CHSRA has been a mismanaged mess, some think it still is, some think it is changing. I guess we will see?

CHSRA got rid of Mehdi, they got rid of Tony, and hey are probably getting rid of a few more in the CHSRA's "competency challenged" management team, very shortly. They prabably could stand to get rid of Kopp and Diridon on the Board, too.

What is really needed most, however, is to rewrite the current HSR legislation to require cost benefit criteria be used to analyze investments, to requre integrated incremental development, to require cooperation with local agencies, to require value engineering, to require minimum operable segments, to require "stand alone" incremental speed/safety/capacity improvement projects in the urbanized areas, and to require open competitive procurement-and not contiue with existing and proposed sweetheart deals for the vendors. The CHSRA is still wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on useless work, that will have to be redone, as I write, and that must be stopped right now.

Some of the two billion dollars of the ARRA High Speed money should be diverted and used to reduce travel time by one hour from LA to San Diego/ This would include making LAUPT a runthrough station, using the already cleared runthourh project. This would finish most double track and raise existing speeds to 110 on many segments, benefitting millions of annual users of LOSSAN, Metrolink, and Coaster. The imcompetent EIS currently being done by CHSRA between LA and Anaheim is actually delaying almost a hundred million dollars in already planned, cleared, and ready to build capacity and grade separation imporvements between LA and Anaheim.

I have it on good authority that the cities in Southern Calfifornia who have been trying to work with the CHSRA's mismanaged team on the EIS are about to "lawyer up" due to the incompetence they have seen, thus far. So it may not be CHSRA's call anymore, after that.