Eight years ago, the California High-Speed Rail Authority estimated it would cost $332 million to acquire the route spanning the Central Valley’s orchards, vineyards, dairies and cities. Obviously that ain’t what’s happening.
The process has proven far more legally tangled. The 1,900 properties in the Central Valley are now budgeted at $1.5 billion, part of the reason the project is 13 years behind schedule and at $44 billion over budget.
There are fights about farm wells and trellises, the price of nut trees separate from the land and the emotional value of land held by families for more than a century.
There is only one judge that settles these many disputes, 85 year old Edward Ross. Once a month he drives 200 miles to preside over these land disputes. For some reason every Kings County Superior Court judge has refused to hear the cases — citing unspecified “personal reasons.
You can read what an unholy mess has been created by California’s quest for a useless rail system here.