Posted on 01/14/2017 4:56:40 PM PST by SeekAndFind
California’s bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated — as much as $3.6 billion more. And that’s just for the first 118 miles through the Central Valley, which was supposed to be the easiest part of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
A confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis, obtained by The Times, projects that building bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter, just north of Bakersfield, could cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion, compared with the original budget of $6.4 billion.
The federal document outlines far-reaching management problems: significant delays in environmental planning, lags in processing invoices for federal grants and continuing failures to acquire needed property.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority originally anticipated completing the Central Valley track by this year, but the federal risk analysis estimates that that won’t happen until 2024, placing the project seven years behind schedule.
The report, the most critical official assessment of the project to surface so far, is labeled a “confidential-draft deliberative document for internal use only” and was presented by senior Federal Railroad Administration executives to California rail authority board Chairman Dan Richard and Chief Executive Jeff Morales on Dec. 1 in Washington.
This analysis puts the state on notice that it could face bigger cost overruns than anticipated and much longer delays than have been made public, a troubling critique by an agency that has been a stalwart supporter and longtime financier of the nation’s largest infrastructure project.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Well, GEE . .. Who EVER would’ve predicted this?
Color me surprised. lol
As Willie Green would say, the train to nowhere is a symbol of the mess California is in.
It wants to build a train no one wants when the state has far more critical priorities waiting to be addressed.
Its the White Elephant of Golden State liberalism run amok.
Hopefully they won’t get a dime from Trump or the Republican congress.
In other news Senator Dianne Feinstein’s wealth has increased dramatically.
I think the real engineers and cost accounts figured the cost at least 100 billion .... the other was just pap to get it approved.
Look at the cost over runs building the new span for the Bay Bridge in SF.
If memory serves a 500 million $$$ bridge replacement became a 6 billion dollar replacement bridge.
High speed rail will be the same story, only more $$$.
Surprise Surprise.... NOT,
For the politicians, its a vanity project to get their names in the headlines.
The market would never build it. Politically connected projects have no connection to reality.
Just end the damned thing. It never should have been started in the first place.
They sold the whole project at vastly understated costs.
This is just the first segment and they’re already 50% over. By the time it became a reality, it would be 200, 300, or more percent over budget, and then they’d want to expand it.
Hell NO!
What is the deal the left in the US and trains?
Moonbeam’s folly (one of them).
Santa Cruz Co. CA’s purchase of a “bullet” train for hikers and bikers (pedals; not shovelheads) has the same problem. If anyone’s interested, I’ll dig up some data.
scam from the beginning money allocated elsewhere probably for illegals
Is that guy on the end drinking gin? At that height? Makes me queasy just looking at it.
Imagine any of our little snowflakes doing that job.
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