Reviving California High-Speed Rail

The California High Speed Rail Authority has reason to be thankful this week as the U.S. Department of Transportation gave it another $900 million, keeping hopes alive for the state’s rail program. That means the feds have given the state a total of about $4.5 billion which, when matched with state bonds (which can only be sold when matched by other money) brings the authority’s total funds to $9 billion.

That’s less than 10 percent of what it will cost to build the San Francisco-to-Anaheim line. The authority plans to start building in the Fresno area next year; if it fails to start by September 30, it loses the federal dollars.

Some members of Congress from California want to take back the rail grants. But it is more likely that the only way to stop the authority from spending billions building a train to nowhere is for the legislature to deny its approval of bond sales.

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Last Spring, the Antiplanner speculated that the Obama administration could signal its firm support for the California program by giving it the entire $2.4 billion released when Florida canceled its train. But the administration gave California only a token $300 million. But by giving the state nearly a billion this week, the administration is indicating that it still strongly supports the program.

It isn’t enough. The administration should have spent the last of the rail money on safety improvements distributed around the nation. Such improvements would speed trains a little but have the much more positive benefit of reducing conflicts between freight trains and other modes. By blowing nearly $1 billion on a doomed program, the administration demonstrates that it has completely lost its grip on reality.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

8 Responses to Reviving California High-Speed Rail

  1. Sandy Teal says:

    I thought NEPA and the California NEPA (CEPA) prohibited segmenting projects such that a government justifies a small project that can’t be justified because it is just a segment of a larger project that makes sense.

  2. LazyReader says:

    They need these immense injections of funds for what……Why should people in other states be taxed greater by the federal government to pay for passenger rail other states. 65 billion to 81 billion to nearly 100 billion dollars today. Florida Governor Rick Scott deserved a big round of applause for rejecting that very appealing 2.4 billion in federal cash for a Floridian HSR project.
    California high-speed rail is a rathole down which the federal government is crazy to put a dime. Any private investor would be crazy to risk a dollar on it and as it shows few have. The systems’ first stage, a 10-14 billion dollar; 160-mile line segment in the Central Valley from Bakersfield to Merced — has run into determined opposition from local residents and farming interests during the ongoing environmental impact review. The possibility of lengthy court challenges could delay construction probably for years, thus increasing costs, eroding political support and putting federal money at risk and only embarrising even further. To spend 40,50-100 billion, who knows how high the cost would run? All on a project to transport business travelers from metro Los Angeles to metro San Francisco when they can already conveniently get from one to the other via one of metro LA’s five major airports and one of metro San Francisco’s three major airports is insane.

  3. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    The Antiplanner wrote:

    Last Spring, the Antiplanner speculated that the Obama administration could signal its firm support for the California program by giving it the entire $2.4 billion released when Florida canceled its train. But the administration gave California only a token $300 million. But by giving the state nearly a billion this week, the administration is indicating that it still strongly supports the program.

    The strategy here is to get some tracks on the ground for passenger rail trains to use (even if it’s only one or two trains every 24 hours). Even if those tracks are constrained because of capacity constraints of connecting (freight) railroads or otherwise severely limited (in terms of not having catenary or traction power for electric trains or perhaps designed so that standard North American freight railroad trains cannot operate on them), the argument will then be made in favor of ever-more taxpayer spending on the project because “so much has already been ‘invested'” (invested is not the right word, but that’s the one that railfans use to justify spending taxpayer money on anything that involves steel wheels on steel rails).

  4. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    LazyReader wrote:

    To spend 40,50-100 billion, who knows how high the cost would run? All on a project to transport business travelers from metro Los Angeles to metro San Francisco when they can already conveniently get from one to the other via one of metro LA’s five major airports and one of metro San Francisco’s three major airports is insane.

    Agreed.

  5. Sandy Teal says:

    The worst idea I ever heard was that US taxpayers should fund a high speed train from LA and SF to Las Vegas. Assuming that letting Californians gamble is in the national interest, wouldn’t everyone (except high speed rail profiteers) agree that it would be far cheaper and more efficient to just build casinos in LA and SF?

  6. the highwayman says:

    C. P. Zilliacus said: The argument will then be made in favor of ever-more taxpayer spending on the project because “so much has already been ‘invested’.

    THWM: So all the taxpayer money spent on your ICC wasn’t an “investment”.

  7. FrancisKing says:

    C.P. Zilliacus wrote: “(invested is not the right word, but that’s the one that railfans use to justify spending taxpayer money on anything that involves steel wheels on steel rails).”

    Lucky you. In the UK, under the Labour Party, ALL government spending was reclassified as investment – including a computer system that they could never get to work, but which they spent $bns on.

  8. MJ says:

    At least Solyndra only cost us $500 million.

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