California is taking of heat for celebrating the completion of an high-speed rail bridge that has cost taxpayers $11 billion and took nine years to build — and clearly goes nowhere.
Critics — including Tesla founder Elon Musk and Dogecoin creator Billy Markus — are ripping the California High Speed Rail Authority after it boasted about last year’s completion of a “Fresno River Viaduct,” a mere sliver of the state’s long-delayed, bullet-train project attempting to link San Francisco to Los Angeles
“This is the most remarkable human achievement ever,” joked Markus, the creator of the jokey cryptocurrency, on X Friday.
“1600 feet of high speed rail after 9 years and 11 billion dollars it takes about 5 minutes to walk 1600 feet so a high speed rail for that is a really big deal,” added Markus, who also goes by “Shibetoshi Nakamoto.”
“California is so competent.”
Musk also chimed in, posting a sad, crying emoji to express his sentiments about the boondoggle of a project that is reportedly in danger of being scrapped.
That’s despite $11 billion in taxpayer dollars that have already being sunk into the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high speed rail project.
That figure includes both the bridge and other work on the first phase of the high-speed route — which runs from Bakersfield north of Los Angeles to Merced, which is about 80 miles from the Bay Area.
Critics were responding to an earlier post by the rail authority, touting that the Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County is one of the “first completed high-speed rail structures.”
“At nearly 1,600 feet long, high-speed trains will travel over the riverbed and will run parallel with the BNSF Railroad,” the authority said on X.
Although reported estimates to complete the rail line will cost taxpayers about $100 billion, Markus fired back, quipping: “wow so impressive, can’t wait until year 2400 for this to finish for 700 quadrillion dollars.”
Venture Capitalist Patrick Blumenthal insinuated the authority should pump the brakes on praising itself, posting a breakdown of the lack of progress the rail-line project has made.
“0.3 miles completed. After 15 years. After $11.2 BILLION. $36.96 billion per mile,” he wrote on X.
