I love the train too, when I was in third grade there was still passenger service in the valley and my cub scout den took the train up there to Roeding Park for the day, I was on a multi-level car with the bubble-top, it was the 1960's and it was pretty awesome.
But this train is a gigantic boondoggle, the current budget is around 68 BILLION and you know that will most likely double before it's done (yeah that 250 million from the gas tax hike is pretty hilarious) in a state that has some of the highest taxes in the nation coupled with an incredibly hard time balancing it's budget because of all the liberal spending.
Currently there is something like a $58 billion shortfall in the funding but Moonbeam is just plowing ahead with it anyway no matter that he's going to run out of money in a couple years, it will never be finished and the sections that MAY get finished (Fresno/Madera to Bakersfield) will never have enough riders to even cover a small percentage of it's operating costs.
A couple years ago I rode the train from Hanford to Stockton on my way to San Ramon to pick up a bike I'd bought and there were 30 people on a six car passenger train.
So you can look forward to even more tax hikes.
Not to mention all the businesses and lives displaced during and after the construction, this hits home for me since the plan calls for taking some more of my mother's land she has next to the route, I mean come on they're hitting her twice on that piece of land, a few years ago the state forced a roadway right through the middle of the property ruining it's value for commercial development and now they want more of it and we can't stop them.
Plus they may bulldoze my little sister's house in the same area, my father and I moved that house from one of the ranches to save it and had my uncle completely rebuild it and she's lived in it for over 25 years, we can't even get any answers from the state about that.
Bastards
ok ok didn't mean to rant that whole train fiasco just pisses me off.
