President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he had canceled $4 billion in federal funding for California’s beleaguered and delayed high-speed rail project — what critics call the “train to nowhere.” [emphasis, links added]
The project has been plagued for years by cost overruns, logistical problems, and a lack of consumer demand.
A rough timeline of events shows the rise, and fall, of what was once considered a promising idea:
- 2008: California voters pass Proposition 1A, which authorizes a $10 billion bond to fund a high-speed rail line (“bullet train”) to connect San Francisco and L.A. in under three hours by 2020 for a total of $33 billion.
- 2009: The Obama administration approves over $2 billion in stimulus funds for California’s high-speed rail.
- 2010: California approves guidelines for the high-speed rail line, and Jerry Brown is elected governor. He champions the high-speed rail project as an effort to reduce emissions and to combat climate change.
- 2014: Breitbart News reports that the high-speed rail project will not actually be fast enough to complete the trip in under three hours. Numerous environmental and engineering challenges continue to delay the project.
- 2015: Amid costs that have ballooned to $68 billion, with deadlines creeping later and later, Gov. Brown pushes forward with the plan, laying down a symbolic track and calling critics of the project “cowards.”
- 2019: Newly inaugurated Gov. Gavin Newsom cancels much of the high-speed rail project because it “would cost too much and … would take too long.” However, he wants to build a Central Valley portion of the project. President Donald Trump immediately announced that the federal government will claw back $3 billion that it has spent on the project so far, ultimately halting nearly $1 billion in federal money that had been allocated.
- 2021: Newly elected President Joe Biden gives California the $1 billion that Trump had denied to the state for high-speed rail construction, with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg championing the project.
- 2023: The Biden administration awards another $6 billion to high-speed rail in California, including a more promising, private sector-driven project to connect L.A. and Las Vegas with a different bullet train.
- 2024: The CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority says the project will need another $100 billion, above nearly $30 billion already received, for a total of $128 billion. The date of completion extends to 2024.
- 2025: Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announces an audit of the California high-speed rail project, and later releases a report concluding that there is “no viable way forward” for the original bullet train.
Duffy said in a statement: “After 16 years and roughly $15 billion spent, not one high-speed track has been laid.” He said that the department would also be reviewing other federal grants related to the project.
“The $135 billion projected total cost of the project could buy every San Francisco and LA resident nearly 200 round-trip flights between the cities,” the statement by the U.S. Department of Transportation concluded.
Read more at Breitbart
