Economy Updated project canceled: California bullet train costs soar to $77 billion

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We have officially entered the "Age of Deception"
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California bullet train costs soar to $77 billion, opening delayed
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/09/cali...g-delayed.html

The projected cost of California's bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles has jumped to $77 billion and the opening date has been pushed back four years to 2033, according to a business plan released Friday.

The two-year plan presented by the California High-Speed Rail Authority is the first under new chief executive Brian Kelly, who has promised more transparency about the project's challenges after years of cost increases and delays.
While the goal is to connect the two major cities, the new plan focuses primarily on opening track between San Francisco and the Central Valley, an agriculturally dominant, less-populated portion of inland California. That portion of track is now set to be finished by 2029, also marking a four-year delay, and significant challenges remain.

One of them is how to cross through a section of mountains — a critical segment to link Silicon Valley to the Central Valley. Rail officials are still working on how best to do that, Kelly wrote in the plan's introduction.

The $77 billion cost, a 20 per cent increase, is a baseline estimate, but Kelly also included high and low ranges in the plan based on potential risks.
It says 119 miles (192 kilometres) of track in the Central Valley is scheduled to open by 2022, which would make it the first operational segment. That's 14 years after voters approved a $10 billion bond for high-speed rail in November 2008.

A summary of the plan reviewed by The Associated Press offers limited details on the portion from Central Valley to Los Angeles. The agency hopes to complete all necessary environmental reviews for the entire line by 2022, a delay from initial timelines that planned for environmental clearance by 2017 for most parts of the track.
How to pay for the entire project remains "uncertain," Kelly said.

The state has spent $2.5 billion in federal stimulus money and has an additional $930 million in federal money on the table. That's on top of the $10 billion bond from voters.
The rest of the money comes from California's cap-and-trade auctions, a system meant to limit carbon emissions by selling credits to pollute and a volatile source of revenue that can be diverted by lawmakers in the future. Predicted private investment has not come in either.


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Thats last paragraph is beyond troubling, thats a whole lot of carbon credits
 
It’s really pathetic how we can’t make anything fast and for a reasonable price anymore. I would love to know what it would actually cost to do without graft and corruption. Maybe 2 billion?
 
Who would have thought that large infrastructure projects through varied urban and rural environments across hundreds of miles could be so complicated?
 
Sounds like someone should be taking a bullet for this!
 
Typical project run by liberals. Uh doy what is dollars hur dur hurr. Please gives to us, too stupid to work.
 
Arguably the most corrupt and incompetent large government project in my lifetime.

Each politician who continues to support this project should be imprisoned.
 
It''s huge but not that outrageous. Elon hyperloop would very likely cost less an is far faster but very experimental an brings with it many unknown elements an issues.

People have to remember this is spread out over 15 years. The cost of the new San Francisco bridge was like 8 billion. The costs has to do with land an material cost.
 
How dare you question Governor Moonbeam’s vision. Being tens of billions of dollars over budget and decades behind schedule doesn’t mean this is a giant clusterfuck of a stupid idea that should be scrapped. Just think how quickly this would enable an illegal immigrant to travel from LA to SF without having to stop in any non-sanctuary areas along the way in 2067.
 
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Who would have thought that large infrastructure projects through varied urban and rural environments across hundreds of miles could be so complicated?
You'd think though that by 2010 they could have seen this potential problem.

Seattle is having something similar happen with their "Lightrail" monorail that is going from the Tacoma area up to near Northgate. They started construction I think about the same time this CA project was approved....

ALMOST 10 years later they're not done, people that live WELL outside of the Lightrail "zone" are being taxed for it and it's over cost.

EDIT:
Just looked it up. The main rail system which currently only runs from SeaTac to UW was approved in 2009. There's an offshoot street car version that has been in Tacoma since 2003.

They're still working on 13 stations with 9 more approved. It's why if you are ever in the Pierce County area I-5 is always a parking lot around the Tacoma Dome.

EDIT 2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_light_rail

Admittedly Wiki but gives a basic rundown of the system.
 
You'd think though that by 2010 they could have seen this potential problem.

Seattle is having something similar happen with their "Lightrail" monorail that is going from the Tacoma area up to near Northgate. They started construction I think about the same time this CA project was approved....

ALMOST 10 years later they're not done, people that live WELL outside of the Lightrail "zone" are being taxed for it and it's over cost.

EDIT:
Just looked it up. The main rail system which currently only runs from SeaTac to UW was approved in 2009. There's an offshoot street car version that has been in Tacoma since 2003.

They're still working on 13 stations with 9 more approved. It's why if you are ever in the Pierce County area I-5 is always a parking lot around the Tacoma Dome.

I appreciate your post by my post was really just a veiled jab at Trump's border wall.
 
It''s huge but not that outrageous. Elon hyperloop would very likely cost less an is far faster but very experimental an brings with it many unknown elements an issues.

People have to remember this is spread out over 15 years. The cost of the new San Francisco bridge was like 8 billion. The costs has to do with land an material cost.

Yeah and that bridge was initially budgeted at $250 million. It was approved for $1.2 billion. Over just a few years, the cost estimates soared uncontrollably, and the total bill may be as high as $13 billion.

A vast consortium of corrupt politicians, government officials, and industry interests sells these projects to the public for a fraudulent cost estimate, and then once they are approved sets about extorting 10x the cost, claiming it was ‘unforeseeable.’ That’s how the scam works.
 
Yeah and that bridge was initially budgeted at $250 million. It was approved for $1.2 billion. Over just a few years, the cost estimates soared uncontrollably, and the total bill may be as high as $13 billion.

A vast consortium of corrupt politicians, government officials, and industry interests sells these projects to the public for a fraudulent cost estimate, and then once they are approved sets about extorting 10x the cost, claiming it was ‘unforeseeable.’ That’s how the scam works.
Didn't some high end politicians at the National level approve a literal bridge/road that goes... no where?

This shit doesn't surprise me anymore even though it really should.
 
If it meant getting from LA to SF in 1 hour it'd be worth every penny but this is a full day train ride that won't even happen for two more decades. This project should have been started and completed last century.

While China and UAE build state of the art transportation and infrastructure, we're over here building century old choo-choo trains in the year 2018.

It has to be a joke
 

‘Who could’ve forseen this cost increase!’

Every single time. I have a friend who runs a construction company that does state projects, and they have their lawyers preparing to litigate each contract before it is even signed. Like a law of nature, the government will come back and claim that 5,783 things have come up that ‘nobody could have seen’ and so the contractor should build them in and eat the costs.

Companies have lawyers who see this sham coming a million miles away and can take steps to protect against it. The general public, by contrast, has nobody to protect it against the scam.
 
If it meant getting from LA to SF in 1 hour it'd be worth every penny but this is a full day train ride that won't even happen for two more decades. This project should have been started and completed last century.

While China and UAE build state of the art transportation and infrastructure, we're over here building century old choo-choo trains in the year 2018.

It has to be a joke

That’s exactly what was sold to California voters .... a high speed Bay to LA direct line ... and yet what our politicians are delivering is so compromised by corrupt special interests that it is unusable.
 
While China and UAE build state of the art transportation and infrastructure, we're over here building century old choo-choo trains in the year 2018.
China and UAE are just building it now.

JAPAN has had this shit for over 40 years now!
 
I'd like to know more about the cap and trade auctions they plan on paying for this with
 
‘Who could’ve forseen this cost increase!’

Every single time. I have a friend who runs a construction company that does state projects, and they have their lawyers preparing to litigate each contract before it is even signed. Like a law of nature, the government will come back and claim that 5,783 things have come up that ‘nobody could have seen’ and so the contractor should build them in and eat the costs.

Companies have lawyers who see this sham coming a million miles away and can take steps to protect against it. The general public, by contrast, has nobody to protect it against the scam.
I do State/county /federal construction ,superintendent here.

Take every corruption and fleecing of tax money you’ve ever heard and multiply that by 10.. that’s the truth..the game is so rigged and corrupt that sometimes it’s hard to be proud of what we do.

I have been known to drop anonymous dimes to local papers though..shit eats me up
 
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