jobtrio.com

December 17, 2009 – Last year, after the new construction of a California high speed train from San Francisco to Los Angeles was voted on and passed, the business plan that was submitted gave an outline for construction costs and future revenue for this decade long project.

An updated business plan has been released to the public as of December 14, 2009 by the California High-Speed Rail Authority; a requirement from the state Legislature. The updated business plan estimates higher costs for construction and ticket fare than originally expected. It is also estimated that these changes to the budget will in turn lower the number of passengers.

California's High-Speed Rail Starting to Look Worse

The numbers outlined in the business plan specifically reveal that the average rate of a train ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles will cost passengers $105 per ticket. This is 83 percent of the current comparable airfare, and up from $55 per train ticket in the original budget. This increase in the cost of ticket fare is due to the increase in predicted construction costs which the new budget states are up to $42.6 billion from $33.6 billion.

The Authority Deputy Director, Jeff Barker, spoke out letting voters know that they are still getting what they voted on. He made the point that the voters wanted high-speed rail, and that’s what they’re getting. He, however, didn’t address that fact that with these numbers, the rail will have a hard time justifying itself to the average traveler from a cost/benefit standpoint.

As a positive effect, the increase in amount of money and time spent on the construction of the train increases the number of construction companies employed from the original business plan. The current estimate is 600,000 jobs over an eight year span.

So, while it may costs voters more in the future to use the train, they will not be expected to pay more in tax dollars for the construction. Many Californians are feeling like they have been the victim of a bait-and-switch and wonder if only those with a contractors license are going to benefit from this enormous public works project. What is your opinion?

Josh Groves
jobtrio.com President
Construction Industry Newswire

Tags: california, construction, contractors, cost, high-speed rail, news, train

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.