State: HRT officials kept true light rail cost 'secret' from feds

Virginian Pilot ^ | 12/14/10 | Debbie Messina

[Sursam Abordine]

NORFOLK

Months before signing legal documents assuring federal officials they could build light rail for $232 million, Hampton Roads Transit leaders knew it would actually cost tens of millions of dollars more, a new state investigation reveals.

In fact, HRT senior officials maintained a separate, internal accounting of light rail costs that was intentionally kept “secret” from government entities footing the bills, documents show.

[Sursam Abordine]

No surprise if you live in the area. We voted this down in a freferendum in 2003, but they went around us and okay'd the project anyway.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Metropolitan Transportation Districts are reparations, and are run by affirmative-actioned racist goons who believe it is their divine right to steal as much public money as they can stuff into their pockets.

And anyone who takes exception to that is a RACIST.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Light rail is a Boondoggle and scam.

[MrNeutron1962]

Another half-baked Trolley to nowhere.

Ding Ding, here comes another 19th century solution to 21st century problems.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Light rail is a Boondoggle and scam.

If Willie Green hadn't been banned he'd be coming to get you.

[Anti-Bubba182]

Probably.

[driftdiver]

Willie was banned! awww, I was hoping he had seen the light.

[VOA]

“
State: HRT officials kept true light rail cost ‘secret’ from feds
“

What a shock (NOT!).
Building light rail MIGHT make sense in dense-pack metros...but it’s
more often a way for engineering groups and politicians to perform
“a total cashectomy” on taxpayers (as Monty Python would say).

Better to build better roads/highways and up the number/frequency
of bus lines before building “rail-lines to nowhere”.

(The rail-line to nowhere I’m familiar with is the one built to
Long Beach CA...at about the time thousands of employees of the aviation
industry were given there walking papers.)

[Publius6961]

Can’t these clowns be sued for fraud?

[moovova]

Can’t these clowns be sued for fraud?

I'm thinking more along the lines of a firing squad...

There'd be a whole lot more transparency in gubment. I'd bet...

[BradJakubiak]

Beep Beep/Zoom Zoom, Neut. Cars were invented before trolleys, highways are mentioned in the Bible, rail is being expanded everywhere, and I’m sorry you think of your hometown as “nowhere”.