Here is my comment on your Bullet Train article on May 10, as we celebrate the 150th
anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad, Golden Spike Ceremony: I was disturbed by your lack of fair treatment of both sides of the issue.
Your article failed to mention the revelation from a whistleblower who said that he quit in protest of the High-Speed Rail paying hundreds of millions to the contractor for no work performed, only delay damages. He said that the rail authority falsely told the federal government that work could be performed when they did not even own the land where the work was to be performed. For this they received $3.1 billion of our federal tax dollars, and have squandered it on damage payments to their contractor.
This is the kind of debacle we get with politician transportation as we see with VTA, COG, TAMC, SCCRTC, Caltrain, Amtrak, ACE Train, SMART Trail and all the rest of the bankrupt boondoggles which kept running massive transfers of gas and diesel taxes to the bankrupt boondoggles by our local elected officials. This is unsound and unsustainable transport policy.
Experts have advised both federal and state governments that we ought to fund transport with user fees. This policy was endorsed by the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on transport funding, and by the California Transportation Commission. But our leaders ignore their own experts. Instead, they gouge motorists for ever-increasing gas taxes.
We need to reverse course on this supermassive black hole monstrosity.
We need to do what Florida did: reverse our bad decision on Prop. 1A.
We voted for self-sufficient High Speed Rail, not another government-subsidized public
sector boondoggle.
How high will gas and diesel taxes have to go to subsidize all these politicians’ nightmares?
California’s politicians have us on the road to serfdom.
Caveat viator.
Joseph Patrick Thompson
