High-Cost Rail - Part 125 Budget Shenanigans

The Mercury News ran an article from the LA Times recapping much of what is already known about high-speed rail finances, but it did highlight a deceptive edit of one of the bids from a large Spanish company that seeks to build the California system.  Morris Brown is well-known in HSR critical circles and he found the shenanigans by comparing two versions of the bid paperwork.

LOS ANGELES -- When a Spanish firm submitted a bid last year to help build the California bullet train, it cautioned that taxpayer money probably would be needed to keep the system operating.  Having reviewed data on 111 high-speed train lines around the world, construction giant Ferrovial said, it found that all but three could not make ends meet.

"More than likely, the California high-speed rail will require large government subsidies for years to come," the proposal said.  That warning, however, was expunged from the version of Ferrovial's proposal posted on the state's website. The only record of it was on a data disk provided to the Los Angeles Times and others under a public records act request.

 

Here is the best part of the article

 

In April, rail authority Chairman Dan Richard assured skeptical legislators during a hearing that they shouldn't worry. Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, asked Richard, "Do you know of any high-speed rail operations around the world that make substantial profit?"

Richard answered, "Actually all of them, virtually all of them, make operating profit." He defined that as being able to cover costs after the expenditure of capital to build the systems.

"Ha, OK," Patterson said.

Ha, not OK.  There should have been about a half-day of intense grilling of that answer from Dan Richard.  This is at the core of the challenge to compliance with Prop 1A that was foisted on the uninformed voters.  At least some people are waking up. 

Comments

[morris brown]

A video of of what took place at the April meeting can be viewed at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBziL_H0xOc

This exchange between Dan Richard and Assemblyman Patterson takes place at
12:00 minutes into this video.

[Cathy Baylock]

Thank you, Morris! Glad to see you quoted extensively in the article!