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Originally posted by Niki2:
Sick bastards, they did it!

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California is poised to become home to the nation's first truly high-speed rail system with Gov. Jerry Brown's signing Wednesday of a law authorizing the first leg of construction for a line that will eventually connect Los Angeles and San Francisco.

California will issue $2.6 million in bonds, with the federal government providing an additional $3.2 billion, to build the initial segment of the high-speed rail between Merced and the San Fernando Valley on the north side of Los Angeles, officials said.

The high-speed rail project was part of a transportation bill signed by Brown that calls for general improvements to the state's rail system involving a total of $4.7 billion in state funding matched with $7.9 billion in federal and local funds, officials said.

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Spin, spin, spin, all of it. Gov. Moonbeam has let me down on this one, big time; our supposed "high speed rail" is a JOKE! Wanna know why?

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In the valley south of Fresno, the issue is the right of way. Farmers presumed the bullet train would run along the Highway 99 corridor to Bakersfield.

Instead, the route heads due south from the highway, through pastures, orchards and residential portions of Hanford. Also in the bullet train’s path: a series of high-tech dairies that are valued at $100 million, says dairyman Joe Machado, 50, owner of a 1,000-cow dairy that is among those targeted.[

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The fervor of support for the HSR project due to unemployment numbers is tempered, however, by the financial reality of the project. The estimated cost initially stood at $33 billion and has ballooned to $43 billion, which many still see as a very conservative assessment. Some experts estimate the cost to be anywhere from $80 to $100 billion, while the ballot measure initially authorized only $9 billion in high interest bonds for construction of the railway.

Even with the additional $2.25 billion in federal stimulus funding promised for the project, the likelihood that funds will come near an amount covering total construction costs—not to mention maintenance costs for the largest and most expensive transportation system in the country—is low.

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One of the things they touted was that it would increase employment...studies on the Japanese high-speed rail shows no growth in employment. Then there's

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But the Catch-22 is that, if California does start building without securing future funding, it could end up with a $6 billion track to nowhere. Washington insisted that California build the initial stretch between two outposts in the lightly populated San Joaquin Valley.

LaHood and other boosters marvel at bullet trains in Europe and Japan, insisting simplistically that we need them, too. But the sprawling, decentralized cities of the United States do not make convenient destinations for train travelers. Rail must compete with well-established air and car options. Business travel is one ostensible purpose of bullet trains in California, but increasingly people meet via video conference.

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Part of the funds will go to foreign companies and advance their technologies. High-speed rail is a worldwide business, and the leaders have become export powerhouses. Yet it's another sector that American industry abandoned long ago.

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The first leg, which will take several years to complete, connects Bakersfield to Madera, cutting the 130-mile trip from three hours to under an hour. So whoopee, it turns a three-hour trip from nowhere to nowhere into a one-hour trip. This is supposedly the "backbone" of the 500+ mile system, but it'll take years, when it's complete few will use it, so how's it gonna get money to build the "next" leg?? And it'll take MANY years to complete the whole damned thing; who's gonna pay for that down the line, and what technology might come out while they're building it to make it obsolete? Plus, how many auto-addicted Californians will make use of it anyway??

So why push ahead anyway? Easy:

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The Department of Transportation has a message for California: Use your federal high-speed rail money or lose it.

And if California can’t decide fast enough, any other state interested in claiming those funds might be out of luck — since the money will no longer be available after Sept. 30, according to a DOT official on Friday.

The timing is crucial because the money will be forfeited altogether if it isn’t doled out by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

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This whole thing is a pipe dream which has more odds of turning into a multi-billion-dollar fiasco than anything else. But hey, it's politics...

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Damn Niki.....

Denying taking whatever Federal funds are available and spending them on bullshit is abhorrent to you?

Welcome to my world.

On one hand, there is no doubt that this will create temporary, high paying jobs on the taxpayer's heads, but at the same time, it's as meaningless as yearly re-construction of the Chicago area 294 every year. Gotta keep those union guys employed every year though, lest they vote Republican next term...

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Originally posted by Niki2:

This whole thing is a pipe dream which has more odds of turning into a multi-billion-dollar fiasco than anything else. But hey, it's politics...

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Originally posted by RionaEire:
I think its a stupid wasteful idea.

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