High Cost Rail - Part 140 Audit, Audit...We Don't Need No Stinking Audit

The SF Comicle tried to appear responsible last week by calling for a "clear-eyed audit" of the high-speed rail boondoggle.  The editorial postulates that "The sore points and failures an audit probably will find could produce the right responses to get the idea back on track...Ways to save money, trim costs and get the system rolling more quickly should be explored."  Good luck with that wild goose chase.  San Jose Democrat state Sen. Jim Beall requested the audit along with Fresno's Republican assemblyman and the Comicle thinks this "dual parentage" will ensure a quality audit.  Somehow the Comicle editors feel they can just assert that "A state with 40 million residents can't rely on freeways and airports."  We just never get even an inkling of why not.

A much more clear-eyed observer of train issues, Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. of the Wall Street Journal, gave us some very insightful facts and figure this past week.

Of the 719 people killed in U.S. rail accidents in 2016, two were paying customers and 581 were “trespassers,” individuals killed by a train while violating some barrier or warning sign. Another 117 were “nontrespassers,” or people on foot or in cars who were killed while not in violation of any barrier or warning signal.  If 719 people were killed by airliners every year, Americans would go ape.

And the faster the train, the greater the risk. Take a 2008 federal study promoting a “high-speed” service between Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C. It estimated that the difference between 79 mph and 110 mph would produce three additional deaths per decade (for a total of 51 in the absence of major changes to crossings).

While the Comicle bleats on about how "These benefits (of HSR) will happen only if there's a public and political enthusiasm that the bullet train doesn't have now", Jenkins finishes with

California’s bullet-train project is the tutti case in point. Hundreds of millions have been spent to rearrange places like Fresno in anticipation of a sealed corridor for 220-mph trains. The relentless Ralph Vartabedian of the Los Angeles Times last Sunday described how, up and down the planned route, properties seized by the state have become an arson- and crime-prone “linear ghetto.”

California’s bullet-train controversy is turning into a culture war between Sacramento’s liberal dreamers and the people in its path who increasingly know in their hearts they are being pushed around and inconvenienced for a train that will never run.

Let's hope Jenkins is right about that last bit and that we don't fritter away another 5, 10 or 50 billion dollars before the axe falls.

Comments

[Bruce Dickinson]

"Cleared-eye audit"? Nice word-smithing, but let Bruce Dickinson call it like it really is: we need to appoint an Independent Special Proctologist to give HSR a full rectal exam!

Seriously, what is the deal with state and public officials calling for audits NOW after the public trust has been completely and utterly breached? Pretty easy to do once zero goodwill exists for this boondoggle.

Why is that? Maybe it's the mis-characterization of the bond measure, the mis-appropriation of funds, the fictitious and revised cost studies, the HSR management turnover, the lies about routes, ridership, eminent domain, costs etc, lack of logic (starting in the middle of nowhere), and using every inkling of political chicanery known to man to basically ram this thing down everyone's throats. And, it doesn't help you have Gov Moonbeam and his henchmen who bludgeon cities into submission by making rules for "housing allocations" and "transit oriented development" and all sorts of crazy machinations for an infeasible and already obsolete rail system. Who do you think runs your city? The city council? or is it really the city Legal Department? Think about all the decisions made by the city of Burlingame through the lens of legal compliance with State "rules" and guess what?: things start to actually make sense!

So Bruce Dickinson has to chuckle when politicians begin calls for "level-headedness" and "clear eyes" to get a handle on the monster otherwise known as HSR. Ironic that many of the very creators of this monster are now trying to come up with ways to slay it!!

(mic drop)

[HSR Logic Explained]

HSR Logic Explained...

Googled "Ties between labor unions and The Mafia and the government"

Pick you source: https://www.bing.com/search?q=ties+between+labor+unions+and+the+mafia+and+the+government&form=EDNTHT&mkt=en-us&httpsmsn=1&refig=0b61c8d291194a3c94bebc1815f25d32&PC=DCTS&sp=-1&pq=undefined&sc=0-19&qs=n&sk=&cvid=0b61c8d291194a3c94bebc1815f25d32

The Problem with Public Employee Unions - Big Unions
https://youtu.be/IxeJvO5xcio

[Steve Kassel]

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/California-high-speed-rail-project-facing-more-12741787.php

The problems and the costs skyrocket again. We need to qualify a new statewide ballot measure to kill this project.

[Joe]

The price of the California bullet train project jumped sharply Friday when the state rail authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would be $77.3 billion and could rise as high as $98.1 billion — an uptick of at least $13 billion from estimates two years ago.

The rail authority also said the earliest trains could operate on a partial system between San Francisco and Bakersfield would be 2029 — four years later than the previous projection. The full system would not begin operating until 2033.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cost-increase-20180309-story.html

A bit I Told You So on this one.

[Joe]

From today's DJ:

Brian Kelly, the project’s chief executive, said he has only about a third of the money needed to complete the project, now pegged at costing $77 billion. It’s supposed to be up and running between San Francisco and Los Angeles by 2033. Lawmakers and analysts questioned whether the project can realistically be finished.

“A complete and viable funding plan does not exist,” said Tom Van Heeke of the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
---------
During my professional career I had several opportunities to advise the LAO and I can say that their analysts are among the sharper State employees around. Mr. Van Heeke sort of underplays what he is really trying to say (or should be saying). There has never been a viable funding plan and it is virtually impossible that the final bill will be $77B, that the train will every get through the mountains into LA or that any serious private money will appear to bail this dog out.

https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/state/lawmakers-remain-skeptical-about-costly-high-speed-rail-completion/article_5b2c679c-36e5-11e8-ad2d-1fe99f522cef.html

[Joe]

Rep. Jeff Denham, hero to the anti-boondoggle crowd, asked for a FEDERAL audit back in December and it looks like it will happen:

California’s high-speed rail project is facing an audit from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s as costs continue to climb.

The inspector general’s audit, announced Thursday, will examine the Federal Railroad Administration’s oversight of nearly $3.5 billion in federal grant money awarded to the project.

The federal money awarded to California comes with specific conditions that Kelly has promised to meet. They include completing a 119-mile segment of track now under construction in the Central Valley and finishing environmental reviews for the full line by 2022. The audit will specifically evaluate how the Federal Railroad Administration determines whether California has complied with federal guidelines.

https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/u-s-to-audit-grants-awarded-to-california-s-high/article_955a1dca-3f8b-11e8-84b4-3fc06fe642d9.html