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Re: Question about Calif High Speed Rail
Author: BOB2
Date: 04-16-2017 - 14:03
The CHSRA had estimates of mid twenties to mid thirties (billions of dollars) back when I was still covering the CHSRA in the late 2000's, just before the ballot measure to fund it. Most of us thought that was way too low for the proposed 220 mph speed necessary to meet the ludicrous travel time "assumptions". A subsequent peer review had an upper end estimate of one hundred (billion dollars that is)..... Which of late has been scaled back to a "politically correct" estimate of somewhere in the mid sixties (billions of dollars).....
I wouldn't have any problem at all of spending 50 dollars per year of my taxes on a first world rail network designed to effectively and efficiently meet CA's travel needs in our most congested interurban corridors. Unfortunately, the CHSRA isn't that project, as it was never based on sound analysis of travel demands, or prioritized based on cost benefit, or that went through a proper planning process that tested true alternative options for operational, cost, and safety, trade offs.
If cost/benefit, observed demand, and maximizing public benefits were the criteria for investing the HSR bond funds, CA would have first funded the nearly three (billion dollars) in grade seps, trackage, speed increases, signal improvements in the San Joaquin, Capitol, and LOSSAN corridors. Projects that were all more truly "shovel ready", back in 2008. And, that were not funded by either the HSR measure, nor the Governator's request for HSIPP rail funds from Congress as part of the "stimulus".....
The CHSRA was based on nonsense out of "Project California" a quasi "public/private" "schmooze-fest/political flea circus and general circle jerk" of "anointed leaders" to "gaze into the future" "flea circus" back in the early 90's that wrongly "predicted" the coming intrastate aviation "crisis" in CA that never came.... And, the massive benefits to CA of companies like theirs building a super high speed HSR between LA and SFO to alleviate this coming aviation "crisis"............
No such intrastate aviation "crisis" has occurred, we shut down vast military air capacity, while intrastate traffic levels fell, and have stayed way below levels projected at the end of the 1980's, on which the "crisis" was "predicted"......
This "delusion" metastasized into Quentin Kopp's 13 year long flea circus, which, put together the "plan" to have a really fast train, regardless of cost/benefits or observed demands, and when we have built it, they will come.........
So how again does that compare to the building of something actually useful like the transcontinental railroad....which, for all of the corruption and chicanery, truly met an observable and real need, beyond just contractor greed and avarice.
CHSRA has wasted vast and scarce rail resources, that could have been much better spent, with real and immediate benefits that would provide safer, faster, cheaper, and more frequent rail, with benefits to rail and highway users, on some of the most congested inter-urban corridors in CA (and, in entire USA, too....) And, no we have no idea what it will ultimately cost, when, if ever it will operate, or when, if ever, it will come anywhere near even meeting the outrageous/fantasmagorical claims made to promote and sustain this amazing public works fiasco.......
I wouldn't have any problem at all of spending 50 dollars per year of my taxes on a first world rail network designed to effectively and efficiently meet CA's travel needs in our most congested interurban corridors. Unfortunately, the CHSRA isn't that project, as it was never based on sound analysis of travel demands, or prioritized based on cost benefit, or that went through a proper planning process that tested true alternative options for operational, cost, and safety, trade offs.
If cost/benefit, observed demand, and maximizing public benefits were the criteria for investing the HSR bond funds, CA would have first funded the nearly three (billion dollars) in grade seps, trackage, speed increases, signal improvements in the San Joaquin, Capitol, and LOSSAN corridors. Projects that were all more truly "shovel ready", back in 2008. And, that were not funded by either the HSR measure, nor the Governator's request for HSIPP rail funds from Congress as part of the "stimulus".....
The CHSRA was based on nonsense out of "Project California" a quasi "public/private" "schmooze-fest/political flea circus and general circle jerk" of "anointed leaders" to "gaze into the future" "flea circus" back in the early 90's that wrongly "predicted" the coming intrastate aviation "crisis" in CA that never came.... And, the massive benefits to CA of companies like theirs building a super high speed HSR between LA and SFO to alleviate this coming aviation "crisis"............
No such intrastate aviation "crisis" has occurred, we shut down vast military air capacity, while intrastate traffic levels fell, and have stayed way below levels projected at the end of the 1980's, on which the "crisis" was "predicted"......
This "delusion" metastasized into Quentin Kopp's 13 year long flea circus, which, put together the "plan" to have a really fast train, regardless of cost/benefits or observed demands, and when we have built it, they will come.........
So how again does that compare to the building of something actually useful like the transcontinental railroad....which, for all of the corruption and chicanery, truly met an observable and real need, beyond just contractor greed and avarice.
CHSRA has wasted vast and scarce rail resources, that could have been much better spent, with real and immediate benefits that would provide safer, faster, cheaper, and more frequent rail, with benefits to rail and highway users, on some of the most congested inter-urban corridors in CA (and, in entire USA, too....) And, no we have no idea what it will ultimately cost, when, if ever it will operate, or when, if ever, it will come anywhere near even meeting the outrageous/fantasmagorical claims made to promote and sustain this amazing public works fiasco.......
