High-Cost Rail - Part 148 More Delays: More Dollars

The reason I call it "High-cost rail" is because no one really has any idea what this boondoggle will eventually cost if it isn't killed or amputated down to a Central Valley white elephant.  No one who is paying attention could think it will be less than $100 billion and with the way things are going $150-175 billion is not out of the question.  If all you read are the local papers, you don't get the picture of the extreme sucking sound coming from the Central Valley.  But the LA Times remains on the case and provides us with these disturbing observations

Seven years after its land buying program began, the California High-Speed Rail Authority has yet to acquire hundreds of parcels, even though the state has the power to condemn property in the way of its future tracks.  At the same time, the rail authority has become landlord to surplus acreage that serves no purpose in furthering high-speed rail but still must be managed by the state. It owns toxic waste sites, vacant lots and rental homes.  The California High-Speed Rail Authority is now a player in the agriculture industry with at least 466 acres of land under cultivation, a side effect of having to purchase entire fields just to acquire a corner for the rail route.  So far, it has yet to secure roughly one-sixth of the 1,859 parcels it needs for the 119 miles between Madera and Wasco.

Even while it has fallen behind schedule in buying property for its future tracks, rail authority managers have underestimated the footprint they need to relocate utilities — including gas transmission pipes, communication cables, electrical wires, water mains and sewers — that sit in the route of the bullet train. 

A June contract amendment the rail authority signed with utility giant PG&E reveals some of the costs involved.  The new five-year deal, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, adds $27 million to the bill for just PG&E’s equipment. Other big operators requiring so-called third party relocations include AT&T, Kinder Morgan, Southern California Edison, Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF and various irrigation districts.

If you click through to the whole piece you will get a slimy feeling up your leg about land buys in downtown Fresno that make you wonder what is really going on here.  But wait, there's more

The new land requirements complicate efforts by rail authority leaders to turn around years of delays, cost overruns and technical problems that are threatening political support for the project. The need for the additional parcels is coming as legislators, frustrated by a decade of slow progress, are considering shifting some of the bullet train funding from the Central Valley to project segments in Southern California and the Bay Area.

Here is the quote of the week:

Another middle manager said more delays are inevitable, lamenting, “I am going to ride this train, but I am afraid it is going to be my ashes in an urn. I told my kids to take my ashes on the bullet train.”

Kudos to the Times.  If I could give them a Pulitzer I would.

Comments

[Joe]

Here's an idea. Let's call time-out on the albatross of LA to SF high-cost rail and let a short line with a much easier route go first:

California approves $3.2 billion bond for Virgin’s $4.8 billion bullet train to Las Vegas
(Source: Construction Dive, November 6, 2019)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank (IBank) has authorized a $3.2 billion tax-exempt, fixed-rate revenue bond issuance to help DesertXpress Enterprises LLC, an affiliate of Virgin Trains USA, build a high-speed train from Victorville, California, to Las Vegas. The new XpressWest service, at speeds of up to 180 miles per hour, will take about 90 minutes one way.

[Peter Garrison]

Wouldn’t it be great if Sacramento did this?
Such common sense.

[Joe]

To the editor (of the LA Times): Steve Lopez’s column on the bullet train is a devastating assessment of California’s profoundly idiotic direct democracy experiment. Using the initiative process to drive public policy and circumvent the Legislature is really offensive to the ideal of republican governance.

Proposition 1A, the 2008 initiative that allocated funds for the rail project, was poorly drafted, crammed with utterly unrealistic restrictions for a large construction project, utterly unrealistic cost projections (really, flat-out lies), and tied to a federal funding spigot with unrealistic deadlines that may require funds to be returned.

Asking the average voter with very limited economic, financial and legal knowledge of large-scale projects to weigh in on something like this is a recipe for failure. Abolishing the initiative system at the statewide level is a timid first step to restoring republican values to our government.

David Pohlod, Oak Park
----------------
Can I get an Amen?

[Peter Garrison]

Talked to one of the main contractors down there near Fresno and he said this project is a mess; regulations, finger-pointing, leaderless- a fantastically expensive waste of our money.

So- big amen.

[Joe]

Here we do again, again. I'll just pluck a few excerpts out of the Chron article:

The cost of running high-speed trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles has grown — again — to $80 billion, a sum the state is yet to muster for a project that continues to be mired in politics and doubt.

The business plan maintains that the new $80 billion price tag for the rail system, up from $77 billion in the past business plan released two years ago and double the original estimate, is still a good deal considering the highway and air traffic it would alleviate. The new cost estimate rose because of inflation, according to the business plan.

According to the plan, California would need to build 4,200 miles of highway lanes and add 91 airport gates to match the carrying capacity of the entire line. (HA-- "capacity" not expect ridership. Nice sleight of hand).

“The project is falling apart, and the costs continue to climb,” said Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno. “The authority continues to hope billions will magically appear, while the fight to siphon off Central Valley dollars for Southern California rages on. It’s become a pathetic fight for the scraps of a failing project.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Cost-of-California-s-high-speed-rail-rises-but-15052415.php