[jazusamo]

I doubt Willie Green would agree with Dr. Sowell. :-)

[jazusamo]

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[ALPAPilot]

It sounds to me like the rain in Spain falls mainly on the trains.

[allmendream]

Waste money now so you can waste more later.

Sowell has this system nailed. Too bad so few are listening.

[LucianOfSamasota]

Why should they worry? It will all work out fine. They are too big to fail, after all. God help our children and theirs.

[Bob]

The original cost estimate (done around 2008), when voters approved the project, was somewhere in the neighborhood of $43 billion with a planned completion target in the 2020's. (I had thought the original estimate was $33 billion but everything now uses the $43 billion figure.) Just three years later, revised figures put the cost over $90 billion with the planned completion pushed out well over a decade. Some recent estimates as to cost approach $140 billion.

How much more will the projections increase in the next three years?

A new report says California’s proposed high-speed railroad could cost state taxpayers more than three times the official $43 billion cost projection.

This $138 billion estimate comes from a trio of Bay Area analysts who have followed the project, which was conceived to carry residents from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about 2½ hours.

The revised cost comes from new construction developments and lower-than-expected federal contributions, said coauthor and entrepreneur William Warren, who has a Masters in business from Stanford University.

The California High Speed Rail Authority, which oversees the project, expected to receive about $18 billion from the federal government. But in a new era of fiscal austerity, Warren thinks it’s unlikely the railway will receive more than the $3 billion it has already secured.

Meanwhile, cost estimates for the Fresno-to-Bakersfield segment were recently revised from $7 billion to between $10 million and $13.9 billion, an increase that Warren and colleagues say will cause construction costs to hit $66 billion.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: SF Examiner article

[kabar]

They should divert the money for high speed rail and invest it in setting up a colony on the moon.

[listenhillary]

It will be simple for the government to resolve the low use of the train. Tax personal vehicles and the fuel to use them beyond the peoples ability to pay for them.

Government power? It’s like having a magic wand in your pocket.