Habitual Amtrak ticket Scammer in LA Union station.

[JRR]

At a “smoke stop” in Memphis on the CONO last Thurs., a guy came out from under the train and began panhandling the passengers on the platform, I pointed him out to the SCA but he wasn’t interested.

 

[montana mike]

I think you've inadvertently explained why SoCal in general and LA in particular have the homeless and recent public health issues they do. The defeatist attitude that says "if we run them off they'll just come back" is part of the problem. There are laws against loitering and solicitation and creating a nuisance, along with penalties for each of those offenses. But if no one is willing to enforce the laws which already exist (for whatever reason), then they are useless.

From what I've read much of the current homeless problem can be traced back to the time of (governor and president) Reagan pushed for wholesale defunding and dismantling of the long term mental health industry. I think many people would agree that there were a lot of problems with how that particular industry was run and regulated, but by choosing not to replace it with anything better a new problem of rampant homelessness and perpetual incarceration was born.

I travel to the west coast often and SoCal on occasion and this major issue has only gotten bad in the past five years or so. Blaming this on Reagan from over 40 years ago is silly. Just looking at the people who are causing these issues, and I was just in Seattle several weeks ago and saw these problems in WA first hand again, almost all are between 18 and 35 years old, some of whom were openly shooting up on drugs in the middle of the day on the sidewalks in downtown Seattle. The police finally stepped in, after several of the addicts began going after people walking along the sidewalks. Not the "traditional" down and out old guy or gal who was a refugee from a mental hospital or a chronic drunk by any stretch of the imagination. Granted I am looking at a small sampling of people in my travels, but I didn't see any "drunks" or open or empty liquor bottles, just lots of needles and drugs. And what I saw in the heart of Seattle in the middle of the day was virtually the same as I witnessed in LA and SF. As much of a rail fan as I am, I think California's billions would have been much more wisely spent on helping these really sad examples of humanity, rather than building the HSR to nowhere.

Not a train to nowhere even in it's very first link from Bakersfield to Fresno --- 9th and 5th largest cities in California. Second link Bakersfield to San Jose.

Do you really think anywhere near the full length of this route will ever be built out, given the fact that they are multiple years behind and tens of billions over budget? Nowhere was a poor choice of words, but my point is a valid one.

 

[Ryan]

Nowhere was a poor choice of words, but my point is a valid one.

Not really.

 

[montana mike]

Get, real. You are "supposedly" a fact checker. Anyone with any common sense and a calculator can do the math and see this project is NOT sustainable. California's own bean counters have stated in writing that the state cannot complete this project as budgeted, nor do they have the resources to fund it.

 

[jis]

Just to give a counter example about "sustainable", one needs go no further than Boston and its Big Dig. Yet it was built, and seems to have been the right thing to do. Too bad that in all the carping about non-sustainability all that got chopped was the North-South Rail Link. But now it looks like even that will eventually get built, sustainable or not

If there is one thing we have learned with vengeance of late, reality is in the perception of the beholder, specially in matters of speculation. In matters of speculation, "Get real" is really not an argument about anything as it would appear.

A very significant proportion of projects that are eventually completed run vastly over budget and are late in delivery and face continuous carping by a significant group of naysayers, But still they are completed. So, based on objective past experience, there is no fact checking that could unquestionably support a speculation about the completion or not of the project in question at this time.

Ah yes, we also have ESA and Second Avenue Subway in New York among other counter examples.

All this just IMHO of course ....

 

[jcs]

It appears the biggest Scammer of all are our government and politicians, which always proposing and passing new taxes for promises they can never deliver and then using the money for something else. As there is no way they will refund the taxes people paid over the years even if the project is cancelled. Ie the high speed rail project or roads to nowhere.

I really wish they just build HSR between LA area to SD/TJ. And improve the stations in between. This corridor is already pretty busy. Though reliability is bad due to aging track equipment and other factors as well as poorly designed stations.

Anyways I would hope there would be a way to get these habitual scam artists to replay their debts without using fines or jail time which would just dig deeper into our pockets.

 

[leemell]

It appears the biggest Scammer of all are our government and politicians, which always proposing and passing new taxes for promises they can never deliver and then using the money for something else. As there is no way they will refund the taxes people paid over the years even if the project is cancelled. Ie the high speed rail project or roads to nowhere.

I really wish they just build HSR between LA area to SD/TJ. And improve the stations in between. This corridor is already pretty busy. Though reliability is bad due to aging track equipment and other factors as well as poorly designed stations.

Anyways I would hope there would be a way to get these habitual scam artists to replay their debts without using fines or jail time which would just dig deeper into our pockets.

No taxes in this (CHSRA), it is all bond money (voted on by the people of California) or grants.

 

[leemell]

Get, real. You are "supposedly" a fact checker. Anyone with any common sense and a calculator can do the math and see this project is NOT sustainable. California's own bean counters have stated in writing that the state cannot complete this project as budgeted, nor do they have the resources to fund it.

If you want real data, not third hand opinions, check here http://www.hsr.ca.gov/About/Business_Plans/2018_Business_Plan.html. Actual budget numbers expended to date and projections along with real engineering data. BTW. UC Berkeley and a private engineering firm have created a very sophisticated operations model that predicts usage, scheduling and fares. It has been validated at least twice by expert auditing committees. At this site you can dig down as deep as you like right to the EIR source information. It can get very technical.