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California's Bullet Train Hurtles Towards a Multibillion-Dollar Overrun (latimes.com)
schwit1 quotes the Los Angeles Times: California's bullet train could cost taxpayers 50% more than estimated — as much as $3.6 billion more. And that's just for the first 118 miles through the Central Valley, which was supposed to be the easiest part of the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A confidential Federal Railroad Administration risk analysis, obtained by the Times, projects that building bridges, viaducts, trenches and track from Merced to Shafter, just north of Bakersfield, could cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion, compared with the original budget of $6.4 billion.
The federal document outlines far-reaching management problems: significant delays in environmental planning, lags in processing invoices for federal grants and continuing failures to acquire needed property. The California High-Speed Rail Authority originally anticipated completing the Central Valley track by this year, but the federal risk analysis estimates that that won't happen until 2024, placing the project seven years behind schedule.
The whole project is expected to cost more than $68 billion.
The federal document outlines far-reaching management problems: significant delays in environmental planning, lags in processing invoices for federal grants and continuing failures to acquire needed property. The California High-Speed Rail Authority originally anticipated completing the Central Valley track by this year, but the federal risk analysis estimates that that won't happen until 2024, placing the project seven years behind schedule.
The whole project is expected to cost more than $68 billion.
It may work eventually, but it's a boondoggle for construction companies and mayors/governors.
It will never have a single paying passenger. This has been an easy prediction since at least the year after it was approved.
It's the 21st century, not the 19th. How many airports could you build with $68 Billion ?
I am shocked that by LA Times writer Ralph Vartabedian's article on the supposed risk and overruns to California's ongoing high-speed rail (HSR) effort. Vartabedian is a known opponent of HSR whose every article drips with antagonism against this project, as a quick review of his past articles will clearly show. Anyone who reads the purported analysis (in fact a single Powerpoint file, taken out of context) will quickly see that the article's claims are not justified -- for example, a *possible* $3B overrun (really less, since this compares against obsolete estimates) does not equal a 50% budget problem for a project of this size. The entire state stands to benefit immensely from this project, which will connect BART, Caltrain, and VTA users in the North with Metro, Metrolink, and Amtrak users in the South --- and connect both to the isolated, ignored, economically-depressed Central Valley. Californians, and all who believe in progress, should embrace this transformative project and reject the uniformed mudslinging by the Vartabedians of the world.
The Interstate System. NASA's trips to the planets. FDA keeping your food from killing you. SS keeping Grandma from moving in with you. NiH keeping research going on the diseases that might kill you. Need I continue or has your myopic stupidity completely clouded your vision?
I can confidently asset that the fleecing of the taxpayers has hardly begun. Already over seven years late and fifty per cent over budget, they have found a good vein and are going to suck it dry. Look for Trump to try to pull the federal funds, or contain them to the railroad subsidy to get the eastern states squealing too.
a mere $3B? no big deal, chump change
The liberal voters in Seattle pushed through a $54B transportation bill for only 64 MILES of track....Ya, with "B"..
http://www.seattletimes.com/se...
Every property owner in 2 counties will get the benefit of higher taxes ($400+ per year) on top of our already 10+% sales tax.
Sure, traffic is awful, but I can't fathom over $843M per mile of light rail. What a testament to government bloat, payola and incompetence...
California tax payers should consider themselves lucky with such a paltry number.
What is so difficult anout doing ground radar surveys so that you know in advance what you are going to encounter
Because if you identify all the problems upfront, and give an accurate estimate, then YOUR PROJECT WILL NOT BE APPROVED. It is much smarter to drastically lowball, and then start jacking up the costs after enough has been spent to invoke the "sunk cost" argument. Business people are taught to ignore sunk costs, but in politics, sunk costs are never ignored.
For me, when I started working for the government, one problem I had was that it was hard to get used to everyone slacking off so much. Previously I worked for a company I own, so any slacking off hit me directly in theb pocketbook. It was frustrating when government employees would come into my office and chit-chat about nothing for an hour.
I eventually got used to it, relaxed, and enjoyed my stress-free job. The less-stressed approach didn't hurt productivity *as much* as I would have expected because it fostered communication between employees and didn't lead to rushing through work, cutting corners on quality because you're rushing. Our quality problems were instead due to lack of competence, because nobody got fired for failing to update their skills in 20 years.
Back in private sector now, I'm glad I had that experience. It reinforced something from working for companies I owned: I don't accept unrealistic deadlines, then deliver crappy trying to meet a deadline that doesn't allow quality work. I can and do tell the boss "no, I don't think we can do project X in a month, and I'm not going to promise you it'll be done in that time." So far, management has appreciated, or at least accepted, being told the truth. They know what "technical debt" is, and they don't want more of it. Actually, MOST of the time they don't want more technical debt. Sometimes, incurring technical debt makes sense, just like monetary debt (borrowing) sometimes makes sense. One instance springs to mind - we wanted to replace an annual contract with an in-house solution. It made sense to use duct tape and baling wire where needed to get the job done before the yearly cost was renewed, then replace the duct tape with bolts afterwards.
You have some very good managers. My private sector experience has been different. If I tell them that we can't do project "X" in a month, and I won't be promising that, the managers in my experience will immediately say, "do it at a far shorter time, or we will find someone who will." The concept of "technical debt" is ignored, because what matters is getting the product out -now-, so the next round of VC funding can be approved, because it is far more important to ship -something- and clinch the sales... than to ship something release worthy and be behind. If the shortcuts taken with coding cause major problems, the company just axes devs and makes the call to Tata or Infosys.
On the other hand, I'm very thankful I'm in the public sector. My boss will ask for a solution that will work for five years. Not something that is duct taped together that will make the lash-bearers in this financial quarter happy and not spawn shareholder lawsuits (but require exponentially more work each time until the axe swings and it just goes offshore), but something that can be implemented and maintained for a good amount of time, then things moved to the next solution.
My experience is that the private sector doesn't want an Engineer Scott who gets the job on time, but is conservative about the scheduling estimates. They want a Captain Cass Mason who can promise anything and everything, with the steam engines always overdriven. When the ship blows, no big deal, stuff gets offshored, and the execs get their bonuses anyway because it was supposed to be offshored anyway.
Almost a hundred years ago, Henry Flagler had the Florida East Coast Railroad built from Jacksonville to Miami to Key West in approximately the same time it now takes **just** to do the environmental impact studies.
It's taking longer to re-double-track FEC along a roadbed built decades ago between WEST PALM BEACH & Miami (for the new Tri-Rail) than it took to build the entire original railroad across a mostly-uninhabited swamp literally a hundred miles from the nearest real city (in 1900, Miami's population was barely 100).