Shortage of Funds for Shorter California High-Speed Rail

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently said the new goal for California’s High-Speed Rail project would be to complete a 171-mile long section between Merced and Bakersfield.

The original goal objective was to link San Franciso and Los Angeles.

The current costs estimates for Merced to Bakersfield is $16 to 18 billion. However, this is likely underestimating the costs. There about 200 pieces of land that still need to be acquired. There are many other areas where cost overruns and delays are likely.

The federal government has terminated a $929 million grant for the project and is trying to clawback $2.5 billion. California will likely be able to prevent the clawback.

California has about $15.1 billion in funding assuming all of the Cap and Trade fees from now until 2023 are included. The High-Speed Rail project has been getting 25% of all the cap and trade money. This is about $400 to 500 million per year in fees.

Nextbigfuture predicted the failure of the San Francisco to Los Angeles high-speed rail project in December, 2018.

Even building the 171-mile Merced to Bakersfield line is a huge challenge. California has the money to build the shortened line. However, there are large political and project management challenges to completing and operating a Merced to Bakersfield line.

California state law requires that a rail line has to be able to operate profitably. There will need to be creative accounting to not allocate the likely end costs of $20 billion when calculating the operating profitability of the line.

SOURCES- Los Angeles Times, Auditor of the State of California

Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

15 thoughts on “Shortage of Funds for Shorter California High-Speed Rail”

  1. AND PRT is spacially and fiscally scalable over low density population areas like sub-urbs. While rail can only serve people within a mile max (most likely quarter mile for most people) on either side of said rail, which is why it doesn’t work in suburbs w/o feeder jitney/bus service in the tertiary roads. But PRT stations can be placed everywhere.

  2. I wish they’d build an inter city SkyTran instead. Unlike a train, PRT style pods would take you to your station if interest without needing to stop and let people on an off at every stop in between.

    It would also be cheaper than Musk’s hyperlooop as due to the light weight of the pods the whole track could Ben elevated for a lot less.

    FOr some reason the SkyTran people seem to be focused on transport within rather than between cities. Even though a high speed maglev system that can’t deal with sharp turns isn’t really suited for intra city travel.

    http://www.skytran.com

  3. That was its purpose. When you’ve got a scheduled completion date of 30 years like was first advertised, you’re not looking at the thing as a transportation system, you’re looking at it as a cash cow to fund your entire career and give you a really large nest egg to retire on.

    It NEVER made any sense, economically or transportation-wise.

  4. I’m interested in the basis for saying the clawback won’t succeed. They got the money to do something, and then didn’t do it.

  5. Trump: “America NEEDS a San Diego to Brownsville HSR line. Third Rail electrified all the way! Big and beautiful!”

  6. This sounds like the job for a tump national emergency… we could build a highspeed train and a wall at the same time..dual purpose

  7. There will need to be creative accounting to not allocate the likely end costs of $20 billion when calculating the operating profitability of the line. 

    Like, spending all that money…and presuming it actually gets built…then ‘sell’ the track to another state entity for $1, so it could operate it at a profit simply by ‘outsourcing’ out the rail service to private companies to use the track for just like the commercial railroads do.

    Or some scam a bit different but similar in general.

    Or the ignore the law. That is what ‘soft dictatorships’ do routinely, after all. Might as well rename the California Dem Party the PRI.

  8. Yeah, let’s put up a railroad between two points that’ll never provide enough revenue to even cover operating costs, much less the costs to build it in the first place.

    The vaunted Blue State model!

  9. Yeah, let’s put up a railroad between two points that’ll never provide enough revenue to even cover operating costs, much less the costs to build it in the first place.

    The kindest thing to do would be to axe the program now.

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