Train to Nowhere
Food Chain Radio Show #1210
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
Train to Nowhere
Guest: Mark A. Wasser, Attorney
For a mere $33 billion dollars, California’s politicians, led by Governor Jerry Brown, promised to connect the state’s major cities with a high-speed rail line. The train was sold to tax payers as a high speed rail that would take passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – California Train to Nowhere – Destroying Farms and Farmers
California taxpayers said, “Yes!”
But as the project progressed, the Sacramento and San Diego lines were dropped. And the travel time between Los Angeles and San Francisco doubled, and the cost tripled to $98 billion.
California taxpayers were left with the prospect of paying for a low-speed rail line that would only go half as far for triple the price. And so California’s new governor, Gavin Newsome, said, “No way!”
What Californian taxpayers now have is a monumental concrete boondoggle that may some day take them from Wasco to Madera. In the interim the project is eating up billions of dollars and some of the most productive farmland on earth.
That so much money and farmland is being lost leads us to ask:
Leave a comment below: Where is California’s train-to-nowhere going?
Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.
