There is no point in the rest of the nation’s supporting California’s failing high-speed-rail project.
There is no point in the rest of the nation’s supporting California’s failing high-speed-rail project.
T hirty years ago, California progressives came up with the idea of an 800-mile high-speed rail service that would connect San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Sacramento. Their goal was to burnish the state’s cutting-edge image while fighting climate change.
In 2008, they got 52.6 percent of California voters to approve a $10 billion bond issue to jump-start the project, which promoters claimed would cost $33 billion, with service starting in 2020. The fastest trains, going at least 200 miles per hour, were to finish the trip in no more than two hours and 40 minutes, and tickets would be affordable.
A full 17 years later, the project looks more like a con artist’s dream than a futuristic transportation service. Last Sunday, the New York Times ran a lengthy piece about it titled “A Scenic Tale of Red Tape: Tracking The Slowest High-Speed Train in the Country.” Construction is inching along on a third of the route, a mere stub between the non-metropolis of Merced (population 93,000) and Bakersfield (population 413,000). The project is now projected to cost at least $128 billion. Officials no longer bother predicting when San Francisco and Los Angeles will be linked. Meanwhile, the California High Speed Rail Authority is virtually out of money. The funding shortfall is nearly $100 billion, and federal taxpayers have already chipped in $7 billion. The train’s boosters were counting on more, but, within days of being sworn in, President Donald Trump cut off more federal funding.
Desperate for money and having drained almost every available pool of government assistance in the state, high-speed-rail advocates are now trying to sucker the private sector to “invest” in their mad scheme. Ian Choudri, the new CEO of the California High Speed Rail Authority, says the state should approach the private sector to keep construction on the Merced-to-Bakersfield portion going. Otherwise, Choudri says, according to the Associated Press, the state may have to take out federal loans or issue new bonds.
But neither option is likely. The federal government is $37 trillion in debt and justifiably suspicious of borrowing more money and pouring it down a deeper train hole. Privately, state officials express the same doubts. Choudri’s proposal would involve guarantees that any private sector loans would be paid back. This would, of course, require at least market-rate interest payments, which would further bloat the project’s costs.
Moreover, the most challenging parts of the construction project remain, including the tunneling between Palmdale and Burbank and under Pacheco Pass, which are necessary to bring the rail to Los Angeles. These are likely to result in at least as much cost escalation as has the far less expensive and flatter Bakersfield-to-Merced segment. One of us authored a report last month for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. It indicated that the cost of California’s project could double, to as much as $250 billion. Any loans from the private sector would likely come at a premium and need to be paid back by California taxpayers.
This doesn’t mean that high-speed rail has no future in the United States. Personally, I (John Fund) love train travel, having grown up in Europe, where greater population density makes it a natural fit. But the top-down, government-driven model of high-speed rail favored by progressives is doomed in the U.S. As he declined to offer more federal funding for California’s project, Sean Duffy, the new secretary of the Department of Transportation, took pains to point out that a similar project by Brightline West, a private company that is building high-speed rail from Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., to Las Vegas, is “going well.”
Indeed, if you want to see high-speed rail that has actually been built and works, go to Florida. The eastern branch of Brightline now runs between Orlando and Miami (a distance of 246 miles) in only three hours and 30 minutes and at an average ticket price of $75. Driving that distance usually takes between four and four and a half hours. Brightline trains are reliable and have comfortable seating, quality food, and a beverage service. And because Brightline used private money and an existing railroad right-of-way (unlike California, which decided to build an entirely new path), the project came in at a reasonable price and almost zero cost to taxpayers.
It’s too late for California’s legislature to try the Brightline model. It now needs to finally decide whether its misbegotten choo-choo is important enough for the state to pay for it. There is no point in the rest of the nation supporting the project, whether with loans or grants, given the disastrous record we’ve seen so far. If Californians want a bullet train, they can pay for it, or they can continue to rely on the constant and affordable air shuttle services that fly passengers from L.A. to the Bay Area in 90 minutes.
John Fund is the national affairs columnist for National Review. Wendell Cox is a senior fellow at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.