Quote:
Originally Posted by CAGeoNerd
That doesn't make it a "fraud." The proposition voters approved was $9.95 billion in bonds to pay for a statewide high speed rail project connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. That's it. It did not say "The project will cost X billion dollars and if it turns out to be more expensive then funds will be raised from other means or the project will be aborted."
You don't want the project, you don't like investment in communal mass transit, we get it. You guys don't have to tap dance around the issue and come up with these pseudo-legal arguments as to why it's a bad project. Just say you don't want your tax dollars going to pay for other people to get around the state.
Is it incredibly expensive? Yes. Does that mean we shouldn't do it? Not in my opinion. We should have listened to the same people when we built the interstate highway system at tremendous cost and at the expense of wiping out countless acres of private property. We would have been much better off if we had listened to those concerns, right?
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Ugh… where to begin? I hesitated responding because I couldn’t believe anyone was really this stupid. Just a few points as I have neither the time nor the inclination to generate a complete dismantling.
Proposition 1A most certainly did state a cost for the project. The estimate listed in the ballot measure was done in 2006 and stated $45 Billion for the entire system. Here’s the precise wording in the voter’s pamphlet:
“The proposed system would use electric trains and connect the major metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Sacramento, through the Central Valley, into Los Angeles, Orange County, the Inland Empire (San Bernardino and Riverside Counties), and San Diego. The authority estimated in 2006 that the total cost to develop and construct the entire high-speed train system would be about $45 billion.”
That is the system California voters narrowly approved in 2008. Now we are being told that we’re going to get a “blended” system that will never have HSR going to Sacramento or San Diego. And the cost estimate is now at $68 Billion.
Here’s more from the actual ballot language:
“Travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 2½ hours for about $50 a person.”
Now, most estimates for the blended system put the travel time from LA to SF at about 3.5 to 4 hours. Ticket prices are NOW estimated at just over $80… each way. And even that will leave operating deficits well into the tens of millions of dollars, probably more.
Again, here’s the actual ballot language:
When constructed, additional unknown costs, probably in excess of $1 billion a year, to operate and maintain a high-speed train system. The costs would be at least partially, and potentially fully, offset by passenger fare revenues, depending on ridership.
So that whole thing about the system paying for itself? Another lie.
The CAHSR Authority sold this farce by estimating ridership at a criminally misleading 117 million trips per year. That would mean it had better ridership than all of the European systems. That is the ridership figure used to sell voters on the project in 2008 and, of course, was just another lie. Now the Authority predicts 19.6 million to 31.8 million riders in 2035.
We were repeatedly told that private investment was just itching to invest billions in CaHSR. Total private investment to date? Precisely ZERO.
There’s so much more, but I’m not willing to waste anymore time trying to educate fools. And saying that just because a federal program from the 1950s proved successful that we should continue spending billions on a state program today is either ignorant, stupid or duplicitous. My guess is all three.
These aren’t “pseudo-legal” arguments (do you even know what the means?) and no one is “tap-dancing” around anything. I am calling CaHSR precisely what it is and always has been: a complete and utter fraud.
If you want to continue living on a little choo-choo Fantasy Island, hey knock yourself out. Just don’t ask the rest of us to pay for it…
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