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

As the old maxim goes

[SuperKendall]

Something that can't go on forever, won't.

Or maybe it really should be - sooner or later, you run out of other people's money.

Re:As the old maxim goes

[Miamicanes]

The main problem with "first floor retail" is that most downtown areas don't have blocks that are large enough. The next time you go to Best Buy, Target, or Walmart, note just how HUGE the store's footprint is... then compare that to the size of an average square block downtown. In most cities, you'd need at least two square blocks... three, after you add in the loading docks, ramps to the parking garage, required means of egress, at least some minimal first-floor lobby for the residential floors above, and service areas for things like trash. And most of the streetscape you end up with will be utterly and completely dead. At BEST, you'll end up with a streetscape that's 95% glass window with stuff behind it, but someone on the wrong side of the building might easily have to walk the equivalent of 2 or 3 current blocks just to get to the store's actual entrance. Retail stores, especially big-box stores, HATE having to deal with multiple entrances and exits... they want to funnel everyone through a single point, because it makes it easier to prevent shoplifting and reduces the cashier staffing demands.

For stores like Target and Walmart, spanning multiple floors is something they try to avoid at all costs. For a store like Walgreens or CVS, the second floor is where they stick the prescriptions and ostomy supplies. Even in mall anchor stores, you usually end up with a situation where the floors that open directly onto a major floor of the mall concourse get lots of foot traffic, and the remaining floors end up looking like a ghost town. In the US, at least, VERY few malls -- even in dense urban areas -- can pull off more than 3 stories before the additional floors look more like virtual ghost towns where they put the bridal stores, tuxedo rental places, movie theater lobby, storefront churches, and other places where people go as an intentional destination instead of casually walking by end up.

Downtown Miami illustrates this problem perfectly. As a matter of law and zoning, every single new skyscraper that's gotten built over the past 25 years has first-floor empty... most of which is in a state of perpetual vacancy because the spaces are too small, or the parking is too inadequate or expensive. In Chicago, there are skyscrapers with big-box stores occupying the basements... but even then, most of those buildings have at least one or two sides that are dead to pedestrians.

In Miami, you'd have a HELL of a time trying to convince a retailer like Walmart to build a store in a skyscraper's basement in downtown Miami, because their insurance costs would KILL them. No, it's not due to the water table... groundwater is a fact of life in almost EVERY big city. Dig a large 25 foot deep hole in London or lower Manhattan, and you'll find at LEAST as much groundwater as you'll encounter in Miami. The REAL problem is storm surge and/or storm-drain failure that leaves the street under a few inches of water for hours or days at a time. It might cause minimal damage to a flooded underground garage that's mostly just bare concrete that needs to drain and dry out, but would cause literally MILLIONS of dollars in damage to a flooded-out store like Walmart full of merchandise. Miami's storm drains fail ALL THE GODDAMN TIME, and half the time it's not even due to a "real" storm... it's because the county doesn't do proper storm-drain maintenance, so the storm drains get clogged with rotting vegetation & trash until we get a week or two of downpours that leave a random square mile with the streets and sidewalks under at least an inch or two of water. The problem is, it might only be an inch of water at the sidewalk, but that inch of water is enough to leave a basement retail store under literally 16-25 feet of water (because once the water gets high enough to pour into an opening, it's going to KEEP pouring in until the water level inside matches the water level outside).

Re:As the old maxim goes

[JohnnyBGod]

I find it amusing how a solution that works just fine the world over somehow can't possibly work in the US.

Feature not bug

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> would cost too much and take too long. There's been too little oversight and not enough transparency

That's usually a feature, not a bug, in government projects. How can you pay off your buddies if people can see who's getting paid?

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[saloomy]

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

China wins again!

[Pollux]

Why can China figure out how to construct 18,000 miles of high speed rail, and we can't even figure out how to connect LA to SF?

High speed rail... dark side of the moon... mass production of consumer goods... America is failing repeatedly, with or without Trump.

Re:China wins again!

[Jeremi]

Let's just say that China takes a very narrow view of property rights. Obtaining the necessary land is much quicker and cheaper when you can just order anybody off of their property at gunpoint with no due process.

Re:China wins again!

[rogoshen1]

us: lawsuits, red tape, more lawsuits, elections, more red tape
china: prison, education camps, execution.

basically it's way easier to do large-scale engineering projects if you can jail or bury anyone who speaks out.

Re:Seriously? Spite Trump?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remind me... how did the last civil war go for the secessionists?

It'd be a shame of Trump ordered the arrest of Newsom and anyone else not obeying federal law.

No doubt #Resist will start a drum circle in protest, that'll show em!

Why can't any government entity

[bobstreo]

create a contract that penalizes the other party for late delivery? If you give the contractor 5x the base price and still have nothing to show for it, you should be jailed.

Government contracts are not supposed to be an endless trough of money.

Re:Why can't any government entity

[alvinrod]

You assume that some of this isn't by design. Government contracts are a convenient way for politicians to kickback some of the bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H campaign contributions that politicians receive from various companies, unions, etc.

The other side of it is that sometimes its other parts of the government that are responsible for the holdups. I'm sure that this thing has been hit with the environmental impact report stick so many times it's cross-eyed.

Re:Seriously? Spite Trump?

[saloomy]

"In January 2017, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office said by several measures California is, indeed, a donor state, but just barely. It receives $0.99 in federal expenditures per dollar of taxes paid"

So, it's about dead even. Since California based companies and individuals have written off so many state and local taxes on their federal income tax returns for so long, they effectively short out the federal government in favor of state and local taxes. Since the TCJA, there has been a cap on the SALT (state and local taxes) deductions you can make. So it will likely change in the future.

Before TCJA, if you made $100,000 a year and you lived in California, you paid to Uncle Sam less than if you made $100,000 a year and lived in Kentucky (since Kentucky had lower state and local taxes). In fact, California is the highest SALT state, so it paid the lowest to Uncle Sam, all else being equal.

Now, it's closer to normal.

But don't let \ stupid little things like facts keep you from getting angry.

so many mistakes

[supernova87a]

As much of a fan of high speed rail as I am, this project from the beginning was plagued by many issues:

- Distance of SF-LA being just beyond the edge of air/rail travel decision break point
- Lots of intractable property rights issues along the route (and lack of political willingness to exert eminent domain for a more reasonable route)
- High required labor and engineering cost (union requirements)
- Backwards approach to do the easiest part / least useful segment first
- Management team that kept moving the target (or was deceived) on cost, geotechnical feasibility, political backing

As a result, I concluded that despite how good it would be as a showcase project, this was not anywhere near the top of the list of cost-effective things you would invest in to improve CA transportation issues. And now they've had to embrace reality.

I would even say, the whole thing should be canned rather than continuing to dump money into a stupid central valley rail that no one will use. Bakersfield to Modesto? Tell me who's going to take that train...

The worst thing is that this will set a bad example / leave people burned and resistant to trying it again. Sometimes, we really do need authoritarian-style government to clear out resistance when a good project is identified but individual interests bog it down.

Re:so many mistakes

[jrumney]

Add to that, they are doing it ass backwards. The sensible approach would have been to build high speed rail San Diego - LA and San Jose - SF first, then once people get used to the idea, build the longer distance link in between. Building the link between two minor cities first for cost reasons is just going to doom the project from the start, as there will never be enough demand for that service to pay for the route (even if that route is much cheaper per mile than the more densely populated routes).

It sucks to be us

[AlanObject]

Every modern country I ever visited has extensive passenger rail systems that everybody uses. But we can't afford it.

Military adventures in the Middle east costing hundreds of billions? No problem. But no new infrastructure. That's socialism or something.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[Solandri]

The idea that the 1% has all the power is a myth. The IRS tax stats are freely available for anyone to see and analyze. The 1% (everyone making approx $500k per year or more) only accounts for 19% of total income in the U.S. The vast majority of economic power in the U.S. (64% of all income) rests with those making $50k-$500k per year.

This is also why the fantasies about giving the 1% a 90% tax rate won't really accomplish much. The 1% simply doesn't make enough money. If you taxed them at 90% (which with certain state tax rates would be a 100% total tax rate), that would only bring in enough money to pay for about a third of the Federal budget. Paying for the Federal government at its current size requires a significant tax rate on those making $50k to $500k, and increasing Federal spending means the taxes on those people has to increase to pay for it.

That said, the ineptocracy happens because currently 61% of the adult population makes less than $50k, and 43% of adults make less than $30k. If you don't flatten income distribution so a majority of the population makes the majority of income, the majority of the population will simply vote to take via government programs what they're not being paid enough to buy on their own. And the end result will be an ineptocracy.

SF to LA should be routine

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are the facts:

Paris to Marseille is a 482 mile drive, compared to 479 miles to Liechtenstein. Today I can buy a Ouigo TGV ticket for 35 euros that will take me from Paris to Marseille in 3h21min.

For comparison:

• SF to LA is 381 miles.
• A regular Amtrak train from NYC to Boston takes 4 hours, for a distance of 216 miles, and the Acela is only marginally faster (3h35min). This is in the "Northeast Corridor," with a population greater than 50 million (compared to France's total metropolitan population of 65 million), and triple France's population density.

Compared to the developed world the US is doing poorly in this regard. We have no excuse for these failures other than incompetence and corruption.

Because it's a boondoggle?

[raymorris]

> why on earth the project is not a multi-state and multi-nation venture

Because other states and countries don't want to waste billions and billions of dollars on something that isn't working?

Maybe it should "go back to Donald Trump"

[melted]

He seems to know how to get shit done for half the budget of the Democrats.

Re:Saw it coming

[nukenerd]

Elon Musk proposed a far better and cheaper plan and they ignored it.

Get back to us when he has his idea actually working and with actual cost figures - ones which he has not pulled out of his backside.

Re:As the old bullshitting faggot goes on forever.

[MMC Monster]

The idea that the 1% has all the power is a myth. The IRS tax stats are freely available for anyone to see and analyze. The 1% (everyone making approx $500k per year or more) only accounts for 19% of total income in the U.S. The vast majority of economic power in the U.S. (64% of all income) rests with those making $50k-$500k per year.

Who care about income? Wealth is where the power is.

The top 1% in net worth in the U.S. hold 40% of the nation's wealth. The bottom 50% in net worth of the U.S. population combined hold 1% of the nation's wealth.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (First paragraph and first chart.)

And this is exactly why...

[erp_consultant]

California is going bankrupt. I knew this thing was doomed to failure right from the beginning and have called it out on here many times only to be ridiculed by these big project rail supporters.

Doesn't really bode well for the Green New Deal now does it?