Posted on 05/01/2018 10:26:59 PM PDT by Olog-hai
The Feds should have a rule in place that any project that veers 10% either way from baseline generates an automatic audit. The audit gives the Feds the right to cancel the deal on behalf of the taxpayers.
By doing this, every project will have additional risks built in and the Project Management Office will have greater oversight.
Trains continue to be a 19th Century solution to 21st Century transportation problems.
Who all has relatives moving out of California, because spending your retirement paying $10,000 a year in taxes for a snail train is uneconomical?
The whole purpose of this train was to launder taxpayer through Democrat supporters into Democrat coffers.
As far as I can tell, it has been a smashing success!
“The cost to move power lines, construction cables and other utility components out of the way was estimated to be around $25 million....In five years, that number has jumped to nearly $400 million.”
Sheesh.
If Californians want this that’s fine. Just so long as no federal money goes toward it. Taxpayers in other states should not be fleeced to pay for this ridiculous boondoggle. Oh and when California inevitably goes bankrupt, no federal bailout. They made their bed. Let them lie in it.
Unfortunately, we don’t have enough prison cells to hold them all.
Paging Willie Green, Paging Wille Green, Please pick up the white courtesy phone.
(I actually miss the Willie Green Happy Choo Choo threads.)
What happens when THE BIG ONE splits the track into scores of parts?
The original proposal for a high speed train was from a French consortium that proposed a direct route from SF to LA with nonstop express trains that would make the trip in 90 minutes.
It was going to be built with 100% private money and run for a profit but after fifty years it would have been handed over to the state.
Nope.
The state got involved and took a simple proposal and turned it into a cash cow for corrupt Democrats.
And while this particular rape of the taxpayer may be coming to an end the next one, the Delta Tunnels, promises to be just as bad if not worse with its insane idea to build two or three 45ft diameter tunnels under the Sacramento River delta to send water to LA.
That idiot idea will cost easily $200bn when it gets done...if ever.
“”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.””
First I’ve ever heard of a Federal Railroad Administration. Maybe they should have stayed “hidden” as they may have a lot to answer for....
Why would it have to have gotten to this degree of boondoggle before someone blew the whistle?
The FRA has been around since 1966, created as part of the US Department of Transportation (under LBJ). The regulations they pile onto the railroads are listed online; just reading them is enough to make one’s head spin.
Subway trains and “light rail” are under a different bureaucratic arm of the DOT, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). This was created two years earlier than the DOT as the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA), primarily to begin federal “assistance” for mass transit including city buses.
. . . appears to have no plausible way of living up to its goal of getting riders across the state in three hours or less.
That is what I took to be (loosely) from "border to border,"which north to south would be. say, from the Bay area to San Dickey. On another article a couple of days ago, a proposal for dividing California into three states was made. So my crazy mind said. Hmmm. Doing that could allow one to go from border to border in one of those states, east to west or north to south, by definition, in a day.
You may be “ mot joking”, but are you serious?!?!
A mistype that got past my role as a copy-reader, which I just didn't exert the effort to correct, counting on your patience and tolerance. But, well, kind of "not joking" if that is a reasonable definition.
When I lived in Buffalo, I surely was not going to drive or take the train for business meetings in New York City, let alone to others in Wilmington, DE (both about 400 miles). Though either could be done in a day, a much more reasonable solution was to fly. In a densely populated island such as Japan, the Shinkasen connecting Niikata and Tokyo is about 200 miles and takes about 2 hours, with 6 stops along the route. I think it followed an already-established "slow" route that did not require a total upset of the intervening populace and real estate, as the California plan does. For the Shinkasen, city workers can travel to and from work pretty quickly, daily. Taking the plane from Buffalo to Philadelphia got one back to family for later supper. I've done both. But four hours between SR and LA? well, that just ruins a day. Taking a flight back and forth has already been settled without government interference. Done that, too.
No, changing the borders doesn't shorten the trip, only how it is described.
(I started to answer you a little after noon. Sorry --)
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