Once the government starts spending money on a project, it becomes a Herculean task to stop it. Few examples epitomize that reality more than California High Speed Rail system. Voters deserve some of the blame, as they voted in 2008 to grant the rail authority $9.95 billion in starter funds via bonds to build a bullet train that would connect San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Too bad they didn’t realize the initial funds would be a tiny down payment on a pie-in-the-sky system with ballooning costs—or that most of the Proposition 1A’s “iron-clad” promises would be treated by the courts as mere suggestions. Now, 17 years later, it’s obvious that 2 ½ hour travel times would never come to pass after the rail authority embraced blended routes that will force fast trains to share track with slow-moving commuter rail.
None of the other lofty promises seem in realistic, from the optimistic completion date to an influx of private investment. Even the New York Times concluded in 2022 that the project is “a case study in how ambitious public works projects can become perilously encumbered by political compromise, unrealistic cost estimates, flawed engineering and a determination to persist on projects that have become, like the crippled financial institutions of 2008, too big to fail.”
National political changes, however, may yet show that it is occasionally possible to stop such boondoggles. In a harshly worded report last month, the Federal Railroad Administration cut off $4 billion in funding. “What started as a proposed 800-mile system was first reduced to 500 miles, then became a 171-mile segment, and is now very likely ended as a 119-mile track to nowhere. In essence, CHSRA (California High Speed Rail Authority) has conned the taxpayer out of its $4 billion investment, with no viable plan to deliver even that partial segment on time,” the agency explained.
Of course, $4 billion isn’t necessarily a deal killer for a project that’s now estimated to cost as much as $128 billion (more than triple the original cost estimates). State officials are eagerly concocting other funding schemes—and making the sort of unrealistic promises that have plagued the project from the start.
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Trump’s trade war makes no logical sense Fentanyl deaths fall without a drug war How much longer will county officials neglect Men’s Central Jail? Newsom holds firm and scores big CEQA reform Newsom cooks the books for CCPOA, again The San Francisco Chronicle recently interviewed rail authority CEO Ian Choudri at a public-transit conference, where he detailed his latest idea: tap into $1 billion in additional state funding and then lure private-equity partners to invest in the system. We’re not sure why a project that has failed to garner private investments will suddenly prove appealing to them, but hope springs eternal.Based on the Chronicle’s interviews with other rail supporters, “companies could develop real estate around stations or operate tunnels and charge for every train that rolls through. For businesses willing to engage in a little magical thinking, the opportunities seem boundless.” Others involve developing real estate near stations—or finishing the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment, then building a ridership and then auctioning “the rights to operate it to private companies.”
That sounds interesting, but the rail authority should have pitched a project that worked from the start rather than brainstorming ideas at this point. Californians can’t do anything about the project’s sunk costs, but they can at least stop buying new, fanciful promises and tolerating more “magical thinking” from rail officials.
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