Posted on 02/22/2021 1:30:57 PM PST by BenLurkin
2014, when the rail authority awarded the contract, it went with the lowest bidder...which promised $300 million in cost savings by altering the design that the authority had proposed to regulators.
Seven years later, these changes have been largely abandoned and have contributed to more than $800 million in cost overruns on the Kings County segment. That figure is 62% above the contract price tag, which the rail authority has agreed to pay, according to interviews and technical and contractual documents reviewed by The Times.
In addition, the rail authority awarded the contract without first completing a scientific assessment of how sinking land in the area — a result of decades of excess groundwater pumping — could affect the rail route. California is now paying tens of millions of dollars to raise track embankments over 21 miles.
In a written statement, the California High-Speed Rail Authority said it is working with regulatory agencies to resolve design issues. The agency declined to make top officials available to answer questions...
The price tag of the massive project to build a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail system has shot up from an original estimate in 2008 of $33 billion with service starting in 2020 to at least $100 billion with an uncertain start date.
Dragados has not started construction on about half of its bridges and viaducts, four years after the original deadline of 2017...The rail authority bears a share of responsibility, having failed to deliver 278 of 998 parcel land purchases needed for construction.
Two other construction teams have filed their own massive change orders. Far more land than ever imagined is needed in the Central Valley, and it is coming at a higher cost. Consultants have racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in higher costs to develop environmental statements...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I’ll bet anyone $100 bucks this thing never carries a paying passenger.
All politicians should be forced to watch that old Simpson’s episode “Monorail” with their eyelids peeled back Clockwork-Orange style.
$800,000,000 for 1 County.
Yep, that’s California.
L
SUCKERS!
California is going to show Boston how to do “the big dig” California style.
Newsom is a demonstrable abject failure
here in Colorado our governor (formerly of california) is pushing the same crap...high speed rail is the answer to ALL of our problems. should be done in 20 years...
Amazing mass corruption.
Maybe not so amazing. Unfortunately this corruption is now par-for-the-course in State and Federal Govts.
We are lost. No nation can survive this level of widespread corruption with any level of prosperity. All wealth is siphoned off by a cabal govt/private sector looters.
Consultants have racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in higher costs to develop environmental statements...
Don’t ya just love how they say that with a straight face...
The communist’s trillion dollar bailout about to pass will cancel/porkify that problem...
In fact, the communist’s trillion dollar bailout is all about porkification...
Dont be to hard on Newsom he had to lick peanut butter from Naceys who ha growing up
California’s “pull-it train, before we all go broke...”
ONE flat county.
Just one flat, farmed-land (not through a city or over a swamp or even a big river! )
No active “moving” earthquake faults in that county. (Unlike the very active fault lines and mountains and cities further south and all through the valley around Los Angeles.
Well, at some point in the future, Mexicans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indians will love their train.
If Califonicate Marxist Big Brother is depending on the "Bullet Train" to transport us Conservatives to the "Reeducation" Camps, we've got no worries.
“$800 million in cost overruns”
As in the Get Smart show speaks: “We missed it by this much.”
This will be covered by a 'rounding error correction' in the trillion dollar Covid bill.
Low cost... HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
They would have better luck building a train to Mars...
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