18 years after voters agreed, high-speed rail progress has stalled

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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Construction of the 1,911-mile transcontinental railroad, connecting California to the eastern half of the United States, began in 1863 while the nation was embroiled in a bloody civil war, and was completed six years later when its two legs were joined at Promontory Summit in Utah.

The California high-speed rail project began in 2008 when voters passed a $9.95 billion bond issue on promises to be completed by 2020, whisking passengers from one end of the state to the other.

Eighteen years later, Ann initial segmentt in the San Joaquin Valley, connecting a station near Merced with one near Bakersfield, is little more than a skeleton of concrete piers, dubbed Stonehenge by some critics, with no tracks, no trains, and therefore no service.

It’s a hot mess that contributes to California’s reputation for managerial incompetence — like a recent episode of “60 Minutes” on the CBS network emphasized. The program’s interviews with project officials ripped into their inability to explain how and when the bullet train would be completed.

Oddly, as the project’s financial viability shrunk, Governor Gavin Newsom, once highly criticalbecame its most visible champion, organizing media events to publicize even its smallest achievements.

Twelve years ago, while serving as lieutenant governor, Newsom was scornful. In a Recorded interview in 2014he concluded, “The facts seem overwhelming that this project will not materialize in our lifetime.”

Five years later, in his first State of the Union address, Newsom again questioned the bullet train’s viability.

“Let’s be real,” Newsom told lawmakers. “The project as currently planned will cost too much and take too long. There has been too little oversight and not enough transparency. Right now there is simply no path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to LA.”

Newsom’s remarks were widely interpreted as a desire to pull the plug. But after construction unions and other advocates pushed back, he insisted he wanted to see the project become a reality, with an extended segment of the San Joaquin Valley.

Last February, his cheerleading squad took him to Kern County to celebrate a small supporting project.

“Here on the high-speed rail system, we’re now in the process of starting to lay track, 119 miles of phase one, fully funded because of the investment we’re going to make through the 2045 cap-and-invest program,” he said.

“Seventeen hundred people every day – union jobs – go to work on this project. Fifty-eight large-scale structures are complete; 29 more are underway; 99% of the environmental work is done. All the hard work is behind us. Now we’re going to see the fruits of it. We’re going to start seeing exactly what you see here, real tracks, real progress.”

All the hard work done? Far from it.

At best, it will take another six years – the same length of time as a transcontinental railroad – before trains carry passengers, and that will only be between stations near two rural towns. And to get there, the project must borrow money for construction, pledging its $1 billion a year in emissions auctions.

It is the final chapter of the saga a new “business plan”, tying the cost of connecting San Francisco to the Los Angeles area by 2040 at $126 billion.

In response, the Office of the Legislative Analyst issued a criticism which listed the plan’s flaws, concluding that it did not meet the requirements of the state’s cost transparency law and other points.

The project was a mess when Newsom became governor; it will be a mess for his successor and will likely be a mess when the next governor leaves.

I remind you of the old saying about beating a dead horse and hoping it lives.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.