California is in complete economic decline, but our politicians think that the answer is a train that will go from Bakersfield to Madera at 200 mph.
Seriously?
Like a drunk looking for his keys under a light - rather than where he dropped them, because the light is better there - California is building the train where there is no ridership because the land is cheaper.
John Fund writes:
I went down to the state capitol here on Friday afternoon to watch the state senate approve, by a single vote, a $4.7 billion bond package to build a high-speed-rail system from nowhere to nowhere. If the whole system is ever built — highly doubtful — it will cost at least $68 billion and run between Los Angeles and San Francisco. But this first 130-mile segment will run from Madera to Bakersfield, a stretch that less than 3 percent of the line’s potential ridership can use.
“Where [Governor Brown], with the state going bankrupt, is even thinking about an expenditure like this is beyond comprehension,” leading California demographer Joel Kotkin told the Wall Street Journal. “When the schools are falling apart, when the roads are falling apart, the bridges are unsafe, the state economy is in free fall. We’re still doing much worse than the rest of the country, we’ve got this growing permanent welfare class, and high-speed rail is going to solve this?”
The whole operation began in 2008, when voters narrowly approved $9.9 billion in bonds. It was a time when the estimated total cost was $33 billion and projections showed the project would be finished by 2020. The bond measure stipulated that the system must deliver passengers from the Bay Area to Los Angeles in 160 minutes or less.
I relish the idea of flitting down to Bakersfield in an hour, which, when you factor in the time spent checking in and checking out of the station, will take as much time as driving.
For this we are going bankrupt.
Ridiculous.
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