Want to hear some good news about California's high-speed train project? So do we. We're still looking.

Here's what we've got so far. The state's overly trusting voters let themselves be talked into putting up $10 billion to build a 200-mile-an-hour train that would connect the L.A. area with the San Francisco area by way of the Central Valley, and the federal government let itself get hornswoggled out of $2 billion to jump-start the project. That leaves more than $30 billion to go.

And that's the least of the problems. There is no business plan that anyone but a rail promoter would find credible. The state's Legislative Analyst's Office says projections made for ridership and revenues are totally inadequate.

We'd call them laughable. Promoters obviously have plugged in whatever numbers made the bottom line look good. One of their assumptions had more people traveling to and from the Central Valley than from Southern California, if you can believe that. We don't.

Few find this more frustrating than Long Beach's Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a liberal Democrat and an enthusiastic promoter of high-speed rail. To his credit, he is asking some tough questions about this project.

Lowenthal, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation, is in a position to do a lot to help this project succeed. But the California High-Speed Rail Authority is doing very little to help itself.

The original business plan was so full of holes

and outdated information that legislators sent the group back to redo it before the ballot initiative went before voters in November 2008. They delivered it one week before the election, and even then it wasn't much better than the first version.

It's still full of holes. Promoters say the federal government will come up with about $17 billion, private investors $11billion, the state $10 billion and local government entities the balance. But there has been no real commitment from anybody but the voters, and what concerns Lowenthal is that the state will end up on the short end of the stick.

For one thing, why would private interests put up $11 billion unless there is an assurance against catastrophic losses? The ballot measure approved by voters promised there would be no state subsidy of operations, yet most bullet trains in other countries operate at a loss; why would this one be any different?

There are other issues. A Reason Foundation study said the supposed cost of the project, $45 billion, is about half what it actually would cost, and instead of a break-even, operating losses could be up to $4 billion a year.

A recent state audit uncovered gross mismanagement and misuse of funds by the rail authority. That's an issue that must be cleaned up quickly by the new CEO of the authority, Roelof van Ark, former executive of a French transport and infrastructure company.

We, like Lowenthal, love the idea of high speed trains. But we also know that the most successful examples cover less than half the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and all have required massive infusions of government money.

Money is not in great supply these days in Sacramento. Californians deserve the best in transportation facilities, including high speed trains if they prove viable here, but they also deserve prudent financial management of state resources.

Sen. Lowenthal has been asking all the right questions. Let's hope he keeps it up.