Quote:
Originally Posted by numble
25% of the cap-and-trade auction proceeds (each quarter there is $800 to $1 billion in revenue), which means about $800 million per year, had been dedicated to CAHSR. The issue wasn’t that the money was used up. It was that it was not enough even if financing against future cap-and-trade revenue to raise the full $77 billion.
Most recent auction:
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local...222204730.html |
California did not raise taxes on its companies or populace to build high speed rail. This contrasts directly with Ohio's HSR plan from 1983, which would have financed construction and operation with a 1% statewide sales tax and built the first 200mph high speed rail line in the United States between Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland. That plan involved tunnels and 10+ mile viaducts over freight railroad tracks to get the line through the suburbs with zero trade crossings, a corollary to the dilemmas faced in California. The Republican takeover of Ohio politics toward the end of Dick Celeste's reign drove a stake through future HSR plans with construction of the new Federal Courthouse in the direct path of Cleveland's HSR approach.
People on these sorts of forums haven't worked in politics and don't understand what hardball these transit and rail projects are. Logic doesn't work when the Koch's and other players are out there relentlessly harassing logic. Take a look at where the Republicans succeeded in getting a federally-owned skyscraper built in Cleveland, OH -- in the former space occupied by the Terminal Tower passenger concourse, precluding that space's use by passenger rail:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_B...tes_Courthouse
In Cincinnati, in the late 1980s the wealthiest family in town (which, incidentally briefly owned Grand Central in New York after the gigantic Penn Central/NY Central bankruptcy) built an Omnimax theater in the space where HSR was to have served the historic Cincinnati Union Terminal (
https://www.cincymuseum.org/omnimax). So now big-time passenger rail can't return to the facility without the region's wealthiest family giving the thumb's up, which means they get something and get something big in exchange. Because being born into a $1+ billion fortune is never enough.
I don't think people here understand how much people are working behind the scenes to undermine this project in California because they know it ushers in a sea change and will work to delay or scuttle the whole thing if they themselves are not set up to profit from it. They don't care about the money needed to build it because Californians are not being taxed directly. It's about CAHSR determining real estate winners and losers. With Pacheco Pass, San Jose is the winner to SF's detriment. With Altamont, the East Bay for certain gets service but SF does not get high quality service unless the second Transbay Tube is built. That's what this is all about, people. San Francisco blue bloods -- just like those in Ohio back in the 1980s -- are working to protect
their interests.