Quote:
Originally Posted by edale
What a mess and an embarrassment. So the estimate is now $135 billion for the whole project? And complete by when...2060? If this project was supposed to provide an example of the viability of HSR in the US, I'd say it's failing spectacularly. I highly doubt we'll ever see more than the CV line. $35 billion to connect f***ing Merced to Bakersfield...what a joke.
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The voter-approved Proposition 1A set up California HSR for failure. The circuitous routing through the Antelope Valley and along Highway 99; the ambitious requirement of a 2:40 run time from LA to SF; the stipulation that the Ca HSR would need to operate without public subsidy; the unrealistically low estimated completion cost of $30 billion or so--all these conflicting and unrealistic requirements and promises set the stage for inevitable disappointment. It wasn't long after Prop. 1A passed that new estimates doubled the expected construction costs. And the promises of private investor funding--to pay costs beyond the modest $10 billion that 1A authorized--never panned out. No shock there.
But construction of Ca HSR hasn't failed spectacularly. It's done pretty well with the resources allocated to it. What can you expect for $10 billion dollars, plus a pitiful annual allocation from the state cap-and-trade fund, plus the very infrequent gift of federal funds? It's not going to build the system overnight. And since the state has been so stingy releasing funds, construction progress has by necessity been slow, which results in overruns due to inflation. The only major construction misstep I've heard about was the authority's failure to complete land acquisitions before it awarded construction contracts. Partly this was due to the need to make the project eligible for the Obama stimulus grants that were supposed to favor shovel-ready projects. That added some costs, but probably minor ones in the bigger scheme of things.
What has the state spent so far on the IOS? Certainly less than $20 billion. To put this in perspective, Caltrans spent $1.5 billion just to add a single northbound lane for 10 miles of the northbound San Diego Freeway in LA. Orange County spent over $2 billion to add 2 lanes to each side of the same freeway between Long Beach and Costa Mesa. Any congestion relief provided by those additional freeway lanes will have evaporated long before the IOS of Ca HSR opens for service.