Actually, those aren't boondoggles, those are exactly the sorts of risks the author is talking about. To make big gains, you have to take big risks.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. -- Theodore Roosevelt

High speed rail is not a big risk technologically. The technology has existed since the 60s. At this point, the technology is advancing incrementally with incrementally improved materials and technology, not "big risk game changing" technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Technology

The risk in high speed rail is primarily due to the scale of the implementation; the cost in terms of time, effort, and money of acquiring the rail right-of-way and physically building the infrastructure.

The big risk in the Wenzhou train collision referred to by the OP was not in the technology that was used or the building of the infrastructure, but was a system and management failure. The technology in the train system, when correctly implemented and used properly, is well known, well proven, and safe.

To be blunt, the failure was not due to "big gains big risk technology," but was due to the fact that the high speed rail system in China was a boondoggle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

What makes them boondoggle projects? You don't think a city the size of Shanghai needs a large subway? Isn't a subway more cost effective and a more efficient way to move people in a large city?

The same argument can be made for HSR. Moving 1.3 billion people are now free to move about the country.

In the US, we're still arguing over building our first HSR.