High Speed Rail Boondoggle Splashed With Cold Water
According to a Sunday Los Angeles Times story, here, the high speed rail (HSR) project, every big-government lover’s answer to all our problems, is starting to receive more unwelcome scrutiny lately. Skyrocketing projected costs and ticket prices, federal subsidy guarantee requirements, incomprehensible ridership projections, and property takings that include, apparently, some part of Buena Park’s Metrolink Station or the adjacent residential development are causing folks to take a harder look at this fiasco in the making.
Things have gotten so bad that even lefty Long Beach State Senator Alan Lowenthal is upset.
HSR should be a source of great alarm to everyone in north Orange County, both in terms of its cost to the taxpayers, the damage that it will do to established communities, and also because so many clueless but ambitious politicians like Harry Sidhu and Lorri Galloway are using it as a mantra to solve unemployment woes in California, and in particular Orange County.
When and if this monstrosity is ever built, the jobs will go to giant out of town engineering firms. Most of the construction workers will be imported from the Inland Empire and Los Angeles County – just like they are on every public works project. The only local recipients of reliable employment benefit will be the lobbyists like Anaheim’s outgoing mayor, Curt Pringle and his ilk who are promoting this giant money sucking vortex in their own interest.
And just watch as the onerous environmental laws that the rest of us have to live by are waived for the politicos pet project.
When the old city hall (now currently police station was built) the federal WPA funding was supposed to be directed toward “local labor”.
#1, that was part of the selling point of FDRs “make work” agencies.
Public agencies (like LAUSD) have programs for “local hire.” The problem is the vast number of construction workers who live in the San Gabriel Valley, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, and the high desert.
When Lorri Galloway and Harry Sidhu start their brainless palaver about “jobs, jobs, job” they are just blowing smoke. BTW, ditto Pringle and especially his harebrained ARTIC boondoggle, bought and paid for by County-wide Measure M sales tax.
In fact, that sounds like a post aimed at La Habra, BP, Placentia and Fullerton residents: Galloway and Sidhu misdirected your taxes into their Anaheim boondoggle! Come to think about it the Anaheimers might not like it much, either.
My first reaction to this post, before I go and read the Times article – and I will! – is that I have no problem with tens of thousands of jobs going to Inland Empire and LA County workers. Hell, they’re our neighbors – I got lots of friends there myself.
Okay, I’ll be back.
As far as Harry and Lorri claiming OC will get jobs that will actually be in other counties… well, we already know that those two are geographically challenged, don’t we?
Knowing full well the backlash I will get for saying this, I will say it; I support the high speed rail system that promises to erase the transportation challenged Mason-Dixon line between northern and southern California. If not for a railroad man with the last name of Fullerton insisting the train stop in a nameless field, none of us would have FFFF.
van, the HSR “promises” all sorts of things.
But what is this California “Mason Dixon” line? How will HSR erase it? Is that “erasure” worth the 50 billion++ price tag?
No, it’s $80 billion per the analysis CHSRA doesn’t want you to read: http://reason.org/news/show/1003044.html.
Wow – a thirty billion jump, even as we speak!
But seriously, nobody is going to invest a nickel in the thing with government guaranteed subsidy. In terms of reducing what they call VMTs, the train would do almost nothing – a drop in the ocean.
I think 3/4’s of the HST cost involves rebuilding the non-HST infracture. Plus buying and tearing dowm all of the new trainstation housing built around the the new train stations.
Somebody who is very intelligent pointed out here not long ago that the very energy needy to do the demo and the air pollution caused by it would give the HSR a negative carbon footprint all by itself.
And how many times will this “demo” need to be done, in order to get us to a much lower carbon footprint for the rest of the century? To make an omelette, you know, gotta break a few eggs!
It should be kept in mind that what Orange County people should be most concerned about is the segment- L.A. to Anaheim. Here is where the real travesty lies. Currently, there are dozens of trains covering this route every day. What convenience will shaving a FEW MINUTES off that 25-minute commute cost? –BILLIONS. I’m all for high speed rail but the need to extend it to Anaheim has been fabricated by Pringle and his fellow lobbyist buddies. Is everyone out there brain dead?
I’m not sure whether these ridership estimates – the high ones or the low ones – take into account the fact that, as Debbie Cook mentioned on my thread the other day, we won’t be flying airplanes back and forth across California in twenty years, nor will we be driving much, due to the cruel realities of peak oil.
http://orangejuiceblog.com/2010/02/the-high-speed-rail-is-coming-brother/comment-page-1/#comment-117809
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6169#more
To me this means a few things that aren’t mentioned here:
– Starting HSR as soon as possible is a necessity for California.
– I THINK it means the ridership will be much higher.
– And wouldn’t that also bring the ticket prices down? (I’m not an economics expert.)
The guy above might be right that the Anaheim/Pringle bit is an unnecessary boondoggle.
Cook’s also right (over at the OJ) that when we built the railroads, the interstates, and so much else that we’ve come to rely on and take for granted, there were always conservative naysayers who just kneejerkly opposed any big public project. It’s just in some of our genes.
And likewise there were always crooks who rushed to take advantage and make a killing. Let’s just try to do this right.
The presentation we got from the CHSR was that we had a choice of the removal of 40 condo;s on the south side of the station or the 3 yr old station it’s self. The ROW would be elevated 45″ at beach blvd to just ease of Dale ave. where it would go below ground to clear the end of Fullerton Airport and then go back to grould level to go over Magnolia. Sounds like an “E” Ticket ride?
Art,
Hows that bid for supervisor coming?