Should California spend $130 billion on a bullet train, or fix their water crisis?

Photo above - depleted reservoirs like this are part of the reason why last year's California wildfires caused $300 billion in damages. The state is spending $260 million per mile to build a scenic railway instead.

California has 2 bullet trains under construction. Trump just cancelled one of them. Guess which one?

Wow . . . California just does NOT get it. After last year’s $300 billion fire which left tens of thousands homeless, the state continued to push ahead with several bullet train projects. One route was Los Angeles to San Francisco. The other was Los Angeles to gambling mecca Las Vegas. Trump cancelled funding for the SF to LA scenic coatsal route. (see link below).

Personally, I would have killed both rail lines, but that’s just me. I don’t know why ANYONE – in DC or Sacramento – thinks there needs to be subsidized bullet trains for gamblers to reach Vegas in a jiffy. But I concede that casino operators and mob families in Vegas might have a different take on this.

How bad IS the LA to San Francisco bullet train? These are figures only a moron would applaud:

1 - Approved in 2008 (the Bush administration), it now won’t be completed until 2033. Possibly during the Gretchen Whitmore presidential administration. But she’s from Michigan, the car capital of America, so she probably wouldn't send train money to California either.

2 - Not a single mile of track has been laid since approval 17 years ago. Not one mile.

3 - The project is $7 Billion over budget anyway, without any tracks yet.

4 - The total costs are now estimated at $130 Billion.

5 - That’s $260 million per mile, for the 500 miles anticipated

Anyway, no more taxpayer dollars from Washington. If Kamala or Newsom – native California politicians – make it to the white house in 2028, funding could be restored. But that might mean completion in 2050, at cost of more than a trillion dollars, based on the project's progress so far.

Cancellation was an easy win for the White House, and the optics are good. Why wasn’t this toy train fantasy project cancelled the day after inauguration?

Of course, Governor Gavin Newsom could conceivably decide to push ahead and tap the wallets of California's own citizens to replace the lost federal money. If he does, I look forward to hearing the governor explain why a $260 million per mile train is more important than reducing crime and homelessness, than making housing affordable, preventing, wildfires, replacing the century old electric grid, fixing water shortages, etc.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Trump Says California’s High-Speed Train to Lose Federal Funding

california bullet train project - Search

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

Both. It is about time US infrastructure gets dragged kicking and screaming out of the 50s.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow i'd love to have modernized infrastructure. i just disagree that the government is the only source of railroad construction, or even any good at it. $262 million cost per mile seems to validate that they are the worst.

PicturesOfABetterTomorrow · 41-45, M

@SusanInFlorida Lol. An Ancap. Got it. Make every road and railroad a toll road for the oligarchs.

You know when US infrastructure was top notch? When the US was making massive public infrastructure investment.

You know what countries have the best infrastructure in the world? Countries with massive public infrastructure projects.

In fact most are in countries where it is exclusively public.

Private infrastructure is where you get sub standard and cheap because their only concern is profit and if you make it fall apart in 5 years that is another contract they can bilk for more money.

Even countries where private citizens have more money than god you have buildings and infrastructure that looks cool but is either a death trap or a nightmare like ther Berge Khalifa that doesn't even have proper plumbing and requires a fleet of trucks to transport literal shit out of the building.