San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
High-speed rail project at risk as cost rises
California’s high-speed rail project has teased residents with recent renderings of how its futuristic trains and massive stations would look. But, despite recent progress and the excitement those renderings have produced, the project remains about $7 billion short of the cost to complete the initial segment from Merced to Bakersfield.
The rail project also needs about $100 billion to make the original vision of linking San Francisco and Los Angeles via bullet trains a reality. And some of the project’s watchdogs say state leaders need to decide soon whether to commit to the entire project — or abandon it.
Officials from the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority shared the project’s latest cost projections during legislative hearings in Sacramento
last week, when they also briefed lawmakers on the status of the project.
If all goes according to the rail authority’s latest plans, electrified high-speed rail service on a 171-mile segment in the Central Valley will begin between 2030 and 2033. Authority officials say they will finalize designs this year on train car interiors and the four stations being
California High-Speed Rail Authority built in Merced, Fresno, Hanford and Bakersfield.
Authority officials say they’re trying to secure $4.7 billion in federal funds to pay for the bulk of the Central Valley segment’s remaining estimated cost.
The project’s two Northern California segments connecting the Central Valley to San Francisco have both reached environmental clearance. Authority officials say they’re trying to secure more funding to complete geotechnical studies in the Pacheco Pass segment between Merced and San Jose, a precursor to construction.
Other projects, such as Caltrain’s electrification and the Peninsula commuter rail’s extension to Salesforce Transit Center are ongoing and part of the high-speed rail project’s eventual plan to reach San Francisco.
State leaders agreed to prioritize finishing construction in the Central Valley first, and the rail project’s supporters hope that the launch of interim service there will galvanize public support to finance the rest of the project.
The rail authority and state leaders have not yet decided where to build after the Central Valley segment.
In Southern California, another bullet train project, the privately operated Brightline West, aims to carry passengers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas via bullet train by 2028. The Brightline system plans to have a stop in Victorville in the state’s high desert, which would be about 50 miles from the High-Speed Rail Authority’s planned stop in Palmdale.
That project, and the state’s high-speed rail project, got a combined $6 billion windfall from the Biden administration’s 2022 infrastructure law, and rail authority CEO Brian Kelly told legislators the Brightline West project “will probably affect our ongoing analysis of where we go next.”
“We do have to get into the population centers, ultimately in the Bay Area and in Southern California, to have a fully self-sustaining system, meaning that the net revenues of the system exceed the net cost of the system,” Kelly said.
It’s unclear how, when and if the high-speed rail project will acquire the funding required to complete the Bay-to-L.A. system initially sold to California voters in 2008. Kelly, who in January announced plans to retire, told lawmakers it would likely take funding “not just from the federal and state (governments), but probably local and regional partners, as well,” to complete the envisioned system.
California’s bullet train project, though, faces other immediate questions.
The project has been mired by rising cost estimates, delays and litigation — “Phase 1” between San Francisco to L.A. is estimated to cost three times the initial cost projection.
Louis Thompson, chairman of the project’s Peer Review Group, said the costs face “considerable risk” in rising further, “because most of the project remains at an early design stage or less, and there is no experience to date with major elements of the project.”
Exacerbating the problem, Kelly and Thompson both said, is the fact that the project continues to face financial uncertainty. Its sole source of ongoing funds, from the state’s cap-andtrade program, expires in 2030. Authority officials want to extend that authorization to 2050.
Even with an extension, that funding alone won’t be enough to finance the complete project, and Thompson said lawmakers should decide soon whether to commit to building the entire project or cut bait.
“It is critical that any funding approach be fully funded, and stable and predictable from year to year. This has not been done, and it is ever more important,” Thompson said. “We cannot emphasize too strongly that inaction by the Legislature and governor to identify an adequate and stable source of funding for the project is increasing its costs and hindering management’s control of the project.”