Posted on 02/27/2021 11:24:10 AM PST by Rummyfan
California’s bullet train has become a nearly forgotten source of trouble, eclipsed in the public eye by Covid-19, a gubernatorial recall, and out-migration from the Golden State. But it’s still out there, sucking up time and money, and as empty as it ever was.
The California High Speed Rail, its formal name, was a hobby-ego project for former governor Jerry Brown that was supposed to move passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco at 220 mph by 2020. Instead, the project is moving at the speed of the museum piece it sometimes appears destined to be. Not a single train has run, with train testing still six to seven years away, amid seemingly never-ending delays.
The news regarding the project is, as usual, dismal. As the Los Angeles Times reported in January, Ghassan Ariqat, vice president of operations at bullet-train contractor Tutor Perini, sent a “scorching” letter to California officials criticizing persistent construction delays, “contradicting state claims that the line’s construction pace is on target,” and warning that the project could miss “a key 2022 federal deadline.” “It is beyond comprehension that as of this day, more than two thousand and six hundred calendar days after [official approval to start construction], the authority has not obtained all of the right of way,” Ariqat wrote. Because of the sluggish construction pace, he added, his company “will have to lay off a significant number of its field workers in the very near future” after already letting 73 walk.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
The project, which has gone through at least a half-dozen business plans, is the definition of a money pit. When voters approved it via 2008’s Proposition 1A, they were told it would cost $33 billion. The Los Angeles Times editorialized that the cost was “not too much to wager on a visionary leap that would cement California’s place as the nation’s most forward-thinking state.” Several other newspapers favored the train, but a few came out against it, with the Orange County Register warning that Prop 1A was “a fast track to bankruptcy” and a “boondoggle.”
The original projection has proved far too optimistic. Cost estimates have bounced around since 2008, landing at various times at $64 billion, $77 billion, $98 billion, and $117 billion before settling, for now, at $100 billion for a scaled-back version that links Los Angeles and San Francisco. That’s $20 billion more than the price tag of a year ago when Governor Gavin Newsom, in one of the political understatements of the year, said that “the current project, as planned, would cost too much and take too long.”
Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys 1971
Great song by Traffic
i love that song!
Just listened to it in my car the other day.
Had California simply got out of the way and allowed the original French consortium to build high speed rail along the I-5 corridor up and over the Grapevine it would be built by now, it would be profitable, and it would be generating revenue for the state in many ways.
Instead the Democrats were offended that someone wanted to make a (GASP!!!) profit from the proposal so they killed the French plan and came up with High Speed Pork to replace it.
Now it’s a gerrymandered line whose primary purpose isn’t transportation but to generate graft and bribes for Democrat politicians and their patrons.
Even longer than the ‘take a complete dump’ song of Stairway to Heaven.
Right on!
I was going to say something to credit the author’s knowledge of this brilliant Traffic song too.
Here’s a good cover:
https://youtu.be/LsSLdzPdbs8
I have it back to back with Freedom Rider on one of my playlists.
That is nonsense. The USA’s rail freight system used to be far superior and could compete with trucking, that is before the road networks started getting subsidized as they continue to be today. With all of the consolidation that regulation and fake deregulation has forced, market share for rail will never get above 40 percent (it’s currently below that) and rate competition will be nonexistent. Never mind the “success” being driven by containers from Red China . . .
Other notable full length songs from a by-gone era.
Autobahn - Kraftwerk
Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield
American City Suite
Small Beginnings - Flash
Beginnings - Chicago
Jump Into the Fire - Nilsson
Roundabout - Yes
Get Ready - Rare Earth (21min)
Green-Eyed Lady - Sugarloaf
In A Gadda Da Vida - Iron Butterfox
When you’re on the roll ...
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed - Allman Bros.
Nights in White Satin
Light My Fire
MacArthur Park
Sky Pilot
s
Alice’s Restaurant
The End - Doors
The literally most stunning fact about California’s low speed
rail project, is that no matter its molasses in January pace,
it still receives more funding as time goes by.
One pictures a time hundreds of years from now a future
civilization seeing the relics of this project sticking up
out of the farmland in California, wondering what wondrous
thing had once existed there, failing to grasp that what
they see was it’s high point, never to become more than
those relics of what never was.
-- Percy Shelley: "Ozymandias"
Since we’re off on this tangent, y’all might like this.
Blind Faith in Hyde Park, 1969
https://youtu.be/F7ADa0l9k0A
I’m pretty sure this is one I watched late last Summer. Can’t go to much live music, so I’ve upgraded the den A/V and watched a lot of concerts.
Very fitting...
Thanks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.