Letter: California cannot afford this $213b HSR boondoggle
Posted by: "12/6 SF Examiner" batn@yahoogroups.com batn_control
Tue Dec 7, 2010 5:33 pm (PST)
Published Monday, December 6, 2010, by the
Letters to the Editor
High-speed rail really is a train to nowhere
The Los Angeles Times and Associated Press refer to the
The analogy is correct. The California High-Speed Rail Authority board just approved spending $4.5 billion in state and federal taxpayer money to lay tracks from Borden to Corcoran (65 miles, combined population of 25,000). The segment won't be operational because $4.5 billion doesn't include costs for trains, electrical wires or eminent-domain property takings, nor is a station in the environmental impact review plans between these small cities.
Extrapolate out 65 miles of flat land, and the $4.5 billion cost, to the remaining 735 miles of high-speed rail tracks (including the densely populated Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego areas) where eminent-domain lawsuits and forcible eviction fights will occur, then add in costs for trains, electrification, stations, et al., and you arrive at Stanford professor Alain Enthoven's $213 billion estimate for just the first phase of construction.
Mike Brown
Burlingame
