Posted on 07/08/2022 9:58:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The estimated cost of California’s High Speed Rail system connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles has been going up every year since it was launched. In February the latest estimates put the total cost at $105 billion. Very belatedly, the state has decided that what the project needs is a dedicated inspector general who can identify corruption in the system and try to bring the spending back under control.
After a decade of cost, schedule, technical, regulatory, personnel and legal problems, the California high speed rail project will be getting an inspector general soon as part of a deal between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature.
The new investigative position is intended to intensify oversight and improve performance of the $105 billion railroad project. Enthusiasm for the change is high, but whether it will fix everything is uncertain, even among state leaders.
“There is nothing but problems on the project,” said Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Lakewood Democrat. “The inspector general provides oversight and some sense of what is going on with management. That has been missing for a long time.”…
Fred Weiderhold, a West Point civil engineer who served for 20 years as Amtrak’s inspector general, said if he were taking the California job, he would want to start with a staff of at least 50 people, half auditors, 30% investigators and 20% inspectors and evaluators.
“It is a daunting job,” Weiderhold said about the California project. “You have to follow the money. I guarantee you that on any project this large you will have fraud, product substitution and waste.”
With a hundred billion dollars being funneled to union workers it’s a sure bet there will be plenty of fraud and waste to uncover. It’s a little hard to believe though that the bluest of blue states is going to come down hard on that fraud when it implicates their union cronies. I guess we’ll have to wait and see on that. But even if they do, it won’t solve the problem of general mismanagement and a lack of planning.
“The project is not proceeding according to a robust plan, which results in waste and other inefficiencies,” said Bent Flyvbjerg, a business expert in mega projects at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and IT University of Copenhagen. “Given the political divisions, the cost growth, the schedule delays and the lack of a sound future revenue source, this project is going to the graveyard of famous boondoggles.”
The governor’s budget includes another $4.2 billion for the project which would be used to complete the segment of the project between Bakersfield (pop. 379,000) and Merced (pop. 84,000). However, Democrats in the California Assembly aren’t going for it. They don’t see the need to pour money into a segment of the line that is unlikely to serve many people. I’ve been to Merced and it’s a nice town with a great looking theater which first opened in 1931. But how many people are desperate to get there at 200 mph when they can drive there in a couple hours already?
Even if they do get the Central Valley portion of the line done, the big question is where the state will get the very substantial amount of money required to connect the Central Valley portion of the line to LA and San Francisco.
A more basic question is whether the state can ever afford to make the costly connections to the coasts, involving lengthy mountain tunnels near seismic faults. Bakersfield to Los Angeles is priced at $50 billion and San Francisco to the Central Valley tie-in at Chowchilla $22 billion, according to upper end estimates in the 2022 draft business plan.
“There is a very significant outstanding question of where that money will come from and how to proceed at this point,” said Kerstein.
Legislators are worried that the 171-mile system would remain isolated.
“The idea that you would spend all your money on a train that doesn’t connect to anything and just hope that you’re going to get more money, I find a really frightening business proposition,” said Friedman.
The section of the line that would connect to San Francisco includes two proposed tunnels, one of which is 13 miles long. Work on those tunnels hasn’t even started.
I’ve taken a bullet train in Japan from Tokyo to Kyoto and back and it’s fantastic technology. So if there was a similar train connecting Orange County to the Bay Area in 2-3 hours I’d be a customer. The problem is that California’s plan has been a fiasco from the start. Even now there is literally no explanation of where the needed funds will come from and thus no completion date that anyone can point to. In other words, the problem isn’t the idea of a bullet train it’s with the execution which has nothing short of a disaster so far.
Maybe the new Inspector General can help whip things into shape and bring the project costs down. But even if that happens it’s hard to see how a project this haphazard can end in anything but failure. I genuinely wish that wasn’t the case but objectively I don’t see much reason I’ll ever get to ride this thing unless I’m willing to drive two hours to Bakersfield to hop the train to Merced. But I’ll give the High Speed Rail Authority the last word. Here’s there latest quarterly progress video.
When they are done with that, perhaps they can start a project to ensure everybody has typewriters and dial up modems
as with ALL mass transit, how do you conveniently get about once you’re “there”?
How do the Japanese and Chinese do it?
Hoo Boy! Another layer of overhead.
Yeah, that Willie is an expert on putting small things into big holes, extending funding and making sure that ALL of his friends get a share.
Sadly, it could probably be worse that selecting wee Willie.
Instead he will take his cut and conclude that the project is underfunded. And needs to hire more queers.
Perfect analogy. I wonder if anyone here has a list of public project boondoggles over the years?
“But even if California figures out how to complete high-speed rail ...”
Do they plan for the line between SF and LA to turn a profit?
I just don’t see enough utilization to pay for it. The 100 billion could be used to build ten new airports in the SF and LA areas. I’d rather fly for 30 minutes than ride the train for several hours.
It sounds ridiculous but it seems to have worked very well so far. There isn't much a little systemic corruption can't accomplish.
I think that if the line ever gets built, California will try to regulate or tax intrastate flights out of existence.
The Big Dig was proposed by Tip O’Neil(D-MA) when he was the Speaker. Reagan vetoed it because he thought the $2.4 Billion was too much. The Dem controlled house had the votes to override Reagan’s veto. It ended up costing around $12 Billion by the time it was done.
I have to admit though once it was done it made going through downtown Boston and getting out to Logan airport a heck of a lot easier. Keep in mind they built a whole new tunnel to Logan and buried the connection of I90 to I95 right under a city that was almost 400 years old and surrounded by water on three sides.
Your proposal would make this project the railroad equivalent of the magic COVID vaccine. Does that California will require everybody to use the railroad?
Massachusetts may be totally corrupt—but at the end of the day they can actually get big projects done.
CA is hopeless.
The Chinese approach is simple—no affirmative action and if corrupt officials are caught they are executed.
“...and if corrupt officials are caught they are executed.”
More like, “if corrupt officials don’t kick enough up the chain...”
CA must have a lot of sinkholes because a lot of money is going into them...taxpayer money.
Incompetence is a factor for sure—that can usually explain no more than the first doubling of costs.
Anything after that requires an additional explanation.
I have told my story often (after the statute of limitations expired :-) )—many decades ago I personally bribed MA politicians to get special favors for my business. They were “honest crooks”, though—after they took the money they did as they were told—the bureaucratic quagmire disappeared like magic.
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