Do you remember that high-speed rail project in California that was supposed to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco and be completed in 2020? Well, it’s finally ready to begin laying track on a much shorter section on a ludicrously bigger budget.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) proudly announced that the high-speed rail has entered the track-laying phase. In his words, “We are now in the process of starting to lay track.” (Emphasis added). This is not for the full Los Angeles-San Francisco line that was supposed to be done six years ago, but for a 119-mile stretch from Madera County to Shafter. The current project goal is a line from Merced to Bakersfield, with a target completion date between 2030 and 2033. That would represent 35% of the promised project, 10 years later, and at least $44 billion (and counting) over the promised budget.
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While Newsom celebrates this “progress,” California Democrats are seeking to keep more information about the project from reaching the public. Proposed legislation by California Democrats would allow the project’s inspector general to hide “personal papers and correspondence of any person providing assistance to the Inspector General when that person has requested in writing that their papers and correspondence be kept private and confidential.”
Newsom has said he knows nothing about this secretive request, but local media have reported that the governor’s administration has “filed nearly identical legislation.” This follows a series of attempts by California Democrats to water down transparency on the project.
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This is all because the high-speed rail project is a national laughingstock. Each price tag increase, each year the project is pushed back, and each time the target goal is shortened is an embarrassment to California Democrats who have spent billions on fire in pursuit of a pointless, fantastical project that is always a decade away from completion.
The project is going to continue to trudge forward, with progress always a few more years and a few billion more dollars away, because California Democrats will be unable to admit defeat. Rather than acknowledge that every update on the project is proof that it’s an embarrassment, they would rather limit updates and the information available to the public, in hopes that scrutiny of the wasted billions upon billions of dollars will ease with less publicity.