How many times have you heard someone pining: “Gee, I sure wish there was a really fast locomotive to ride from Anaheim to San Francisco that costs more and takes longer than flying there in an airplane.”

Yeah, I’ve never heard anyone say that either.

One of government’s arrogances is to presume to know what people want, then to provide it to them whether they need it or not at great expense without regard for consequences.

In 2008 Californians were asked to approve bonds to pay for a high-speed train to whisk passengers along the route mentioned above at 225 miles per hour for $51 a pop. Voters were told not to worry that the bonds would pay only $9.9 billion of the total $33 billion cost. Congress and local governments would kick in more taxpayer money, and private investors will be chomping at the bit to fork over their cash as well.

In effect, Californians were urged to go into debt, and hope Big Brother and unidentified private investors would bail them out later. What could go wrong?

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Three years later, we see how good the promises were.

The cost has nearly tripled from $33 billion to $98 billion. It won’t go as far as promised – San Diego and Sacramento have been scratched. The completion of the 520-mile line also has been delayed 14 years from the original 2020 to 2034. The federal government has sprinkled a mere $3.7 billion into the pot, and it doesn’t look like another dime will be forthcoming until Congress and the White House either are out of debt or completely back in Democratic Party control, two contingencies not likely for at least a few election cycles.

Not a nickel of the promised private investment has shown up, but there already is a long line of crony capitalists and opportunists queuing up to be paid from tax money allotted to date. Rather than lay the first tracks where the most people live, a political deal dictates the great non-bustling, non-metropolises of Fresno and Bakersfield must be connected first. The tracks won’t even reach all the way into Bakersfield proper. All aboard for Merced!

The train’s latest “business model,” a rather loose use of the term in our view, estimates “Merced will draw more passengers than Penn Station.” When you stop laughing, you may want to know what planners were smoking to come up with that. (See below) But their estimates are more understandable, though no more plausible, when we consider private investors won’t pony up any money without assurance there will be enough riders to turn a profit.

Profitability is another of those details glossed over in 2008. It boils down to how many people climb aboard. In 2010, a UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies analysis discovered data used by train planners was so “unreliable” it was impossible to predict whether the project would run in the black or suffer “severe revenue shortfalls.” The professors said that after initial results fell short, the rail authority’s consultants unfairly had changed formulas to show higher rider counts. Estimates also were based on questioning a disproportionate number of likely high-speed rail users, rather than a random sample of the public.

“This is quite an indictment. Nobody was watching the store,” state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, chairman of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, said at the time.

Now we are assured the guesswork is more honest. As many as 34 million passengers a year are expected, about a third as many as once forecast. If the wiggle room is that pronounced, is there any reason to believe them this time?

The desperate need for a lot of people to ride the train may explain why promoters now claim the Merced station will attract 14,400 passengers a day, more human beings than patronize any Amtrak depot anywhere in America. This is based on a monumental collection of assumptions, estimates and projections the curious can examine for themselves in the 285-page addendum on “Ridership and Revenue Forecasting” attached to the 230-page 2012 business plan. Color us skeptical.

Does any of this even remotely resemble what voters thought they were approving in 2008? At what point will Californians say “Enough’s enough!”?

Maybe more detail will help. One might think that nearly tripling the original cost would at least buy what we were promised in 2008. Not quite. There have been some other changes.

It turns out that the train route cuts through some of California’s fastest-growing areas, where tens of thousands of new houses and offices have been built. “Planners at the rail authority,” the Register’s Ron Campbell reports, “didn’t pay attention for years.” They don’t strike us as a particularly alert group.

These are people we are to trust with $98 billion?

Actually, considering the phenomenal rate of increase in only three years, it may be much more.

“There is absolutely no reason to have any confidence that it will only be $98.5 billion,” train critic Alain Enthoven, a Stanford emeritus management professor, told the Register. “It’s only an estimate from people who have a lousy record.”

According to Campbell’s report, “The engineers have had to scrap plans to lay rails on the ground” in many places. They now plan elevated tracks or tunnels to take trains over or around homes, offices and businesses. As should have been foreseen by train proponents, building trestles high above ground or burrowing through hills is considerably more costly than laying tracks on flat land.

Remember the $51 ticket you were promised to ride from Anaheim to San Francisco? Train planners increased the price a couple of times, but for now have settled on $81 – a 60-percent increase over the original. Does anyone really think this will be the last – or lowest – price we are likely to see?

A good assessment of this boondoggle is offered by Richard Tolmach, president of the California Rail Foundation, who actually wants high-speed rail to be built. He describes the current plan as a “fantasy project based on a wish for $98 billion.”

Tolmach prefers that the High-Speed Rail Authority be shut down and replaced with competitive, private industry proposals. The Legislature, many of whose members grow increasingly skeptical, can do that when hearings begin on the plan in December.

Legislators can refuse to authorize sale of bonds, which is only prudent, considering it will cost taxpayers about $1 billion a year in interest to pay off all the bonds, and the state faces up to an $8 billion deficit for the coming 2012-13 fiscal year. Moreover, according to the San Jose Mercury News, California has “a staggering $293 billion shortfall over the next decade to maintain crumbling roads, outdated freeways and transit agencies.”

The Obama administration threatens to take back the $3.5 billion federal tax money designated for the Central Valley unless it is spent. So, it is no surprise the Rail Authority wants to begin laying track as soon as possible in the Central Valley, even though trains won’t roll until that stretch is connected to population centers to the north or south. We could end up with a useless 130-mile railroad track.

Some suggest scaling back the project some more. But voters didn’t approve bonds to pay for a 110-mile-per-hour upgrade to existing Metrolink/Amtrak routes, as one Los Angeles County supervisor proposes.

State Sen. State Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, has a better idea. He will introduce legislation to put the rail project back on the ballot where voters can undo the damage they unwittingly set in motion three years ago.

Unless this run-away train is stopped, the public may become familiar with the rail authority’s business plan fine print. Richard White, Stanford history professor and author of “Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America,” says the new ridership estimates are hedged as “subjective judgments” that “may differ materially from the actual future ridership and revenue.” No surprise there.

“They think we’re suckers,” White wrote recently. Fool us once, shame on them. Fool us twice… .

Contact the writer: mlandsbaum@ocregister.com

Contact the writer: or 714-796-5025