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 ...
This is the mother of all boondoggles designed to enrich Unions, lawyers, and environmental consultants.
transcontinental RR construction started January 1863.
cconstruction was completed on May 10, 1869.
Just a little difficult to comprehend why anyone would plan a train system someplace where the roads are fantastic, everyone owns a car, and earthquakes can be expected to occur at any time.
I stand corrected...
Ok...It took six years...
Today it would take 60 years...
A stupid, slow train to the middle of nowhere's-ville CA makes zero sense.
I don't know why that hasn't been proposed.
CA can grease the unions, and I wager that LV casinos would even chip in.
Win-win for everyone.
PARTICULARLY liberals.
And it would probably be in operation in 2 years.
Still pretty snappy...
Still pretty snappy...
We travel light and do pre-check with TSA. Go right through with no problem.
I have no desire to go to San Francisco, even by car. But, I don’t get out much, so maybe it’s just me.
Just put an end to it. Where’s Dr. Kevorkian? Calling Dr. Kevorkian...
I’m not worried about being in the tube when the quake hits. The faster people are moving, the less likely they are to be in the tube at the exact moment the quake hits.
The bigger concern with the fault lines is that the tube must be straight, and correcting for plate movement would be much harder than with conventional rail. I might think that a minor amount of slippage could knock service out for a long time.
Paging Willie Greene, Paging Willie Greene!!
A Railroad Record that Defies Defeat
http://cprr.org/Museum/Southern_Pacific_Bulletin/Ten_Mile_Day.html
Nice. Thanks.
I understand you point but if this is actually to be a major method of transport between to large urban areas, someone will be in transit when the nest big quake hits.
My question is: will anyone get one one after they see 400-500 dead people strewn across the country-side and having to wait 6-12 months for service to resume or will they go back to air travel?
This proposed train system has the potential to be the biggest public transportation infrastructure financial disaster in America History.
There won’t be 500-600 dead people. There might be if they were on a slow, conventional rail. But there’ll be one pod destroyed. And that one pod will be carrying EIGHT people. That’s right, only eight. The pod two minutes behind it will stop before it gets to the fault. And there are 8 people per pod.
Therein lies one of the shortcomings: the hyperloop will only carry about 240 people per hour each way.
Let’s say they boost the pod size: 32 dead (960 people per hour each way). Bad, but no, not the Concorde disaster.
Understood, but at this point (correct me if I am wrong) the plan is to build a high speed train, not the hyperloop.
That’s right. The high-speed train plan can only be a method of paying off political supporters.
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