There are lies, damn lies and then there is the California Highway Speed Rail.
Seventeen years ago we were told by the Sacramento Liars’ Club, also known as the California Legislature, that we would be boarding a train in downtown San Francisco and be in downtown Los Angeles two and a half hours later traveling at 220 mph by the end of 2020.
And it would cost $33.6 billion to build and cost $50 or so for a one-way ticket.
That was back in 2008 when Sacramento sold the Big Lie known as the $9.9 billion Proposition 1B bond measure to California’s voters.
Fast forward — something the small army of high speed rail bureaucrats can’t do — to today.
Californians can’t ride high speed rail to anywhere but perhaps the poor house.
The 177-mile Merced to Bakersfield link — the first city connection the project coordinators believe will actually have scheduled passenger service — is now not expected to be in place until roughly 2033.
They are at least $7 billion short having spent over $22 billion.
Now the estimated year for the first train to suck up electricity from California’s shaky power grid to make it from LA to SF won’t happen before 2040 with a one-way ticket well in excess of $100.
And the trains will operate slower than the electric powered 2025 Maserati GranCabrio Folgore that has a top speed of 170 mph and costs a little over $200,000.
The high speed rail project between LA and SF is now expected to come in at $100 billion.
That’s enough to buy 500,000 Maseratis.
Or, to put it in terms of vehicles most California taxpayers might be able to afford assuming Sacramento doesn’t bleed them dry trying to complete high speed rail, that is the equivalent of 3.7 million 2025 entry level Toyota Priuses.
Given the Chicken Little segment of climate change alarmists that the world will be doomed by 2040 if we don’t do something now, it would be more prudent for Gov. Gavin Newsom to channel Oprah Winfrey and give 3.7 million Californians with older cars a Prius to drive exclusively.
They can be reducing greenhouse gas emissions now.
Assuming high speed rail is finished by 2040 between SF and LA, by that time the most extreme green cabal prediction means it would be ready to roll just as the world is coming to an end.
Besides, a Prius is a true mass transit vehicle.
That’s because cars, and not trains or buses, move the masses.
More than 91 percent of American households have vehicles.
Vehicles that can take them anywhere there is a road.
Do not misunderstand.
We need more trains and buses.
However, trains should carry passengers in travel corridors that are congested twice a day, five days a week and not just on three-day weekends.
There would be a great reduction of greenhouse gas emissions if rail trips were frequent enough between the job rich coastal cities and their respective affordable housing solutions of San Bernardino-Riverside counties, the Northern San Joaquin Valley, and year Sacramento region.
The biggest drawback with putting all of the proverbial eggs in the basket that is the SF-LA corridor is that it isn’t where the congestion is located.
Gas powered vehicles driving I-5 between Interstate 205 and the Grapevine cruise along at 70 mph in the slow lane. At that speed, fossil fuel burns the most efficient and reduces emissions on a per mile basis and otherwise.
The opposite is true in commuter clogged corridors.
There are a lot of reasons why high speed rail bogged down.
The biggest, by far, was the decision to make the venture kill-proof by revving up pork barrel project mentality and re-marketing it as a way to battle climate change impacts.
The Valley, by wide margins, didn’t support the project. That’s because high speed was going to go along the extremely lightly populated I-5 corridor with minimal condemnations and bridge structures needed.
It is where the 220 mph travel promise came into the equation.
It was conceived as a system connecting major metro areas and not the equivalent of. Greyhound bus milk run along Highway 99 through the San Joaquin Valley.
But when it was becoming clear the project was facing the possibility of getting bogged down in lawsuits at each end of the SF and LA segments, the decision was made to start spending money as soon as possible.
To get buy in, the route was shifted to the Highway 99 corridor.
It was sold as a way to generate construction jobs and spur economic growth.
Given the aim was getting SF-LA drivers off the road who would stop at gas stations, restaurants and convenience stores along the way, it’s doubtful a food kiosk at a high speed rail station would remotely generate even enough jobs to replace the ones that would be killed.
That sent the project through homes, parks, schools, hospitals, and more not to mention significantly more farms than on the Valley’s Westside.
The state was ill-prepared for the switch.
But it served one objective: The start of physical construction meant the federal government wouldn’t claw back billions of dollars that had an expiration date requiring them to be spent on a viable physical project.
Of course, no one in Sacramento ever thought their version of The Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue would happen in a million years.
At the very least, the first segment will likely be completed.
Plans, as they stand now, would get a hybrid system in place to move rail passengers to LA and SF.
On this end, it would mean a switch to ACE trains in Merced dedicated to ferrying high speed passengers to destinations promised in 2008 — San Francisco, San Jose, and Sacramento.
It would mean more trains passing through Manteca for at least a decade or so.
That said, it could become the default backbone for rail passenger movement between the north and south in California.
The reason is simple.
Cost estimates and further delays will only intensify as the state tries to send high speed rail tracks through major urban areas as well as tunneling beneath Pacheco Pass to cross the San Andreas Fault.
