The High Speed Rail project is the biggest farce of a project ever created. The cost is an insane $64 billion, and the project changes so much that it's not even close to what voters thought they were approving.
High Speed Rail in California is a joke. It won't even be high speed!
Financial analyst and writer Ed Ring has written a piece for the California Policy Center called "What Californians Could Build Using the $64 Billion Bullet Train Budget:"
"California’s High-Speed Rail project fails to justify itself according to any set of rational criteria. Its ridership projections are absurdly inflated, its environmental benefits are overstated if not actually net detriments, and its cost, its staggering cost, $64 billion by the latest estimate, overwhelms anyone with even a remote sense of financial proportions. To make this final point clear, here is an assortment of California infrastructure projects that could be paid for with a $64 billion budget.
If these projects were built, instead of the bullet train, Californians would have abundant, cheap electricity, abundant fresh water, and upgraded roads and freeways capable of handling all the traffic a surging economy could possibly dish out..."
Click here to continue reading.
Here's what Ed Ring says we could get done:
- Build 10 natural gas power plants generating 6.2 gigawatts of electrical output for $5.7 billion
- Build plants to desalinate 1.0 million acre feet of seawater per year, supplying 1/3 of ALL California’s residential (indoor and outdoor) water requirements for $15 billion
- Build plants to reclaim and reuse 2.0 million acre feet of sewage per year, supplying 2/3 of ALL California’s residential (indoor and outdoor) water requirements for $10 billion
- Build the Sites Reservoir for $4.4 billion
- Build the Temperance Flats Reservoir for $3.3 billion
- Widen and resurface every major interstate (and then some) in the entire state
- Fix the Potholes
Read more about each project at the California Policy Center.