The Guilty Gulp
Sacramento's Rail Grifters are Terrified
You are at a restaurant with your mistress or pool boy or what have you.
You think that because it is out of way, obscure – the equivalent of an off-off-Broadway show - that no one will ever see.
And then a friend of your spouse walks in and sees you.
Gulp.
And that exact scenario is what is happening now in Sacramento as the high speed rail humanblobchunks that have shuffled and slithered between lobbying and bureaucracy and consulting are doing right now.
If you listen closely, you can actually hear it.
And it is happening because President Donald Trump just said he is going to launch an investigation into the state’s high speed rail project.
If I had ever worked for it, I would be gulping too right about now.
It started at $33 billion and would run from San Diego to Sacramento – currently, that amount is barely getting Shafter to Madera finished.
Don’t know where those towns are? One is near Bakersfield and one is near Merced.
Don’t know where they are? Doesn’t matter, won’t be finished … and will only compete with the Amtrak line anyway.
Would you pay an extra $60 bucks to cut about 40 minutes from the time to get from one field to the other? No, of course not.
The rail project was a pointless disaster even before it began – no one (I voted no when I was involved in various Southern California inter-agency groups at the time of it’s approval) thought the cost figure was even close to true (hence my no vote.)
Not only did they – the planners and engineers and what not - think that, they knew it and then hid that fact from state voters before they approved the bond to kickstart the project.
That was in 2008 and that, again, estimated that the whole magilla would cost $33 billion and be done, um, five years…ago.
To this day, no train car been bought, no proper track has even been laid, and – if seen through the most generous eye - only one-twentieth of the project – as approved by voters - has been built.
For those that think Trump is just trying to stick it to California for fun, let’s review:
Green project but no green money.
Note – the state pension funds have literally hundreds of billions at their disposal. They say they are committed to green and they invest in a number of hare-brained schemes in that “industry.”
The funds are large enough to move international markets, to move share prices, to ..well, when you have hundreds of billions at your disposal, the money people listen.
But they have never ever invested in the project, even though it was expected to attract outside investment and legally cannot use state “general fund” money to exist.
That’s the state greeny funds refusing to drop a dime on a state greeny project. They could have paid for it all but even they know it’s a financial disaster.
‘Nuff said?
How about more about the project:
Knowing the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground? Not so much.
Building something that costs as much as going to Mars? Sure and gulp.
Being incredibly wrong about everything ever said about the project?
Using incredibly inaccurate comparisons to sell the project to keep getting paid? In spades.
Trump’s investigation into the decades-long, wildly over budget project should not be a political thing. Save for the fact that the blob that runs Sacramento is terrified: high speed rail was the revolving door for humanblobettes that could not be employed elsewhere because, even in Sacramento, they wouldn’t pass the laugh test.
While its inception may have been pure of heart – the guy who first floated the idea has now since disowned it – it became an instant graft-o-matic attractor, the equivalent of having a bug zapper on your back porch but each and every bug attracted not only lives but ends up making a bunch more money than you do.
Trump’s investigation may not turn back the clock, but – God willing – it will keep the state and feds from spending the next $175 billion that is claimed to be needed.
In the end, the project will never leave the Central Valley of the state, for beyond that lay tens of billions in costs and lots of tunnels to get to LA, And then another $60 billion to run inland to San Diego (that’s why the current trains run along the coast – it’s flat) and then another $40 billion to get to Sacramento and then whatever absurd amount the local pols demand to get it into downtown San Francisco (the expectant train station already has structural problem.)
Now Trump said it costs two dollars to get from LA to SF – that’s not true, it’s about $70 - so the public will see him being fact checked on that .But the project being hundreds of billions over budget? As claimed today. that’s pretty much the truth.
If you live in Sacramento and/or have ever taken even a dime from the project, first your gulp.
Then you talk to your lawyer.
Note – I don’t sually toot my own horn [ in public at least) but I’ve been covering this disaster for years so do please check out the other Substack pieces on the issue and if you across anything written by Ralph Vartabedian (formerly of the LA Times) on the matter definitely read and trust.
One final note that should be re-emphasized– the current/may actually be kinda finished-ish bit of the project runs literally parallel to EXISTING AMTRAK LINES.
The train is already there.
Somehow, I think that makes it worse.