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LA Construction Workers Wary Of Jobs Boost From High-Speed Rail Project

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — A proposed multi-billion-dollar rail project was the target of skepticism from yet another group on Thursday.

KNX 1070's Ed Mertz reports construction workers are speaking out against the embattled project.

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Kyle represents some of the rail workers — some of whom are unemployed — who attended the California High-Speed Rail Authority's monthly meeting at Metro headquarters in downtown Los Angeles to have their say on the $100 billion project.

The price tag was projected to be around $33 billion when voters approved the project in 2008.

"We're not talking about spending $98 billion today or the next year or in two or three year, we're talking about spending it over 20, 25, 30 years, so when you look at that it's reduced down significantly on a per-year basis," said Kyle.

Analysts have produced conflicting estimates over how many jobs the railway would create — a number that gets increasingly more unclear as the target completion date for the system is pushed back from 2020 to 2034.

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