Posted on 12/14/2014 1:57:22 PM PST by Jim Robinson
The California High-Speed Rail Authority will officially break ground next month in Fresno on construction of its statewide bullet-train route.
The Jan. 6 groundbreaking ceremony, announced Friday afternoon, comes about a year and a half after the agency awarded its first construction contract, a $1 billion deal to design and build the first 29-mile section from Madera to the south end of Fresno...
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California voters approved Proposition 1A, a $9.9 billion bond measure to help finance a high-speed rail system, in November 2008. But it wasn’t until the fall of 2010, when the Obama administration and the Federal Railroad Administration directed more than $3 billion in federal stimulus and transportation grants to California to begin construction...
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Between the federal money and bond funds from Prop. 1A, the rail agency has about $6 billion available to build the backbone of its system from Merced to Bakersfield. But that’s less than 10% of the estimated $68 billion cost to span the statewide system’s first 520-mile phase from Los Angeles to San Francisco by 2028 or 2029...
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Just where the rest of the money will come from is uncertain. While state legislators agreed this fall to allocate 25% of annual cap-and-trade money — funds paid to California by companies for credits to offset their air pollution emissions...
(Excerpt) Read more at fresnobee.com ...
What a stupid project its not even going to be finished and where is all the money going? I would rather see a few billions or tens of poured into a feasible and successful water project for California
Even Willie Green thought it was a dumb idea.
Call it the Choo Choo Express to Nowhere.
More money down a rat hole to pay off the well connected and unions.
Will it stop at Corcoran?
This is a scam to get government tax payer money to fund the illegals you can bet on it!
Perhaps it could run right into the ocean.
Gotta get infrastructure funding away from the feds.
We need an earthquake warning system far more than we need this 18’th century crap.
A $1 billion boondoggle.
All that loose change under the couch.
A billion doesn’t buy much in an $18 trillion economy.
In the inevitable battle for the public revenue (taxpayer) dollar, one wonders how the judiciary will rule when PENSIONS, promised and never deposited, compete against the ‘Big Project High Speed Rail’ (HSR)? Given the usual lean towards government promises in pensions by the judiciary, I’d say that unless the California economy and tax revenue improves significantly, HSR remains a drug dream, appropriate for California is is not?
Build it in Ferguson. They need a bullet train badly.
There’s nothing “high speed” about this. That’s just a bunch of b.s.
How does one do that when college football is now under their iron fist?
We need a recall of the Moonbeam....and his cohorts.
The money covers only the ready shovels.
It doesn’t cover labor costs, laying track, overhead cables, switches and signals and rolling stock.
Its a scam.
Cui bono?
Think how many EBT card benefit increases that would cover.
California needs a bullet train like it needs...
a BILLION dineros to go from Fresno (big city) to the vicinity of the local UC Campus.
A bus could do same thing in 20 minutes, too.
Charge each illegal alien $1000...That should raise about one billion...
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