The Bullet Train Corruption Cometh

Let The Stealing Begin

• The high speed rail trough of billions in corrupt money is starting to fill for the supporters of California's political hacks.

The state high-speed rail authority took another key step Thursday in building the initial segments of the bullet train system between Los Angeles and San Francisco, saying it had preliminarily selected a team of contractors for another 65 miles of the route through the Central Valley.

While the agency continues to move ahead with planning, contracts, legal settlements and political agreements, it has yet to start heavy construction in Fresno, which was expected about two years ago. But officials have vowed that the late start will not delay their completion dates in 2017 and 2018 for about 130 miles of rail line from Madera to Bakersfield.

The team for the 65-mile section, led by Dragados USA, a subsidiary of a Spanish construction firm, submitted the lowest of three bids for the new contract and was judged as having the highest technical competence score. It submitted a bid of $1.23 billion, well below the $1.74 billion submitted by the team led by Sylmar-based Tutor Perini and the $2.07 billion by the team led by Samsung E&C Americas, a Los Angeles-based unit of a South Korean conglomerate reports the L.A. Times.

The 65-mile segment runs from near downtown Fresno south to the Kern County line, passing nearby but not through the small farming towns of Hanford, Allensworth and Corcoran. The cost of the segment, about $19 million per mile, is significantly less than the 29-mile segment through an urbanized part of Fresno, which will cost about $34 million per mile.

The new segment of rail has been among the most controversial in the Central Valley, raising the ire of farmers who said the line was bisecting pristine agriculture fields with some of the richest soil in the state, if not the nation. The route planning triggered a number of lawsuits by farmers and counties.

Hanford officials strongly objected to having trains running through their historic downtown at 220 mph. Instead, the route swings in a semicircle to the east. Another bypass near Corcoran avoids sensitive wetlands. An Allensworth bypass avoids a wildlife preserve and a historic state park, according to rail agency documents.

John Tos, a farmer who filed an unsuccessful suit to block the project, vowed to continue his opposition.

"It appears they are doing a lot of paperwork," Tos said. "It is a charade they are putting on for the public."

Amtrak rail lines in California..
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Nothing to Steal
An intelligent person would simply connect the Amtrak line that dead ends in San Luis Obispo with the Amtrak line at San Jose.  For a tiny fraction of the cost of the insane "high speed" rail fraud most of the state from Mexico to Sacramento would be connected by rail.
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..Instead countless billions will be pissed away as payback to the businesses and unions that fund the campaigns of the Sacramento hacks.  All the special interests have their snouts in the trough of corruption.