A shinkansen N700A series, or high speed bullet train, arrives at night in Tokyo on March 21, 2021. (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP) (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
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California’s misbegotten high-speed train project is an expensive example of Ronald Reagan’s insight that a government program “is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Back in the early 2000s, California politicians fell in love with the idea of a 520-mile bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles, with various stops in between. After all, countries like China, Japan and various European nations had passenger trains that could run at remarkable top speeds of 200 mph or faster. Plans and dazzling PR presentations were put together. Voters were impressed and approved a nearly $10 billion referendum in 2008 to get the thing started.
However, the passenger projections and the revenues the bullet train would supposedly collect were pure fantasy, verging on fraud. So were cost estimates. Original estimates were $33 billion, and the train was supposed to be completed by 2020.
The whole thing has been a disgraceful boondoggle, even by government standards. Here we are five years after the bullet train was to be up and running, and the state hasn’t even begun to lay the 119-mile track between two cities, both far from the original destinations of LA and San Francisco. Track-laying for this won’t even start until early next year.
The latest cost calculations for this project are $135 billion, and rising. Completion date? Sometime in the next decade, and maybe not even then.
Long ago, most normal people concluded that this fiasco should be abandoned. But sensible thinking from pyramid-loving politicians and folks who hate cars and planes has been conspicuously absent.
The California legislature is planning to provide $20 billion for the financially- and managerially-challenged California High-Speed Rail Authority that’s in charge of this scheme. The funds will come from the state’s convoluted cap-and-trade program, which makes emitters of greenhouse gases buy pollution credits. The catch is that the authority will get only $1 billion a year from this legislation over the next 20 years.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration is wisely clawing back $4 billion in allocated funds, on the grounds that the authority defaulted on the original terms. In other words, it lied about plausible estimates of time and costs. Moreover, from the get-go changes to the plan were made for political reasons.
Desperate for money, the rail authority is now plotting to lease some of the land it seized by eminent domain to real estate developers. Another scam to get money is to build solar facilities to provide electricity not only for the train but also for sale to private commercial customers. You wanna bet that if this undertaking happens, it will be a big money loser?
It’s long past time to derail this fiscal fiasco.