The 2008 Notice of Intent for the environmental impact statement stated that five separate rail technologies would be covered by the EIS. The others that were not steel wheels on steel rails were brushed off in a paragraph of a 2,000-page document, one that should have been rejected by the FTA. Those of us who submitted written comments on the EIS were ignored. Manipulation of the process, including a (so-called) expert panel of “hired guns” for steel wheels, that prevented a fair and open competition for the rail system technology brought us to the current debacle that has involved delays and cost overruns. The only impediment to a “fix” for rail is the lack of political will in our elected legislators and council members toward “derailing” their “gravy train.”