If You Don’t Like the Data, Attack the Messenger

California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office announced this week that the state is about to waste $6 billion or more starting construction on a high-speed rail line that will never be completed. “The availability of funding to complete a usable segment is highly uncertain,” said the report, to which the Antiplanner responds, “Duh!”

Yet some people aren’t ready to hear the truth. Assemblyperson Cathleen Galgiani, who claims to have authored the law that is now expected to cost taxpayers more than $100 billion, “decries” the new report as “misleading and biased.” Her complaint seems to be that there must be some sinister conspiracy against high-speed rail, but the Legislative Analyst’s Office won’t tell her who is behind this conspiracy.

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The projected costs of this project have more than doubled. (Much more, considering the original projection of costs was about $15 billion and the current projection is about $100 billion.) The projected benefits have declined (projected ridership has fallen by 10 percent, and even that is a gross exaggeration of actual likely ridership). Yet proponents such as Galgiani are not interested in considering or debating the value of the project, only in making sure that it takes place no matter what the cost.

A recent poll found that less than a third of California voters still support high-speed rail. Interestingly, when rail measures lose at the polls, rail advocates simply resubmit them to the voters over and over until they pass. Once passed, and costs inflate while projected benefits decline, rail advocates are never willing to go back to the voters for a reassessment. Damn the cost estimates! Full speed ahead.