I’m not in the habit of posting up every little communique I receive from Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana) , or you’d see little else here. But I’d been thinking, there’s been a little too much Kumbayah around this joint, and it’s supposed to be a Mosh Pit. It seems like us liberals running this place have been in agreement with our conservative friends – Cynthia, Zenger, Ryan Cantor, etc – on too many issues, it’s unhealthy and unnatural. Especially local stuff – corporate welfare, corruption, OC boondoggles, police brutality, the democracy of district elections – it’s like there’s no daylight between us. But two things that CAN be counted on to stir up dissension in our ranks – California High Speed Rail and Obamacare!
This just came in over our Central County Transom:
SANCHEZ AFFIRMS SUPPORT OF HIGH SPEED RAIL
DURING TRANSPORTATION HEARING
WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (CA-46) today testified before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials on the importance of high speed rail in California. Rep. Sanchez argued that a high speed rail system is a much needed transportation project and a critical job creator for the state.
“This is bold, this is big, and in other words, this is Californian. [High speed rail] is the best project for getting us out of this real recession,” said Rep. Sanchez. “There are a couple of realities in California. Our unemployment rate is still stuck at over 8% and we have some of the worst traffic congestion in the nation. High speed rail moves both of those points.”
“In the first five years of construction alone, California’s high speed rail system will support 100,000 new constructions job in areas where we need our people to work. It is estimated that there will be over one million direct and indirect jobs in my area,” continued Sanchez.
Rep. Sanchez referenced the air and road delays that Californians have come to live with, but that waste valuable time and fuel. Every year, auto congestion drains $18.7 billion in lost time and wasted fuel from the state’s economy and flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco are some of the most delayed in the nation.
Rep. Sanchez also spoke of her experience in transportation infrastructure financing, expressed her willingness to stop projects that are not on sound financial footing, and confirmed that, “this is the time for this project. I believe that the [High Speed Rail] Authority has worked very hard to put together a finance plan that will work for Californians.”
“This is an important project, it’s important for jobs, it’s important for our economy and I urge you, we all need to work together to make this a reality,” finished Rep. Sanchez.
***
Vern again. Our friends on the right – the honest ones – have several big objections to California High Speed Rail (apart from their general ideological allergy to ambitious government projects) – a big one of which is that the project has morphed into something other than what was described to and approved by voters in 2008’s Prop 1A. Most notably, it was supposed to be largely funded by private investment, not the government or bonds. And they have a point – voters in 2008 had no idea how long and severe the Bush recession would be. And sure enough, the project is being fought in the court on those grounds, and in December a judge ruled that the state can’t take out bonds to cover the project. But, as Loretta mentions in the video above, the judge has declined to stop the project thus far, so we push on by other means, buoyed by our marvelous Jerry Brown surplus.
Most of the project’s travails are the doing of hostile California Republicans representing us in Washington, particularly Jeff Denham, a zealot hailing from our smog-choked Central Valley, who, after three years of blocking federal funding to his own state for this crucial project, has now been trying to convince his colleagues on the Hill that we will be unable to make a a $180 million payment of matching funds we will owe the Feds in April. The Governor’s answer to these setbacks? Diverting a quarter-billion from our cap-and-trade carbon-reduction program. Sounds good to me!
Some environmentalists have criticized the use of cap-and-trade money for rail, saying other projects could reduce greenhouse gas emissions more immediately.
“Yes, it’s long-term,” Brown said. “But we aren’t all, you know, Twitter-holics that have to have instant gratification after 140 characters. We can take a few years and build for the future, and that’s my sense here, that I’m coming back to be governor after all these years. … It’s been on my list for a long time, and I think we’ve got to get it done. And we do need that funding, and it’s legal, and I hope the Legislature will support it.”
HSR foes also claim they expect hardly anyone will want to use high-speed rail to get back and forth between Northern and Southern California. I expect they will. Thousands of folks drive and fly up and down our state every day, and that is only going to get prohibitively expensive in the coming years and decades. But in any case I created a poll last time I wrote about this; and we can re-visit that poll today – VOTE!
[poll id=”299″]
At a basic level, the project’s backers have facts they can point to, as do the project’s opponents, and we will throw those back and forth in the comments section, but it really comes down to ideological beliefs in what our government can and should do. I believe the reason we have a nation and a government is so that we can accomplish these amazing projects that will make our lives better for generations; conservatives have always resisted such projects. But aren’t you glad our grandparents made the railroads and the highways, Social Security and Medicare, the UC system? Shouldn’t we tighten our belts and build something for OUR grandkids? Can we no longer accomplish things that Asian and European nations have built YEARS ago? And most compellingly, High Speed Rail is just going to cost more the longer we put it off! (We SHOULDA done it in the 90’s.)
Discuss…
We have more important priorities than this. Its benefit is questionable and the investment is substantial.
There’s significantly more low hanging fruit in the LA basin that would remove 100 times the carbon at less than one tenth of the cost.
Do you realize that our rail system in this US is as antiquated as the steam engine, in comparison to the rest of the world? This project is needed and we were stupid to do the “private funding” thing because you knew it wasn’t going to work. Projects like this HAVE to be done by government. Why? One, it’s for the commons. Two, private industry has NEVER brought any large project in on time and on budget. They always under-bid projects, knowing full well that, once they get going, budgets and time limits don’t mean squat, as no city, county or state will stop a project by firing contractors and start the bidding process (which can take months) over again. By the time they get a new contractor and the paperwork is all done, the government entity feels that it would be cheaper to keep the contractor who is ripping them off. It’s a tried and true process. We need to stop handing out these projects to the private sector, do the bond measures, fund our projects and build them. We DESPERATELY need to upgrade our rail system. Flying is far too expensive for average people to travel now. High speed rail will finally give the airlines the competition it desperately needs. It’s an utter fallacy that the private sector can do projects cheaper and faster. There has never been a case that anyone can cite. Not only that, even when they go way over budget, they always cut corners and use lesser quality material. Study after study has shown that the private sector cannot do anything better than government. We need to redo this and kick out “private investment”.
Actually, that’s not true. It’s not even remotely true. The difference between the American rail system and that of its European (and to a degree its Asian) counterparts is that our modern rail system is designed to move FREIGHT, not people.
Why? Because it’s a whole lot cheaper to move a person at 500mph on an airplane than 120mph on a train. It’s also a lot cheaper to move a mile long train at 20mph full of freight than to make it go 200mph. That’s particularly true since airplanes don’t require the use of eminent domain.
“Two, private industry has NEVER brought any large project in on time and on budget.”
That’s hysterical. There are literally thousands of private sector projects that complete daily on time and on budget. The fact that you’re bringing this up in the context of a rail comment is particularly absurd. The ENTIRE US rail system was built with private money . . . so why isn’t we can’t build rail with private money again?
Anyway, I’m not arguing who should or should not do this project. The project is stupid. It’s stupid with public money. It’s stupid with private money. As designed, it’s installing billions of dollars of infrastructure that will be obsolete before the first train rides a rail. It won’t be ready for the better part of a generation, and even when it is built, it’ll still cost twice as much to ride the train (absent LARGE subsidies) than to fly simply by doing the very basic arithmetic needed to pay back the $100 billion in bonds.
I’ll sum it up: High speed rail is a nice to have at $9 billion. There are still better and more important projects we can do.
It’s absolute stupidity to do it at $100 billion.
*Beam me up Scotty.”………these are the same folks who thought going to the moon might get them some cheap cheese! Name all the bullet trains in the world and then decide. Calling the CA HSR nothing more than “The Stage Coach Ride” at Knott’s Berry Farm …….is probably not the most visionary approach…we can think of…
“Flying is far too expensive for average people to travel now” WHAT?
Have you been to an airport any time in the last two decades? Do you even realize what you are saying or do the syllables just come tumbling out?
For example, the governor just put out a call for citizens to curtail 20 percent of their water use immediately. We put a tremendous amount of energy into producing and moving water in this state. Our economy is tied much closer to our ability to move water than it is to moving Angelinos to San Francisco.
Funding for high speed rail should be going to sustainable water projects, which will do more to enhance our economy and reduce our carbon emissions than HSR will. Solutions will also come on line sooner.
As far as water usage goes, we should all be fighting against city ordinances that stop people from xeriscaping their front yards. 50% of our usage is on our lawns, which should be an obsolete vestige of the past in this desert clime.
Let me get warmed up to fight over HSR… need a cup of coffee…
Vern Nelson,
You are misinformed.
80% of Californias water is used by (Big) Ag. Of that 80% 60% is used for two crops: Cotton and Rice, which happen to also be among the most subsidized and oft exported crops in the state.
Lawn rationing is little more than a means to fine homeowners and spread fear. You should visit the UC water resources and then compare it to the propaganda recently put forth in the Latino Elected Official’s organization.
This is an absolute political stunt.
50% of our personal use then. And far from advocating “lawn rationing” or the government forcing people to xeriscape, I’m talking about fighting the local governments who are forcing people who WANT to xeriscape, NOT to.
Quite a surprise to me when I learned that Anaheim had finally exempted mulched replacements for green lawns from the Code Enforcement requirement for 75% green front yard coverage ( thinking vs dirt, but applied both ways!). For a while the Utility Dept site was flogging rebates for (approved) mulch cover, which CE conceded would be a violation, not any more!
I think that the presence of high-speed rail is increasingly becoming an “entry ticket” worldwide to a certain level of ease and prestige — and that increasingly we will start to lose out in competitions for business and tourism to other countries and areas in its absence. This is not like “we have to have a baseball team, we have to have a desal plant, etc.” — we’re talking about basic transportation infrastructure that makes it bearable to commute up and down our coast. (I do question whether we need a spur to Vegas — if so, let Nevada pay for it.)
Yes, we do have other priorities as well — work on physical infrastructure (repairing bridges and sewers, improving energy transmission) — spending on which conservatives generally oppose. (The exceptions are usually the flavor of conservative that the conservatives I like say aren’t “conservative” but are nevertheless generally thought of as conservative in most political discussions — they are happy so long as they are “wetting their beaks,” defined by them as more like whole body immersion.)
There is so much money out there, hidden and untaxed, that I’m not that sympathetic to Ryan’s demand for prioritization. Tax higher earners to pay for it. Give them some goodies in return, like 12 or 24 or 52 free rides a year or whatever, and they get to wear special sashes when they ride so that people know that they are “job creators.”
And this would be an actual job creator. I’m finding more and more that the question of whether a policy is good or not can largely be reduced to “is it good for the middle class without being wasteful.” I think that that can be accomplished.
But I have other fish to fry right now, rather than take up my time AND Cynthia’s!
Yes Greg, you and I do have other priorities today, but see my response below, I do not care how great anyone thinks the project is, it is clearly illegal and thus why are we even talking about it? You may not break the law, and betray the trust of millions, even if you think the outcome is a good idea. Sorry. That is a lesson we are trying to teach Anaheim right now, HSR is the macro view of the same lesson. Come see me when the project is compliant with promises made to voters in Prop1A or when we have allowed voters to approve the now completely different project this has morphed into.
I wouldn’t try to push through something illegal — but nor would I concede illegality without closer inspection (and better knowledge of how much slack is allowed in such situations.)
Who are you kidding? “Travel up and down the coast?” The thing goes through the Central Valley! “Tourism?” “Entry ticket?” What are you smoking?
This train will take three to five times as long as a Southwest Airlines puddle jumper to get from anywhere in Northern California to anywhere in Southern California. And it is going to cost AT LEAST 100 BILLION DOLLARS.
For that amount of money you could desalinate 5 KM3 of seawater per year, more than all residential users consume in a year in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties combined. Or you could rebuild and enhance every freeway and rail line in the state.
And you think this is a “job creator?” How? Because a handful of union construction engineers will get work for a few years? What about providing an ample supply of drinking water, or efficient transportation for people within our cities? That would actually grow the economy and create millions of jobs.
Go back to Colorado, Greg. They’ve got really good weed waiting for you back there.
OK, stranger — I’ll explain things to you slowly, in order.
(1) This is the first leg of a route that (as I recall) is supposed to travel from SF/Sac to LA/OC/SD when completed. It’s not supposed to stay confined to Central California.
(2) We live in an area called “the West Coast.” Someday, we might see bullet trains from San Diego to Seattle (or even Ensenada to Vancouver.) So, yeah, “travel up and down the coast.” You don’t get a whole system set up without starting it somewhere. Why the Central Valley? Pretty obviously for political reasons: if it were NorCal or SoCal, the other major region would suspect that it would be left out.
(3) Yeah, this state (and coast) has a lot of tourism.
(4) If you don’t think it’s an entry ticket to 21st century competition, tell me what other countries and regions already have bullet trains.
(5) I am smoking your ass.
(6) The “time of travel” comparison of a train to an airport — “please arrive one hour early, extra charge for luggage” — based on simply how long one is inside the contraption while it is moving is inapt.
(7) I’d enjoy seeing your figures on desal. It may really change my thinking on the damage done by the Iraq War.
(8) And the same for “rebuild and enhance” freeway and rail.
(9) Jobs are about more that construction. They’re also about tourism, and about getting employees easily from one location to the other. By the way, what’s the difference in passenger capacity between a bullet train and a puddle jumper?
(10) Again with the drinking water. Are you one of the shills for Poseidon?
(11) Efficient transportation within cities? Explain what you have in mind.
(12) What makes you think I’m from Colorado? (I think I know why, and it has nothing to do with pot; I just want to hear you say it.)
I always laugh when people act aghast at the cost of this project, when the military wastes that amount of money all the time on planes and tanks and subs that the military neither wanted, needed or asked for. Google the F-35. What a piece of crap! When old Russian and Chinese fighter jets can out run it and it has blind spots the size of Texas, you know it’s a brick! And this boondoggle has cost the taxpayers a TRILLION dollars! Google the F-22. The pilots pass out if it reaches too high of an altitude. $67.3 BILLION for 188 planes before DOD finally shut it down. The OSPRY (the worlds biggest piece of crap) can’t fly in the rain! In 2008, $27 BILLION, with another $27 BILLION to be spent on this crappy copter by the end. It’s unsafe with serious design flaws. But Lockheed, Boeing and Bell all keep raking it in. But, god forbid we build a common sense thing like an UPGRADED RAIL SYSTEM!!! When I heard outrage over the DOD budget, then I will take the outrage over the high-speed train seriously. But, I never hear a peep about ANY DOD project. Do you know that the Pentagon CAN’T do a financial audit? That’s how screwed up their record-keeping is. Google it. It’s frightening. That’s why aerospace was recession-proof. Building DOD crap that isn’t needed.
I can fill pages of response (as you know) with the nitty gritty details of why HSR is a useless POS, which would waste both your time and mine, and right now I would greatly prefer to spend my time fighting things that matter rather than stuff that a) is about to be kicked to the curb by a Judge and b) will never get funded and is therefore a moot point.
My only concern for the project currently is that they will spend (in a frenzy) the money they DO have, taking property by eminent domain and destroying people’s lives, and the livelihoods of an entire section of the state, for something that will not be completed. There are real people, farms, dairies, and hopes and dreams behind the “takings” on this project. I have met the residents being impacted, looked into their eyes, toured their properties, and heard their frustrations regarding how this project is destroying their futures.
So Vern I would challenge you (and Loretta) to answer these two questions;
1) Is “being Liberal” exemplified by the deliberate destruction of the California dream for hundreds of citizens who have worked hard for the property they own, in some cases living on land their families have been on since the Victorian era railroad came through and displaced their forebears? Because I will take any of you on a road trip to Kings County to meet some incredible, gracious people, and I want you to look them in the eye and tell them to sacrifice everything in the name of a project that is not funded, and counting on Fed dollars that the Feds have committed to NOT giving California. It is one thing to ask someone to sacrifice for a “big bold dream” that puts Californians to work, it is quite another to ask them to do it for a project that only employs consultants until the money runs out. but if that is how you and Loretta want your party to be represented, have at it.
While Dems see only Assessor’s Parcels Numbers on a map, mere obstacles in the way of their big bold money maker, up on the peninsula I see Kathy, the woman who bought her dream home, the place she and her husband would live out their retirement years, only to have HSR come through and render their investment worthless, they cannot sell it, they fear it being taken (for far less than market value now that comps have been distressed for years over this issue) so they have no choice but to fight, something Kathy traded her day job to do. Or Nadia, the home-maker whose concerns for quality of life for her family having this train now box them into their street with an enormous earthen berm obstructing their light and access, have been dismissed because she lives in Steve Jobs’ neighborhood, is clearly not living on rice and beans, and thus her concerns have no merit for some reverse snobs. I would love you to meet Elizabethm the brave woman who cold called me years ago, alerting me to the project that was such a banging good idea that the head of the HSR who was also our Mayor had not bothered letting his own City Council know the project would bisect our fair community. She and Rita have committed full time non-paying jobs to fighting this in defense of their quality of life, are their rights as citizens to demand that major impacts to their existence at least follow the minimum standard of the law? Or is it OK to screw over our fellow citizens, breaking the law in doing so, because Loretta thinks its a great idea? I wonder if Loretta would still think it was great if the citizens being displaced by an illegal project were poor Latinos in Santa Ana, instead of the landed gentry in Central California. Maybe she needs to meet Frank, who leases his family’s ancestral land in Kings County, to a variety of farmers who produce organic food for us city-dwellers to enjoy. These farmers have invested massive funds in drilling wells ($150k and up each) and sustaining fragile long-range crops like almonds that take YEARS of nurture before producing profitable yields, and are already screwed by being cut off from water, now HSR is bisecting those farms, rendering the far side of the land inaccessible, but HSR is only paying for the little strip they use. The rest of that acreage you cannot get to? Well you still own it, why should we pay for it? Oh, your kids cannot get to the bus for school because idiots planned the system? So sorry, but we have to put union people to work…in some areas impacts could be mitigated by moving the route by MERE FEET and the HSR won’t do it! I have a great story (with pics) to share about a rendering plant whose loss destroys the dairy and cattle business for an entire valley, because they cannot replace it, and cannot run the economy without it. You do NOT want to get me started on “job creation” with this project because i will mop the floor with Sanchez on this.
2) You tell me how you ‘n Loretta plan to get around the fact that the project is EFFING ILLEGAL, and it was found in violation of the law by a Judge because it broke every promise to Voters in 2008, and then some. This project tap danced on the dead carcass of the promises made to voters. So if you want to promote a “big, bold” project even though it breaks the trust of California’s citizens, again, perhaps see Question 1 above.
Now I will return to forcing arthritic fingers to complete the stadium article I promised you, but no way in Hell was i letting this one go unanswered. If you are bored, go clean your room and stop picking fights with your siblings to fill the time. And remember I love you. Now go play nice and quit talking stupid, you are smarter than this, Vern.
For the record, Cynthia’s concerns are valid and would need to be addressed, with people harmed being properly compensated. Whether than can happen is a topic for another day. I don’t want to presume that good faith efforts to do so would be impossible. (Perhaps if the farmers incorporate they will get more respect!)
I’ll say the same thing about this HSR project that I wrote to Sharon Quirk-Silva: It’s a boondoggle for a good cause. It’s getting close to bing the Great Park of California. I support energy efficient high speed rail that serves a purpose, but not an out of control plan with questionable benefits. Although, destroying the rendering plant is almost worth it.
The Buzz: California lawmaker files initiative to block high-speed rail
By Jim Miller
jmiller@sacbee.com
Published: Monday, Jan. 13, 2014 – 12:00 am
For the second time in less than two years, a California lawmaker has filed proposed ballot language to put the brakes on California’s high-speed rail project.
Assemblyman Jeff Gorell submitted paperwork Friday to qualify the Stop the $100 Billion High Speed Rail and Reinvest in Education Act. The proposed November ballot measure is largely identical to the Stop the $100 Billion Bullet Train to Nowhere Act submitted by then-state Sen. Doug La Malfa and former Rep. George Radanovich in March 2012, which failed to qualify.Gorell, R-Camarillo, is running for Congress this year against freshman Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Oak Park, in the 26th Congressional District, one of the most competitive House seats in the state. A Gorell spokesman said the assemblyman does not expect to lead the effort to qualify the bullet-train repeal. Besides the congressional campaign, Gorell will be busy as vice chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee.Gorell and other opponents will need to collect 504,760 valid voter signatures to qualify Friday’s measure for the ballot.– Jim Miller
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/13/6066072/the-buzz-california-lawmaker-files.html#storylink=cpy
And more recently, from-
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/high-speed-rail-takes-more-punches/?utm_source=CAPoliticalReview.com&utm_campaign=9a850b785b-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b855a22bd3-9a850b785b-302742077
“The Legislative analyst threw another haymaker at the governor’s bullet train funding proposal saying the $250 million the governor wants to use from the cap and trade fees from business is “legally risky.” The reason: the fees are supposed to reduce greenhouse gases by 2020. The train will not be completed by then and may even add to the greenhouse gases problem. Environmental groups who don’t like the use of cap and trade fees for the train project are applying those left hooks to the project. “
Oh, dear me. Why won’t this thing just die!
Well David, people up and down the great state of California have worked for 5 years now to expose the lies, law breaking, crony capitalism insider deals, land speculation, and the WORST incompetent planning I have EVER seen (and living in the land of Platinum Triangle that is saying something!) but because leaders like Loretta Sanchez insist on continuing to back this “big, bold” project by deliberately ignoring the protests (and lawsuits) exposing it, we will continue to see it live on.
I want Loretta Sanchez and any other great visionary leader to come with me and see how BAD this thing is, the planning is abysmal, truly, truly stupid design work by people with zero knowledge of what is on the land they drew a line through on a map, or how that line impacts land use (and people’s lives) literally for miles around. I am not being partisan here, I genuinely question the leadership ability of anyone, left or right, who has refused to investigate the credible expert testimony brought forward by American citizens fighting this in their own free time.
Vern and Greg, i want you to imagine the CSL report on the Stadium, times about a million, and you understand my frustration here.
The finances have been reviewed-and debunked completely-by a white paper written by some of the finest banking minds in the world (über-finance brain William Grindley assembled experts to review the business plan, and came back laughing and horrified) expert statician and economist Elizabeth Alexis has been called to Sacramento and Washington to testify about blatant falsification of ridership numbers and the discredited methodology used to get them. The list of experts in their fields who have reviewed, and discredited, this project as currently designed, is long and impressive. But hey, why listen to people who clearly know more about specialized areas of technical expertise when politicians have found barrels of pork funding to grab for special friends in an election year?
Many who initially supported this project now oppose it, not because it isn’t a great idea, or even needed, but because corruption and incompetence have perverted high speed rail into a pork project to enrich a select few, while doing irreparable damage to critical functions of our state’s economy. One has to willingly suspend all common sense and fiduciary duty in order to continue supporting this nonsense, and I will personally work my ass off against any leader who keeps dumping their responsibility for honest service to the people of California by pushing this illegal, immoral, bullshit.
Other than that I have no opinion. Have a nice day.
So are you saying that it can’t be done — or that it can’t (or at least shouldn’t) be done this way?
I’m perfectly willing to consider the latter argument. I’d prefer to squeeze the corruption out of such a system, minimize the harm done to individuals, ensure that the plans are as good as possible and that legitimate objections are taken into account.
The former argument, given the success of high-speed rail elsewhere, doesn’t impress me. Now, I’m off to the Kelly Thomas verdict protest. Coming along? And after that I have some reading to do….
The project we have now, and the governing body overseeing it, must be scrapped completely, i see nothing salvageable in the current system, other than a monumental lesson in what NOT to do. Go back to the drawing board, frankly run the whole damn thing up the 5 freeway where the State already owns the right of way. While there are valid negatives to that plan they are significantly less damaging than anything else I have seen proposed. Plus it then becomes its own advertisement, when I am sitting in stop and go traffic and a sexy sleek bullet train goes whizzing past me on the median, I am going to slap myself for not thinking train ticket before gassing up the car for a road trip. AND….I believe while the State should entitle the whole thing, open the doors for the private sector, put out an RFP and invite for-profit entities to submit their own plans, even if they require a SMALL subsidy for a short period of start up cost, but the state should NOT be planning, building, or operating the stupid thing. But this crap with telling us it will never require a subsidy (oops) or that it will travel from point A to point B in XX time, then load it up with stops driven by political favoritism which slows the route to a crawl because every leader whose buy in is needed is trading their YES votes for a stop in their district…or that it will cost less than planes (nope) NOT ONE of the promises to voters has been kept, and the whole deal was if it couldn’t be done within those parameters it wouldn’t be done. Now they discover it can’t be done as promised, but are forcing the issue anyway. What happened to keeping the deal made with the public expected to pay for it?
Going up the 5 certainly makes sense to me on its face. Why don’t they want to do it?
Well Greg, if you use space CalTrans already owns, you skip over all the fortunes to be made in land speculation, and greatly reduce the ability of the consultants who pumped campaign coffers in their push to overcharge for studies. And then there are those using the project to attack their own pet projects, like an otherwise legal rendering plant objected to on levels with nothing to do with transportation, but hey if you can use this tool to rid the world of something YOU don’t like, why not? Think about all the game playing that takes place in these massive public projects, and multiply by many hundreds of millions and you get the world of high speed rail for the last five years. Greg come dig through my files, enlighten yourself on this one, and then maybe go re-educate some of your Dem buddies who just don’t get it.
….and Vern, maybe Greg can enlighten Vern where I have clearly failed.
Building this for the benefit of short-term construction jobs or for some sort of state status or volksgeist pride is utter nonsense.
Of course Cynthia is right, anyway. First, the roll-out is a fraud perpetrated on the people who voted for this; second, the current HSR regime has been completely corrupted by venality and mission creep/slide.
*Cynnie girl, please. DeSal in HB…..HSR in CA…..Nano technology for removing cancer tumors, RNA/DNA replacements of severed arms and legs, brain tissue, heart tissue and livers………. Technology…whether if works immediately or in five years…..still works and make our future better. You still want to invest in Coca Cola with Cocaine in it…..since 1912? You probably find nothing abhorrent about Big Pharma advertising big money therapies…..NOT Cures on TV? Technology offers many vertical products and projects through Reseach and Development. How much did the first Adding Machine cost? How much do they cost today? Progress, intelligent research and people that care. Not people with their hands out …..for easy cash.
Can somebody please translate?
“Technology is good. Something else is bad.”
Every time I think I might get it, my brain blows a fuse and I have to start over.
*They say that when you are IN the box…..it is always hard to think OUT of it.
Well played Winship. Well played.
Apparently Newsom has dealt a death blow this moronic adventure in greed, prevarication, bureaucratic empire building.
https://ktla.com/2019/02/12/gov-newsom-abandons-plan-for-high-speed-train-from-l-a-to-san-francisco-cites-cost/
However, it ain’t dead yet. For some reason good money is following bad down in the boondocks between Hootervile and Pixley.
Rest assured, it’s only to shift the funding to a similar adventure of his own.
You may very well be right. Certain things have a way of never dying so long as somebody can make a buck fleecing the public.
Article today in Bloomberg said, although the train is stopped, bond sales continuing. Go figure. Is Bernie Maddoff out on work-release ?
You misspelled “Bakersfield” and “Merced,” although I’m sure that you enjoyed doing it.
Having HSR over that flat 171-mile stretch isn’t unreasonable, as it helps to spread out where people can live and commute from. (OC, you may have noticed, is getting a little cramped.) With even standard train service from Bakersfield south to LA ($27 bus trip) and whatever public transit can get one from Merced to San Jose, one could imagine someone from Turlock making a long commute into LA taking only an hour longer than it would take from Yorba Linda, or someone from Bakersfield being able to get to San Jose reasonably quickly and cheaply without a car or plane. I know that you hate public transit, but given that this portion of the plan doesn’t involve getting a supertrain over the Tejon Pass, that’s pretty good. Part of this is a plan to help develop the Central Valley, which may mean nothing to you but may mean a lot to them.
There are other reasons that you’d know if you read the story. “Newsom said the state risked having to return $3.5 billion in federal money if building stops on the Central Valley leg or it doesn’t complete the environmental reviews.” Seems like a reasonable thing to avoid.
“Part of this is a plan to help develop the Central Valley, which may mean nothing to you but may mean a lot to them.”
That’s probably the most ignorant thing you’ve ever asserted. We paid for HSR, not developing the Central Valley which has also run out of water.
Consult a map. Merced is 60 miles from San Jose as the crow flies – and no transit, public or private goes anywhere near directly between. Bakersfield is about the same distance to downtown LA and although the 5 is straight through it’s a bitch of a drive at almost any hour of daylight. Poor Mr. Turlock who’s stashing his car in Bakersfield so he can save an hour to LA!
But let’s keep cooking up moronic justifications for this folly. After all that’s been the MO for its boosters from Day One.
There’s a train between Merced and San Jose. After this line is completed, the market will likely provide private buses, much like the cheap one from Bakersfield to LA. One can sleep on a train or a bus. One can also sleep while driving a car, I suppose, but the results aren’t as positive.
I’m paraphrasing Central Valley readers who have commented on this line, which essentially continues to build up the host city of UC Merced into a larger and more significant player. I did some research, in other words, rather than pulling definitive statements out of my ass as some fonts of wisdom like to do.