By Bob Walsh
CA State Senate member Lola Smallwood-Cuevas (D-San Jose)
made a solid attempt to secure long-term funding for the totally
improperly named California High-Speed Rail Authority. The attempt was
unsuccessful.
The HSRA now
wants $ 54 billion to run tracks to Gilroy and Palmdale, from which
maybe connections could be made to the Bay Area and Los Angeles. She is
whistling past the graveyard.
It
should also be noted that back in the 60s when BART construction
started Santa Clara County opted OUT of the program. They now want in.
That is nice, but the folks in Livermore (Alameda County) have been in
since the beginning and they STILL don't have their station. The line
ends at Dublin. They have the land, right next to the Livermore Lab, to
build a station and parking. The right-of-way is there. They just
don't have the funding. The leeches from Santa Clara County want to be
bumped to the head of the line and piss on Livermore. I grant you it
makes sense to get Santa Clara County into the system, that way the BART
system will be a loop all around the bay rather than the horseshoe it
currently is. It is still monumentally unfair to the people in
Livermore who have been paying taxes into the system since construction
started up over 60 years ago.
Slightly more than a week ago the feds made more-or-less final their withdrawl of funding from the boondoggle.
Somebody
recently proposed turning the right-of-way into a long, skinny solar
farm to power a yet-to-emerge AI operation. I can't quite figure out
how serious that proposal may be.
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