You've got to remember, Mouse is too busy coming up with his clever memes to apparently bother to read these stories he posts. He hates all trains, and this is just another manifestation of the voices he hears, through his special tinfoil hat.

This project has been a complete clusterf##k, from the very inception up until now, and is on the verge of pending financial collapse, if the Feds do finally get serious, and start disallowing some of the ineligible project costs. Meanwhile, the CAHSRA management is proposing more and more arrogant and ludicrous stunts like these latest incompetent proposals, which seem now to "insure" that we taxpayers will see nothing operable, after tens of billions in taxpayer dollars utterly wasted, and a whole decade lost.

The other "buried lead" is that the legislature has had enough. And, is now is threatening to take future State funds away from these incompetent fools. And, may instead start to divert those scarce taxpayer dollars, to the long list of unfunded "real", doable, and more sensible CA rail transportation projects. Projects, which might, sometime in their (or their children's...) lifetimes, actually be completed, and which would actually serve some of CA's more pressing transportation "needs".

Read both of the stories, they both point out the increasingly delusional and desperate state of unbelievable arrogance, utter incompetence, and continued self serving mismanagement at the CAGSRA "runaway money train" fiasco.

Buried lede Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "The California High Speed Rail Authority has a
> new plan to complete the necessary construction
> for 119 miles of track in the Central Valley by
> 2022, as required by federal grant agreements.
> They’re going to build the track in non-continuous
> 5-mile segments.
>
> Just when you thought nothing could be more
> ridiculous than the plan to run the bullet train
> between San Jose and an orchard near Wasco, the
> rail authority announces a plan to build segments
> of track that don’t connect to each other."
>
>
>
> This got overlooked 2 weeks ago.
>
> [www.latimes.com]
> 6/the-federal-standoff-on-california-bullet-train-
> is-getting-deeper
>
> "The California bullet train authority is moving
> ahead with an aggressive plan to issue its biggest
> contract in history, steering into sharp criticism
> by federal regulators and even the state-appointed
> peer review panel that it is overreaching.
>
> The agency took a key step last week toward
> issuing a 30-year-long contract to install track,
> set up high-voltage electrical lines, create a
> digital signaling system, build a heavy
> maintenance train garage and obligate future
> maintenance of the equipment and track.
>
> It would cover future track from San Jose to
> Bakersfield, more than half the proposed Los
> Angeles-to-San Francisco system. It would lock the
> state into a maintenance contract, as well as
> equipment, on segments that it currently does not
> have money to build."
>
>
> "If the state fails to accelerate its current slow
> work pace, it could end up not having all the
> civil work completed to install track by 2022.
>
> To help manage that, the state plans to install
> track in non-continuous 5-mile segments, a plan
> that federal regulators said is complex and would
> prevent a “calculated or logical progression.” The
> letter was signed by Juliana Shu Barnes, a career
> civil servant who is a project manager."