Californians shrug off their high-speed rail boondoggle

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden blocked construction of the Keystone XL pipeline linking Canadian crude oil fields with distribution centers and refineries in the United States. It was an enormous victory for American environmentalists who want to leave fossil fuels on the ash heap of history. But it also triggered a huge political scandal in Canada, with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney being roasted for spending $1.5 billion in public funds on a now-doomed project.

“Kenney’s crazy bet has to be near the top of the most irresponsible things ever done in Alberta’s history,” concluded one news analysis under the headline, “What’s that Flushing Sound? Just Albertans’ Keystone XL Investment Going Down the Drain.” “There is no sugar-coating just how devastating this is for Mr. Kenney, his government and the province,” opined another.

Yet here in California, there is nothing close to a comparable uproar over a public works fiasco that is 15 times as costly. The state’s bullet-train debacle is impossible to exaggerate.

In 2008, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers persuaded a narrow majority of state voters to provide $9.95 billion in bond seed money for what was initially promised to be a $33 billion high-speed rail network linking Northern and Southern California, with operations beginning in 2020. But in a matter of days after the election, a longdelayed official business plan was released — and it warned that promises of subsidies if ridership was lower than projected were the only way the California High-Speed Rail Authority could ever attract the private investors that voters were told were eager to partner on the project. Such subsidies are illegal under state law created by the bullet train initiative.

Now, a year after the project was supposed to be completed, the state is committed to building only a single-track, 171-mile route from Bakersfield to Merced — at a staggering cost of $22.8 billion. Given the frequency of cost overruns and the rail authority’s inability to complete land purchases needed to complete construction, the state may not even be able to meet the modest goal of finishing the lonely Central Valley segment.

Yet Schwarzenegger’s successors — Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom — have soldiered on, backing a radically downsized project without adequate funding even after years of scandals involving coverups of damning information. Even as it became clear that voters were fed lies in 2008 and that less than a majority of Californians still support the project.

Unfortunately, some other Democratic lawmakers — ones serving in Washington, D.C. — have other ideas. Last month, Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., reintroduced the HighSpeed Rail Corridor Development Act, a measure that could provide California with up to $32 billion in federal funds for its bullet train. Costa views the bill as being a smart addendum to the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief measure that the White House is pushing.

Or maybe sanity will prevail, and Costa, Schwarzenegger, Brown and Newsom will be roasted like the Albertan premier for being so eager to waste the public’s money on one of the worst public works fiascoes in global history.

If that happens, the vestiges of the failed project just might become a Central Valley tourist destination — massive bridges and culverts serving as testament to human stubbornness and incompetence. Its plaque can cite what Brown said in 2012 about project skeptics: They were “declinists” and “fearful men.” Nine years later, Brown and the governors who preceded and succeeded him owe skeptics — and every taxpayer — an apology.

Even if many Californians are inexplicably indifferent to the worst boondoggle in state history.