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high speed rail fail

byke said:
Even if they built it, it'd be an endless subsidy pit. Flying is barely faster than driving even without the ss checkpoints.
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Up and down our coast for sure. Get east of the state line and not at all.
 
I'm out of the time frame of non-disclosure but I still won't say too much, well I'm not going to say anything at this point other than I spent a few years living in the wonderful city of Selma, California... Our work on this project was between the wonderful cities of Fresno and Bakersfield. Utility relocations. I didn't agree with the project then and I still don't but it paid the bills which is selfish but gotta put food on the table.
 
Ruh-row; 60 Minutes

Other countries have 200 mph passenger trains. Why has high-speed rail not tracked here?​

By Jon Wertheim, David M. Levine
April 5, 2026 / 7:00 PM EDT / CBS News

It's hard to exaggerate the role of the train in the American story or the romance of train travel, those iron horses galloping down tracks of steel. Why, then, has high-speed rail — so common in other countries — not tracked in the U.S.? An ambitious state-run project connecting L.A. and San Francisco has lurched, derailed, cost billions and may never happen. One private company is betting that it can succeed where the public sector has not, but that, too, has had its bumps. As U.S. high-speed rail remains a mirage, a ghost train, it's become a stand-in for a broader question: can America get its act together and still build big things?

The very model of modern engineering, it hums across the fruited plains at a top speed of 200 miles-an-hour. It revolutionized travel, it's a source of national pride… in Morocco.

www.cbsnews.com

Other countries have 200 mph passenger trains. Why has high-speed rail not tracked here?

High-speed rail can be found around the world. Yet so far, the projects haven't tracked in the U.S., where both the public and private sectors have faced ballooning costs and delays.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com
 
NorCalBusa said:
Ruh-row; 60 Minutes

Other countries have 200 mph passenger trains. Why has high-speed rail not tracked here?​

By Jon Wertheim, David M. Levine
April 5, 2026 / 7:00 PM EDT / CBS News

It's hard to exaggerate the role of the train in the American story or the romance of train travel, those iron horses galloping down tracks of steel. Why, then, has high-speed rail — so common in other countries — not tracked in the U.S.? An ambitious state-run project connecting L.A. and San Francisco has lurched, derailed, cost billions and may never happen. One private company is betting that it can succeed where the public sector has not, but that, too, has had its bumps. As U.S. high-speed rail remains a mirage, a ghost train, it's become a stand-in for a broader question: can America get its act together and still build big things?

The very model of modern engineering, it hums across the fruited plains at a top speed of 200 miles-an-hour. It revolutionized travel, it's a source of national pride… in Morocco.

www.cbsnews.com

Other countries have 200 mph passenger trains. Why has high-speed rail not tracked here?

High-speed rail can be found around the world. Yet so far, the projects haven't tracked in the U.S., where both the public and private sectors have faced ballooning costs and delays.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com
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Maybe we just need to look at other successful countries with high speed rail and, well, copy that.
 
90% of what amazon ships is air. Dunb wasteful stuff is more of a scale and design problem than it is a public/private problem.
 
bojangle said:
Maybe we just need to look at other successful countries with high speed rail and, well, copy that.
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We've spent far beyond the money raised for the entire project- so we can't afford two Coach plane tickets for engineers to well, anywhere.
 
budman said:
Maybe we should look at how we procure work to analyze why it costs 4 times as much and takes 3 times as long to build.

We have so many levels of red tape it just sucks the life out of huge public works projects.
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Not just procurement, although that is wildly correct. Permitting work is also a huge problem.
 
Eldritch said:
Not just procurement, although that is wildly correct. Permitting work is also a huge problem.
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Permitting is in that long time to build for sure. The cost of drawings is probably close to double because of how the State does business too. :facepalm
 
Took this from the ca state portal site

CA had to pay the feds back.

In late 2025, the Authority removed from its budget calculations approximately $4 billion in federal funding, including the $3.1 billion Federal-State Partnership cooperative agreement and $928.6 million from earlier Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) awards from 2010 and 2011. While the Authority initially challenged the FRA’s termination of these funds, the Authority ended its litigation in December 2025. As a result, federal funding now accounts for less than 10 percent of the program’s total budget, far below international norms for nationally significant investments in high-speed rail such as this one. $23B spent with 1B/yr expected from state through 2045. For a $231B project.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) failed to submit its final 2026 Business Plan this spring to the state legislature as required by law. This missed deadline is significant because the report was mandated to address critical issues, including:
  • Funding gaps for the 171-mile Merced-to-Bakersfield segment. Expected to run in 2033.
  • Revised cost estimates, which have reportedly ballooned to as high as $231 billion for the full San Francisco to Los Angeles system.
  • Proposed station changes that nonpartisan watchdogs warn may violate state law.


Current Status of the 2026 Plan

  • The Delay: The Authority officially "punted" the final vote on the plan, moving it to a June 1, 2026 meeting to align better with the state's 2026–27 fiscal budget cycle. [1, 2]
  • Legal Warnings: The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) warned that the current draft lacks essential legal information and transparency regarding station relocations (such as moving downtown stations to "North Bakersfield" and "South Merced" to save money).

A fuster cluck
 
Our Gubment doing good work. Failure, Transparency issues.. nice job. :(
 
budman said:
Our Gubment doing good work. Failure, Transparency issues.. nice job. :(
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I sill haven't heard one BARF member say they would ride it...in 6 years a the earliest it would seem.

The first leg of the California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) is an Interim Initial Operating Segment (IOS) connecting Merced to Bakersfield in the Central Valley. This ~171-mile segment includes stations in Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings/Tulare, and Bakersfield, with revenue service for this initial section projected to begin around 2030–2032.
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