American Thinker: Nobody with any authority over it can admit that Jerry Brown’s pet project, a high-speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, is a multi-billion dollar fiasco and pull the plug to avoid squandering additional billions of dollars from taxpayers. Governor Gavin Newsom has “temporarily” downsized the project, promising to build only the 165 mile segment from Merced to Bakersfield in the flat Central Valley, a trip that few people would ever make at the sort of fares necessary to sustain high speed rail service, a premium-priced commodity everywhere in the world with high speed rail. (The barely high-speed Acela trains between DC and Boston charge fares comparable to airlines.) Very few executives need to travel from Merced to Bakersfield quickly.
But saving the taxpayers’ hard-earned money would require leaving partially-finished bridges and roadbeds in the Central Valley that would quickly become symbols of “Brown’s folly” as it inevitably would be known, and an embarrassment to the Democrats who championed the project. So, in order to save face, they want something – anything – that could claim to be at least marginally useful. more here
I think they should go to coal fired steam trains.
Tried and proven over the ages and sure to attract tourists as well.
What about that battery making genius??
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in Bakersfield and wished I could take a fast train to Fresno.
Uh, yes I can tell you. Zero times.
They should just build the tracks, let them rust for a decade, pave over them and call it a bike trail for the homeless.
…I’d be happy to donate the Cincinnati Streetcar to them, since it goes nowhere anyone wants to go, blocks traffic, gets in accidents, has design flaws that prevent its use in the winter (in CINCINNATI!), and has lost money EVERY SINGLE YEAR…it’s a good fit since it was built as a boondoggle by Cincinnati’s former Black mayor who was an Obama Mini-Me, with funds from the Obama Administration that he hurried up and spent so it would be hard to abandon the project (shades of Obamacare), leaving his fellow lefties to run of defunding the streetcar, only to fund it immediately after being elected.
…Communist like two things: spending other people’s money, and controlling other people. Public transportation does BOTH of these things, and what a wonderful pot of money it provides for the corrupt…
…why not just have Buttigieg and his gay friends run a train on Mr. Governor, and leave taxpayers the hell OUT of it…
Put the rails down…..Now you’ll have something with-which to run the politicians out of town.
It never was a “fast, high speed” train as compared to French or Japanese standards. The “half-assed” train to nowhere.
It was another gov’t money trough to begin with. The millions spent on environmental studies, various designs, etc., etc. Those consultants are long gone with their early retirement wealth.
POTUS Trump had more than a few laugh from the National Association of Realtors speech, when he brought up the total failure of this boondoggle.
Forgot to mention, I love the “Gavin the Dank Engine” pic.
“You’re a very useless engine, Gavin”–Sir Topham Hat
Partially finished bridges might make for some good gallows substitute.
So, you are tooling along at 200 mph when an earthquake hits, is that the time to ask yourself if flying over it all wouldn’t have been a better choice?
^^^you’ll be flying either way if the train’s on a bridge at the time, @Roman V, but the STOP at the end will be WAY different on the TRAIN…
Back around the turn of the century, southern California had a substantial rail system, with a line as far out as San Bernardino & up to the san gabriels..
By the time the 60’s rolled up America was well on their own wheels and the budget came down to roads or rail repairs, that and the oil company lobby, killed the RR.
More fookin idiots that are evidently unable to learn from history.
The big picture: who got rich off this 70 billion dollar rip off? What politicians got paid off? Whose campaigns will this money fund, and where?