In our last post on this subject we noted how the projected cost of that California high-speed railroad from nowhere to nowhere or, (if the locals will forgive us) from Bakersfield to Fresno for openers, has been steadily rising. https://gideonstrumpet.info/?p=2134 Now there is more on that subject, except that this time that caper is beginning to assume farcical proportions. See Ralph Vartabedian and Dan Weikel, California Rail Agency Requests Billions to Start Construction, L.A. Times, November 4, so11 – click here.
The Los Angeles Times’ latest tells us about “hearings” before the transit folks in charge of that “bullet train” in which, predictably, some folks were for it and others agin’ it. So far, so good except that the time alloted to each speaker was 90 seconds, reduced to 30 seconds as time went on. So you can imagine how much useful informaation was conveyed. So far so bad.
But the zinger is in the last sentence of this L.A. Times article, which blandly suggests that the cost of this caper, approved by the voters a few years back at $33 billion, has gone up to an estimate of $98 billion, and — get ready — it “could jump” an additional $19 billion depending on the route and construction features. And that is how through the magic of government design $33 billion became $117 billion. And counting, we predict.
In the meantime, California is broke. Further your affiant sayeth naught.
Follow up. Here is another reason why California is broke. Here is an excerpt from today’s Los Angeles Times editorial:
Th[e Los Angeles Times editorial] page endorsed Proposition 1a, the 2008 bond measure for the [high-speed] train, with words that now seem prophetic: “If voters approve Proposition 1a, it seems close to a lead-pipe cinch that the California High Speed Rail Authority will ask for many billions more in the coming decades.” That’s because the financial projections and ridership figures used by the authority at the time were based on little more than conjecture, and now that such issues have been subjected to greater scrutiny, it’s clear that they were wildly optimistic. Voters have good reason to believe they were sold a bill of goods, and the project would be in less jeopardy today if its backers had been more honest about the price from the outset. Yet for the same reasons we shrugged and endorsed the bond measure anyway, we still think the train is worth building.”
So according to the Times it’s OK to persuade the people of this state that they should approve $30 billion in new bonded indebtedness for a new high-speed railroad, and to do so with the realization that this figure is wrong, and the real figure would be much higher. As it turns out, some $117 billion, and counting. Isn’t that what’s called bait-and-switch?
No wonder California is going broke.
For another view of the problem, this time by a Stanford history professor who has written a book on California railroads, and who thinks little of this boondoggle, click here.