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By Jon Coupal
What is it with California that it just doesn’t know how to run a railroad?
This column has, on several occasions, covered the abysmal history of the nation’s largest boondoggle, high-speed rail. With every passing day, it becomes increasingly obvious that it will never be completed and all that will remain is a series of concrete pylons in the Central Valley that will become California’s version of Stonehenge.
This past week two news items highlighted another rail disaster unfolding in California. First was the report that a police sergeant with LAPD had his finger bitten off by a homeless man in East Hollywood. The second news item was a request from transit advocates for a $5 billion bailout of California’s failing transit systems. The proposal is being pushed by Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, who said that without the state cash, BART and other big-city transit systems will have to make drastic service cuts.
Senator Weiner is correct about California transit systems being on the verge of bankruptcy, but he is wrong to suggest that the problem will be fixed with a bailout from taxpayers already paying billions for the self-inflicted wounds of poor planning and bad management.
It is indisputable that California’s major transit systems are in trouble, but among the several reasons for that trouble, only the pandemic was beyond the control of politicians. No one disputes the impact that COVID-19 had as millions of Californians were told to stay at home. But even here one must wonder whether California’s chosen pandemic response contributed to the severe economic blow. The economic damage from the pandemic was less severe in other states which remained more open.
To read the entire column, please click here.
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