Authority spokeswoman Annie Parker stopped short of predicting that the Merced-Bakersfield leg would break even, however, saying only: “We see a robust demand and a profitable system in our future.” The high speed rail authority said it was “simply untrue” to suggest that its timeline and budget projections were unrealistic. All this is doing is making contractors and engineers and bureaucrats fat and happy.”
“Who cares about going from Merced to Bakersfield? I am appalled and angry over the bastardization of the promise to taxpayers … It’s a stupid waste of money. It will never cover its own expenses from the farebox,” said Quentin Kopp, a retired former legislator and judge who led the charge for an LA-San Francisco high speed line for two decades, starting in the 1990s, but has now lost hope that it will ever see the light of day. It is also far from clear who would ride on it since it largely duplicates an existing Amtrak rail route. The Merced to Bakersfield stretch is projected to cost more than $20bn – several billion dollars more than a previous projection made in 2019 and likely to grow only more expensive. The more pessimistic view is that the project has turned into a boondoggle, the proverbial “train to nowhere”, and no good can come of continuing to throw money at it. “California right now is our only hope,” he added. The rest will follow,” the editor of the industry publication Railway Age, William C Vantuono, all but pleaded in a recent article. “All we need is one system up and running. The boosters also sense a unique opportunity, since California is currently running a $97.5bn budget surplus and the White House, led by “Amtrak Joe” Biden, has been offering billions more, largely thanks to last year’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which allocated up to $108bn for public transport projects.
Yes, the project is expensive, they argue, but so were the public investments in the highway system and the passenger airline industry, and the economic benefits of those are inarguable. The optimistic view for the project’s future – espoused most vigorously by California’s high speed rail authority, its consultants and its lobbyists – is that the stretch from Merced to Bakersfield will, once finished, provide proof of concept and thus convince state and federal authorities to shell out the many tens of billions of extra dollars it would take to extend the line north and south. Map of California with colored lines representing the three proposed phases of high-speed rail construction. Even if the stars align, though, and a restive legislature can be persuaded to release the necessary funds, the segment still might not start serving passengers until 2030. Instead, his office is focusing on a 172-mile segment connecting a handful of medium-sized cities in the flat agricultural Central Valley. The California project is still technically up and running, but it is so far behind schedule that it has yet to lay a single mile of track, despite 14 years of work and about $5bn spent.Ĭalifornia’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is no longer talking about the 500-mile stretch from LA to San Francisco, because the projected price tag has skyrocketed far out of reach. The Obama plan collapsed, falling victim to a combination of inexperience, mismanagement and furious opposition from several key Republican legislators and state governors.
It was not long before the incoming Obama administration upped the ante, with a national plan for 8,600 miles (13,840 km) of high-speed rail lines, later increased to 12,000 miles (19,312 km), that would help kick-start a dormant economy and wean a highly mobile nation off the fossil fuels threatening to destroy the climate.įast-forward to the present, and the dream is all but dead.
DELIVER US THE MOON MONORAIL STATION PUZZLE FULL
The project was to be the start of a new era of high-speed rail that would eventually stretch the full length of the west coast, from San Diego to Vancouver, across the desert to Las Vegas, and, eventually, all across the continental United States.Ĭalifornia voters that year approved the sale of $9bn in state bonds, on the understanding that the LA to San Francisco line would be up and running by 2020.
0 kommentar(er)
