We've been following this one for a while, some links below.
From Tech Startups, January 21:
California’s $100 Billion High-Speed Rail Boondoggle Project: How California’s High-Speed Rail Went From a $33 Billion Project to Become the Single Largest Public Infrastructure Disaster in U.S. History
With all the talk about using electric cars to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, one mode of transportation that has received less coverage is high-speed rail. Many transportation experts agree that high-speed rail is a better environmental alternative than automobile or even air travel.
While airplanes are an efficient form of transportation, their environmental impact is undeniable. For example, an airplane can carry 175 passengers at one time, but a high-speed train like Japan’s Bullet Train can carry up to 1,300 people, making it a much more efficient form of transportation.
In fact, European countries, Japan, and recently China, have used high-speed rail as a method of transportation for decades to transport millions of people and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. High-speed rail systems are becoming more popular around the globe.
For example, Japan Bullet Train (known in Japan as Shinkansen) has been in operation for 58 years. During that period, Japan’s high-speed maglev train system has carried over 10 billion passengers and has never seen a single passenger injury or fatality in its history.
It’s an impressive feat considering that the train travels at speeds of up to 200 mph across a total of 1,717 miles of tracks. Japan Bullet Train is known for its on-time arrival and departure, comfort (relatively silent cars with spacious, always forward-facing seats), safety, and efficiency.
In recent years, however, China has taken the crown of the best high-speed train in the world. The country now boasts the world’s longest high-speed railway network with a total distance of 23,550 miles (37,900 km) as of the end of 2020, about 26 percent of the country’s total railway network. China’s High-Speed Rail (HSR) network covers newly built rail lines with a design speed of 120–220 mph.
While China and Japan may be the envy of the world, the United States is one of the few developed countries with no high-speed rail system. The fastest rail system in the United States is the Amtrak Acela Express along the Northeast Corridor (NEC), with max speeds of up to 150 miles per hour but with averages around 66 mph.
So, it’s no surprise that the US state with the largest economy, California, decided to embark on the country’s first multi-billion dollar high-speed rail project perhaps the most ambitious high-speed rail project in modern US history.
The project started all the way back in 2008 with an initial price tag of $33 billion. The project promised to take passengers across the 400-mile journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than three hours at a speed of about 220mph by 2033, a dream that would take more than six hours by car. Today, California’s high-speed rail project was perhaps the single largest and most embarrassing public infrastructure disaster in US history....
....MUCH MORE
Here are a couple posts from 2011:
"California High-speed Rail Costs Triple to $100 Billion (and it will be arriving late)
California High Speed Rail: The Man Who Predicted The Cost and the Delay
And some editorializing on the first bit of track to be laid:
High Speed Rail: "Texas Central Railway intends to build a Houston-Dallas line with private money."
Of course the builders were able to pick and choose where they wanted to run their first line, unlike California which was forced by God to run their choo-choo from Bordon to Corcoran, a 65-mile stretch that will cost a minimum of double the $4.15 Billion estimate.
Borden to Corcoran?*
Okay, God had nothing to do with that routing of the West Coast disaster, that was all California High Speed Rail Authority.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for high-speed rail, it's just that in the U.S., in every single instance the promoters have been lying scum.
Every single time.....
....Previously on the California Dreaming channel:
Mother Jones: "California High Speed Rail Now Even More Ridiculous Than Before"
Don't Argue Choo-choos With Reason: PolitiFact Gets High-Speed Rail Facts in Florida Wrong
California High-speed Rail Costs Triple to $100 Billion (and it will be arriving late)
California High Speed Rail: The Man Who Predicted The Cost and the Delay
Jerry Brown Rejects $100 Billion Cost Estimate, Says Cap-and-trade Fees Will Fund High-speed Rail
And elsewhere:
China Considering Beijing-US High Speed Rail Line
*From the San Jose Mercury News 20Dec2010:
