In the not too distant future, this saga will have been going on for two decades. Here’s the latest half-billion dollar installment.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority is moving to settle litigation, a deal that would trigger the single most expensive change order in the project’s history at $537.3 million.
…High-Speed Rail Authority’s Board unanimously approved a settlement change order with Dragados Flatiron Joint Venture for up to $537.3 million on Jan. 21. The construction company oversees the design-build for the project’s 65-mile route located within Fresno, Tulare and Kings counties. The settlement change order would represent the project’s most expensive change order since it began, according to High Speed Rail Authority records.
In construction, a change order is an official change to the project’s original contract. It can mean more work, different work, or unexpected issues—and usually more time or more money. That’s been the case hundreds of times for Dragados Flatiron Joint Venture, which has had a total of 597 change orders since the project started, records show. The latest settlement would bring the total dollar amount of the company’s change orders to well over $1 billion.
If it wasn’t for bad news, I wouldn’t have no news at all.
In an interesting twist, perhaps related to the above bad PR, California lawmakers are working on a bill to withhold such information from the public.
AB 1608 would allow the project’s independent Inspector General to withhold records from the public that could “reveal weaknesses that could be exploited by individuals attempting to harm the interests of the state or inappropriately benefit from the project”…
The governor’s administration has filed nearly identical legislation. The legislation says weaknesses could include information security, physical security, fraud-detection controls and pending litigation.
Except the project has been dysfunctional from the beginning. An example from 20 years ago…
How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html The state was warned repeatedly that its plans were too complex. SNCF, the French national railroad, was among bullet train operators from Europe and Japan that came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of getting a contract to help develop the system.
The company’s recommendations for a direct route out of Los Angeles and a focus on moving people between Los Angeles and San Francisco were cast aside, said Dan McNamara, a career project manager for SNCF. The company pulled out in 2011.
“There were so many things that went wrong,” Mr. McNamara said. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”
The agriculturally immensely rich south central valley of California — starring
and their long time dominant land owning familes, was and largely remains a separate conservative “kingdom” within California with immense power in the state legislature. When the idea of building a high speed passenger railroad linking San Francisco to Los Angeles arose, they basically put a veto on it unless routed through their mostly sparsely populated domain. They have been using their control of the local governments there to rake off immense payments. I see this later as simply the latest of the same, albeit much more exposed and large….
The rail line was always going to go through the flat Central Valley. The west side would have been slightly shorter than the more populated east side. The valley is only about 50 (flat) miles wide so the difference would have been minimal. The big change came when instead of following I-5 over the Grapevine the route was shifted to include the high desert. In addition to the increased distance, this involves a lot more tunneling. The San Gabriel Mountains in particular are geologically treacherous. One of the main reasons for the high desert route change was to increase ridership; the rail line is supposed to be self-supporting and a lot of passengers are needed to even approach that.
All of which has little to do with the bureaucratic nightmare, political disfunction and multitudinous design changes exhibited so far.
I think we realize building a high speed rail line through a highly populated area will be extremely costly. Better to build as much as you can where land is more affordable. (The same situation that resulted in interstate highways being built through minority areas.)
Dreamers are welcome to dream all they like. As long as they have plenty of other people’s money to spend.