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Government Corruption
California's high-speed rail is still nothing more than a nocturnal emission fantasy
2024-01-11
[Washington Examiner] The California high-speed rail is a blank slate that everyone can cast their wildest dreams upon because it does not exist and isn’t anywhere on the horizon.
All of the ballot promises: Ridership, costs, funding, ease of construction,...were LIES. All of them.
Among those projecting onto the non-existent train is state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), who posted, "Don’t believe the naysayers: CA high speed rail continues to be popular, polling at 56%. High speed rail will help our economy, lifting up Central Valley, connecting regions. High speed rail will help CA’s housing crisis. High speed rail will help CA achieve our climate goals."

Wiener posted that with a link to a CalMatters piece, which touts all the revitalization of areas in Fresno, which is slated to become a hub for the train if it is ever built. Read through the piece, and you would assume that everyone loves it; it isn’t actually that far behind schedule, and it has a real possibility of being ready soon.

But even this piece paints how ridiculous the entire idea is. The piece admits that the price tag has ballooned to an "optimistic" estimate of $128 billion at the most and that the actual project has shrunk by about 300 miles. Officials "hope" that 119 miles from Merced to Bakersfield will be complete in 2026. The first tests are "slated" for 2028. The state has blown through every other timeline it has crafted for this project, but you are expected to believe that now they have a realistic one when "projections widely used by engineers and project managers" show that "the train could not be completed in this century."

But the piece gives away the game when talking about the people who are supposed to be seeing this project built. The project is "at the whims of slow-moving bureaucracies that only show urgency when there’s a press conference or deadline." California has "no money to connect the system to the Bay Area and Southern California until the federal government steps up," but the federal government "has been largely absent." Democratic Rep. Jim Costa keeps introducing legislation in Congress to fund the project, but it keeps failing and requires bipartisan support.

Posted by:Besoeker

#5  Back in December the US DOT awarded another $6B for high speed rail in California. About half was for the Calif HSR. These funds were available because of the 2021 Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act (aka, Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill).

I'm not sure but I think the Federal funding awarded to the Calif HSR to date is about $10B.

The only good thing about this project is that it will forever illuminate the horror of the US 'targeting' of investments.
Posted by: lord garth   2024-01-11 15:26  

#4  
Posted by: badanov   2024-01-11 10:25  

#3  And as long as the train robbers are BIPOC and have fast enough horses, they will never be jailed let alone hanged.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2024-01-11 10:24  

#2  "FORWARD TO THE 19TH CENTURY!!!"
Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839   2024-01-11 10:19  

#1  Not a fantasy, but a very real scam.
Posted by: Rex Mundi   2024-01-11 08:22  

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