HSR Authority CEO “drinking the Kool-Aid” with latest comment
Yet another appalling budgetary upsurge (currently, the SJ–SF section alone will cost $5.3 million), and Brian Kelly still calls California’s failed high-speed rail project affordable? The Opp Now team spoke with Kelly Decker and Cindy Bloom of the SAFE Coalition about this fallacious claim and why HSR is a “Train to Nowhere” except taxpayers’ pockets. The San Fernando Valley-based SAFE (Save the Angeles Forest for Everyone) Coalition originally fought the HSR project on environmental grounds and now also its overall devastation to California.
Opportunity Now: How does SAFE Coalition respond to Brian Kelly’s recent statement defending HSR affordability, labeling it cheaper than expanding existing mobility options?
Kelly Decker: For Brian Kelly to go on record saying that HSR is more economical than other infrastructure improvements is laughable. He's either outright lying, or he's that far out of touch with reality that he's now drinking the Kool-Aid he's selling.
The estimated costs of the HSR project have spiraled out of control, increasing every year since the bond measure passed in 2008. Fourteen years later, they're at over $100 billion, and they have yet to lay a single inch of track anywhere in the state of California.
One of HSR's biggest problems is that they fail to see the big picture. They're operating in silos throughout the state, but without a plan or funding to connect any of them. That's why their current plan has the train ending in the middle of an almond farm in Shafter. They aren't partnering with or even cooperating with air and road partners to create a system that really gets people from Point A to Point B, as is evidenced by the fact that the Burbank Airport filed a lawsuit against CHRSA because its catenaries will interfere with avionics and jeopardize airport operations and safety.
Cindy Bloom: The argument that HSR is cheaper than building additional airports and highways on its face is fallacious because Brian Kelly is relying on the faulty premise that building additional airports and highways is absolute. California’s population is stagnating, and it even lost a Congressional seat in 2022. There is no requirement that California needs, or will need, to build new or expand existing airports or highways.
Even if more highways and airports were required, with the rate of cost increases presented at every business plan, it is almost guaranteed that the project will quickly meet and then eclipse the cost of these other transportation modes.
Read more from the SAFE Coalition here.
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This article is part of an exclusive Opp Now series.
First, TRANSDEF president David Schonbrunn rebuts the HSR Authority CEO’s “bargain” rhetoric surrounding California’s high-speed rail ambitions.
In the second article, environmental group SAFE Coalition’s Kelly Decker and Cindy Bloom respond to Brian Kelly’s claims of financial affordability.
Then, the third article spotlights Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association president Jon Coupal’s take on Brian Kelly’s argument.
For the final installment, the Opp Now team analyzes outdated logic in the State’s informational page on the HSR project.