After 17 years, California still has no tracks for its high-speed rail. However, the gravy train has run on time in every single fiscal year — until now.
A new report from the Department of Transportation reveals that nearly $7 billion in federal funds resulted in exactly zero feet of high-speed track laid in the Golden State. Sean Duffy released the report today, along with an ultimatum for the state to explain exactly what happened to all the cash. In less than 40 days, the gravy train will come to an end after 17 years, Duffy warned:
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened Wednesday to pull federal grants for California’s High-Speed Rail Authority after it spent nearly $7 billion in taxpayer funds over a decade and a half without laying a single foot of track.
In a more than 300-page report, Duffy detailed the missed deadlines and stretched budget for the long-running project — and gave the Golden State’s high-speed rail office 37 days to respond or lose out on around $4 billion in grants.
“This report exposes a cold, hard truth: CHSRA has no viable path to complete this project on time or on budget,” he said.
If this sounds familiar, it should. We have covered the California Counterfeit Choo-Choo story since at least 2008, warning at each step that it was a boondoggle that was not only unnecessary but totally unrealistic. Even normally friendly media in California, such as the LA Times and Sacramento Bee, sent up red flags over the fiscal claims and assumptions made for the high-speed rail project.
And, of course, we got essentially the same data two years ago, after fifteen years of futility. CNBC tried to put some lipstick on this pig at that time, but to little avail:
In 2008, California voted yes on a $9 billion bond authorization to build the nation’s first high-speed railway. The plan is to construct an electric train that will connect Los Angeles with the Central Valley and then San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes.
But 15 years later, there is not a single mile of track laid, and executives involved say there isn’t enough money to finish the project. The latest estimates from the California High-Speed Rail Authority suggest it will cost between $88 billion and $128 billion to complete the entire system from LA to San Francisco. Inflation and higher construction costs have contributed to the high price tag. …
Despite the funding challenges, progress has been made on the project. In California’s Central Valley, 119 miles are under construction. The project recently celebrated its 10,000th construction worker on the job. The infrastructure design work is complete, and 422 out of 500 miles have been environmentally cleared, which is a monumental task in California.
“When we finish just the environmental clearing process, that cost is about $1.3 billion,” Kelly said. “And that’s for no steel in the ground or no cement.“
Well, whose fault is that? California had to spend $1.3 billion just to get environmental clearance for a supposedly high-priority project being subsidized by the federal government to the tune of $7 billion — so far. That’s a symptom of California’s over-regulation, a condition that afflicts private sector businesses and homeowners much more than it does the state government.
Today’s report exposes the CNBC claim of “progress” in 2023 as little more than a regurgitation of a press release. The fact that California celebrated hiring the 10,000th worker on a 15-year rail project that never laid a foot of high-speed rail tells us everything we need to know about this generation-long farce. It’s not a legitimate transportation project; it’s a make-work boondoggle that paid off unions for political support in California. The only progress they’re making is in featherbedding without any practical results.
And now they want even more money from the rest of the country to keep those wheels greased, rather than train wheels lubricated for a route that multiple airlines already service much more efficiently. Two years after that CNBC report, California probably hit 11,000 or 12,000 workers for its choo-choo by now, but is likely decades away from Passenger 1, if they even get any passengers at all for the full planned route between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Duffy erred in giving Gavin Newsom 37 days to respond to this report, however. After 17 years of robbing federal taxpayers blind, Duffy should have given Newsom 37 minutes, or perhaps just 37 seconds, before cutting off any more funding to the Newsom Express To Fiscal Ruin. If Californians want this train, let them pay for it themselves — and hold Newsom and the Democrats responsible for its failure.
