To put this into perspective, China’s high-speed rail project in Indonesia connecting Jakarta and Bandung (a distance of 143 km) at a speed of 350 km/h was completed in just four months at total cost of $7.3 billion.
This line has seen an impressive number of passengers, with approximately 2 million people utilizing the service.
Project leaders estimate it will still need an additional $100 billion to finish what voters were originally pitched in 2008
lol, there are people learning to drive that began existence the same year as this plan. Really helping to provide timely emissions reductions team
I even enjoyed sleeping overnight for Beijing/Shanghai. Left after work Friday and slept, hung out all day Sat and Sun, slept for work Monday, woke up walking distance from my job.
Just give me options to see my country.
wait, is this the same one that was supposed to be built 20 years ago for $10 billion?
Yes.
Still worth it in the country with a military budget over 8 times that but ffs there’s no reason that should cost more than 10% of what it does
In other countries inflating the costs of public works to hand over money to private interests is called “corruption,” what’s it called here?
what’s it called here?
High labor costs due to too many unions, usually.
(This is a lie: the US has lower labor costs and union participation than other countries that have trains. But it’s the answer I see most.)
I agree that if $100 billion is going to be wasted regardless, I would rather have SOME of that money go towards high speed rail and the rest go to oligarchs’ pockets, rather than 60% of it going to weapons and 40% of it going to oligarchs’ pockets.
Exactly, if we’re gonna line oligarchs pockets regardless I’d rather it be while while building trains than bombs
Lobbying
No no, this is the result of the lobbying
Private-public partnership
By 2030, and a trillion dollars later, they will have finally established a public-private partnership charging $700 per person to ride on the not-greyhound medium-speed shuttle bus between SF and LA!
It will be a solar powered bus so it’ll be green
Zeno’s California Rail Project. Its so fucking funny that “damn, this whole thing is shady af, look at all the grifts and crimes and cons involved!” was a B-plot in a True Detective season released in 2015 and they’re still getting away with it.
“You can use private sector partners when you are in a segment where it’s likely to be profitable,” he said. “I think that’s hard to do in the Central Valley, but more likely in the Bay Area and Los Angeles regions.”
God damn America.
I would still go with it, it is the first time America is trying to do HSR, $100b is nothing (America spends $800b annually on military)
$100b is nothing
Its a fuckton of money. Its over five times the GDP of the country of Georgia. I wouldn’t even be arguing “HSR isn’t worth it”. I’d be arguing we need a fucking HSR Joseph Stalin to kill all the motherfuckers who have been involved in the project to date, start over, and do it right.
yea but that’s not happening in the shithole that is the US. What I meant is that they should stop caring this much about the money aspect and look at whether the progress is good. $100b is a lot for normal people and smaller countries but not much for a (falling off) superpower, and it’s spread out over many years.
The 2008 bailout for instance was like $29000b
The 2008 bailout for instance was like $29000b
A one time bailout of the national economy that included a bunch of HSR funding from coast to coast.
Make it so.
I can think of three people in the US that has more money than that to their names.
100 billion ain’t shit no more. Quit telling us we aren’t worth a Bezos, or take it from Bezos so I don’t have to suffer under the hypocrisy.
I don’t think the money is the problem. For one thing, it shouldn’t cost $100 billion. The Kyushu bullet train was built in 2004 and cost $6 billion. It’s 159 miles long. The SF to LA train would be around 390 miles long, and yet would cost over 15x that of an equivalent Japanese train.
The problem is the private companies contracted for this thing don’t actually want to build trains, they want to make a profit. They make enough of a profit from scamming tax subsidies, so they never actually have to build the train.
Failed state
Oh, don’t let them make you believe for a second that they are actually incompetent. They’ve been dragging their feet for this, looking almost pleadingly at the California people to beg them to make them stop ever since they voted on it. Sure, high-speed rail projects unfortunately have a bad habit of going over-budget, but this is obvious weaponized incompetence.
: “Teehee! Oopsie-daisy, looks like we can’t do anything right, so quirky! Now never expect any project from us again. You’re driving a car and you’re gonna like it!”Its by design. When the 10 freeway in downtown LA got damaged in a fire and it was speculated that repairs would take months to reopen the freeway (for perspective the freeway does through the heart of DTLA and connects a lot of vital areas of the city with rachother)
They had it fixed in 5 days with enough political pressure.
They could have a series of high speed public transit all over the state if they wanted to, its not a question of resources since Los Angeles and California as a whole is a very very wealthy and resource rich state.
except sadly this country’s inability to do anything other than burn 1 ton of carbon per human moved per mile is taking the entire world down with it
Looks like this train only goes…
to Chinatown.
By the time cost overruns, last minute changes, etc etc are figured, id not be surprised if the $100bn quote balloons to 150 or more.
Are they making it one centimeter at a time?
one embezzlement at a time
One kickback at a time
joke country for silly clown people
I guess all the grifter… i mean consultants gotta eat as well.
Are… Are they buying billionaires land by the square centimeter to run a railroad through?
