Posted on 05/01/2018 10:26:59 PM PDT by Olog-hai
The biggest boondoggle in California history is now under the microscope of the U.S. Department of Transportation as costs continue to climb on a multi-billion dollar high-speed rail project that routinely misses deadlines and blows through budgets.
The DOT is currently auditing the pricey West Coast venture—something critics claim is long overdue on what’s essentially a pet project that’s billions in the red, seven years behind schedule and appears to have no plausible way of living up to its goal of getting riders across the state in three hours or less.
The audit was requested by Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., and began in April. A summary of preliminary findings is expected this summer with a final report due in the fall.
Denham asked for a review of the previous administration’s oversight of federal expenditures. His office told Fox News they want to know if all precautions and risk analysis were taken to ensure the state’s finances were viable to meet their non-federal match requirements. The office says while they hope the federal government didn’t break the law, they are concerned that proper safeguards weren’t in place.
According to the DOT, the inspector general’s audit will examine the Federal Railroad Administration’s oversight of nearly $3.5 billion in federal grant money awarded to the project. …
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I hope the catch the politicians who have been stealing.
Claw back the money.
About time.
I don’t trust any feds any more either tho.
I dont trust them either.
The problem of getting a person across a state from border to border in a day’s comfortable travel is not by speeding up a train or highway speed limit. For California (and Texas, perhaps) it would be by subdividing the state into three or four smaller state-sized manageable governed areas. As it was for the Carolinas, Virginia, and the Dakotas in other years, to wit. Mot joking.
If you want to go from S.F. to L.A. or San Diego in a hurry, the solution is to buy a freakin’ plane ticket on Southwest. No one except the politicians and the folks getting rich on this boondoggle (and there’s probably an overlap between those two groups!) wants this stupid train.
This is like the whitest of white elephants, not to be racist or anything.
Can they arrest Gov. Moonbeam for defrauding the US Govt? I’d love to see him in a jail jumpsuit. A fitting end to an asshole Marxist wackjob.
I often tell the story of the German government who got all hyper about some bullet-train scenario....so they signed up to a test plan....building a special stretch of track that would extend from Koln to Frankfurt’s airport (118 miles roughly). When they finished, it was a positive deal in terms of time...62 minute ride.
Cost of a one-way ticket? Well....this got into an interesting situation. They agreed to run it every thirty minutes. The deal ended being roughly $100 in Euro (one-way). A normal train fare would have been in the $30 range (one-way). Business travelers had some interest but they never got real passenger ‘love’ for the situation.
I look at this San Francisco situation and kinda wonder....who is so fired up to race down to LA? The two-way trip would have to run a minimum of $150...maybe dipping into the $100 for a 4AM run. Are there like forty flights a day hustling folks back and forth between the two cities?
IF the original rules written in the proposition had been followed not one dime would have been spent because private funding never showed up
*** essentially a pet project that’s billions in the red, seven years behind schedule and appears to have no plausible way of living up to its goal of getting riders across the state in three hours or less. ***
I can drive from the Bay Area to any place in Los Angeles faster than this Slow Boat to China.
They voted for it. They certainly aren't willing to pay for it, but the people voted for it. I suspect most of them still support it (as long as they aren't paying the bills).
After millions spent on unsuccessful eminent domain suits, and hundreds of millions more in paying contractors not to work, the chances that any federal funds are left are slim, leaving Calif in the awkward position of facing federal fund clawback.
A trip down memory lane, and I doubt much has changed since:
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-tutor-20150303-story.html
You may be “ mot joking”, but are you serious?!?!
Sentient beings don’t care about how many state borders they cross in a day.
Which, I guess raises the question: Do you?
I can drive from SF to LA in the course of one freakin’ day! Why would I want to ride Railhenge (which is what all these diassociated bridge structures will be called when somebody finally puts a stop to this boondoggle).
There are two decent roads between SF and LA: US 101 and I-5. You could say three, if you’re willing to go out to SH 99 and use that.
One way to stop this.....ban bullets in CA! /sarc
“....... not one dime would have been spent because private funding never showed up.”.......
If Kalifornika, or any other state, wants such a boondoggle project, let them pay for it themselves. In this case, the American people have been throwing good money after bad to fund a project in a state most Americans will never set foot in. If the project was soooooooo important to that state, it should have been paid for by the people of that state, not the tax payers of the entire country. I can see funding projects that might improve transportation across the entire country and multiple states but the “Bullet Train” is not one of them.
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