To the editor: The assertion by a California Excessive-Pace Rail Authority spokesperson on this article actually caught my consideration (“California drops lawsuit searching for to reinstate federal funding for the state’s bullet prepare,” Dec. 28). “Transferring ahead with out the Trump administration’s involvement permits the Authority to pursue confirmed world finest practices used efficiently by fashionable high-speed rail programs world wide,” it learn.
Actually? The mission is years not on time and billions of {dollars} over funds. That’s the results of erratic assist from the Trump administration?
The second a part of that authority’s assertion is a doozy. Solely now will or not it’s potential to “pursue confirmed world finest practices”? Why couldn’t these practices be pursued in previous years?
The mission was licensed in 2008. I had excessive hopes again then. But right here we’re 17 years on with virtually nothing to indicate for no matter effort has been expended in all that point. I’ve to surprise how a number of European nations (to not point out Japan) have efficiently constructed high-speed rail strains. What did they do proper that we will’t replicate?
Our bullet prepare mission jogs my memory of the Gravina Island Bridge in Alaska — a.ok.a. the “Bridge to Nowhere.”
Martin Parker, Thousand Oaks
