California Democrats are rallying to the defense of the nonexistent high-speed rail against the Trump administration. It is way past time for them to swallow their pride and let this unmitigated disaster of a project die.
The Federal Railroad Administration released a report Wednesday detailing California’s missed deadlines, budget issues, and the optimistic projections for how many people would ride the rail. The Department of Transportation is giving California until July to respond before it revokes the $4 billion in federal funds the project would receive.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, and Democratic politicians up and down the state are outraged, reinvigorated in their support of the magic train to nowhere. But the project is never going to be completed, and California Democrats only have themselves to blame. Their incompetence, and the unworkable web of labor laws, environmental regulations, and commitment to labor unions they have created, are to blame.
The original project was supposed to cost just $33 billion. The budget is now over $100 billion. It was supposed to stretch nearly 500 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The current iteration stretches from Madera (population around 68,000) to just short of Shafter (population around 22,000), about 99 miles. The entire project was originally projected to be finished in 2020. The current projection for the shorter version of it is 2030, a deadline that keeps getting pushed back.
CALIFORNIA STATE REPORT: HIGH SPEED RAIL FACES $6.5 BILLION FUNDING GAP, NEW DELAYS
There is no urgency to finish the project. The High-Speed Rail Authority didn’t even submit a complete financial update to legislators before a budget hearing with state legislators. Those legislators were told by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office that the project needed another $7 billion by June, with no plan to acquire it. California’s construction environment is so terrible that the French national railroad gave up on bidding for the project and went to the “less politically dysfunctional” country of Morocco instead. Morocco’s Al Boraq high-speed rail was completed in 2017.
The project isn’t going to be built, certainly not as the envisioned mega-line from Los Angeles to San Francisco. California is going to tax its own residents into the dirt trying to make up the billions upon billions that get added to the project’s budget seemingly every year. The project is a money pit, a pipe dream, and a failure. Just let it die already.