Legislature shouldn’t budge on $4.2 billion funding request for bullet train

Former Governor Jerry Brown erstwhile defended the outgo of the slug bid task by citing the request to sacrifice for the future. It took generations of sacrifices, helium said, to concern medieval cathedrals.

In 2008, Californians voted for aboriginal generations to wage backmost $9.9 cardinal successful indebtedness to physique the slug train. It’s 13 years later, and a medieval cathedral inactive travels faster.

Not each of the wealth voters authorized has yet been appropriated by the Legislature, and the California High-Speed Rail Authority wants the remaining $4.2 cardinal close now. Gov. Gavin Newsom supports that request, but lawmakers successful the authorities Assembly person different ideas. Speaker Anthony Rendon and others would similar to determination those funds to obstruction projects successful the Bay Area and successful Southern California. Talks betwixt the 2 sides broke down recently, and it appears that thing volition beryllium decided until January astatine the earliest.

This statement is little astir California’s funds than the wealth that could travel from the national authorities arsenic portion of the multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure legislation. President Joe Biden, who helped to get $8 cardinal for high-speed obstruction into a national stimulus measure erstwhile helium was vice president during the Obama administration, is affable to obstruction funding, and Democrats narrowly power some houses of Congress. Advocates deliberation the model is unfastened and the spigot should follow.

But that whitethorn not happen. California’s boondoggle task has mislaid the enactment of cardinal authorities lawmakers including Assembly Transportation Committee seat Laura Friedman, D-Glendale, who has argued that high-speed obstruction funds should beryllium re-routed from the Central Valley’s bullet-train operation tract to commuter obstruction successful Southern California.

If California lawmakers propulsion wealth distant from the slug train, it’s little apt that legislature appropriators volition perpetrate important national obstruction funds to the project.

If Democrats suffer power of the House of Representatives oregon the Senate successful 2022, it’s apt that the chances of national backing for the slug bid volition decrease.

And if Gov. Gavin Newsom is recalled, his replacement could determination to cancel the high-speed obstruction task entirely.

So the contention is on. In August, U.S. High Speed Rail Association president and CEO Andy Kunz called California’s slug bid “visionary” and predicted, “As soon arsenic trains are operating, the disapproval volition rapidly slice distant similar yesterday’s news, and everyone volition beryllium thrilled to person specified a fast, easy, reliable mode of transport—not seen successful America yet.”

What we person seen does not animate confidence. The High-Speed Rail Authority is presently spending $500 cardinal per twelvemonth connected gathering a slug bid from Merced to northbound of Bakersfield, and if determination is simply a important marketplace for a 200-mile-an-hour travel betwixt those Central Valley cities, it was not mentioned successful the ballot measurement that voters approved successful 2008.

Something other that wasn’t presented to voters is the high-speed obstruction project’s existent large backing source, which is 25% of the gross that comes into the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund from the cap-and-trade program. Cap-and-trade is efficaciously a hidden taxation that raises the terms of gasoline and diesel substance arsenic good arsenic electricity.

Current plans task that the Merced-to-Bakersfield conception tin beryllium completed successful 4-5 years for $22.8 billion. That rests connected the anticipation that determination volition beryllium nary delays oregon outgo increases. Perhaps negotiators should clasp their adjacent gathering successful a medieval cathedral.