Posted on 02/08/2022 7:55:42 PM PST by george76
Ed Morrissey wrote a story about the costs of California’s high speed rail project going up back in August 2011. More than ten years later, we’re still seeing that story repeated over and over. Last January, we learned from a contractor’s letter that project delays were “beyond comprehension,” often thanks to failures by the state to buy needed property to build on.
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The cost to build California’s ambitious but long delayed high-speed rail line has once again risen, with rail officials now estimating it could take up to $105 billion to finish the line from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
The new cost estimates, released Tuesday as part of the California High Speed Rail Authority’s biennial business plan, are up roughly $5 billion from two years ago.
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The project’s price tag has steadily risen since voters first approved nearly $10 billion in bond money for it in 2008, when the total cost was pegged at $40 billion.
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As for actual design and construction, the report says design of the initial 119 miles will be complete in the 2nd quarter of this year. The project now owns 90% of the parcels needed for construction of that segment and actual construction is approximately halfway done.
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this initial segment of 119 miles, but that’s less than a quarter of the total 500 mile project and it’s also the easiest section to build because it runs through lightly populated parts of California’s Central Valley.
For those that haven’t driven through this part of California, it’s basically a giant farm full of fruit and nut trees as far as the eye can see. Many of the smaller towns along the way are of the one stoplight variety. All that to say, building the segments of the line through the Bay Area and Los Angeles, where tracks will have to be placed through already congested areas, will be much slower going. And until that happens this isn’t going to be much use to very many people.
Can you say “boondoggle”?
That’s a lot of consulting contract opportunities right there. Yum, pork!
Don’t you still have to drive to the train depots?
I thought it was dead. It still lives, I guess.
That’s what happens when you let gov’t manage a project. You’d think they would have learned by Amtrak
So obvious from before the very start that this boondoggle was going to be massive.
Let Newsom and Zuckerberg, et. al. fund it from their own Sta$hes.
Libs love them some choo choos. They surely do.
The Big Dig all over again.
Saw this coming a mile away.
Wait, they only have half the rail built and are still missing 10% of the land but will get done by June 30, 2020? I hope they don't have any big news that day because that's when I was going to invite the media to see me flap my arms really hard and fly to the moon, which is just about as likely as completing the first segment by then.
So later this year, the politicians can ride a high speed train until they get to mile marker 119. Then what? Go backwards for 199 miles? That is the definition of modern government.
How did they engineer this project to such a even number?
Kill the damn thing!
They also expect VERY LIGHT ridership on this segment, as the cows have made it perfectly clear that they have no need to commute back and forth between Bakersfield and Fresno (and there’s very few humans there).
Be cheaper to give anyone who wanted it a limo and a driver.
They could buy a fleet of 737s and operate them with free tickets for 20 years for less.
Politicians will not leave the coast to take a train from Bakersfield to Madera.
Fresno?
Wouldn’t that make it FReep Train
This effing massive theft of taxpayers’ money is still in the works? 🙄
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