CAL HIGH SPEED RAIL CONFISCATING FARMS FOR DEVELOPMENT PROFITS
“Breitbart reported in November that in the six years since California legislature approved the High-Speed Rail Authority (HSRA), just 7% of the 1,100 pieces of land needed for the first leg to travel 130 miles across farm country had been acquired.
With the project billions over budget, HSRA’s chair has admitted the agency plans to make billions in profits by confiscating farmland under eminent domain for real estate development and advertising rights along the rail line.
Because California has had a horrible record of starting and then later abandoning freeways, power plants and other highly expensive infrastructure projects; the state legislature was forced to add a series of provisions to pass AB 3034 for approval of the high-speed rail project. The restrictions were meant to ensure the train is not partially built and then becomes what “government-speak” refers to as a “stranded investment.”
The most common reasons so many California infrastructure projects have become “stranded” is that the state legislature is notorious for drastically underestimating the cost of obtaining lands and construction in order to ensure approval for the projects.
State planners knew that the most difficult sections to complete for the 381-mile long rail project would be crossing the 7,680-foot-high Tehachapi Mountain range and tearing up huge swaths of the densely populated Bay Area and Los Angeles Basin–so planners picked the flattest, straightest and most desolate area for the first segment.”
Street, Chriss. Breitbart 16 February 2015.