From The Daily Caller
5:19 PM 02/12/2019 | Energy
Chris White | Energy Reporter
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom abandoned a high-speed rail project Tuesday that sought to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco.
He suggested the high cost of the project made the idea a pipe dream.
Newsom dialed back anticipation for the project during California’s State of the State address. The Democrat suggested building a high-speed rail line between Bakersfield and Merced — a distance of 160 miles — rather than a project designed to connect the state’s two largest cities.
“Let’s level about the high-speed rail,” Newsom said. “Let’s be real, the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. Right now, there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were.”
Former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan would have cost nearly $77 billion and taken more than a decade to complete, according to recent estimates.
“Critics are going to say that’s a train to nowhere, but I think that’s wrong and that’s offensive,” said Newsom, who was elected after Brown was term-limited in November 2018.
FILE PHOTO: California Governor Jerry Brown delivers his final state of the state address in Sacramento, California, U.S., January 25, 2018. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
“Abandoning the high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions and billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises … and lawsuits to show for it,” Newsom said, adding that he does not want to send the $3.5 billion in federal money allocated for the project back to the Trump administration.
The rail project has faced a lot of controversy throughout the years. Backers of a campaign to eliminate California’s most recent gas tax, for instance, pushed an initiative in 2018 directing Brown to halt the high-speed rail project and use any unspent funds on road improvements. (RELATED: California’s Gas Tax Opponents Push A Unique Way To Pay For Road Fixes)
The new ballot initiative would have required any funds not needed for repaying rail bonds instead go to other transportation work. Supporters said the measure staves off criticism that eliminating the state’s recent pricey gas tax makes it more difficult to make infrastructure improvements.
Newsom’s decision to ditch the project comes at an awkward time for Democrats. A document posted online fleshing out elements of the so-called Green New Deal suggests Democrats are looking to “[b]uild out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.”
Some conservatives in the state are upset that the project will continue to exist in some form.
“Make no mistake about it: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement today is not about killing the wasteful High-Speed Rail Project, it is about keeping it very much alive,” Carl DeMaio, chairman of Reform California, said in a press statement Tuesday. “Newsom wants to spend tens of billions on a rail line between Merced and Bakersfield — a complete waste.”
Follow Chris White on Facebook and Twitter
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well after it’s built, every ticket will be subsidized as well.
I guess maybe they saw this new poll.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/growing-number-of-californians-considering-moving-from-state-survey.html
The Fed should pass a symbolic law prohibiting californians from moving out of california. The locust have already ruined one state, and unfortunately, when they move, they bring their loony toons ideas with them, and seek to ruin another.
You think AOC is paying attention to how this affects the validity of the “New Green Deal” or is this somehow a Republican manipulated scheme to undermine her plan before it even gets voted on. If the “greenest” state in the country cant get it done, how will we eliminate air travel in 10 years for the entire country?
” If the “greenest” state in the country cant get it done, how will we eliminate air travel in 10 years for the entire country?”
We are not going to eliminate air travel. Period. This is a leftwing pipedream.
We should be glad the Democrats came out and publicly proposed this plan. Now, just about everyone can see how crazy their plan is. The Democrats are running away from the details of this plan just as fast as they can.
Bakersfield (“Baker’s Patch”, “Bako”, “that S-hole over the hill”) to Merced. Just life support for all of the contractors committed by the Brown Doggle. Writing is on the wall, time to find some other work
The world’s longest, fastest and most expensive streetcar line.
Use the money to build a huge number of affordable houses with the same bought off unions instead of high speed rail to nowhere.
Or watch people leave…
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/growing-number-of-californians-considering-moving-from-state-survey.html
“Let’s level about the high-speed rail,” Newsom said. “Let’s be real, the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long.
Breakthrough! California lefties are running scared, and Newsom has staked out a new direction by admitting what everyone in-state and out has recognized for five years. Be sure this ‘leveling’ of his won’t extend to reining in other leftist excess, but it is a signal that the real world does penetrate as far as the upper levels of the Blue Blight party.
California already has a high speed travel network between 9 of the largest urban areas in the state that travels at over 400 mph safely and efficiently. It’s called Southwest Airlines and the other numerous air carriers the service from north to south, SAC, SFO OAK, SJC, BUR, LAX, ONT, SNA and SAN. That’s Sacramento to San Diego with 7 other destinations in between. It’s affordable, and saves me personally a lot of time going between the Bay Area and L.A.
It works much like the train travel of our great grandparents, except its fast, normally on time and fairly convenient. Trains for traveling long distances are obsolete, but can be fun, like a cruise ship. Not many people use those either for trans-Atlantic or trans-continental travel anymore either.
And for some, there is also Long Beach Airport. However, the system gets strained when there is fog in the Bay. Need to move the outer runway at SFO further out into the bay to allow dual instrument approaches.
SNA (aka John Wayne, or Orange county) to and from SJC beats driving and Amtrak hands down.
Let me just say in advance that any suggestion that our plan to take $12 billion, stack it into an effigy of Mother Gaia, and sacrificially light it on fire is somehow a waste of money would be both obviously wrong and offensive. So, having conclusively settled that question, I will expect to hear no more about it. Does anyone have anything important or relevant to ask me?
Does this mean there is hope for a crack in the wall of climate change scare crusades?
Let’s see now, we have atmospheric rivers ending permanent drought fear mongering, PGE bankruptcy, millennials leaving because of cost, and assorted other spending needs of the Party. Reality is picking up the pace in reversion to the mean.
Think of the savings and the other spending needs of the Party if they were to shrink the plan to a cross-town high speed rail project in Merced. For the children!
Gavin is simply redirecting the HSR deficit spending into illegal alien support services deficit spending. And into Universal crap health care for all deficit spending … oh … and gold plated State employee pension deficit spending.
See what you are missing: here’s a list of high speed rail services throughout Europe.
Europe is crowded and had a rail infrastructure dating back over 150 years and still managed to do all this. It is still doing it… and USA can’t do better than 90mph on a handful of tracks.
https://www.eurail.com/en/get-inspired/trains-europe/high-speed-trains
In Europe, passenger rail service has priority over freight – the opposite is true here, because long-distance passenger rail by and large makes no sense here. And it’s precisely because “Europe is crowded” that they can make rail work. The proposed HS rail between Dallas and Houston is using passenger boarding numbers from the east coast’s Acela for justification of the 240 mile boondoggle. No way they will get that much ridership.
Most European rail journeys on HS rail are in the 200 to 400 mile range.
It seems to me a lot of your E and W coast has large cities at those distances.
and a lot of the EU HS lines are new… and yes, we still run freight too.
The east coast cities already have a lot of passenger rail, though it losses money every year.
Check out this article in today’s WaPo, “Why the U.S. will never have high-speed rail,” at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/13/why-united-states-will-never-have-high-speed-rail/?utm_term=.142a74550d7b&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
I have a simpler reason: Western Europe has 465 people per square mile. The U.S. has 84.
griff, you need to understand the difference between “want” and “need”. We sort-of have high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor, which is about the only place it could possibly work.
The Wright brothers showed us how to fly. But we did bring home the idea of an interstate system from Germany.
See what you are missing: Germany is teetering on recession, the A380 has been canceled, and the unemployment rate in Spain is at 14.4% down from 27% in 2013, Italy is probably in recession, and all of this is before Brexit. Have a good day.
Suddenly he cares about money – never mind he’s backing a plan and an individual that will utterly bankrupt his state and the country twenty times over.
These people can’t be honest about a damn thing.
Holy Political Party Switch Batman!
“Getsum” Newsom is acting like a Republican!!! HOW COULD IT BE ?
Ha ha 😀
“Abandoning the high-speed rail entirely means we will have wasted billions and billions of dollars with nothing but broken promises ”
That’s called sunken cost. Never never never make decisions based on sunken costs.
So why waist another $3.5B after the billions already waisted (and yes I did meas Waist rather than Waste as that is where the Fat Cats will wear their $hare)
Why pocket another 3.5 billion? My guess would be that it’s already pocketed and they are afraid to ask for it back from their mates.
Like all politicians, they speak in circles but if I got it right … they intend to have a series of high-speed rail projects that they will cancel and use the money for other project in California.
The left always uses numbers when percentages are insignificant, and vice versa. The spend so far on the CAL bullet train is about $5.4 billion spent over several years. CA budget request by Newsome in Jan was $144 billion for next fiscal year. So that’s less than 4% of their annual budget. No big deal. By the way, his $144 billion 2019 – 2020 budget included about $664 million specifically for “high speed rail authority.”
You know, a town with money’s a little like the mule with the spinning wheel.
No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it.
Well of course the bill was too high. Pretty much impossible to build anything in Californistan other than sports stadiums and ridiculously overpriced, walled-off mansions on beaches or unstable slopes for celebrities/CEOs/politicians.
May we safely conclude that Governor Jerry Brown and Governor Gavin Newsom have a different circle of buddies?
+1
A lot of people on here think you build an HSR in isolation. There is no point in isolation. It has to be integrated into more holistic long-term planning.
Look at HS2 in UK, despite lots of invective here and elsewhere, the principles are these:
1. Use HSR as a catalyst for major regeneration programmes in areas around HSR stations. This includes around Old Oak Common in West London (suburb station), around Birmingham Curzon Street (Midlands terminus), a new development around Crewe in Staffordshire (intermediate station) etc etc.
2. Ensure linkages to as many airports as possible: Manchester, Birmingham have their own stations, links to Heathrow (and possibly on to Gatwick and connecting to HS1 line to continental Europe) are mooted.
3. Use slots freed up from normal network to increase service frequencies on the existing lines (in case of HS2, this would be lots from Northampton southwards into Euston).
4. Free up extra freight capacity on traditional network through creation of new HSR lines.
The other thing to think about is dynamic pricing to put bums on seats. If you want to put bums on seats, you price like low-cost airlines price things, you do not merely target the rich. The rich alone will never make railways pay.
The problem in both Uk and US is litigious lawyers. Litigious lawyers are a parasitic disease, reducing societies to impotent depressed groupings as nothing can achieved without tortuous drawn-out unpleasantness. The French State has powers to buy up land at a fair price and get on with things. In UK you have lawyers stymieing legislation, stymieing land purchase, stymieing common sense and stymieing route choice. It took 10 years to get enabling legislation to build part I of HS2. Parts IIa and IIb are still in play. The private sectors love fleecing the state, it is their greatest joy.
UK is the classic case of how capitalism prevents anything not benefitting the small minority of extremely rich. Ensuring HS2 has no link to the Channel Tunnel is classic, spiteful, puerile London-centric hatred. Everything spiteful about UK power circles is manifested in that coordinated imposition of London power on the rest of the country.
France is the classic case of how a strong State gets things done.
Takes your choice, both systems have drawbacks.
Not sure where you are, Rhys, but we have eminent domain here in the USA as well, and it generally is fair and let’s things like rail, highways, roads, and other public-good projects get done. Land is not the problem as much as the environmental lobby adding at least 20% to the cost of everything, sometimes more, often ruining any economic or public good justification.
Rhys: “France is the classic case of how a strong State gets things done.” All due respect, but US is the classic case of how a strong people prevent a strong State from happening. No strong State to be taken over by an elite class that “gets things done” that most people don’t want or need. At least, until recently, when we snoozed while progressives are at work building an ever more powerful state. Have you traveled in the US? Here, almost anyone can afford a car and gasoline to get wherever they want. No train can do that. That’s why a free people chose to abandon point-to-point trains and put our money into roads. Sounds to me like you folks still don’t quite get “freedom” at the individual level. As I write, some folks in France are having second thoughts about a strong State, non? And the strong State responds with firehoses etc, and you think that’s all good?
“France is the classic case of how a strong State gets things done.”
Somebody had to say it “Yellow Vests”.
Why is it that all leftists dream of a government that is powerful enough to completely override the wishes of everyone else?
How exactly does building a train station, for a train that nobody is using, going to “renovate” the area around the train station?
More than likely the loss of business due to all the houses seized and torn down, combined with the increased difficulty of moving around thanks to all those empty trains temporarily shutting down surface streets, will cause the area around the station to further degrade.
This sounds a lot like the frequent claims of how a new sports stadium is going to revitalize the downtown district.
Problem is, it never does. And neither will these new grand government schemes.
Check out this article in today’s WaPo, “Why the U.S. will never have high-speed rail,” at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/13/why-united-states-will-never-have-high-speed-rail/?utm_term=.142a74550d7b&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
Re-purpose my 3.5 billion in tax dollars and build the wall.
Another worker’s paradise is getting a dose of reality:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-biz-lake-shore-drive-bridge-reopens-20190212-story.html
Lots of deferred maintenance chickens are coming in from the cold to roost.
Re the CA HSR fiasco, a RR colleague and I looked at the Fresno boarding numbers they used to make the HSR pencil out. There were no passenger arrivals. Fresno would be depopulated in weeks.