It’s not like Americans need the money.
California’s high-speed train-to-nowhere project has long been infamous for very good reasons.
In 2008, California voters approved $9.95 billion of state bond funding as seed money to build an 800-mile high-speed rail (HSR) network connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the Central Valley to coastal cities, at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour, with an expected completion date of 2020.
But now, 15 years after the bond issue, three years after the expected completion date, not one train has left the station. Not one route has been completed, even though nearly all the $9.95 billion seed money has been spent. And the original budget of about $33 billion for the entire 800-mile system is now inadequate to build just one route (Bakersfield to Merced), whose cost pencils out to $207 million per mile—a cost that will almost certainly rise in the future, and for a route that may not be ready for ten years. Or more. Or perhaps ever.
The current estimated budget for the system is $128 billion.
How shamelessly corrupt do you have to be to throw any money at this? Ask Biden.
The federal government awarded California’s High-Speed Rail project a $202 million grant that will go toward finishing construction of the bullet train’s Central Valley segment from Merced to Bakersfield.
What are they actually paying for?
The $202 million grant will fund six grade separations in Shafter, a small Kern County town northwest of Bakersfield, that will separate car traffic from high-speed rail. Construction of these grade separations will begin in August 2025 with a three-year completion estimate, according to the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority.
Is there one good reason why everyone involved in this should not be going to prison?
But the good news is that Biden will shove $200 million stolen out of the mouths of struggling American families at this corrupt boondoggle.
Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield
