High-Cost Rail - Part 156 Employer of the Year?

I probably should have saved this for an April Fool's Day post, but I fear nobody would have been fooled.  Just this week we learn:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The California High-Speed Rail Authority (Authority) has received the prestigious Employer of the Year Award from the Women in Transportation Seminar (WTS) Sacramento chapter. This annual award recognizes a transportation organization for outstanding leadership in mentoring women in the transportation field, providing opportunities for upward mobility for women and having women at the highest levels of leadership.

“A talented, highly-capable and diverse staff is a pre-requisite for success on a project of this magnitude,” said Authority CEO Brian Kelly.

Let's look at the state of the project.  A supermajority Democratic legislature is balking at the ever-escalating costs and suggesting the Authority pull the plug on the Central Valley train to nowhere in favor of spending the funds at the metropolitan bookends; while our US Senators are out begging in Washington for additional bookend funding.  Other legislators are asking if the trains shouldn't be diesel--the horrors!  Much of the overrun is driven by the inability to get rights of way deal closed and putting in change orders that send the contractors' bills up.  The system has dropped to a single-track configuration in the Central Valley which is gonna make north and southbound trains tough to schedule.  And the court battle over complying with the original Proposition's T's & C's is on-going.

CC-HSR is now heading to the California Supreme Court. We will be filing a “Petition For Review” in the Supreme Court on or before January 7^th, and while the Supreme Court doesn’t have to hear our case, we have some good reasons to think that the Court will take up the question we raise.   The Supreme Court has made very clear, in its own past decisions, that the Legislature cannot pull a “bait and switch” on the voters.

If the CHSRA were a private company, it would be bankrupt, out of operation and looking to sell assets in a court-monitored sale---but there aren't any assets beyond some concrete in the Central Valley.  If I were working for the Authority, that job would not be highlighted very much on my resume--regardless of my sex.

Comments

[Everything's Jake]

Let's hope the 2022 election puts budget-minded politicians in office.

$30,000,000,000,000 debt and counting.

[Phinancier]

You can see a lot of gaps in resumes of people who worked at Enron. Similar phenomenon.

[Peter Garrison]

Drove to Santa Barbara. $50 gas per person for round trip. Parking for a morning in SF is more expensive.
HSR is stupid.

[Joe]

I don't know this guy from Belmont but he's on the right track except for the note about +$5 billion---add a zero to that:

I read the California high-speed rail project is increasing in cost again by an additional $5 billion. This project is a boondoggle on steroids. Voters were given promises and commitments for a completed project that would cost a tiny fraction of the current costs and this sad story is decades away from being completed if ever. Gov. Newsom and or California Attorney General Bonta should step in now and stop this obscene waste of taxpayers’ money.

David Altscher

Belmont

https://www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/stop-wasting-money-on-high-speed-rail/article_6a47ac66-8bb2-11ec-b611-23bc3e020a6f.html?utm_source=smdailyjournal.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1644678021&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline

[Jennifer Pfaff]

'Completely agree with Mr. Altscher of Belmont. Gov. Newsom really showed his true colors on this, as the worst kind of wishy-washy.