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 ...
TSA time?
TSA time?
The enormity and scale of the WWII infrastructure is one of the greatest achievements in world history. Hard to imagine how we could that today.
What a comnplete criminal waste of money by LIB idiots and their crony-capitalist buddies.
How long did it take to build the freedom tower in NY?
It disgusted me to see how long it took to fill in that hole at ground zero.
Still looking up the history of Friden Calculators which I used a few times back in the day to backup and extend the accuracy of the ‘rule.
We can’t even carpet bomb ISIS concentrations using 50’s era bombers....
Do the bullet train and hyperloop involve traveling over the ground at incredibly high speeds across major fault zones?
On the plus side, if you’re traveling in the train/hyperloop when the temblor hits, it’ll be over quick!
Dresden. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Our current leadership would have lost WWII. We would all be speaking German or Japanese.
Done by people who loved America!
Apparently the large majority of the Citizens of The Day....
Maybe they should connect from BART to the LA subway system.
Not going all the way into either SF or LA should make for a lower cost system.
We built the transcontinental railroad in 18 months.
Of course, there are quite a few china men buried along the way...
That’s about $2,000/Californian.
A family of four Californians would be out $8,000.
What political speak! A delay because of more ambitious plans? Scope creep already? Ratified conditions on the ground? Oh, they finally drove through there and looked around? Doesn't anyone have a brain these days?
This is a joke, a charade. It should not nor ever will be built and Moonbeam should rot in prison for the corruption he has wrought.
Trump should take the fed money from Mexifornia and use it to build the wall. Anything left, use it to get rid of the delta dart fish and let the water start flowing again.
I think running a "high-speed rail through the Democrat-controlled assembly" is an excellent idea.
Democrat not Democratic, of course.
an interesting and possibly good idea, does have some advantages.... but... also...
1. Bart and LA trains have very serious problems right now (especially Bart, which is as close to complete breakdown as is possible while still operating) and
2. SF and LA political power brokers are very strong in Democratic (California) big project deal-making and super-sized graft matters... and they might not like it unless the bullet trains “serve” SF and LA
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