Stop us if you’ve heard this before. And you have, you have. The price for the first leg of the California high-speed rail system has gone up 35% over earlier projections, adding nearly $3 billion to the cost of connecting Bakersfield to Fresno — or more accurately, points just outside both towns, neither of which are exactly destination centers in the Golden State. The reasons offer a bleak look at the sustainability of cost projections for the entire LA-San Francisco route, too: