There hasn’t been much to report lately about California’s proposed “bullet train” between Los Angeles and San Francisco. But a dispatch in today’s Los Angele Times avers that the projected cost, has just been increased by one billion dollars.
So let’s review the bidding, as it were. First, California voters were snookered into approving at the polls the issuance of some $9 billion in bonds for that railway, because that’s what their government leaders told them this project would cost. But the first cut of the projected budget took that figure up to over 100 billion. Whereupon our Governor threw a fit, and the projected figure came down t o something like $67 billion. Now it’s up another billion.
So to paraphrase the expression of the late Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
In the meantime everything on the project is in suspended animation until the state Court of Appeal reviews the decision of a trial judge who stopped the project pending completion of this litigation.
So stay tuned.