Poll finds support waning for rail project
SACRAMENTO — As legislators debate the future of California’s highspeed rail project, results from a public opinion poll showing lackluster voter support has aided skeptics fighting to take money away from the bullet train.
The poll, which The Chronicle obtained, was commissioned by the Assembly Democratic Caucus and suggests voters are almost evenly split over whether construction should continue on the 220mph train.
A slight plurality of voters surveyed, 42%, said the state should stop building the highspeed rail system and use the money elsewhere while 41% of voters said construction should continue, according to the polling firm Goodwin Simon Strategic Research.
Support for the bullet train varied greatly along partisan and regional lines. For example, 71% of Republicans support stopping construction while only 29% of Democrats want to halt work. Support for the project is highest in the Bay Area, where 48% of voters want construction to continue, compared with 35% of voters in the Central Valley and 40% in Los Angeles.
The poll appears to have had a significant influence at the state Capitol as some Assembly Democrats from Southern California push to block Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request to use
$4.2 billion in voterapproved bond funding to finish building an initial 171mile stretch from Merced to Bakersfield.
Newsom wants to build that segment first, followed by extensions to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and eventually a spur to Sacramento.
Opponents say the money should instead be used for local rail projects in the state’s denser urban centers, and they’ve excluded the project from the state budget that legislators are expected to approve this week.
But supporters of the highspeed rail project said lawmakers should be thinking more longterm about the state’s transportation needs and not get distracted by polling. They worry that diverting funding could hurt California as the federal government may be poised to offer additional financial backing via President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
Assembly Member Luz Rivas, DArleta (Los Angeles County), said the poll supported her belief that more Californians would benefit if much of the money were instead diverted to rail connectivity projects in L.A. and the Bay Area.
“It actually confirmed what my constituents have been saying all along,” she said. “We’ve lost the public’s trust.”
California voters approved $9.95 billion in bond funding for highspeed rail in 2008, with the promise that money would be used to help build a bullettrain system to zip riders between San Francisco and L.A. in less than three hours.
Construction started on the Central Valley line six years ago, but repeated construction delays and soaring costs, with the budget growing from $33 billion to about $83 billion, have led to ridicule.
Proponents of the project said negative news about its hiccups has unfairly tainted the bullet train’s reputation. They said delays are, in part, the direct result of political bickering and legal challenges.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, DSan Francisco, said the state needs to do a better job talking about the longterm potential for highspeed rail. The project was envisioned as a way to connect California’s affluent coast with inland counties, where people suffer from high unemployment and poor air quality.
“We’re the fifth largest economy in the world, yet we don’t have a true statewide rail system,” Wiener said. “It’s embarrassing. We know that we need it. We can’t keep expanding our airports, we can’t keep expanding our highways.”
Rail advocates said the emphasis on money for regional projects presents a false choice. They said the state is simultaneously investing billions in local transportation projects with its budget surplus.
Dan Richard, a former chairman of the HighSpeed Rail Authority Board, said the debate also overlooks the history of the project: More than $2 billion in rail funds have also already been allocated to projects that improve connectivity with local transit systems.
He said while the project has faced headwinds, he’s frustrated that legislators have used polling to help guide their discussions about a major infrastructure project that could shape the state’s growth.
“I don’t think something like this, that involves the future of California, ought to be susceptible to that kind of polling,” he said. “Leadership is important when you’re building a multigenerational project, something that is going to last for 150 years.”
Bill Wong, political director for the Assembly Democrats, said the poll was influential insomuch as it confirmed many legislators’ concerns that construction delays and soaring costs have made highspeed rail unpopular.
The poll findings were presented to legislators in a May caucus meeting.
Wong said while many lawmakers support the concept of a bullet train, many feel the project has gone astray as the state focuses on building the Central Valley segment first. Originally, the Rail Authority planned to build track inward from Los Angeles and the Bay Area, including a line running east from Silicon Valley. Now, it’s building the Central Valley segment first while planning continues on those other spurs.
“There’s a big portion of the population that will never see use of the highspeed rail because of where it’s located,” he said.
The poll, which had not been made public before, was conducted in midMarch and included 668 registered voters, who were surveyed on land lines, cell phones and through text message invitations. It was conducted in English and Spanish. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.