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

[RockstarChris]

wasnt that train being built when i was in highscool?

do you guys remember the old "bridge to nowhere?" I was driving with my mom and sister to Lincoln CA and there was an overpass in the middle of a farm field with no roads going to it for like 5 years.

 

[KONG-D'SNT-TAP]

77 billion!?!? and 25 years from vote to approximated completion???

If this was a private firms oversight, entire teams would be fired.

no they wouldnt. 2008 financial crash proved this. They would be awarded bonuses and no one would be fired.

Dick Fuld walked away with hundreds of millions after poor decision Making crushed a financial firm that was doing business for a century.

 

[RockstarChris]

It is definitely pushed by massive landowner interests, but for the most part they are not the politicians. Huge swathes of land are owned by aggregated corporations in the Valley, which they bought for dirt cheap. They pushed as hard as possible to get the train to come through their desolate land to rack up land value increase. Combine with local politicians pushing for the same, and they corrupted the process.

Look at some of these ‘bullet train’ stops. Tulare? Fuckin Tulare? It’s a wasteland.

if they made the train go to vegas it would be built in like 10 days

 

[lifelessheap]

glad we pay all these taxes (gas over 3.00 a gallon now, Cigarettes/dip had an EXTRA $2 added last year, etc...)

I mean we have shitty roads, exorbitant electricity costs through the Edison monopoly, and the water is suspect

we also have dimes everywhere, so hey, what are you gonna do

We have the WORST roads. It is beyond awful. We have the highest gas taxes in the nation, pretty much the highest state income tax and all the other bullshit taxes and fees and we have nothing to show for it.

You have Edison, and I have PG&E and both rape their customers with energy prices that make me sick. Hell, years ago the leader of the California Public Utilities Commission went before investors for the energy companies and said he would deliver for them. Our public servants bending us over.

LOL, my local town doesn't want people to use wood heat in the winter because it is 'bad' for the environment. But if I use electricity I will hit the third tier of electricity pricing and my rates will basically triple. Tripling the price of a baseline price that is near the highest in the nation. Insanity.


Anyway, I'm just ranting now.

 

[jimbob27]

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.

London got the cable-car nowhere as part of the Olympics. They claimed it'd be a useful commuter route afterwards but it drops you off near the millennium dome, an area of London that's pretty much deserted when there's not an event on.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

We have the WORST roads. It is beyond awful. We have the highest gas taxes in the nation, pretty much the highest state income tax and all the other bullshit taxes and fees and we have nothing to show for it.

You have Edison, and I have PG&E and both rape their customers with energy prices that make me sick. Hell, years ago the leader of the California Public Utilities Commission went before investors for the energy companies and said he would deliver for them. Our public servants bending us over.

LOL, my local town doesn't want people to use wood heat in the winter because it is 'bad' for the environment. But if I use electricity I will hit the third tier of electricity pricing and my rates will basically triple. Tripling the price of a baseline price that is near the highest in the nation. Insanity.


Anyway, I'm just ranting now.

I live in the Mojave Desert, granted, but just to run my A/C last summer to cool the house to a mere 80.....

my bill was 400-600 dollars all summer months. And it's off the 8 hours a day i'm at work too

Which I had no choice, as my Swamp/Evaporative Cooler that my house also had (much cheaper) didn't work

good times

 

[ultraninjastar]

Should be a private company building it. All of a sudden it will be efficient. If Warren Buffet or Elon Musk got the contract it would have been finished a couple years ago.

 

[Lord Coke]

The Hawaii rail is not doing to well either
It is several billion over cost.
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/07/honolulus-rapid-transit-crisis/534150/

 

[Shoemaker]

if they made the train go to vegas it would be built in like 10 days

Put a stop at the Worlds Largest Thermometer and tickets would be booked a year out.

 

[HIMBOB]

Pretty standard procedure for new management.

Blow out cost projections, write down all investments, talk up any issues and blame it all on the old guy. That way you can take credit for making it so much better.

I'm not saying it's going well but I get less concerned about announced cost blow outs when new management is put in place.

Arguably the most corrupt and incompetent large government project in my lifetime.

Each politician who continues to support this project should be imprisoned.

I would like to introduce you to the Australian National Broadband Network.

A project so fundamentally flawed it will be almost entirely a superceeded by the time it finishes.

Oh and it's not designed to be upgradable.

Edit should mention Turnbull ran it into the ground. He shaved 5 billion off the bill by keeping old copper wires to the house. Turns out 30 year old tech is hard to integrate with modern stuff so it's cost an extra 10billion and it's still going through 30yo copper.

 

[lifelessheap]

I live in the Mojave Desert, granted, but just to run my A/C last summer to cool the house to a mere 80.....

my bill was 400-600 dollars all summer months. And it's off the 8 hours a day i'm at work too

Which I had no choice, as my Swamp/Evaporative Cooler that my house also had (much cheaper) didn't work

good times

Tiered pricing is such bullshit. I mean, if someone went to buy a hamburger and it was 5 bucks, and then if they bought another why would it be ten dollars? And if he bought a 3rd burger why should it be 15 dollars? lol.

I guess the point is to force people to use less electricity? I mean, demand isn't even an issue anymore. So much solar has gone up in the last decade that PG&E has stopped a bunch of plans to build new plants and infrastructure. And of course PG&E gets to rape people when their residential solar creates a surplus of energy. People are paid basically nothing if they create a surplus, so PGE takes their surplus and sells it to their neighbor for the highest rate in the nation. Brilliant! Pissed off customers watch their usage and some use electric heaters or other high energy devices to make sure their surplus is used so it can't be taken and sold. lmao.

This fucking state. I mean, being a tax payer here is the worst. They just take and take and take. And our politicians, I swear to god they spend 100X more time talking about how to help the homeless than how to help tax paying citizens. My local politicians changed all the laws regarding the homeless, and now they seem to be taking over and the police can't do shit. I took my daughter to a playground and a group of 8 or so homeless were drinking and using needle drugs at one of the picnic tables. And they had a scary looking dog just roaming around growling at people. We left after a few minutes.

Wow, I'm really ranting today.

 

[RockstarChris]

My best friend just got a job at Union Pacific. Ill see what i can do.

 

[JudoThrowFiasco]

no they wouldnt. 2008 financial crash proved this. They would be awarded bonuses and no one would be fired.

Dick Fuld walked away with hundreds of millions after poor decision Making crushed a financial firm that was doing business for a century.

Engineering and systems design is a much different world than Financial -- ordinarily each phase of the project has been agreed by firms and clients and if I A,B,C,D etc isn't done by agreed upon time outline by the project plan on agreed upon budget (with usually a few small lenincies) the firms has to return either money or professional service hours back to the clinet.

Public infrastructure projects play by much different rules

 

[HunterSdVa29]

Tiered pricing is such bullshit. I mean, if someone went to buy a hamburger and it was 5 bucks, and then if they bought another why would it be ten dollars? And if he bought a 3rd burger why should it be 15 dollars? lol.

I guess the point is to force people to use less electricity? I mean, demand isn't even an issue anymore. So much solar has gone up in the last decade that PG&E has stopped a bunch of plans to build new plants and infrastructure. And of course PG&E gets to rape people when their residential solar creates a surplus of energy. People are paid basically nothing if they create a surplus, so PGE takes their surplus and sells it to their neighbor for the highest rate in the nation. Brilliant! Pissed off customers watch their usage and some use electric heaters or other high energy devices to make sure their surplus is used so it can't be taken and sold. lmao.

This fucking state. I mean, being a tax payer here is the worst. They just take and take and take. And our politicians, I swear to god they spend 100X more time talking about how to help the homeless than how to help tax paying citizens. My local politicians changed all the laws regarding the homeless, and now they seem to be taking over and the police can't do shit. I took my daughter to a playground and a group of 8 or so homeless were drinking and using needle drugs at one of the picnic tables. And they had a scary looking dog just roaming around growling at people. We left after a few minutes.

Wow, I'm really ranting today.

they raised cigarettes/tobacco products $2 additionally to the already high rates.......and for what?

to fund MediCal recipients.....awesome

what about people that actually earn keep tho? nothing, take it and like it

 

[Shoemaker]

I live in the Mojave Desert, granted, but just to run my A/C last summer to cool the house to a mere 80.....

my bill was 400-600 dollars all summer months. And it's off the 8 hours a day i'm at work too

Which I had no choice, as my Swamp/Evaporative Cooler that my house also had (much cheaper) didn't work

good times

I lived there until I was about 22. It's an interesting age to live in the desert because you develop a problem that means you can't afford the AC, but the same problem means you don't really need to.





If you haven't guessed, that problem is beer.

 

[HunterSdVa29]

I lived there until I was about 22. It's an interesting age to live in the desert because you develop a problem that means you can't afford the AC, but the same problem means you don't really need to.





If you haven't guessed, that problem is beer.

the only good thing is we're on our own water table, separate from the Golf Course heavy Palm Springs area so our water bill is like astonishingly low considering where we're located

well we also don't have grass here haha, so there's that

 

[lifelessheap]

they raised cigarettes/tobacco products $2 additionally to the already high rates.......and for what?

to fund MediCal recipients.....awesome

what about people that actually earn keep tho? nothing, take it and like it

My niece has a boyfriend who is illegal. He and all his siblings are on MediCal and get free healthcare. Their dad makes tons of money and they could easily afford insurance, but our state doesn't give a shit. My family pays about 600 dollars a month for insurance and we have a 5,000 dollar deductible. fffffffffffffffuuuuuuuu

I wish my kid could be an illegal. Hell, I wish I was an illegal. I'd work for cash and pay no taxes, get free healthcare, and I would abuse food and housing programs. Its like a super power.

 

[Shoemaker]

the only good thing is we're on our own water table, separate from the Golf Course heavy Palm Springs area so our water bill is like astonishingly low considering where we're located

well we also don't have grass here haha, so there's that

Palm Springs is a ridiculous city to me.

Jim: Hello, fellow citizens of Los Angeles. We're looking at creating some new vacation destinations and we need a place to put all of our water-intensive golf courses and resorts.
Dave: I got an idea, how about in the middle of the fucking desert?
Jim: I'll be damned. Walk off home-run, Dave. I don't think we need to hear any other proposals.

 

[lifelessheap]

I lived there until I was about 22. It's an interesting age to live in the desert because you develop a problem that means you can't afford the AC, but the same problem means you don't really need to.





If you haven't guessed, that problem is beer.

lmao, in college I lived in Chico and it would often hit 110+ degrees and even 115+. I lived in shitty apartment where the AC literally couldn't cool the air so it was cooler inside than outside. Something must have been fucked with the attic insulation or ventilation. My girlfriend lived in a 100 year old house in an upstairs room. It got so hot that her candles melted. When it was hot I just would hang out in basketball shorts with my shirt off, get a fan going and mist myself with water. And obviously drink beer.

And to the people who say, "but its dry heat bro." Well we were surrounded by hundreds of thousands of rice fields that would have to be flooded with water. So it often got disgustingly humid and hot.

 

[KONG-D'SNT-TAP]

Engineering and systems design is a much different world than Financial -- ordinarily each phase of the project has been agreed by firms and clients and if I A,B,C,D etc isn't done by agreed upon time outline by the project plan on agreed upon budget (with usually a few small lenincies) the firms has to return either money or professional service hours back to the clinet.

Public infrastructure projects play by much different rules

What’s the difference. Both groups are ripping people off and doing bad business. What’s the sector of industry matter