California will abandon $77B rail plan

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that he’s abandoning a $77 billion plan to build a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco and will focus instead on completing a 119-mile segment in the state’s agricultural heartland.

Voters approved a ballot measure in 2008 calling for the linking of Northern and Southern California, a rail project initially estimated to cost $33 billion and be completed in 2020. Subsequent estimates more than doubled the cost and pushed the timeline to 2033.

“Let’s be real,” Newsom said in his first State of the State address. “The current project, as planned, would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency.”

Newsom pledged to finish the segment already under construction through California’s Central Valley. He rejected the idea critics have raised that it will be a “train to nowhere” and said it can help revitalize the economically depressed region.

While that construction continues, Newsom said, the state will conduct environmental reviews on the entire Los Angeles to San Francisco route and push for more federal and private money to connect the valley to the state’s economic powerhouses, though he didn’t say how.

—