Posted on 10/21/2013 1:52:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
California continues to go full speed ahead on its high-speed rail project connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, as construction starts far away from either end of the system in the Central Valley. The engineers have arrived to start the first 30-mile leg to and from a city that few will want to visit on the line, and the locals aren’t exactly impressed. In fact, they’re getting angrier as the project slowly rolls forward:
Now, engineering work has finally begun on the first 30-mile (48-kilometer) segment of track here in Fresno, a city of a half-million people with soaring unemployment and a withering downtown core littered with abandoned factories and shuttered stores.
Rail is meant to help Fresno, with construction jobs now and improved access to economic opportunity once the project is finished. But the region that could benefit most from the project is also where opposition to it has grown most fierce.
“I just wish it would go away, this high-speed rail. I just wish it would go away,” says Gary Lanfranco, whose restaurant in downtown Fresno is slated to be demolished to make way for rerouted traffic.
Such sentiments can be heard throughout the Central Valley, where roads are dotted with signs such as: “HERE COMES HIGH SPEED RAIL There goes the farm.” Growers complain of misplaced priorities, and residents wonder if their tax money is being squandered.
Aaron Fukuda, a civil engineer whose house in the dairy town of Hanford lies directly in one of the possible train routes, says: “People are worn out, tired, frustrated.”
Voters in 2008 approved $10 billion in bonds to start construction on an 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) rail line to ferry passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes, compared with 6 hours by car now during good traffic.
Except that’s not the apposite comparison. The correct comparison would be to other mass-transport systems, and the fact is that the route already has service — through the airlines. At least a half-dozen airlines fly that route each day, with multiple departures and arrivals through multiple airports throughout both endpoint metropolises. The costs of those flights cost less than the full projected cost of a round-trip ticket on the 160-minute train ride, and gets there in less than half the time. There is almost literally no need for this boondoggle except to aggrandize the politicians wasting taxpayer money by laying track adjacent to and across the West’s largest earthquake fault.
No one’s really sure what the end costs will be, either. A recent estimate scaled the final price tag back from $100 billion to $68 billion, but for a state in chronic debt, it’s still monopoly money:
Since then, the housing market collapsed, multibillion-dollar budget deficits followed, and the price tag has fluctuated wildly — from $45 billion in 2008 to more than $100 billion in 2011 and, now, $68 billion.
And that cost “savings” comes at the expense of the train’s supposed speed, too:
Political and financial compromises led officials to scale back plans that now mean trains will be forced to slow down and share tracks in major cities, leading critics to question whether it will truly be the 220-mph (355-kph) “high-speed rail” voters were promised. …
Even the former chairman of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Quentin Kopp, has turned against the current project, saying in court papers that it “is no longer a genuine high speed rail system.”
Dan Walters pointed out in last week’s Sacramento Bee that the new specs for the project no longer meets the bond initiative’s language. This sets up a test of integrity that California and Governor Jerry Brown are failing:
Legal maneuvers aside, it’s quite evident that the project, as modified by Brown’s handpicked High-Speed Rail Authority to overcome other political and financial hurdles, cannot comply with the plain language of the bond ballot measure – language that bullet-train proponents told voters would protect the project’s integrity.
Having been integrated with commuter rail in major urban areas, for example, the bullet train could not possibly comply with the requirement of a 160-minute ride between San Francisco andLos Angeles, even if authorities insist otherwise.
Clearly, Brown, et al, hope that if they can stave off legal challenges long enough to lay a few miles of track on San Joaquin Valley farmland, it would create some kind of moral imperative to see the project to completion, regardless of the law or its costs, now pegged at $68 billion but certain to grow.
Ultimately, however, it’s a test of political integrity – especially in light of recent polls showing that most California voters now oppose the project. If the bullet train cannot honestly comply with the requirements that voters were told would guard against flim-flam, it should be derailed.
It never should have been “railed” in the first place, but Walters is right. This project has become an even bigger joke, one with a price tag that will haunt generations of Californians simply to feed the 19th-century, fixed-rail thinking of politicians. It’s insanity manifest large in the Golden State.
How many use BART these days? Is it empty most of the time?
who’s going to pay for that? It’s not as if California has any money or any visible future.
“It’s A Heartache”
BONNIE TYLER
It’s a heartache
Nothing but a heartache
Hits you when it’s too late
Hits you when you’re down
It’s a fool’s game
Nothing but a fools game
Standing in the cold rain
Feeling like a clown
It’s a heartache
Nothing but a heartache
Love him till your arms break
Then he lets you down
It ain’t right with love to share
When you find he doesn’t care for you
It ain’t wise to need someone
As much as I depended on you
It’s a heartache
Nothing but a heartache
Hits you when it’s too late
Hits you when you’re down
It’s a fool’s game
Nothing but a fools game
Standing in the cold rain
Feeling like a clown
[Instrumental Interlude]
It ain’t right with love to share
When you find he doesn’t care for you
It ain’t wise to need someone
As much as I depended on you
Oh, it’s a heartache
Nothing but a heartache
Love him till your arms break
Then he lets you down
It’s a fools game
Standing in the cold rain
Feeling like a clown
It’s a heartache
Love him till your arms break
Then he lets you down
It’s a fools game
Standing in the cold rain...
Physicians typically have nice houses. So if we give people nice houses they will become physicians.
Prosperous societies typically have well developed infrastructure. So if we ‘invest’ in infrastructure it will create prosperity.
The coastal liberals who voted for this thing don’t want it running through their pristine neighborhoods so they’ve routed it through Red State California in the central valley, whose voters are outnumbered and ignored except for squeezing more tax money out of their wheezing businesses and farms. So, in short, tough crap.
No. Much better everyone commute to work by bicyle to their solar-powered offices with low-flow toilets to, um, well, do something.
High-speed rail will help gangs plan raids into outlying communities and be back in LA in time for dinner.
BART is commuter rail. This is long haul between LA and San Francisco. BART does not run at 200 mph ... or have any need to. Two different concepts.
BART has decent ridership ... but currently is on strike.
I think I read that they would have to move the 99 freeway.
(Don’t really have go, but it is their plan.)
So they start by tearing up Fresno, existing homes and businesses.
I wonder how many folks could fly for the 68 billion. Just fly them free. Cheaper and easier all around.
Jerry Brown wants an infrastructure legacy. His father built the north-south canal which rivals Mullhalond’s project to bring water south.
Jerry wants his legacy project. This is a misguided effort to fulfill it.
What is needed is high speed local rail, like Van Nuys to Long Beach or Riverside to Irvine. But even this would attact few riders other than commuters. How many families are going to travel by train for social reasons (family visits, picnics, dinner dates, sporting events). Take a look at why people need to travel.
Not-Many need long distance cross state trips. The airlines serve those that do.
The problem with building something like this is — if after you build it and then realize later that it’s losing money.... CALIFORNIA TAXPAYERS WILL BE STUCK WITH PAYING TO MAINTAIN IT TILL THE END OF TIME.
RE: I wonder how many folks could fly for the 68 billion.
And get this — $68 Billion is the INITIAL estimate. How many of us really believe that the final cost will be $68B? It’s at least going to be DOUBLE that based on past history of government projects?
What is up with liberals and anal projections.
First Obamacare is shoved up our arses now this California rail to nowhere is shoved up again on the taxpayers.
Reminds me of the Simpson’s “Monorail” episode.
This is a huge waste of money not just to build it but to maintain it.
Nothing but Pork for State workers and Unions.
I’m sure a ton of money was spent on “Environmental impact” reports, but not a cent on projected revenues.
The problem with mass transit is there is no separation of class.
Although I can’t afford it, I did frequently ride Acela’s first class (”expensed”). It sucked. There was not an effective separation. For one thing, they let me ride in first class. They also provided nothing beyond the privilege of paying $200+. I think I was entitled to a free cup of coffee. It was just a way of milking people who absolutely had to get somewhere with late notice when the rest of the train was full.
If they want to have a successful mass transit system, they’re going to have to have real, serious, exclusive first class service.
Yeah, where is that damn snail darter when you need him?
I thought I read somewhere they shut this down. Or was this some other state?
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