Posted on 01/08/2012 8:48:35 AM PST by SmithL
JIt's one thing for politicians, ordinary citizens, lawyers or even media pundits to say that California's bullet train project is fatally flawed and should be scrapped before it becomes a hopeless money pit.
Bullet train zealots dismiss those naysayers as uninformed or biased, and even reject milder criticism from the Legislature's budget analyst.
But when the California High-Speed Rail Authority's own "peer review" committee of transportation experts says the project is half-baked and should be put on hold, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature should pay heed. And that's exactly what happened last week.
The peer reviewers, headed by former Caltrans director Will Kempton, told the Legislature that while recently revised plans are an improvement, they still don't adequately describe how the north-south system could reasonably be built and operated.
It concluded, "We cannot overemphasize the fact that moving ahead on the HSR project without credible sources of adequate funding, without a definitive business model, without a strategy to maximize the independent utility and value to the state, and without the appropriate management resources, represents an immense financial risk on the part of the State of California."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
“...represents an immense financial risk on the part of the State of California.”
Yes, California prefers proven wastes of money to those that only have a possibility of calamity.
You want Jerry Brown to ignore a half-baked idea? The guy is the queen of the EZ Bake Oven.
He really needs to update that picture of him. It’s REVOLTING.
This is a pure wealth transfer from taxpayers to crony friends of the Federal and California governments. Period. No economic sense, but theft from taxpayers.
You want Jerry Brown to ignore a half-baked idea? The guy is the queen of the EZ Bake Oven.If Free Republic had a "Like" button, I would have clicked it for your post.
I’m ready to write off the entire State as a lost cause.
Awright, what happened? Did I fall asleep and wake up on April Fool's Day?
Did The Bee get bought out by a bunch of rabid, right-wing, cave-dwelling Tea Pary Luddites?
Is Dan Walters exercising his fledgling parodist wings?
Am I just drunk?
HA! Riiiiiiiight.
It’s time to admit that in a liberal-infested state like California, you can’t build ANYTHING big.
Good luck.
The Bee gets more radical leftwing every year (exceeding the NYT in some cases), so Mister Walters is, indeed, an artifact of a more journalistic (and less radical activist) time.
.
Dan Walters is himself lefty. So is the former director of CalTrans. EVEN THEY say this is garbage.
Unions are not amused must find another way to stick it to the state.
My fear is that, while the older parts of it are falling apart in disuse, we will continue building new stretches of this train to nowhere.
I HOPE that's what's going on.
Could be.
One must remember that Dan Walters is no conservative. During even the soaking-wet Republican governors’ runs, he frequently criticized even the most modest of proposed cuts, reforms, etc., and never said Boo about public sector pensions IIRC until a few years ago, when it was obvious to the blindest fool that we had a problem there.
But this HSR is so stupid that even liberals can’t miss it.
Thank-you.
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