MIKE POWELL wrote:
> This message was originally in conference misc.transport.rail.americas
> and was forwarded to you by DUMAS WALKER.
> -------------------------
> California is taking of heat for celebrating the completion of an high-
> speed rail bridge that has cost taxpayers $11 billion and took nine years
> to build . and clearly goes nowhere.
To the contrary. The Rail-to-Nowhere project accomplished exactly what
it was intended to do -- it siphoned a whole lot of money to the
construction company owned by CA Senator Diane Feinstein's husband,
which was awarded the contract. (Yes, really.)
I was still living there when the ballot proposition rolled around, and
I'm one of those bad people who reads the whole thing. According to
their own math, and allowing for a dead minimum of 3x cost overruns
(usually more in CA, but I was being generous) a one-way ticket on the
(if ever) completed N-S rail would have needed to cost about $1500 for
the project to break even across 30 years (and I didn't allow for
maintenance, since they didn't). That's fifteen-hundred, in case anyone
thinks it's a typo.
With maintenance, considerably more than that.
At the time the most expensive trip-by-car cost about $200, and you
could fly the same route on Southwest Air for a bit less. A taxi for the
distance cost about $400.
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