"I call this the great train robbery."-Quentin Kopp, LA Times-criticizing the new HSR and possibley affordable" HSR that is replacing Quentin Kopp's original plan, for his cost is no object vision, for a "Runaway High Speed Money Train from Hell".

Quentin should know all about how to carry off a "great train robbery". After all, he's the one who pulled one off for his entire tenure on the CHSRA Board, on the taxpayers of California. And, often with full "bi-partisan" support from all of Arnold's appointee's.

Quentin Kopp is one of those chiefly responsible for wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on planning contracts for worthless business plans, based on questionable or untested assumptons, based on questionable or overtly self serving data, based on little or no realistic analysis of other reasonable alternatives, with an undefined purpose of need, and no realistic analysis of the costs and/or benefits, but full of hype and visions, with no effective management in place to oversee any of it.

There was no effective accountability or oversight at CHSRA under Quentin Kopp, to the point where every bad plan and screw up by contractors, Board staff, or Boardmembers, was well rewarded with even more contracts to go back and get paid to do the work over and over again.

The lies told to voters, the State Legislature, our Congressional Representatives, and the FRA about the costs, performance capabilities, the level of planning or "shovel readiness of the Federal project requests, all stem directly from the seeds of a CHSRA culture based on project hype and hyperbole, rather than sound analysis of real costs and/or real benefits, that were planted at CHSRA under Kopp's tenure.

The incompetence and mismanagement of the CHSRA under Kopp's "visionary leadership permeated every level. This Kopp legacy of a dysfunctional culture of cost is no object visions, repeated incompetent planning, and serial (surreal?) lies to a public who sincerely wanted an effective pasenger rail option, is what has lead to the current HSR fiasco, that the Brown appointee's are now trying desparately to fix.

About the only thing that still isn't to be found lacking in Quentin Kopp's record and legacy, of repeated failed agency management and leadership during his tenure at the CHSRA, is his sheer chutzpah.

It was good to see that Kopp still supports "real" high speed rail, though. Unfortunately, that still seems to look a lot like the kind of "real" high speed rail one might build primarily in order to slop a lot of special interest troughs, with unlimited taxpayer money, while nobody is really paying attention?