Elevated, subterranean or ground level, California High Speed Rail Authority’s SuperMassive Black Hole is still the mother of all boondoggles, up there with VTA’s boondoggles.
Socialist public sector transit is a death knell for cities and counties that do it—just look at VTA’s so-called “balanced budget.” As I said to then Judge Quentin Kopp in 1996, only in the private sector can you find long term sound, sustainable transport in America. As I said at the joint Gilroy and Morgan Hill Chambers’ pre-election debates in October 2008, we could have purchased all of the outstanding common shares of Pacific Southwest Airlines and had a viable high-speed form of transportation without taxpayers’ subsidies.
The Dispatch published my letter in which I predicted that gas would have to go to $10 per gallon to raise enough money to run socialist Bullet Train. I was wrong: today it’s going to be more than $25 per gallon, and even then we’ll be facing annual losses of $1 billion per year, plus the money to debt-service the bonds.
Time to put CAHSRA in Chapter 9, liquidate what we can, cut our losses, trade the partially completed infrastructure in exchange for restoration of intermodal facilities in all ag-shipping counties and have the bankruptcy trustee claw back all fraudulent transfers. The trustee gets an extra two years on the statute of limitations to file his fraudulent transfer avoidance complaints under the Bankruptcy Code. Socialism doesn’t work—just look at VTA, COG, Caltrain, Amtrak, ACE Train, SMART Train, Metroliner, Lite Rail, etc.
Joe Thompson
Past-Chair, Legislation Committee, Transportation Lawyers Assn.
