops a track record of execution instead of announcements, file this one under "believe it when you're riding it."