Good day all. One of the last boondoggles Govno Jerry Brown foisted on the state of Kalifornistan was his plan for a high speed rail system. As I recall, the original plan was to have it go from Los Angeles to San Francisco. That plan was quickly dumped and a new one put in place that only makes sense to a crack addled Kalifornistan politician.
One of the companies that came in was the French national railroad. France has one of the best high speed rail systems in the world, probably rivaled only by the Japanese system. It made sense to have a company with experience in building and running a high speed rail system. Then the French came in and found out just how bad things are in the People’s Democratic Republic of Kalifornistan. Here are the details from Breitbart:
The French national railroad company intended to help California build its high-speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles, but ended up leaving the state to pursue projects in war-torn North Africa, which the company said was a less “dysfunctional” place.
The New York Times published a lengthy essay on Sunday about how California’s “bullet train” failed — despite the fervent desire of Gov. Jerry Brown (D) that it be built, and the investments of both the Obama and Biden administration in its supposed construction.
There is a reason that Jerry Brown is also known as “Governor Choo Choo.” He wanted to basically have his own, life size, taxpayer funded train set to play with.
The Times noted:
Now, as the nation embarks on a historic, $1 trillion infrastructure building spree, the tortured effort to build the country’s first high-speed rail system is a case study in how ambitious public works projects can become perilously encumbered by political compromise, unrealistic cost estimates, flawed engineering and a determination to persist on projects that have become, like the crippled financial institutions of 2008, too big to fail.
Nothing is to big to fail of course, and that includes some of these massive banking institutions. The problem with the high speed rail project in Kalifornistan is simple. The ruling elites out there can’t admit that, from day one, it was a debacle looking for a place to happen. They also, in their classic Progressive Elitist “I know what’s best, not you!” manner, refused to listen to people and organizations that actually know what the Hell they’re doing.
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.
Silly French. Even though the whole world makes fun of them, there are things they are very good at doing. Building Nuclear power plants for one, and building high speed rail systems for another. (Aircraft carriers? Not so much) Then they ran into that one group that makes the Cheese eating Surrender Monkeys look good, the Kalifornistan Progressive.
“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.”
Ouch! That should tell you just how bad this whole situation was for the French. Of course, North Africa has a different set of problems, but those problems can be generally solved with cash donations to someone’s retirement fund. With Progressives, they generally won’t stay bought, and the French couldn’t send in the Foreign Legion to deal with the troublemakers. In any case, in one of the few smart things he’s done, Gruesome Newsom finally drove stake through the heart of Govno Choo Choo’s dream.
Upon taking office in 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) canceled the high-speed rail project because he said it would “cost too much” and “take too long.” President Donald Trump (R) then tried to have $1 billion that federal taxpayers had already paid into the project returned to the national government.
But President Biden and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg restored the funding, hoping to build a high-speed rail link between sparsely-populated rural cities in the Central Valley that are most often traversed by car.
Leave it to these to idiots, well one idiot and one senile old fool, to reinforce failure. It’s what progressives do. The reasons that this project has failed was all the interference by politicians trying to get their piece of the pie and of course, radical environmentalists. In the first case, the political hacks wanted the rail system to make stops throughout Silicon valley and towns along the route. This would defeat the purpose of the system. It’s meant to be an express system, not a commuter rail. A High Speed Rail system can hit speeds over 150 miles an hour, but not if they have make stops every 15 miles.
The next problem were the radical anti-human extremist envirowhackjobs. They threw constant roadblocks in the routing of the rail system and constantly dragged the state into court. This was another reason that Newsom finally killed the project. Of course, what Buttplug and Dementia Joe actually have planned is paying off all of the progressive elites with taxpayer funds. I don’t see them laying down one foot of track.
The French are used to dealing with the corruption of Turd World countries and now how to handle it. (Usually with cases full of cash) What they didn’t know how to deal with was the epic stupidity and incompetence of American progressives. It’s no wonder they pulled the plug and left.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
