California is mercilessly mocked for 'world's most pointless crossing' high-speed rail bridge that cost $11 BILLION

[austinnerd]

Originally Posted by Livinginwaterland

If the daily mail article is correct (not leaving out facts) then that is absurd. 11 billion for that? I’m a fan of commuter trains and spending money on them, but this is just ridiculous if true.

Not really leaving out facts as much as misrepresenting facts. Try this headline "Cali has spend 11bil on HSR over 16 years and this is what they have to show for it". It's a false equivalency to equate the total amount spent to date with only a single artifact produced, but one "gets" the fact that Cali was shortsighted enough to tout this one specific "accomplishment" given the overall context of a significant lack of progress combined with significantly rising cost.

[Volobjectitarian]

Originally Posted by vincenze

It cost $0.5 billion to build the 6th Steet Bridge in LA.

The high-speed rail needs a long tunnel to cut through the mountains on the way to LA. The costs will be enormous.

I understand that it will cost north of $250 billion. I was calling CA government full of crap when they first proposed this nonsense at the price tag they did.

But those same politicians and their apologists don't get to ret-con 2008 and gaslight taxpayers by saying "oh, you knew it was going to be way more expensive and take way longer, but you still voted yes."

They sold it as a 12 year project, for a low cost, and denied every last critical analysis at the time that said no way it would happen that fast or cheap, if it ever happened at all. They called critics and realists haters, deniers of progress, enemies of the environment, blah blah. Oh no, they sold the everliving EFF out of the "by 2020 for the low low cost of $X" lies.

All this 2024 retconning is standard political backtrack doublespeak gaslighting.

[Igor Blevin]

Originally Posted by austinnerd

Not really leaving out facts as much as misrepresenting facts. Try this headline "Cali has spend 11bil on HSR over 16 years and this is what they have to show for it". It's a false equivalency to equate the total amount spent to date with only a single artifact produced, but one "gets" the fact that Cali was shortsighted enough to tout this one specific "accomplishment" given the overall context of a significant lack of progress combined with significantly rising cost.

California government is the one who chose to highlight this single bridge as the great accomplishment to date. If they hadn't promoted it, they would not have gotten the pushback. They have only themselves to blame.

If you spend $11 billion, you had better be able to clearly demonstrate to the taxpayers what they got for it. Showing just this bridge makes it look like they haven't got much for their money -- which in fact, they haven't.