California’s High-Speed Rail: Slow, Expensive, and Bound for Cancellation This is a good article on the project, the problems, and the reasons is it little more than one of the walking dead. Please read the article, if only for this analysis. More below. It also compares it to the Florida Miami to Orlando project.
"In Florida, an alternative vision of high-speed rail is unfolding using updated diesel-electric locomotives built by Siemens — ironically, in a Sacramento, Calif., facility. Unlike California’s all-government effort, Florida’s Brightline is a private venture, with executive leadership drawn from the hospitality industry. Brightline’s investors have raised $1 billion to use existing tracks to operate a train between Miami and West Palm Beach, reliably shaving 30 minutes off a 90-minute drive, with service starting this summer. Brightline’s investors plan to raise an additional $1.5 billion to operate a line from Miami to Orlando. Their trains will travel at up to 125 mph on this route. By comparison, California’s vaporware electric train is supposed to hit a top speed of 220 mph in its San Jose–to–LA run, assuming political considerations would allow it to operate non-stop. It will operate at up to 125 mph in the 51 miles from San Francisco to San Jose. California’s high-speed rail was expected to raise a significant amount of private money on its way to operation, but, eight years after being narrowly approved by voters with $10 billion in government bonds sold to start construction, the project is nowhere near completion and has not raised a penny of private money. Further, boosters solemnly promised voters in 2008 that the project would require no tax increase to build, and no public operating subsidy. In fact, the opposite has occurred. California has borrowed $10.6 billion against 35 years of future revenue from the state’s ambitious carbon dioxide cap-and-trade tax program. Unfortunately for California taxpayers, the revenue from cap-and-trade auctions collapsed nine months ago, forcing California to raid about $1 billion from other accounts. No one with any credibility believes the train can operate without a heavy government subsidy. Furthermore, with California now projected to have a $1.6 billion budget deficit in the 2017–18 fiscal year, pressure from lawmakers to abandon the costly project will grow. This will be compounded by the 2016 election results, which make it even more likely that federal support will dry up as well. California’s High-Speed Rail project will be dead before a single passenger can ride it from San Francisco to Los Angeles." California's budget problems are just beginning. The governor has diddled with the budget to hide the budgets problems about as much as is humanly possible, and now those problems will surface for all to see. Absent a serious economic turnaround, California will be in a difficult economic state. The environmental goals, business restrictions, and land use restrictions will maintain the downward economic pressure on businesses, and upward pressure on home prices, and the cost of living. Today 25% of Californians live in poverty, and 1 in 3 can only barely pay their bills. Another 1 out of 3, do better but are only just keeping up in the high cost California economy. The Politics Of The Next Recession: How A Bust Could Impact The 2016 Elections | Newgeography.com The Demographics of Poverty in Santa Clara County | Newgeography.com
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