California Will Not Complete $77 Billion High-Speed Rail Project (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday the state will not complete a $77.3 billion planned high-speed rail project, but will finish a smaller section of the line. "The project, as currently planned, would cost too much and take too long. There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency," Newsom said in his first State of the State Address Tuesday to lawmakers. "Right now, there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to (Los Angeles). I wish there were," he said. Newsom said the state will complete a 110-mile (177 km) high-speed rail link between Merced and Bakersfield. In March 2018, the state forecast the costs had jumped by $13 billion to $77 billion and warned that the costs could be as much as $98.1 billion.

California planned to build a 520-mile system in the first phase that would allow trains to travel at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour in the traffic-choked state from Los Angeles to San Francisco and begin full operations by 2033. Newsom said he would not give up entirely on the effort. "Abandoning high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises and lawsuits to show for it," he said. "And by the way, I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump."

Comments

Re:Badly planned from the beginning.

[HornWumpus]

Your not going HSR fast in the Bay area. The urban part is just the Caltrain route, just upgrade that. Besides unless you repurpose the golden gate. SF is a dead end. Even if you do the golden gate, that puts you in Marin, good luck with those nuts. Also note: HSR already paid SF huge bucks to build a terminal. Straight up bribe for political support. Bet the money is gone.

There is already Amtrak commuter from Oakland to Sac, connecting to BART and Sac light rail (kind of expensive vs just driving to the end of BART). Sac has a clear shot north and is already the rail crossroads.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing wealth with income. Most people become very wealthy when their investments, such as stocks, increase in value. While shares can provide yearly income in the form of dividends payed out by the company, the majority of the value resides in the shares themselves. Until the shares are sold it is not considered income nor does it get taxed, even then, if has been held for more then a year it only gets taxed at the max capital gain rate of %20. Amazon has never paid a dividend so if Bezo's didn't sell any shares (and ignoring other sources) his income would be just his salary of $82.000.

and WAR

[bussdriver]

The USA needs WAR to get them to pay for anything. I should have figured that the highway system was a form of military spending.

Re:Because it's a boondoggle?

[Ichijo]

What are you talking about? High speed rail is wildly successful in every country that builds it. It always makes an operating profit within a few years after it opens (even Taiwan's), even our nation's own Acela Express makes "a profit of about $41 per passenger."

So on what basis do you claim that it "isn't working"?