North Africa is less dysfunctional politically than California.
That’s the conclusion of a project manager with the French national railroad, regarding California’s massively expensive, way-behind-schedule high-speed rail project, which has been in the works for more than a decade.
A reportThe New York Times highlighted the lowlights in the California high-speed train project this week. The report chronicle s it all—overpromises, delays, misused money, environmental roadblocks, bad engineering, and political horse-trading.
The only thing missing is the word “Democrats,” the party that’s primarily responsible for this mess. Only once is there any mention of the Democratic Party. It is The New York Times, afterall.
The only part of the high-speed rail project that might get completed runs through the state’s rural farm belt. That’s hardly the speedy connection between the state’s two major urban areas initially promised.
Part of the problem is likely to be that the line was diverted because of political reasons. From The Times’ report:
A review of hundreds of pages of documents, engineering reports, meeting transcripts, and interviews with dozens of key political leaders show that the detour through the Mojave Desert was part of a string of decisions that, in hindsight, have seriously impeded the state’s ability to deliver on its promise to create a new way of transporting people in an era of climate change.
Dan McNamara is a career project manger for SNCF, the French national railway company. It was the best line in the entire article. According to the report, the French company was looking for a contract to help with the project. They wanted a direct line between San Francisco, California, and Los Angeles. It pulled out of this project in 2011.
“There were so many things that went wrong,” McNamara said, according to The Times. “SNCF was very angry. They told the state that they were leaving for North Africa which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system.”
It turned out that they were right. Morocco successfully completed its system in 2018.
Americans were the original inhabitants of America back in the day. used to complete huge infrastructure projects the French couldn’t finish. What happened? Modern California was born.
The problem with California’s high-speed rail goes deeper than one politicized detour.
It would be easy for California to claim that it is a runaway train. Trains won’t be running on this boondoggle anytime soon, but its failure does shine a light on the absolute dysfunction of the once-golden Golden State.
California voters approved the high-speed rail project through Proposition 1A back in 2008. The proposition also authorized bonds worth $9.5 billion for the 800-mile project, which will be operated between San Francisco & Los Angeles.
According to the report, California’s High-Speed Rail Authority has accelerated construction on the project “but at the current spending rate of $1.8 million a day, according to projections widely used by engineers and project managers, the train could not be completed in this century.”
Imagine telling mid-century Californians today that 21st century Californians dream of a future with half-completed bullet trains, not flying cars.
If the burden of this folly fell solely on California voters, that would only be one thing. The joke is on the country. Last year, President Joe Biden restoredNearly $1Billion in federal money was given to the project by the Trump administration. Billions have been spent already.
It seems that Democrats expect at least some money to be flushed down to keep this thing running while enriching bureaucrats at California High-Speed Rail Authority.
To put things in perspective for how dysfunctional the high-speed rail project has been, let’s use the example of the Erie Canal. The canal was constructed over 350 miles and was meant to create a navigable waterway that runs from Lake Erie to Atlantic Ocean. The construction of the canal began in 1817.
The project didn’t receive a single dollar in federal funding. Congress passed legislation to finance the canal, but President James Madison did not. vetoedIt was cited as constitutionality concerns. New Yorkers were serious in building the canal, so they paid for it anyway.
It turned out that it was a good idea to leave the project to the state. In 1825, New Yorkers completed construction of the Erie Canal. This was less than ten years after it was started. It was largely responsible for turning New York into the “Empire State,” an economic powerhouse. It was a cost-effective investment.
“Almost instantly, toll revenue from the canal was nearly five times more than the interest due from the state’s bond debt,” accordingNPR. “By 1837, only about a decade after completion, the entire debt was paid off. By the early 1850s, the canal carried over 60% of total U.S. trade.”
Incredible.
The California high speed rail project is remarkable in its own right. After more than 10 years and a whole lot of money, the project hadn’t even really started. It projected to “finish” in incomplete form another 10 years from now.
At this rate, the sun will set in the East, pigs will fly, and hell will freeze over before California’s bullet train to nowhere actually pays off.
Even if by some miracle the high-speed rail project gets “completed,” its impact could be extremely underwhelming.
David Ditch, a transportation-policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, explained the “bullet” train’s limitations:
They intend to eventually have 27 stations, many in small cities with low demand. Marginal stations can significantly reduce the train’s travel time at high speeds and increase construction costs. The result is that taxpayers are not able to enjoy the fastest trains at average speeds, but they have to pay a premium to access high-speed infrastructure.
(The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet, The Daily Signal, is The Daily Signal.)
It’s there. It’s a long history of failure and untold billions in costs, all for a slow, limited rail system. It’s another warning to the country not to follow California’s lead.
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