By Bob Walsh
Governor Jerry Brown’s legacy is possibly going to be the California Not-So High-Speed Rail system. I call it that as it is going much significantly slower than promised originally, it costs a WHOLE LOT more than originally estimated, and will not give nearly the service promised.
It is now 2 1/2 years behind schedule and construction has started in Fresno. The current plan is for the first link of the train to go between Armpit and South Armpit in the Central Valley. They are now seriously considering running the first link from the valley into San Jose, in hopes of getting some actual ridership early on, relatively speaking.
San Jose is sort of a perennial Johnny-come-lately in this thing. I remember distinctly when the Bay Area Rapid Transit district was formed. Santa Clara County opted out. They are now in (makes sense having BART loop the bay) but the folks in Livermore are screaming like mashed cats. They have been paying taxes to BART for over 50 years and the Livermore BART station is still an empty piece of property kind-of sort-of near the Lawrence Lab. A lot of people want to give priority to the loop closure in the South Bay, with a limited buy-in by the folks there.
This thing is never going to make money. It is never even going to break even. It is barely possible it will be worth the trouble and expense if it delivers on its promise. They have already admitted it won’t. Seems like it is likely to be another money pit, with a lot of the money diverted into various graft, corruption and home-boy goodies. People are already looking at games the HSR Authority is playing with money. There will be an attempt made next November to run up a ballot initiative to shitcan the whole project and divert the money to water storage projects. That, however, is not what Jerry wants. With the overwhelming Democrat-Socialist majority in the CA legislature Jerry will probably get what he wants.
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