Is Troubled Rail Project a Warning for NC?

Discussion

1. Lonnie says

   May 21, 2016 at 5:22 PM

   Do the “good people” of Civitas Institute think the same society that put a man on the moon with less computer power than a ten year old cell phone con not solve the problems of light rail in America?
   This article is another example of conservatives having no vision. Conservatives should never be trusted with political power because they only see short, term self interest but never the high cost of status quo politics.
   Conservatives are always the road blocks to justice, change and the future.

2. Larry says

   May 21, 2016 at 6:39 PM

   Lonnie,
   You have never seen anything you didn’t won’t to spend somebody else’s money on,have you?

3. Lonnie says

   May 22, 2016 at 7:16 AM

   Larry
   It’s called investments. You have never been a Gardner or farmer. Investments must be made if you expect a good harvest.
   Governments must invest in society, education, research, infustructure, healthcare and defense.

4. Larry says

   May 22, 2016 at 10:45 AM

   Yeah,your President has invested us into bankruptcy.How many Trillions have been flushed down the toilet because of something that doesn’t exist,like Global Warming.Half the people in the country are not paying taxes because they can’t find a job or they are working part time and don’t make enough to pay taxes.Remember,”Its the economy stupid”? November will remind people that they are a lot worse off than 8 years ago.I would like to know how you know I’am not a gardener,not Gardner.Defense,surely you know our defense has not been this bad since before WW2.I take that back,Huffington Post would never tell you that and you don’t watch anything that might get you off the Kool-Aid.

5. Pinto says

   May 24, 2016 at 5:00 AM

   “What about us brain dead slobs?”

   “You’ll be given cushy jobs!”

   “Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!”

   —The Simpsons

   State and federal officials downplayed the shift in the timetable, saying it partly reflected more ambitious plans for the Central Valley work, and in any case merely ratified construction realities on the ground. Jeff Morales, CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, said his agency is accelerating its pace after a painfully slow start, with a half dozen construction crews now building overpasses, relocating utilities, and demolishing structures from north of Fresno down to the Bakersfield area.

   “Early on, there was a vision, but no clear sense of how to implement that vision,” Morales said. “We have that now, and we’re moving ahead aggressively.”

   [….]

   Concerns about the project’s viability, however, extend well beyond NIMBY-ism and car-bias. The estimated price tag is now equivalent to 35 times the annual federal subsidy for Amtrak. The state’s voters approved $9 billion in bonds for high-speed rail, and Brown has diverted some revenue from California’s carbon trading program to the project, but Republicans shut off the federal spigot when they took back the House of Representatives in 2010. So while Morales says there’s enough money to extend the railway north to San Jose, there’s not yet a long-term funding source to finish the entire job. There is some optimism that private firms can help finance construction in anticipation of profits from running the line, but there is also widespread skepticism about the state’s rosy ridership forecasts.

   Meanwhile, the choice to start in the middle, in the sparsely populated and economically depressed Central Valley rather than the dense metropolitan areas to the north and south, has been ridiculed as a recipe for a high-priced train to nowhere. The first segment is actually designed to terminate in an empty lot north of Bakersfield. And the authority recently reversed its plans for its second segment, abruptly announcing that it will head north instead of south—understandable given the engineering challenge of tunneling through mountains en route to Los Angeles, but projecting a bit of a whoopsy-daisy vibe.

   “It’s like a Saturday Night Live skit,” Patterson said.

   The original rationale for starting in the middle was that all stimulus dollars had to be spent by September 2017, and the Central Valley run seemed relatively “shovel-ready.” It didn’t require massive urban redevelopment or daunting tunnels.

   Clearly, though, even the out-of-the-way Central Valley section was less shovel-ready than expected. There have been bitter lawsuits over financing and environmental permitting. There have been protracted negotiations over many of the 1400 parcels the state needs to purchase or seize through eminent domain. As late as 2012, California’s high-speed rail agency had just a dozen employees overseeing the megaproject. And after Brown secured the carbon-trading money, the authority expanded its initial scope of work to include electrification of the line.

   https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/05/22/beyond-boondoggle-california-high-speed-rail-delayed-4-years/?singlepage=true

   Gee, why do socialists keep having all this bad luck every time they implement another project involving the economically infallible process of spending other people’s money on other people? It’s like the realities of human nature keep getting in the way of their utopian dreams, or something…