Obama’s “moon project” aka high-speed rail is moving along. Costs are spiraling:
Faster than a speeding bullet train, the cost of the state’s massive high-speed rail project has zoomed to nearly $100 billion — triple the estimate given to voters and more than enough to run the entire state government for a year.
Planned completion times are increasing:
bullet trains won’t be up and running until at least 2033, much later than the original estimate of 2020, although that depends on the state finding the remaining 90 percent of the funds needed to complete the plan.
And the voters are increasingly beginning to see the light:
Four weeks after the news that the cost of California’s high-speed rail project has tripled since voters approved it, the struggling project is taking another hit: waning public support.
A new Field Poll shows that 64 percent of California voters would like a ballot measure giving them a chance to reconsider their 2008 decision to approve $9 billion in state bonds for the project.
Fifty-nine percent said they would reject the $98.5 billion project if it were put before them again. In 2008, 52.6 percent of voters approved plans for the rail line to connect San Francisco and Sacramento with Los Angeles.
So what should our government do? Should they be fiscally intelligent and kill the stupid thing?
Obama?
The Obama administration vowed Thursday at a House committee meeting in Washington that it would not back down from its support of California’s bullet train project despite attacks from critics who alleged it is tainted by political corruption.
“We are not going to flinch on that support,” said Joseph Szabo, chief of the Federal Railroad Administration.
Szabo said that his agency had committed itself to provide $3.3 billion for a construction start next year in the Central Valley and that federal law prohibits any change of mind about where to begin building the first segment of the state’s high-speed rail system.
“The worst thing we could do is make obligations to folks and start to renege on our word,” Szabo told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
If the cost has increased three fold before one shovel has hit the ground…what do you think it will end up costing in 20 years when it will supposedly be complete?
It’s insanity. It’s a huge waste of taxpayer money. And in the end it will STILL be faster to fly.
If Obama really wanted a “moon project” to spend money on it should be for a completely new mode of travel. Something that would provide new technology and might actually be worth spending the money on.
But instead he wants to bankrupt us on a 19th century mode of travel.
See author page
19th century way to travel? So was the automobile. And the airplane barely made it into the 20th century.
Back to the Future, I believe it’s called.
A lot of people on this blog think that the biggest problem with America is a loss of religiosity and values and they want to blame this on Democrats. I think that the biggest problem is a “next quarter profits” mentality, which is politically neutral.
Thank goodness for people with a time horizon beyond the next quarter, beyond the next election, beyond the next decade.
– Larry W/HB
Nah, let’s in invest in our future. Let’s allow our infrastructure to crumble so we look like a third world country.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: So you are in favor of further financing this fiasco?
anticsrocks…. INRE that question to Larry. Are we feeling masochistic tonight? LOL
@MataHarley: Heh, I guess I just can’t stand to see someone is supposedly so smart be so dumb.
Heavens, Larry… you do so tend to ignore those “devils in the details” I try to remind you of.
Take for example two proposed high speed rails systems in areas in which I am intimately familiar… Tampa to Orlando, and Portland to Seattle.
Waste of taxpayer funds… plain and simple.
But that doesn’t matter to the temporary denizen of the WH. If it looks good on paper with fudged stats and numbers, and translates to campaign talking points for fake jobs – while ignoring lost revenue – what the hay does he care?
Obama looked at Amtrak and thought, “I can do that too, but bigger and faster and better!”
@liberalmann: A brand new money-losing railroad does not qualify as maintaining crumbling infrastructure or investing. It is simply wasting money on a monument to a politician’s glory, or in this case, stupidity. Obama doesn’t understand anything about investing. He only knows how to borrow money from the future of the American people and waste it.
Do you really claim that this railroad is the most efficient and important thing for Americans to spend borrowed money to produce?
This boondoggle is another step in a long line of attempts to control the freedom of the populace to move about the country as they please. It is another lowering of our standard of living. Americans drive their cars places. That’s why all passenger railroads went broke and amtrak loses money. But Obama wants us crammed like rats in a railroad car, rather than on our own.
Obama has a problem. We love freedom and we aren’t changing.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: “Thank goodness for people with a time horizon beyond the next quarter, beyond the next election, beyond the next decade.”
Except for when it comes to bankrupting the country.
I’m guessing the companies that would get to build the system, and the companies who would make the parts for the trains and structures, are the ones who donated the most money to Obama. That’s how things work with him.
A long time ago I was told that Amtrak is subsidized so much that the government could buy the passengers first class tickets on the airlines.
We look at the Amtrak Sunset Limited between Los Angeles and New Orleans for an example of how efficient the Feds are at running trains.
In 2011 a study showed that the Sunset Limited LOST $462 per passenger.
And that is counting the fare people pay PLUS the federal subsidy of $237.53 for every 1000 passenger miles.
It costs ~ $1.80 to move one passenger one mile on Los Angeles’ Light Rail (METRO).
But the fare is much lower than that!
In Los Angeles we have a light rail route between Los Angeles International Airport and Burbank.
It is 17 miles long.
In rush hour I can drive that in my car in 30 minutes of stop and go. (averaging 35 miles per hour)
But the light rail takes 78 minutes!
That’s 13 miles per hour!
Obama has jumped the shark on this one, folks.
“The worst thing we could do is make obligations to folks and start to renege on our word,” Szabo told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
————————————
Got a good chuckle from that.
“Obama’s Fiscal Insanity: ‘We Will Not Flinch From Spending Billions On High Speed Rail’” Another shameless lie by a shameless wingut. Obama never said this.
Nice try.
@Liberalmann: You are just like your hero. Plenty of BS and no followup. You have written twice now that the Republicans have stopped economy saving bills proposed by Obama and the Democrats. You’ve been asked twice to name the bills and what they would have done.
*crickets*
Now you can be ignored, as you are just a poor troll. From now on I will simply mock you.
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-bullet-hearing-20111216,0,908163.story
Californians would vote against it by 59% NO, some yes, some undecided, if it were put to another vote now.
@Nan G: Even Californians are coming to their senses? Interesting. It’s too late for them, but interesting.
Didn’t the GOP gain big during the 2010 midterms in Wisconsin – a major blue state – in part for opposing this nonsense? Why is it whenever political backlash occurs that Obama somehow thinks it’s an endorsement? “What’s that? Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy’s seat by campaigning against my agenda? Well, full speed ahead then!”
Or he could’ve – oh, I don’t know – not pulled the plug on NASA going back to the moon. Oh, but I forgot, NASA under Obama has to focus on Arab outreaches or non-existent global warming – not completely unrelated matters like space travel.
As usual delusional Larry shows his love of fantasy and his exterme disconnect from reality.
So between this and his other posting today here’s what we can say about Larry:
Disconnected from reality
Hates millionaires
Loves BIG government
Closet authoritarian
@Nan G -“Tainted” by political corruption??? Try [ Reeks ] of Political Corruption….
Why on God’s Green Earth does California, or any other State for that matter, need a “Bullet Train” [right now, right this very year] anyway?? Does this man’s stupidity know no bounds???
@Meremortal: Yes, liberalchild is your garden variety troll. All pen and no brains. Maybe in this case, all keyboard and no brains.
He is afraid of honest debate where one has to cite sources and back up one’s comments with logical thought.
Oh, and I almost forgot. He likes to leave nasty, vile comments and pick on fatherless infants.
Here and here.
Then when called on it, he refuses to apologize the family he insulted.
This is why I call him liberalchild. No man worth his salt would be that crass on a memorial thread, such as Photo of the Day was.
@anticsrocks: Oh yes, I remember that thread now. Disgusting creature. It may require more smiting on general principle.
@Meremortal: #14
That is what he wants you to do. He wants to see how far he can lead you without using a leash.
@Meremortal: #17
Your comment reminded me of Wiley Cyote falling off of a cliff, but not knowing it for a while, then he starts grabbing for air. The Californians are now grabbing for that same air, but we are watching them keep falling and falling, and falling, and falling…. I wonder how big a thud it will make?
@Smorgasbord: #23
Don’t ask that; the falling Cali crowd is highly likely to land on the rest of us!
Like those characters the Cali crowd doesn’t understand how gravity works…or economics…or reality…
While I have no problem with the idea of building a high speed rail system, isn’t this something that rail companies can invest in on their own? We simply can not afford wasteful spending at this time. Apparently Democrats and Obama especially need to have it shouted in in their ears until they are deaf:
We’re broke you clueless jackass!
There is no more money that can be afforded to spend, unless you take it from entitlements, other subsidies or pork. All you are doing now is carving meat from the living body of the golden goose. Only a total moron or dishonest debtor continues to spend money when he is on the verge of bankruptcy. It is also taxation without representation, to spend with the intention for future taxpayers to pay for your excesses.
@ThunderGod: #24
Don’t worry. There’s plenty of money for Obama to borrow and bail them out.
@Ditto: #26
How about someone who wants to destroy a free America?
@Smorgasbord:
If that is their secret goal, then they are being dishonest debtors. n’est-ce pas?
@Ditto: @Ditto: #29
They are what they are.