California's pricey and now-failed bullet train costs about $1.8 million a day, but without a light at the end of the tunnel on how it can be completed as designed, experts told The New York Times.
The bullet train sought to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco, but the only thing it has brought is red tape and a bulging bottom line: from $33 billion when planned in 2008 to be finished in 2020 to an estimated $105 billion in February to $113 billion now to be finished in 2030, the Times reported.
"There is nothing but problems on the project," State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon complained.
Political debate, compromise, and redirecting the route outside of a direct path into the Mohave Desert have the project deserting its goal of getting passengers from L.A. to San Fran in 2 hours and 40 minutes.
"We would make some different decisions today," developer Tom Richards told the Times, adding he still thinks the project "will be successful."
There remains doubts, including the project's original chairman Michael Tennenbaum.
"I was totally naïve when I took the job," he told the Times. "I spent my time and didn't succeed. I realized the system didn’t work. I just wasn't smart enough. I don't know how they can build it now."
The goal of connecting L.A. to San Fran was too bold and "a strategic mistake," according to the longest serving chairman Dan Richard to the Times.
Another former chairman, Quentin Kopp, told the Times the project "is a loser."
The failures were due to political horse-trading and compromise, Tennenbaum added.
"I said it was ridiculous; it was wasteful," he concluded to the Times.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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