News reports that the California High Speed Rail Association’s newest “business plan” proposes getting 18 million annual riders from Gilroy is, as predicted, more lipstick on a bankrupt-from-conception socialist boondoggle.
The population of Gilroy is 60,390, with 47,200 adults. Morgan Hill’s population is 45,952. So, in round numbers we’re looking at about 100,000 people of all ages. How many would take the Bullet Train every workday to Merced to Bakersfield? Would they pay full fare, or like VTA, COG, etc., pay only about 1% of the cost of their rides?
Taxpayers, motorists, pay the balance of their costly rides. It would make Lenin blush. If they all rode Bullet Train, that would be .0055% of CAHSRA’s pie-in-the-sky projected ridership.
So, it’s safe to conclude that CHSRA’s new “business plan” is pure, unadulterated horse-pucky as we liked to say when I had my law office there.
Gilroy’s taxpayers, including crucified motorists, labor under “worst-in-the-nation” award winning VTA, awarded them for extraordinary fraud, waste and abuse by the M.I.T. study of all the nation’s transit agencies. In more than 45 years of representing small and very small business owners in Gilroy and South Santa Clara County, I saw business failures and bankruptcies at higher rates than the national average. Why’s that? Confiscatory taxes/fees/fines/assessments and mandates?
In 2008, when the Gilroy and Morgan Hill chambers invited me to debate former Supervisor Rod Diridon in the pre-election debate on Prop. 1A, I said the same thing that I said to the “Godfather of the Bullet Train” in 1996, the Honorable Judge and Sen. Quentin Kopp. Private sector solutions are the only sound, sustainable transport solutions for local, state and federal governments.
I repeated my position in testimony before the Assembly Transportation Committee in the Capitol in 2010 in support of proposed legislation to defund the Bullet Train.
Nothing has changed over the years since to make me change my position. In fact, construction and operating costs have increased dramatically, and will increase more before it’s completed. In a guest opinion published by the Gilroy Dispatch in 2008, I predicted that gas taxes would have to increase to $10 per gallon to fund the CAHSRA’s monstrosity. Their fiscal bottomless pit is now so deep that I now double my previous estimate to $20 per gallon. But then, what will we do if we tax people out of their cars?
Instead of creating another socialist public sector transit boondoggle, I think that we ought to learn from our history, and switch to private sector rail, which is the only sustainable way to run a railroad.
CAHSRA has, predictably, answered AB 377 with a new “business plan” that’s no different than their previous plan to crucify the taxpayers. Asking a blood sucking leech to have a new diet is an exercise in futility. We cannot afford the blood-sucking leeches that our leaders have already plastered on our backs. No wonder people are fleeing California in record numbers.
Joseph P. Thompson, Esq.
Past-President, 1999-2001, 2006, Gilroy-Morgan Hill Bar Assn.
And how are you associated with this private sector you are so interested in getting funded?
Caltrain literally has 100 trains a day going either in our out of their San Jose station. I think there would be significant demand further south through the central valley (and beyond) if passenger rail options were available.
Even CHSRA admits the project will never break even.
And if it is ever completed, it will still be faster and cheaper to drive or fly.
Common sense will eventually in California, because even the USSR collapsed. I hope to live to see it, because it will be glorious!