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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."
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."
The Chinese have the political will to modernize their country, and are relatively patriotic, as a byproduct of their propaganda, and information control. We are more individualistic and put ourselves above the needs of everyone else.
Reminds me of a Milton Friedman quote: "I believe the government spends too much money. We should spend less money on everyone else, and spend more on me - Everyone"
The problem is that there is no geographical representation of California. The coastal cities have 100% of the power, with the countryside east of the coast having zero voice. Well, except for Federal lawsuits.
We can look at things like the Salton Sea, where nothing is done about it until the mass fishkills are so great, LA smells it, then once people have to deal with the stank (people who actually have sway over the state), then stuff gets done. Or, the general water crisis where you have rice paddies on one side, perma-droughts on the other.
California should be split up. Let the coast be one state, let everything east of it be another. That way, someone might see something from the state government other than higher taxes, more middle fingers from Sacramento, and more feel good laws. It is amazing how little that state does, with the highest tax rates in the US, be it the highest income tax, highest property tax, and highest salex tax.
No wonder why hick towns like Austin get 300 Californians a day moving there, and there is a diaspora going on away from that state.
When a recession hits, where will that state get their income? They won't be touching the well-heeled people, and the proles are already taxed out, causing more people to flee.
CA's politics amaze me. Can the politicos do any more to run people out of that state?
The approach was flawed from the outset. To take a "train" today from San Diego to Sacramento you spend 5 hours in a bus, between Los Angeles and Fresno due to the mountains. Your two options are to hug the coast which doesn't provide value to inland communities, or figure out a way through the mountain, which would be about a 40-mile tunnel through a seismically active area. (Yes, tunnels are safe places to be during earthquakes, unless they cross fault lines, which this would.)
But, if they pulled it off, they would suddenly have a tunnel to Antelope Valley/Palmdale, which would provide a huge economic impact on the region and allow for a metric shit-ton of affordable housing with a 20-minute commute to downtown LA. The problem is that just that section would cost about $20-40 billion.
On the upside, once it is done, (and you have presumably purchased the right-of-way to Fresno already) the rest of the project is easy to make incrementally.
Three words: Interstate Highway System.
It's not the lack of Chinese authoritarianism that's preventing us from making it work. It's our inability to align all our interests and resources to make it happen.
Back in 1956, we passed something called the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. In 35 years, we constructed over 48,000 miles of dedicated highway, three times as much Chinese high speed rail in only double the time. How did it all come together? Simple: the threat of war. Eisenhower was inspired by the national highway system of Germany and how it served as vital military infrastructure for them during World War II. Investing in that infrastructure for the homeland would be a strategic military asset in case of invasion. So far, it's yet to be used that way, but it's contributed tremendous returns to our nation's GDP.
The only thing preventing us from making it happen is a lack of will.
Except that California is one of the wealthiest states with the highest wages, where as the poorer ones where most people are making under $50k are the ones that vote Republican, i.e. for tax and benefit cuts.
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