California's High Speed Cash Sink

If I didn't expect to have bail them out (via federal loans or something) this would be funny. How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails

First, let's look at the bit the caught my attention, the political dysfunction in California. In what follows SNCF refers to The Société nationale des chemins de fer français, the French national rail company.

The company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF.‌

The company‌ ‌pulled out in 2011.

“There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”

Morocco, a country most Americans would have trouble finding on an unlabeled map, built a bullet train in less time - significantly less time - than California.

And then of course there are the costs. When this project started in 2007 the "projected cost" was $33 billion dollars.

When the California High-Speed Rail Authority issued its new 2022 draft business plan in February, it estimated an ultimate cost as high as $105 billion. Less than three months later, the “final plan” raised the estimate to $113 billion.

The rail authority said it has accelerated the pace of construction on the starter system, but at the current spending rate of $1.8 million a day, according to projections widely used by engineers and project managers, the train could not be completed in this century.

How is it possible that Americans cannot build 500 miles of railroad in 30 years. (This whole thing started in 1996, in case you had forgotten.) It only took six years to build 1900 miles of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. That ran from Council Bluffs, Iowa to Oakland, California. But then someone said we have lost the ability to build things.

They were told not to do this. They were told to stop doing this. But all the cool kids have high speed trains, and besides, they are the mighty, trail-blazing Californians. You don't know what they can accomplish. (Just ask them, and they will tell you that.)

There is more. Click thru.