9 thoughts on “CA HSR”

  1. Those are staggering amounts for engineering consultants on a ground-based project. Given that everyone on the state side seems to be either fools or corrupt, I have a business idea.

    Why not get California officials to pay Simberg Aerospace Consulting a hundred or so million dollars to survey possible aerial routes between LA and San Francisco? Of course the contract is going to be an extremely expensive and take years to complete because the most viable routes are way up in the sky. Sure, the papers might slings some mud at you a decade later when your report says “A generally north-south route somewhere up in the stratosphere seems to be the best solution,” but at that point would you really care what they say?

    1. No, he just indefinitely postponed the sections from LA and the Bay Area. They still plan to pretend to build the San Joaquin section, or else they’d have to return federal funds.

      1. I’m sure Bakersfield and Merced will become boom towns once people can ride a train between Bakersfield and Merced!

        Based on population and distance, the corridor would be pretty close to the idea of using high speed rail in Indiana to connect Fort Wayne and South Bend. Someone should ask Buttigieg if he’s support that. His response might prove amusing.

  3. The rail authority’s consultants are hardly household names, but they are politically powerful and made major contributions to support the 2008 political campaign for the bullet train bond. They have staffed their ranks with former high-level bureaucrats, and their former executives have occupied key government posts.

    Is the problem that they privatized the process or that they hired cronies instead of the best people for the job? A government run effort wouldn’t have fared any better because it would have been the same people in charge and doing the work.

    Aside from blaming the cronies and implying the government would have done a better job, there wasn’t much information in the article. Why are things taking longer and harder to do than expected?

    1. Well, one of the problems is the initial proposition was a physical impossibility. If the contractors were honest, they wouldn’t have accepted. So it shouldn’t be too surprising what CA got.

  4. Anyone who has ever read Neville Shute’s “Slide Rule” could have predicted this. To err is human, to truly foul things up requires government oversight.

  5. It’s interesting how it just keeps going despite the ugly mess. Everyone knows this project isn’t going anywhere and that there’s probably criminal activity going on, but it still keeps on spending.

    It’s an advanced state of decay when the rats don’t care anymore if you see them.

  6. I think it’s really weird you would need contractors to expropriate the land. That seems something open to all kinds of abuse.

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