California's train to nowhere

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Another big social planning money-pit. From the Los Angeles Times:

Special Report $68-billion California bullet train project likely to overshoot budget and deadline targets
The monumental task of building California's bullet train will require punching 36 miles of tunnels through the geologically complex mountains north of Los Angeles.

Crews will have to cross the tectonic boundary that separates the North American and Pacific plates, boring through a jumble of fractured rock formations and a maze of earthquake faults, some of which are not mapped.

It will be the most ambitious tunneling project in the nation's history.

State officials say the tunnels will be finished by 2022 — along with 300 miles of track, dozens of bridges or viaducts, high-voltage electrical systems, a maintenance plant and as many as six stations. Doing so will meet a commitment to begin carrying passengers between Burbank and Merced in the first phase of the $68-billion high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

However, a Times analysis of project documents, as well as interviews with scientists, engineers and construction experts, indicates that the deadline and budget targets will almost certainly be missed — and that the state has underestimated the challenges ahead, particularly completing the tunneling on time.

"It doesn't strike me as realistic," said James Monsees, one of the world's top tunneling experts and an author of the federal manual on highway tunneling. "Faults are notorious for causing trouble."

Much more at the site. They haven't even agreed on the route or acquired the right-of-way. Over budget and over time. I wonder what the ridership will be once the novelty wears off - other light rail projects have cost so much that it would be cheaper to buy every rider a Prius and give them $10,000 every year to spend on gasoline.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on October 25, 2015 3:40 PM.

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