SACRAMENTO — The cost of completing the under-construction segment of California’s high speed rail line in the Central Valley is projected to increase by $1.8 billion, bringing the total cost to $12.4 billion, the Los Angeles Times report…
Who would have guessed? Another upward tick in the cost of a government sponsored sinkhole.
The road to financial ruin? Put the politicians in charge! After all, it is not their money that they are spending. And when the chickens come home to roost, they will either be gone or claim that the troubles arose from a perfect storm that they had not been advised was on the horizon.
It still amazes me that they did not decide to build the Bakersfield-LA segment first. Then at least they would have gotten SOME return on investment, by being able to extend the San Joaquins to LA on a dedicated ROW even if the rest of the system were never built.
70,
The answer to that is "it is too hard’ The projected route crossed very steep mountains and involved something over 20 miles of tunnels in at least two long segments. Then have to condemn many miles of expensive real estate to get downtown. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.
The theory was do the physically easy Central Valley segment first to show folks a bright shiny toy to encourage public demand to finish the job.
Mac
Could it be that most costs are listed as future contingiencies.?
I seem to recall there was a Fresno congressman involved in the funding that was pushing for the Central Valley location.
Every capital project that I was associated with, including the building of a nuclear power plant, included a range of estimated costs that were revised frequently. They contained thousands of variable price points stretching over many years. By necessity the estimated cost of the project(s) contained a significant amount of wiggle room.
We had to justify most estimated project costs to the Public Utility Commission. We used regression analysis to help develop a range of costs, i.e. $7.8 billion to $8.2 billion. We never told the regulatory authorities that the plant would cost $8 billion, as an example.
As it turned out, it took more than 10 years to build and license the plant. The total cost was over $12 billion.
It became a political project. So you had the Governor running around like the founder of Jurassic Park telling everyone he wanted a first class system (ie: the spare no expense line from the movie) and that one of his visionary goals was rerouting the line via the Central Valley in a kind of large state sponsored jobs program.
Why choose a coast line routing when you can burrow under the same mountain ranges twice at two to three times the expense? Because it is also politically more expedient the more population centers you hit in a kind of political game of connect the dots. A coastal line routing would mean it would be a primarily HSR between LA and SFO verus a HSR project for everyone to jump on board. Also, why build in increments when you can float bonds to build it all at once in one grand scheme?
Complete political stupidity and this is what happens when politicians get involved in large infrastructure projects. It almost happened in Wisconsin.
Became a political project? I disagree. It was a political project from the begining.