CA Gov Newsom aborts unborn Green New Deal, cancels SF-LA high speed rail project

WILLIAM A. JACOBSON FEB 12, 2019 7:00 PM

I’m so old, I remember when the Democrats’ Green New Deal was going to build so much high speed rail there would be no need for airplane travel.

Totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out highspeed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary, create affordable public transit available to all, with goal to replace every combustion-engine vehicle. [emphasis added]

Anyone with half a brain would know that high speed rail projects have been complete debacles in the U.S. so far. The poster child for failure was the Los Angeles to San Francisco high speed rail projects. Starting several years ago we have chronicled the cost overruns and bureaucratic failures:

• California’s bond dreams become High Speed fiscal nightmare (2012)
• Sacramento Judge Rules that California’s Bullet Train is a Turkey (2013)
• California High Speed Rail: Dead or just near death? (2014)
• California Voters Want More Water and Less Bullet Train (2016)
• California’s Bullet Train may have received final, fatal fiscal hit (2017)
• California bullet train blasts budget, now set at $77.3 billion (2018)

So it comes as no surprise that California finally is declaring the Bullet Train dead, Gov. Newsom ending high-speed rail project between SF, LA:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday he’s abandoning a plan to build a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, a project with an estimated cost that has ballooned to $77 billion.”Let’s be real,” Newsom said in his first State of the State address. “The current project, as planned, would cost too much and respectfully take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency.”The idea long championed by Newsom’s predecessor, Jerry Brown, is years behind schedule. The latest estimate for completion is 2033.Newsom, though, said he wants to finish construction that’s already underway on a segment of the high-speed train through California’s Central Valley, arguing it will revitalize the economically depressed region. He’s also replacing Brown’s head of the state board that oversees the project and pledged more accountability for contractors that run over on costs.

There will still be some rail projects, but you won’t be able to get by high speed rail between the major cities in California. The 800-mile project is reduced to 120 miles of track already under construction between Merced and Bakersfield.

How are you going to have a Green New Deal centered around high speed rail that will eliminate the need for airplanes when liberals can’t even build high speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco?

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