This notion that light rail is less expensive than BART is just plain flatly bogus!

In very pointed fact - Every single light rail project in California since BART was first built (there were none before), has cost just as about as much per mile to build as BART; including Muni's extensions. Some have cost even more.

That is, until the sole exception of the BART's airport extension, which mere 11 miles cost more than all of the rest of BART put together! The only rail projects significantly less expensive than the usual BART and light rail cost, are those built by the likes of UP, BNSF, CSX, NS, CP, etc. The public is getting screwed big time.

At 1-2 million per track mile for privately financed construction, verses the minimum 10-20 million per track mile for any and all publicly funded rail work, it would seem obvious that the problem is not just BART, per se.

Actually, It's the public funding.

Repeat - it's the public funding. It's the $1700 hammer syndrome. Most politicians seem to think that when you don't really know how to do something - because you refuse to listen to those who do - just throwing money at it will solve everything in spite of their lack of vision - by rote brute force.

But actually, who in their right mind is gonna charge you a mere million a mile, if you're so damned anxious to spend ten million instead - they'll gladly take it. Wouldn't You! On the other hand, who in their right mind would give ten million, when the next guy spends only one million. Who indeed!

BART Management's contribution to this problem (and all other public agency managements as well) is that they are way too damn stupid and without vision, so as to not know that they are being taken for a big fat hairy ride by nearly every contractor and vendor they use. They really don't have a clue! The only vendors that don't screw the public agencies, it seems, are the few that also supply the freight railroads. Of course, it could easily become very obvious if they did overcharge.

But even if public agency managements did know they were being ripped off ten to one, there is damn little they can do about it, given the sorry reality of Federal and State laws governing public contracting. Worse than the disadvantage in monetary negotiating, that the law puts public agencies into, is the required use of the lowest bidder, which means that almost always, the one that must be picked is the stupidest, most inexperienced, inefficient, and always most incompetent ones out there. Private railroads don't do business with them for a reason, but places like BART, Muni, and VTA, etc, are all forced to - almost exclusively.

So, in California at least, it won't matter what SMART does, what technology they choose, what money is available, where the Bayside terminal gets put, or even what public agency actually administers the project; they (and us) are certain to get screwed - at least ten to one.

A public dollar only buys one tenth the amount stuff in general, that a private dollar buys! And it is very obvious now, that it is going to be getting much worse - very soon. Before, we had merely slipped on a banana peal on our way to hell. But now we're in the hand basket, sliding on ice, down the slippery slope - all the way to Helangon!

Too bad! So I am finding it harder and harder to care anymore - what these ninnys with no vision do (actually what they are failing to do). But I really don't want to work and live with an attitude like that. I sometimes wonder what it will take, to be able to not notice any of this anymore. Change jobs I suppose.

Or - I suppose - I will just retire very soon and be leaving California - Not all states are this screwed up.

OPB