Carol,

I heard an even more cynical assessment yesterday from a source in Sacramento. He just noted that he felt that all of the money from Washington would be a gift to one contractor, and we would likely see no real track, bridges, grade separations, or anything of substance....

Before I get the "hate mail", note, I absolutely do support HSR. We do deserve a "first world" rail passenger system for California. But, let's not confuse support for high speed rail with support for obvious stupidity and waste. The CHSRA,in its present form, is an incompetently managed, largely dysfunctional, and very possibly corrupt mess.

The CHSRA and the whole state rail program needs to be reformed and made accountable to the taxpayers, with proper planning, independent peer review, and transparent independent oversight. This needs to be done now, before the current dysfunctional CHSRA really starts wasting money on a truly grand scale. Most of the planning money CHSRA has spent, thus far, appears to have been largely wasted, with these examples of obvious resulting loss of public confidence in the project.

BOB2