This is why Californias wasting another $3.5B on high speed rail

High-speed rail in California has become synonymous with failure, a waste, a racket, a punchline.So why shovel $3.5 billion more into the project, as the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority did this week?Short answer: to prop up Gavin Newsom’s presidential dream.If the governor wanted to do right by California residents, he’d simply abandon the long-stalled project, absorb the sunk cost, and move on.But that would mean admitting the obvious: He’s led the state down a dead end.The facts are striking:Voters in 2008 were promised a train that would whisk them between LA and San Francisco in under three hours, for $33 billion.Eighteen years later, not a single inch of track has been laid and the project’s estimated cost is $231 billion and growing.That’s a bad look for a two-term governor who aspires to the Oval Office.So Newsom installed Steve Kawa, a crony, as head of the rail authority.And this week, they pushed through a scheme to plan more, spend more, and perhaps put down a few sticks of track before the “not an inch” campaign ads are written for the 2028 presidential election cycle.It doesn’t matter what happens from there; they just need to plausibly claim minor victory, progress or momentum … even if the scheme lingers in limbo for another two decades.And that’s the essence of the entire bullet-train project: It’s an opaque, inert, disingenuous racket.

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By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Never miss a story Even Newsom, the conductor of the rail mess, knows this.In his first State of the State address, the governor said, ”The current project, as planned, would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long.

There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency.”But instead of keeping his pledge to scrap the project, he scaled it...