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Posted on 11/12/2011 2:07:57 PM PST by Graybeard58
Liberal editorial boards crack us up sometimes. Last week, the California High Speed Rail Authority announced its much ballyhooed super-fast choo-choo from San Francisco to Los Angeles, in the works for at least 15 years, is going to cost $98.5 billion and will be up and running by 2033. When taxpayers approved the project just three years ago, the authority pegged the cost at a mere $33 billion, with service beginning in 2020.
Gee, a government project coming in way over budget and way behind schedule. Who could have known? Newspaper editorialists, for one. Still, in response to the news, The San Francisco Chronicle wags praised the authority — "High-speed rail plan on right track" — for its "business plan that is decidedly more pragmatic, realistic and transparent than anything Californians had been presented to date." This after admitting: "None of the rail authority's numbers should be treated as gospel."
Amen to that. Recall how in 1998, Connecticut's Department of Transportation announced a $75.3 million plan for a busway connecting Hartford and New Britain. Had the DOT adhered to its original timetable, the buses would have rolled no later than 2005. Well, 2005 came and went, but by then, the cost was up to $337 million, on its way to $458 million in 2006, with the completion date pushed back to 2012.
Now it's up to $573 million, or almost eight times the 1998 estimate, with the ambitious goal of 2,500 new daily roundtrip riders; that works out to $229,200 each. The busway now is supposed to open in 2014, but that deadline is predicated on construction beginning this year, which it won't. For one thing, the state expects the federal government to pay $458 million, but to date the feds have committed only $54 million. Likewise, they have made only a $4.3 billion down payment on the California high-speed rail project, and the feds' share recently zoomed to $79 billion. And for California, Connecticut and the feds, these underestimates are just the initiation fees; cost overruns, ever-escalating annual operating subsidies far into the future, graft and hundreds of millions or billions in interest payments will inflate costs well beyond today's unaffordable levels.
With the costs of these projects as well as the billion-dollar-plus Rell Railroad through the heart of Connecticut spiraling out of control, taxpayers ought to be alarmed, but doubly so since government transit planners, cheered by reflexive liberal editorialists who never met a green elephant they couldn't ride, remain committed to these and countless other projects even as prospects for promised or imagined federal funding diminish by the day.
As it is, the Obama administration has pledged only $53 billion for high-speed rail projects across America as part of the government's 10-year transportation plan. So even in the highly unlikely event House Republicans agree put a small fraction of that amount into the bill, Connecticut and California will be left to choose between assuming a far greater share of construction and operational costs or finding more sensible and less expensive ways of dealing with highway congestion. Considering both states technically are insolvent, the latter is far and away the more prudent alternative.
Ping to a Republican-American Editorial.
If you want on or off this ping list, let me know.
I rode on a train in 1963, from St. Louis, Mo. to San Antonio, Texas, a day and a half trip. That was all the train I needed for a life time.
Why in the world would be building more in less populous areas.
My thoughts are pretty close to yours. It occurred to me that liberals love the idea of all of us traveling together -- just not on a plane. That makes First Class too crowded for them.
Which is exactly what New Jersey and Governor Christie ended up doing. The money just is not there. Great editorial.
OK, so realistically, someone would drive to the train station in SF, get to LA, and then they’d have to take a VERY expensive taxi ride anywhere they wanted to go. Then take another very expensive taxi ride back to the station. Downtown LA is quite far from anywhere of interest. It is NOT like NYC, where you can walk most everywhere, or grab a subway. This makes NO sense economically for a person to even WANT to take this train. Taking a plane would be much more convenient, faster, and cheaper.
It’s a patronage pit for the Unions, nothing more. All under the guise of Railroad construction.
I’ve always kind of wondered. Does anybody know how long it took to build the transcontinental railroad, how much it cost, and who paid for it?
I've always contended the best way to travel is a good train.
The worst way to travel is a bad one.
Some of them *do* like that. But I've talked to others who love the idea of public transit--as long as they don't have to use it themselves.
They can't move the 40 and 8's fast enough to get everyone to camp with the current system.
If it isn't faster, people might figure out what is going on...in time to do something about it.
Thanks for the link. Soooo, looks like a railroad line about 10 times as long across wilderness, very large mountain ranges, crossing large rivers, and deserts, without the benefit of modern machinery to carve out tunnels, build bridges, and cut mountainsides, was completed in 6 years, with private money plus government bonds, (and government land grants...but, not like anybody owned 99% of that land back then, so no eminant domain), with labor shortages because of the civil war to boot. But 30 years and one hundred and eleventy billion dollars for a rail line that nodody will use is pretty impressive
Only government could do this, you understand...
The private sector is simply incapable of undertaking a task like this...
lol.
Only government can waste massive amounts of cash on stupid endeavors that will never be worth the price.
True that.
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