Is it (finally) end of the line for HSR?
Hopelessly late. Wildly over budget. And ridiculously over-hyped. California's High Speed Rail project may finally be sent back to the shed, unless new sources of funding are found, says local State Senator Dave Cortese. LA Times reports.
Trump's selected Cabinet officials and a California congressman have vowed to pull federal funds from the ongoing rail project, which is budgeted at roughly $100 billion more than the $33-billion budget the authority estimated in 2008.
The potential loss of federal support would pose one more setback for the project, which has struggled to identify tens of billions of needed funds and has no clear timeline for completion.
Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, said that a combination of cap-and-trade and private developer investments is key to sustaining the life of the project.
“If we can’t come up with a formula like that, that adds up and gets us close to a full substantial budget for the project … we will die under our own weight and never have an opportunity to blame the federal government for much of anything,” he said.
Cortese said that private sector investment will be studied further amid discussions over how long to keep California’s cap-and-trade program, which is set to run out in 2030 and has helped fund the project.
The project was recently targeted on X by Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency, as its leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy [Editor’s note: Vivek Ramaswamy stepped down from DOGE after this article was published] look for areas to cut spending. The post highlighted the $6.8 billion the project has received in federal funding, and the authority’s request for an additional $8 billion. Musk said earlier this year that billions of dollars have been spent on high-speed rail “for practically nothing.”
And U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, announced plans to introduce legislation that would cut federal dollars on the project.
“High-speed rail, in short, is a staggering waste of taxpayer dollars that fails to meet the transportation needs of either today or tomorrow,” Kiley said. “That federal support is keeping the project on life support.”
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, who helped secure federal funding last year, said in a statement that he is “prepared to use every available avenue to protect current funding and prevent clawbacks of federal high speed rail investments.”
Construction on the rail project is underway in the Central Valley along a 119-mile stretch, with plans to extend into Merced and Bakersfield. Despite seismic concerns, last segment of Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high-speed rail line is cleared environmentally.
Despite these steps, the project continues to face uncertainty. Ridership projections have dropped as interstate travel for business has decreased in the age of remote work. Some initial supporters of the project have lost interest. And a recurring grievance in board meetings is that there is far more money yet to be identified for the rail system than currently exists, even with help from the federal government.
Read the whole thing here.
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