The California high-speed rail funding plan is “not financially feasible” says a peer-review committee created by the state legislature to review that plan. Various media reports suggest that this finding significantly reduces the likelihood that the legislature will approve the plan.
This is after the rail authority admitted that it inflated job estimates, claiming that the line would create a million jobs when in fact it meant a million job-years. No more than 60,000 jobs would be created by construction at one time, which is still a lot but a lot less than a million. This admission cost the authority the editorial support of the San Jose Mercury News, a paper normally eager to support any wacky rail plan that comes its way.
