Posted on 05/18/2016 11:45:07 AM PDT by reaganaut1
High-speed rail is turning out to be a slow-speed proposition.
The first segment of California’s first-in-the-nation bullet-train project, currently scheduled for completion in 2018, will not be done until the end of 2022, according to a contract revision the Obama administration quietly approved this morning. That initial 119-mile segment through the relatively flat and empty Central Valley was considered the easiest-to-build stretch of a planned $64 billion line, which is eventually supposed to zip passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours. So the four-year delay is sure to spark new doubts about whether the state’s—and perhaps the nation’s—most controversial and expensive infrastructure project will ever reach its destination.
“Four years? It just shows that something deep inside this project has gone terribly wrong,” says state legislator Jim Patterson, a Fresno Republican who recently shepherded a bill to increase oversight of high-speed rail through the Democratic-controlled assembly. “The time is coming where we’re going to have to call a halt.”
State and federal officials downplayed the shift in the timetable, saying it partly reflected more ambitious plans for the Central Valley work, and in any case merely ratified construction realities on the ground. Jeff Morales, CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said his agency is accelerating its pace after a painfully slow start, with a half dozen construction crews now building overpasses, relocating utilities, and demolishing structures from north of Fresno down to the Bakersfield area.
“Early on, there was a vision, but no clear sense of how to implement that vision,” Morales said. “We have that now, and we’re moving ahead aggressively.”
Still, the authority has yet to lay any tracks, and it has purchased less than half the land it needs in the Central Valley.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Kinda like Bertha here in Seattle......
This is a giant mafia boondoggle. Can you imagine the money a four year overrun costs?
I am not a fan of high-speed rail, BUT....
This used to be a country that could get big things done.
We built the Golden Gate Bridge in four years.
We put a man on the Moon in nine.
Now we can’t even get the permits lined up to build a flippin’ choo-choo train in less than a quarter-century.
The project is simply being shelved so the LA water interests can steal the bond money and spend it on THEIR hundred-billion-dollar boondoggle, the Delta Tunnels Project.
For my home state of CA, this is no surprise. Environmentalists and labor unions running the show.
It is just ANOTHER DemocRat sham. A near useless train for the sole purpose of creating UNION, tax-funded jobs to feed the DemocRat voter base in Taxifornia. Another fine piece of work by Jerry Brown and his mob in Sacramento.
And as usual, they do NOT have the money. More tax, more spend, more debt...driving people and jobs out of Taxifornia.
Ship yourself as freight, it’d be cheaper...And faster...
Yeah, Hoover Dam, Empire State Building, Build stuff to win WW II in four years...
Who knew that they need to buy land for a train? Mistakes were made. They are conducting a thorough review. Insert a sentence with the word “accountable” in absolutely any sentence you wish to compose.
This is a giant mafia boondoggle. Can you imagine the money a four year overrun costs?
$64 Billion!!! Shirley U. Jest must be the project manager.
"...This used to be a country that could get big things done..."
Both the Golden Gate Bridge and SF/Oakland Bay Bridge were built from conception to completion in 3-1/2 years, simultaneously. The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake damaged a small section of the Bay Bridge and it took over 25 years to rebuild that small section (27 years and they're still working on demolishing the replaced section). Not only that, but Chinese built major components and shipped them to SF for installation. We used to have steel mills and industrial factories locally in the Bay Area, long gone now. This country can no longer get things done quickly.
Gov Moonbeams choo choo train to nowhere!
Desal plants would be a far better use of the money.
Maybe dam things up to save the precious rainwater instead of letting it run off into the ocean.
By the time it gets built America will be a turd world banana republic and no one will be able to afford to ride it.
How much is being wasted? $64B plus inflation factors.
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