Re: NY Times Front Page on CAHSR Boondoggle- Not really new "News" to the AP community is it?
Author: BOB2
Date: 10-10-2022 - 03:10
OMG???? Who could have imagined?
Left on the TV and computer on, and when I woke up and came in to turn it off, what did I wake up to find?
What can I say? I'm just shocked that the CHSRA's "runaway money train" based on assumptons that were complete bovine excrements has resulted in the gold plated boondoggle that has been a complete case study in utter incompetence and corruption.
As someone who went to my fist CHSRA "runaway money train" meeting in 90's, all of the planning was considered a joke, no real ridership or demand analysis, just choo-choo must go real fast regardless of costs, needs, or benefit. Design started based on no demand and/or operating plans to meet those demands. Build it and they will come (or at least the contractors and the political prostitutes who have schmoozed this hot mess).
This orirignally came out of another dubious Pete Wilson era endeavour called Project California, which proclaimed the need for choo-choos that go fast, to build California's fast choo-choos technoology, so we could be just like China or Germany, not meeting our actual empirically observed travel demands or needs.
Ahnold, not Brown was the big brains behind this, and that's who made all of the trips to China, where his aids had to head him off from offering illegal "sole source" contractiing opportunities to every Chiness high speed official and businessman he encountered on those junkets to see China's high speed.
Now will there be a halt to the madness, a rewrite of the enabling legislation, and the voter approved bond requirements, which could be easily done with a two thirds vote of the Legislature?
Will the program be completely overhauled, to redirect all rail funds, to projets and project segments for all rail in CA, base on a needs based project planning and cost benefit criteria?
Or, will there just be more waste of taxpayer dollars and continued incompetence on this fiasco, accompanied by much hand wringing and feigned indignation over the obvious and always visible incompetence of thie fiasco, going all of the way back to it's very inception?
As the Zen Master said: "We'll see"....