Posted: 7/31/2025 1:48:12 AM EDT
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You're kidding , right? They have a $200B project and they have no funding plan??? They are already 10 years late and $130B over budget (4X). SHUT THIS DOWN NOW! Here's the text - FRESNO, Calif. -- The California Governor has signed a bill requiring the state's High-Speed Rail Authority to create a funding plan. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 377 on Wednesday, requiring the rail authority to update cost estimates, risk assessments and service initiation options for the Merced to Bakersfield segment in its 2026 business plan. "California's high-speed rail project is a critical investment in our future, and we must remain focused on policies that help clear the path to completion," Newsom said in a signing statement. The bill was authored by Central Valley assembly member David Tangipa, who called his bill a necessity. "My bill is an important step to make sure Fresno and the Central Valley are not left with an unfinished monument of wasted taxpayer dollars..." Tangipa said in a statement. The signing comes as California's High Speed Rail Authority is suing the Trump Administration to keep $4 billion worth of federal funding for the project. In June, the High-Speed Rail Authority said it expected trains to be rolling by 2030, ten years after the initial goal and well above the original estimated cost of $33 billion. Now, it's expected to cost between $89 and $128 billion. Under Governor Newsom's current budget, the rail effort would receive $1 billion annually over the next 20 years to complete its initial operating segment. |
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It's never been properly or securely funded, always been scrambling for funds based on cascading funding needs, not actual progress. so they've pissed away the funds they had hoping to just keep it dribbling in. The feds didn't help because matching funds, etc., were based, again, on funding not real progress. ""My bill is an important step to make sure Fresno and the Central Valley are not left with an unfinished monument of wasted taxpayer dollars..." A little late now. Every pillar, post, bridge should have a sign on it - "You paid for this! Never vote for a Democrat again!" |
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The politicians have way too much invested (politically) not to keep throwing money at a lost cause. Remember it was supposed to be San Diego to Sacramento and San Francisco. Now we are down to a very, very small run only in the central valley. If they ever get a single train to run on this boondoggle the politicians will be right there touting how brilliant an achievement it is. Every politician who ever voted a single penny to this thing should be convicted of fraud and sentenced to hard time pulling up the unused rails. |
"Go low, go slow and preferrably in the dark", the old Sarge.
"Every man needs at least one good rifle and know how to use it," Dad.
"Every man needs at least one good rifle and know how to use it," Dad.
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Originally Posted By jeepnik: The politicians have way too much invested (politically) not to keep throwing money at a lost cause. Remember it was supposed to be San Diego to Sacramento and San Francisco. Now we are down to a very, very small run only in the central valley. If they ever get a single train to run on this boondoggle the politicians will be right there touting how brilliant an achievement it is. Every politician who ever voted a single penny to this thing should be convicted of fraud and sentenced to hard time pulling up the unused rails. Originally Posted By jeepnik: The politicians have way too much invested (politically) not to keep throwing money at a lost cause. Remember it was supposed to be San Diego to Sacramento and San Francisco. Now we are down to a very, very small run only in the central valley. If they ever get a single train to run on this boondoggle the politicians will be right there touting how brilliant an achievement it is. Every politician who ever voted a single penny to this thing should be convicted of fraud and sentenced to hard time pulling up the unused rails. You must mean IF they ever lay any rails. As of right now, there are no rails laid, not one. Thanks for reminding me, I'd forgotten how much utility they de-scoped out of this system. I suppose, if they ever get something finished, they will then tout adding additional runs to capture the SD, SF and Sac markets. Imagine the bill for those! Originally Posted By Featureless: It's never been properly or securely funded, always been scrambling for funds based on cascading funding needs, not actual progress. so they've pissed away the funds they had hoping to just keep it dribbling in. The feds didn't help because matching funds, etc., were based, again, on funding not real progress. ""My bill is an important step to make sure Fresno and the Central Valley are not left with an unfinished monument of wasted taxpayer dollars..." A little late now. Every pillar, post, bridge should have a sign on it - "You paid for this! Never vote for a Democrat again!" Unlike what local politician Central Valley assembly member David Tangipa said, there is no benefit from or need to throw good many after bad. In fact, there is harm. They really should shut this down and minimize the damage. |
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Estimated costs and time to complete are out there for the different sections. The more truthful and transparent they get, the longer things are expected to take and more expensive. They are floundering around. Reality is being forced on them. We're years past the "They have fast trains in Japan, Europe and China!" stage with almost nothing useful to show for it. Getting closer to being ready lay rails. I don't know if we've got the power sourced. They expect a couple of years between rails and actual running after delivery and testing of the train sets. Why the ehll aren't the train sets already on hand and waiting because everything else has been delayed. Nope, they are behind schedule, too. Local cities have to get past this being a slush fund for their urban renewal dreams. You want a fancy station and downtown and parking and local light rail and bike lanes and charging stations, pay for them yourself. Are they considering a light rail or?? to Yosemite? Nope. But Yosemite used to be served by rail almost all the way to the park. And it's abysmally crowded and a nightmare now. None of the "We used to have the P.E.!" crowd are thinking that way. But, why not? Brightrail is coming to Rancho Cucamonga. Not Ontario airport, not San Bernardino or Riverside. L.A. to San Diego is now going via the Inland Empire and sort of down the I15/215 routing. The national level idiots want a national high-speed rail from SoCal to Arizona and east. Maybe through Banning Pass, maybe north of the mountains via Victorville and Mojave. That route doesn't need L.A. nor does northern California, Oregon, Washington and San Diego. None of the current or near term "rail" in SoCal serve the major airports directly or well. They added/restored service to Redlands from San Berardino. Diesel Multiple Units. Almost no one rides. They aren't timed to connect to the rail service to downtown L.A. or points between. Not frequent and stops aren't particularly useful to a broader riding public. |
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Originally Posted By jmb95023: The purpose was to take land from farmers. And grift money from the tax payer. Feinsteins husbands construction company got the job. |
Watching the kids shoot Pieeater's 1919 was great. Nothing warms the heart more than seeing a little kid kneeling in a pile of brass and links.-Pthfndr after the Nov 13th NorCal shoot
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I was working for the Railroad in 2008 when this thing took fruition. I had lunch with a lead civil engineer who did work for BNSF and UP. He was brought in to review the state planners. He told the proposers it was all Fugazzi. The initial plans had high speed rail trains traveling over privately owned freight lines with a restricted speed of 35mph. I remember around 2012, Governor Brown was being interviewed and the interview (I think it was Tom Brokaw) said something about the High Speed Rail costing 200 billion. Jerry Brown laughed it off. "Nobody says it is going to cost that much," the governor said with a laugh. At the time project had a report out and admitted it would cost that much. The interviewer laughed a little and carried on. No follow up. The whole thing was a scam from its inception. |
"I'm telephoning you from a café about 10 miles south of Mesurier, and I wondered if you could do me a favor."
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I read two tidbits today. 1. The Boring Company could put a super-high speed line between LA and SF for <5% of the current cost for this project. 2. The proposed budget of $128 B could fund free airline travel between LA and SF for 150 to 200 years (at current rates of usage). |
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The latest update to the high speed rail shenanigans - they are merely displacing an existing 80 mph passenger and freight rail line (see map, below). Link to full article (excerpt below) A High-Speed Rail Punchline (and some more evidence about the details) Chris Bray Sep 16, 2026 If you read the last thing I wrote about California’s very slow high-speed rail project, you may have noticed that I said walking over to the construction area “requires you to cross an active rail line used by freight trains and Amtrak.” There’s a quite curious detail hiding in that sentence that quite curiously hasn’t been discussed very much. If you look at the state’s description of the initial project, California is spending at least twenty years, and tens of billions of dollars, to connect the cities of the Central Valley by rail: “High-speed rail construction currently spans 119 miles in the Central Valley across Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare, and Kern counties with plans to extend into Merced and Bakersfield.” The current point of the project is to one day allow residents of the Central Valley to take a train from (say for example) Bakersfield to Fresno. But to get to that very expensive project, I’m going to say this again, you have to “cross an active rail line used by freight trains and Amtrak.” As I was driving around looking at the massively expensive and complicated rail project, this kept happening:  That’s a — well, how can I put this? That’s a passenger train. The Amtrak Gold Runner will currently take you from Bakersfield to Fresno, among a bunch of other Central Valley destinations. This exists right now, providing regular service:  As for speed, it appears to cruise in the mid-80s, but watch for cops and don’t ask me how I know. Nationwide, Amtrak says it “operates more than 300 trains each day — at speeds up to 150 mph,” though those higher speeds are for newer Acela trains in the Northeast corridor. The Acela trains started running on existing track, with some later incremental upgrades, not on a whole new rail system. The High-Speed Rail Authority is demolishing Central Valley Amtrak stations so it can build new rail that will serve newly constructed train stations, replacing a rail operator that can achieve speeds up to 150 MPH with a train that will one day in a few decades do closer to 200 MPH on a 171-mile route. They’re replacing trains with trains, and train stations with train stations. The Central Valley, which is connected by rail, is being connected by rail, after which the Gold Runner will be shut down where it overlaps, but still operated where it doesn’t. So where you would now ride one train, e.g. Bakersfield to Sacramento, you’ll instead be able to ride Amtrak to where you get off and get on the bullet train, and then you’ll ride the bullet train, and then you’ll get off where the high-speed rail line ends and get on another Amtrak train. It’s so much more efficient! When voters authorized a $10 billion bond issue in 2008, they thought they were voting “to develop and construct a high-speed train system that connects San Francisco Transbay Terminal to Los Angeles Union Station and Anaheim, and links the state’s major population centers, including Sacramento, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, Orange County, and San Diego.” Instead they’re getting trains to Fresno where they already have trains to Fresno. |