California ditches high-speed rail line

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday 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. Newsom 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.

“Right now, there simply isn’t a path” to complete the full line, said Newsom of the plan championed by his two predecessors, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown.

Newsom also replaced Brown’s head of the state board that oversees the project and pledged more accountability for contractors that run over on costs.

During the address, he said the state faces “hard decisions that are coming due” on clean water, housing and homelessness.

Newsom also rebuked President Donald Trump again on border security after saying Monday he will withdraw most of the state’s National Guard troops from the border with Mexico.