A bridge too costly

The less than favorable results of High Speed Rail's Madera Bridge Project mess-up points to a potential underlying theme: Is the return on taxpayer investments a genuine concern of California’s government? Evan Symon reports from California Globe.

On Monday, a release of documents showed that a California High-Speed Rail and BNSF Railway bridge in Madera County has halted production due to numerous construction issues and design problems.

The Road 27 bridge, located in the town of Madera, was scheduled to have been completed in 2017 to link up the $20.4 billion Bakersfield to Merced leg of the California High-Speed Rail Project. However, steel lines that were supporting the bridge started snapping and tension strands started corroding. Engineering experts found that errors by contractors and consultants at the Sylmar-based Tutor Perini Corporation led to years of delay, with metal and steel damage halting the project since December of 2019.

However, many critics have said that the bridge, now four years behind schedule, could have more, not-yet readily apparent issues lurking beneath. Many of the issues and delays surround the high-speed line have influenced the federal government to pull some funding, such as the Department of Transportation pulling $1 billion in funding in May.

For the High-Speed Rail, there’s the added pressure of urgency, as this project is years behind schedule and has gone way up in price. It was originally priced at $40 billion, but now an opening may not happen for over a decade still and is costing, by some estimates, as much as $100 billion. Any failure now for a project this size isn’t an option, by like the bridge showed, it keeps happening and costs go up.

Other high speed lines, such as an LA to Las Vegas route, are currently being moved forward by private companies. Currently there is no plan to finalize repairs on the bridge.