Bullet train speeding away with taxpayers’ money
“It’s not surprising,” responds Steven Greenhut, western region director for the R Street Institute. “We’ve seen cost overruns all along.”
Greenhut predicts the problems may get worse.
“The beginning construction portion is taking place in the central valley near Fresno, which is the long, flat, valley, and they’re having cost overruns of that,” he explains. “Just wait until they try to get over the Tehachapi Mountains, which they haven’t figured out how to do, to get over towards Los Angeles.”
The bullet train proposal, he says, is a far cry from what voters approved in Proposition 1A.
“Governor Jerry Brown sees it as a way to fight global warming. There’s also this kind of European envy where politicians say, Hey, they have that in Europe and when I went on vacation it was really cool,” he says. “Well, we already have high-speed rail. I just took it to Los Angeles from Sacramento last week. It’s called Southwest Air Lines, and it’s quicker and cheaper and more convenient than this train will ever be.”
