Thank you for asking! It’s 7 years behind schedule, way over priced, and there’s in-fighting.
CPR: Void in Leadership Continues for California High-Speed Rail.
Four months after then-California High Speed Rail Authority Chief Executive Jeff Morales told authority board members he was moving on and two months after Morales made his decision public, the agency overseeing the state’s $64 billion bullet train project hasn’t settled on his successor.
In 2012, four months after Chief Executive Roelof van Ark abruptly left following two stormy years, Morales already had the job. This time around, the same speedy selection process seemed likely. The RT&S transportation industry website reported after Morales’ decision was announced in April that the board was likely to have his replacement approved before Morales’ final day of June 2.
But the CHSRA board met in closed session on the succession issue on May 10 and June 14 without reaching a decision. The rail agency’s number two job – deputy chief executive – has also been vacant since Dennis Trujillo left in December.
The empty slots atop the CHSRA power structure come at a critical time.
According to a federal report prepared under the Obama administration, the state’s high-speed rail project is already seven years behind schedule and on its way to having a 50 percent cost overrun on the $6.4 billion, 118-mile first segment now being built in the Central Valley. MORE
No big shock. Typical. Par for the course. That’s why these losers work in Government. What private business wouldn’t have already fired them after the first year?
Those Democrats sure loves themselves those massive big budget (and over budget, and unnecessary) high speed rail projects.
Must offer excellent opportunities for big pay days to friends and family and other political insiders
Watch former state treasurer Phil Angelides get the job. He needs a fresh supply of BS to get rich(er) from.
If the dang thing is gonna get built, someone ought to dig up LTG Leslie Groves and prod him back to life. Among other fine work, he oversaw the building of the Pentagon and managed all construction on the Manhattan Engineer Project. He did good work as do many autocratic workaholics.
But, but…..if liberals can imagine it…..that’s all that’s needed.
Wanna see this horse shit end overnight? Ask the public employees to have their retirement accounts invested in Brown’s favorite project.
As much of a boondoggle as that may be, Illinois wanted to borrow billions so they could bank it for the interest payments.
The Audacity of Stupidity!
Hmmm. Can’t find anyone to head up the project. How odd. Well, since the only qualification is that candidate has to be politically connected, might I suggest a New York judge, whose about to become unemployed because she’s massively obese, in her 50s, and still not potty trained?
And just how am I going to go from Bakersfield to Fresno and back? And why do I want to go from Bakersfield to Fresno and back?
Wyatt
Replace the word “GO” with “Flee”.
I thought they had wasted every last dime on ‘environmental impact studies?’
The initial plan was for a HIGH SPEED rail system, directly connecting San Diego to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Sacramento.
What we got was a massive waste of most of the money on “environmental studies,” a new plan for a rail system that is not high speed, that does not directly connect San Diego to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Sacramento, and has a rail map that looks like a corrupt unreasoning five-year-old drew a complex squiggle on a map of the State.
Everyone involved in this fraud belongs, at least, in prison for the rest of their lives.
@Bad Brad: I’m not sure fleeing Bakersfield to Fresno or vice versa is anything but an exercise in futility.
@AC: I actually voted for the high speed rail proposition when it was proposed. Like an idiot, I believed that a high speed rail system that went from LA to San Francisco in no more than 4 hours would be a good thing and that the California legislature would recognize this. Just run the damn thing up the 5 freeway, although engineering the route through the Grapevine would have been challenging.
But there is nothing like billions of dollars of “free” money to entice politicians to fuck up what I still think was a good idea. Lesson learned, although I should have realized this when this boondoggle was proposed.
You know, if that was planned for a route between
tijuana and Sandy Eggo, it would have been built in
a month and under budget.