This article from a travel blog is an insider's view of passenger rail travel, HSR, and what's wrong with it. The most important point however is his last sentence:
". . . .the Department of Transportation is clearly unfazed by such cost blowouts, and yesterday awarded almost $1 billion in further funding to what is increasingly seeming like nothing more than a bottomless pit and boondoggle of gargantuan proportions."
That's not correct. The $928.6 million in question had already been awarded to the CHSRA by the FRA as additional parts of their ARRA Stimulus award, made earlier. (From Florida's rejection, for instance.) In this case, as we've said numerous times, the FRA merely "obligated" these additional funds, thereby securing them further for the rail authority and possibly preventing their re-call by the House Republicans.
Along with author David Rowell, who objects to this project, all the pro-HSR papers have cited this piece of bureaucratic paperwork as new and additional funding. This is misleadiing and that's not the case.
It's all part of the already well-known $3.5 billion that the CHSRA is counting on to match with another $2.5 billion from the state bond issue to start construction in the Central Valley, for a cost of what they now say will be around $6.5 billion.
Here's my speculation on this. The actual costs of construction will continue to climb dramatically. Whereas the amount of funding from the FRA may possibly increase by several million, but far from sufficiently to complete anything in the Central Valley, leaving all those people, with lost homes, businesses and farms, hanging out to dry!
Our State Government at work.
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Appalling California High Speed Rail Cost Explosion
Posted by David Rowell at 4:48 pm
I have written several times before about California’s ambitious high speed rail project, most recently in September.
In September, the official estimates of the cost to build this rail line were in the order of $43 billion. Other estimates guessed it as being more like $65 billion, and a few naysayers suggested the real costs could end up exceeding $80 billion.
To put things in complete perspective, in 2008, when Californian voters were asked to approve a $9 billion bond issue for the first part of the project’s funding, the cost was estimated to be $35.7 billion, with the system expected to be operational by 2020.
So now it is time to update things. The state is now saying the cost will be $98.5 billion, and it doesn’t expect to see the line operational until 2033.
Yes – in three short years, the cost of the project has nearly trebled, while the time to get the project operational has extended by 13 years. Each passing year has seen more than four additional years added to the completion date.
Or, to put it more dramatically, in the two months between September and November, the projected costs have increased from $45 billion to $98.5 billion.
How can this happen? It isn’t as though millions of dollars haven’t been spent in planning and projections and feasibility studies. How can the costs escalate so far, so quickly, and even beyond the most pessimistic projections? And how can the lead times stretch out an unexpected extra 13 years?
There are two more questions that also need to be asked.
1. Can we place any confidence at all in the new revised cost of $98.5 billion, and the new revised 2033 estimate for when the trains will start operating? Or will further cost increases and delays continue to occur into the future, the same as they have in the past?
2. Does it even start to make any sense at all to spend what has grown to now total $100 billion on 800 miles of high speed rail? Can California afford this? Does California need this?
There needs to be accountability and consequences experienced by the promoters of this project. How can one explain such a huge revision in cost and leadtime as an innocent mistake? At the very best, they’ve shown themselves to be grossly incompetent, and make a laughing stock out of them, their project, and the US as a whole.
However, the Department of Transportation is clearly unfazed by such cost blowouts, and yesterday awarded almost $1 billion in further funding to what is increasingly seeming like nothing more than a bottomless pit and boondoggle of gargantuan proportions.
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