California’s Democrat Bullet Train To Nowhere
by Pete Ketcham
If ever there was a representative example of the gross incompetency and deceit of Democrats as they initiate and pursue their taxpayer funded projects, it is the current convoluted project of the proposed high speed “bullet” train between Los Angeles and San Francisco. More aptly described as a boondoggle:
“ A boondoggle is a project that is considered a waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy or political motivations.”
This project is so messed up that it is difficult where to begin in describing the convoluted path it has taken since first proposed to the California tax payers in 2008. The following article by Connor Harris, a policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, gives a good overall summery of the details of this boondoggle: Fast Train to Failure
Another (long read) article by Charlotte Allen a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, describes this debacle in more detail: Bullet Train to Nowhere
The objective of my article is to illustrate the catastrophic results when the liberal Democrats are able to gain the funds and control necessary to implement their illogical fantasy concepts of environmental transportation alternatives, or of any other issue for that matter. What you see in the California bullet train is the manifestation of AOC’s Green New Deal if it were ever allowed to be attempted.
Although the previous two referenced articles go into specific detail, the following is some of the highlights of this total boondoggle:
1. An agency was formed called the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) to direct and oversee the financing and construction of the project. This agency has displayed it’s ineptness from the conception of the bullet train to the present. They had used “a network of high-cost consultants who had consistently underestimated the difficulty of the task.”
2. The CHSRA has exhibited it’s ineptness by proceeding with construction plans on a design as you go basis, with no realistic grade and construction plans on how to get over or through the Tehachapi Mountains.
3. The cost overruns went from 10 billion to estimates of 98 billion, with estimates of 15 billion alone for the tunneling cost through the Tehachapi Mountains. In like manner the completion schedule has went from ten years to 30 years, and still going.
4. The CHSRA has acquired miles and miles of right of way (ROW) through productive orchards by the condemnation (eminent domain) process. It has ripped out productive orchards within the ROW and have not paid the farmers for their loss of land and crops. The proposed ROW also goes through smaller towns at ground level, literally cutting them in half and destroying existing businesses.
5. All this irresponsible action has brought multiple million dollar lawsuits down on the CHSRA, which contributes to the rising cost of this California Boondoggle Railroad.
I could go on about other highlights of this project, but the CHSRA (in all it’s wisdom) has now decided they will complete the stretch between Bakersfield and Merced (approx 120 miles). This will put a highspeed railroad system between to minor towns that can not begin to support it, thus creating a perpetual negative profit railroad that the California tax payer will be required to support in addition to the cost already incurred.
CONCLUSION
It is hard to believe that AOC and her fellow moronic Democrats are proposing grounding the entire US airline industry, and replacing it with a highspeed nationwide bullet train network within ten or twelve years as part of their “New Green Deal”, when they can’t even complete a minor portion between just two major US cities.
I truly believe this California Bullet Train fiasco can be used as an opportunity to demonstrate to the US citizens how completely out of touch with reality the Democrats are, and how costly it will be if they are ever allowed to attempt to implement their insane agenda, not only in the “new Green Deal”, but in all areas of governing.
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