High-speed rail causing havoc

The Transbay Terminal, which was built to accommodate high-speed rail, has cost us over $2 billion and is closed now with major structural problems. Its excavation work may also have caused the sinking of the Millennium Tower and we could be on the hook for that as well. I’m sure they are giving lots of our money to lawyers already.

The electrification of Caltrain was primarily prompted by and funded through the high-speed rail project. Starting this weekend, it was go no further than Bayshore on weekends until next spring (“Service shift for weekend trains to S.F.” in the Sept. 24 edition of the Daily Journal). This weekend is Fleet Week, featuring the Blue Angels and also Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival. Either event draws far more crowds than any Giants game. The elimination of the two San Francisco stops will cause major inconveniences, especially for those with bicycles. There will undoubtedly be major expenses involved busing all the passengers to the final stations.

I am not opposed to the high-speed rail. I just believe it was a bad idea to send it on a dead-end dogleg to San Francisco. It would be much simpler to connect with BART in San Jose and/or the East Bay, as Amtrak does now. We could have avoided these expensive problems and use that money to build the high-speed rail to Sacramento.

Tim Donnelly

Burlingame