Posted on 05/17/2011 12:48:03 PM PDT by SmithL
THERE IS nothing that epitomizes California's dysfunctional government more than the state's pursuit of a high-speed rail fantasy that is headed for all-but-certain failure.
The latest criticism of the rail scheme comes from the independent Legislative Analyst's Office, which strongly opposes Gov. Jerry Brown's request for an appropriation of $185 million to keep the project moving forward.
It's past time for the state to do what it should have done more than a year ago -- cancel the project and stop wasting any more of the taxpayers' money.
The High-Speed Rail Authority has bungled the project from the start with poor management, a lack of a coherent business plan, no realistic estimates of cost, ridership or fares, no final decision on the route and even less chance of obtaining the private financing that is needed to complete the system.
It is difficult to fathom how anyone could not see that a high-speed rail system in California is doomed to failure. The estimated $43 billion for the first phase of the project from the Bay Area to Anaheim is likely to be way low.
The $9 billion in bond authority approved by the voters in 2008 won't even cover a quarter of the cost, and requires matching funds that are not likely to be forthcoming.
It is dismaying that the federal government has offered $2.8 billion for the project, when even a cursory examination would show that the rail system cannot operate without huge continuing handouts from a state that has the largest budget deficit in the nation.
Even with large subsidies, ridership is not apt to be anywhere near what is needed to keep fares competitive with airlines, even with higher fuel prices.
It would make far more sense for California to spend transportation money on urban transit projects such as BART to San Jose than to try to build a high-speed rail system in a region that does not have the population density to support it.
Gov. Brown could show some leadership by dropping his request for high-speed rail funds and bring the budget a bit closer toward balance.
Unfortunately, there are entrenched interests pushing to spend $5 billion on a length of tack in the middle of the Central Valley. If the state is foolish enough to go ahead with laying miles of rail from nowhere to nowhere, years from now people living there will wonder why a useless stretch of track was ever built.
The LAO report is just one of several highly negative evaluations of the high-speed rail project. Anyone who takes a close look at it can readily see that it is no more than wishful thinking, unrelated to reality.
If California continues to proceed with such a waste of billions of taxpayer dollars, how can the state expect voters to pass tax increases and extensions?
California faces many very real financial challenges without diverting revenue to a doomed rail project that needs to be quickly and permanently rejected.
Hedey will not be happy.
—and then there’s the one to Las Vegas——
Who is on the board of the High Speed Rail Authority? Who appointed them? How much do they get paid?
white elephant... two things which Kalipornia are running out of whites and elephants.... heh
Established in 1996, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) is the state entity responsible for planning, constructing and operating an 800-mile-long high-speed train system serving California's major metropolitan areas. The Authority has a nine-member policy board (five appointed by the governor, two appointed by the Senate Rules Committee, and two by the speaker of the Assembly) and a core staff. The majority of the environmental, planning and engineering work is performed by private firms under contract with the Authority.High Speed Rail Authority Board
I don't know about their pay.
I looked at the board members names and recognized some of them as termed out political hacks. No suprise there. I am sure they get paid plenty to do nothing.
That one should also be a non-starter. Las Vegas is on it’s a$$ and will be there for a long time to come. I believe I just read that something like 25% of the real estate there is in foreclosure.
Wow, and I would have to presume that any dead-tree newspaper based in Oakland would lean very far to the left generally
Oh but it will! That's the whole idea. It is exactly what they did when they built BART in the first place: the real estate people had the station sites all picked out before the project was even announced. Here's how it appears to me to be going in the Central Valley:
Deja vu all over again. I've been watching variations on this little racket for fifty years and the time these creeps buy is always during a recession. The real question is: Where do they think the people are going to find jobs to fund all this?
The nifty thing about it is that the southern San Joaquin Valley is a natural smog trap. That means one can sue to prevent anything but Willie Greene's chew-chew-money train. Anybody want to hazard whether the TNC already has their sites on the "proposed green belts"?
Read post 14. The Trib editors probably understand that with insta cities in the Valley and gas prices high enough to make them fantasy pencil, older cities like Oakland are even more Detroit than they already are.
Why, if Jerry Brown starts shutting down stupid projects that exist only to benefit political cronies, where will it stop? If you start dragging reason into political decisions, then who’ll pay all those lobbyists? Not me!Please support this project and keep a good kid in lobbying instead of practicing law.
You’re absolutely right Mark.
The whole thing started when Joseph Silva from Brentwood caved in and cast the deciding vote to create BART. Nobody but nobody even suspected that Silva would cave, since he was from the town that was going to be screwed the most of all.
Bart has cost more than 70 times the original “estimate.”
Parsons, Brinkerhoff, Tudor, and Bechtel (AKA P.B.T.B) was the engineering conglomerate that was created to design the “shaft.” (no vaseline was proposed)
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