California is taking heat for celebrating the completion of a high-speed rail bridge that has cost taxpayers $11 billion and took nine years to build — and goes nowhere. [emphasis, links added]
Critics — including Tesla founder Elon Musk and Dogecoin creator Billy Markus — are ripping the California High-Speed Rail Authority after it boasted about last year’s completion of a “Fresno River Viaduct,” a mere sliver of the state’s long-delayed, bullet-train project attempting to link San Francisco to Los Angeles.
“This is the most remarkable human achievement ever,” joked Markus, the creator of the jokey cryptocurrency, on X Friday.
this is the most remarkable human achievement ever, 1600 feet of high speed rail after 9 years and 11 billion dollars
it takes about 5 minutes to walk 1600 feet so a high speed rail for that is a really big deal
california is so competent https://t.co/Uff4LT57tZ
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) May 3, 2024
“Sixteen-hundred feet of high-speed rail after nine years and 11 billion dollars. It takes about five minutes to walk 1,600 feet so a high-speed rail for that is a really big deal,” added Markus, who also goes by “Shibetoshi Nakamoto.”
“California is so competent.”
Musk also chimed in, posting a sad, crying emoji to express his sentiments about the boondoggle of a project that is reportedly in danger of being scrapped.
😢
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 4, 2024
That’s despite $11 billion in taxpayer dollars that have already been sunk into the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail project.
That figure includes both the bridge and other work on the first phase of the high-speed route — which runs from Bakersfield north of Los Angeles to Merced, which is about 80 miles from the Bay Area.
Critics were responding to an earlier post by the rail authority, touting that the Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County is one of the “first completed high-speed rail structures.”
Top image via California High-Speed Rail Authority
Read rest at NY Post
A total waste of money to construct a Rail Bridge and Governor Nuisance still proving to be a idiot just like Moonbeam Brown was a
I worked the numbers on this back in 2015, and this what I came up with…
“The California High-Speed Rail Authority has estimated the project’s year-of-expenditure cost at $68.4 billion (2011 estimate).”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_RailWikipedia
“SFO to LAX Round-trip = $137”
http://www.orbitz.com/flights/from-San_Francisco-to-Los_Angeles.o4468.d4309/
The equivalent of 499,270,073 tickets
“More than 6 million people fly between the Los Angeles basin and San Francisco Bay per year.”
http://cahsr.blogspot.com/2009/10/la-sf-nations-second-busiest-air-route.html
For round trip, cut that figure in half, to 3 million.
So my back of the envelope figures show that for the cost of building the high speed rail, you could fly everyone for free for 166 years.
Of course projects like this can easily double in actual cost.
But who is counting?
And now in 2024 that figure has doubled!
What a thing to publicize after the recent announcement that railroad locomotives, diesel-electric, and over the road freight trucks, have to reduce ’emissions’. So what is going to power these ‘high-speed’ trains? An overhead electric supply or batteries? Just wondering out loud…..