As if all the calamities that have befallen the proposed California high speed rail weren’t enough, here comes another one. The California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group delivered its report yesterday, concluding that the proposed railroad from San Diego to San Francisco is deeply flawed and not financially feasible. It recommended that the State Legislature not appropriate any money to it, not even the initial $2.7 billion in bonds to match $3.5 billion in federal money. For the whole megilla, read Ralph Vartabedian and Dan Weikel, Review Urges Delay in Borrowing Billions for Bullet Train, L.A. Times, January 4, 2012 — click here http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bullet-train-report-20120104,0,3258448.story.
The bottom line of the report is that apart from the piddly few billion allocated thus far to the initial leg of the $98.5 billion railroad (between Bakersfield and Fresno — down the middle of Central Valley where few likely passengers live, and as most Californians believe, is the middle of nowhere) is unlikely to be followed by additional construction due to lack of funds. The review group supports a high-speed rail line, but feels that starting the project in the middle of Central Valley “maximizes the risk to the state.”
So the line-up against going ahead with the high-speed rail as presently envisioned now includes the State Auditor, the State Inspector General, the Legislative Analyst, The UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies, and the Transportation Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. But our Governor and his friends in the labor unions are all for it.
So stay tuned and see what happens — we can’t wait, though we fear it will be a long wait.