First it was the cost of California’s high-speed rail project that came under fire, prompting officials to ultimately more than double their estimates to nearly $100 billion. Now it’s the promoters’ $171-billion estimate of what will be needed for new roads and airports if the rail line isn’t built that’s being called wildly inflated, the LA Times says. An excerpt:
Already, transportation researchers, government officials and watchdog groups are saying the $171-billion claim is based on such exaggerated estimates, misleading statements and erroneous assumptions that it is "divorced from any reality."
"There is some dishonesty in the methodology," said Samer Madanat, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies, the top research center of its type in the nation. "I don't trust an estimate like this."
