Via The Economist:

THREE DAYS after he took office in 2010, Andrew Cuomo, New York's Democratic governor, wrote a letter to Ray LaHood, who was at the time Barack Obama's secretary of transportation. In it, Mr Cuomo asked that New York be given the federal high-speed rail money that other, Republican-led states had rejected. "High speed rail is critical to building the foundation for future economic growth, especially Upstate," Mr Cuomo wrote.

In the end, New York was allocated around $300m to help reduce delays in and out of Penn Station, but nothing to further its high-speed rail ambitions. And sinc...