Boots & Sabers

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Owen

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1004, 14 Jan 17

Massive Cost Overruns for California High Speed Train

What!?!? Unheard of! /sarcasm

California’s bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated — as much as $3.6 billion more. And that’s just for the first 118 miles through the Central Valley, which was supposed to be the easiest part of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

A confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis, obtained by The Times, projects that building bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter, just north of Bakersfield, could cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion, compared with the original budget of $6.4 billion.

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1004, 14 January 2017

14 Comments

  1. Kevin Scheunemann

    Thank you to Scott Walker for tanking this boondoggle in WI!

    This decision alone makes him one of the great leaders in WI history!

    Saving us from the liberal insanity on the train….thank you, again, Scott Walker!

  2. Le Roi du Nord

    Yup, that darn liberal Tommy G. Thompson, train promoter.

    FYI:  We will never know if the train in WI would have been a boondoggle or not.  You really can’t take credit for something that never happened.

  3. Kevin Scheunemann

    Nord,

    I’ll bite on your nonsense statement.

    Where has light rail NOT been a boondoggle?

  4. Le Roi du Nord

    Europe.  Milw-Chicago.  The entire east coast.

  5. Kevin Scheunemann

    All massively subsidized by taxpayers…and nearly all are losing money.

  6. Le Roi du Nord

    You are making stuff up again……  God’s gonna get you……

  7. Paul

    Sad how this blog has degenerated into a jerkoff session between these two mental midgets.

  8. penquin

    Arizona has a light rail system that seems pretty effective…expanded it twice with more planned through 2044…and they ain’t exactly a bastion of liberalism over there.

    But Kevin’s remarks makes me wonder: Has the interstate highway system or  city/county roads ever turned a profit for the government? They all been massively subsided by taxpayers…and given the state of most of our roads, could easily be labeled a “boondoggle”.

    While the hard-core Libertarians would say privatize all of those, I beleive our society is better served by having transportation available to more than just the wealthy.

  9. penquin

    “Sad how this blog has degenerated into a jerkoff session between these two mental midgets.”

    Some light candles, some curse the darkness. Then there are those who light a candle and curse the glarewe all make our own choices, eh?

  10. Kevin Scheunemann

    Highways are available for wide transit audience and very flexible use.

    They are available to nearly everyone and are a cost effective public benefit.

    Rail corridors are a narrow transit audience, very inflexible use, and very expensive….and in the end, require roads anyway to get people, (if any) to and from the rail station.

    Arizona rail system has less problems than most of the spending disasters of rail, but still is counterproductive on amount spent per rail mile, vs. amount spent per road mile.

    Less spending per mile is better for global warming cult, because it does not waste resources.

     

  11. billphoto

    I knew the outcome before they started this project because I lived in San Jose years ago when they built their light rail system.  The end result was it would have been cheaper to buy every rider a new Honda based on the annual expense not to mention the millions that went into building the thing.

    The train stops were located in the wrong places, took longer than a bus to get to the same destination and cost more.  More, the City pushed to build high density housing next to the tracks which became another financial failure.

    Scott Walker was smart enough to do his homework BEFORE we got stuck with an albatross of our own.

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