I get its supposed to be a funny joke, but CA has some of the biggest transit projects in the country going on currently. CAHSR is wildly expensive, but its still being built, and will far and away be the best rail corridor in the country when its done.
LA has been building a decent amount of transit for how hard it is to get anything done there.
SF already has a fairly robust and solid transit network, and there have been some great maintenance projects done in the last 10 years to keep it going. Its only current major issue (imo) is the frequency, which still isnt the worst ever. MUNI is also getting new signaling to improve frequency, and a massive underground train station is going to get built at Salesforce (finally making use of a great transit hub).
BART is a great system with some much needed improvements happening currently, including new fare gates and all new signaling. They also just finished upgrading to the new fleet of cars, and came in under budget!
CalTrain is also rolling out their brand new electrified system in September, with hugely upgraded frequencies, that will make transit up/down the peninsula much better.
It isnt a ton when compared to other countries that build much more efficiently, but its still more than anywhere else in the country.
Above link says construction to start this year and take 12 years. So eventually you'll have CalTrain, CAHSR and BART as connected system.
A good point is the projects are being rolled out they way they are due to funding constraints and a desire provide ongoing side benefits, like the electrified CalTrain and the grade separation projects in the central valley. (Every over pass over the existing rail is a benefit).
Los Angeles is indeed building a lot of public transit. As is the nature of any of these projects, especially in California, it will be many years (decades) before much of it is complete. But it's happening nonetheless.
A lot is complete already like over 100 stations. Only got started about 30 years ago too so they are building at light speed compared to the rest of the country.
What do you mean they just ripped a chunk out of bakersfield a couple years ago for a highway? Also its easy to say no new highways when you take a random dirt road probably laid by the spanish out in the countryside, call it a state highway already, then then turn it into a six lane cement dragon while saying “see we didn't build a new billion dollar highway”.
