"Like watching the Titanic sink in slow motion over and over again"

John Pritchett

Randal O'Toole on California's high-speed rail project:

...The authority recently admitted that the first section of the project, which was supposed to cost $6 billion, is now expected to cost $10.6 billion. That’s the cheapest segment of the line because it is flat Central Valley of the state. Getting from there over the mountains to Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area will require expensive tunneling at both ends, including a 13.5-mile tunnel that is expected to cost anywhere from $5.6 billion to $14.4 billion.

The total cost of a truly high-speed line all the way from L.A. to San Francisco is almost certainly going to be more than $100 billion, and it won’t be complete until sometime in the 2030s at the earliest. A representative of the airline industry pointed out that, for just $2 billion and eighteen months, the state could start a high-capacity airline service between the two cities — and sell the planes if it doesn’t work out. Though rail proponents say that downtown-to-downtown train times will be comparable to flying, the Los Angeles area has five airports and Bay Area has four...

All this is irrelevant, however, in the eyes of one of California’s leading rail nuts, Rod Diridon, Sr. He’s the one who thinks that “mass transit is the only answer to gridlock” when in fact mass transit has failed in Silicon Valley, where he headed the region’s transit agency, and in general it is the cities that are spending the most on transit that are closest to gridlock.

In Diridon’s latest opinion piece, he argues that high-speed rail’s objective is “to efficiently bring employees to work and clear roads to move products to market.” In Diridon’s fantasy world, people who work in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley are going to live in the “affordable” Central Valley and commute to work by high-speed train.

“Only a small fraction of those daily Central Valley trips need to ride the train for profitable operation,” claims Diridon. Of course! That must be why the Altamont Commuter Express, which takes commuters from homes in Stockton in the Central Valley to jobs in San Jose, is so profitable. In 2017 it collected $26.6 million in fares against $8.6 in operations and maintenance costs. 

Whoops! Got that backwards. It collected $8.6 million in fares but spent $26.6 million on operations and maintenance...

Rob's comment:

The project was sold with the promise that the system would be paid for by its users and that no public money would be used to operate it if/when it's ever built. See pages 8 and 9 of the legislation.

See also Quentin Kopp's declaration:

"The statutory scheme in Proposition 1A assured voters there would be no state, local or federal operating subsidy for HSR. I repeatedly assured groups of voters of that statutory and bond measure prohibition."

Best comment to the LA Times story linked by O'Toole:

This is the most nightmarish project in the history of the state and also our country. It's like watching the Titanic sink in slow motion over and over again. People's lives are being DESTROYED in the Central Valley by this group of idiots--both at the CHSRA and politicians--who are too stupid or greedy or both to pull the plug on this boondoggle.