Canceled! California's billion-dollar boondoggle train by Craig Rucker, President CFACT, 2/12/19.
The billion dollar boondoggle train no one wanted to ride appears to have reached the end of the line.
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced yesterday that he was terminating former Governor Jerry Brown's pet Green project; a high speed bullet train connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco.
California's new Governor was candid. “Let’s be real," he said, "the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were.”
The train never made practical sense in a state where automobiles, though vilified, are by far the principal means of transportation. After purchasing an expensive (though subsidized) train ticket, what were the few who chose to ride the train to do once they reached their destination -- rent a car?
California already spent over $5 billion on the train, but estimates to finish the project have now exploded to a staggering $77 billion! The completion date has been pushed back all the way to 2033.
The New York Times - reported last summer that the cost could yet have reached a staggering $100 billion
Along with general bureaucratic mismanagement and waste, the train fell victim to some serious Green-on-Green conflict. In 2008, Green-minded leftists in the affluent San Francisco suburbs of Atherton, Menlo Park and Palo Alto voted overwhelmingly in favor of issuing bonds to build the train. When they realized what it would be like to have it in their own backyards, they later sued to block construction, or force the train to reroute around or under their communities.
One can't help but feel the irony. California's admission that this ill-conceived train was a multi-billion dollar mistake comes within a week of the release of the even more ridiculous Green New Deal. Representative Ocasio-Cortez just got finished advocating for replacing air travel with trains!
Must every foolhardy Green scheme fail this expensively and dramatically before we can end it and move on? Can we learn a lesson and reevaluate government subsidies and mandates for intermittent, incapable wind and solar?
The Green New Deal, like the Green dead train, is a dangerous waste.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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