Jerry Brown’s embarrassing bullet-train bragging to Trump
In an open letter to Donald Trump this week, Gov. Jerry Brown bragged that California’s bullet train exemplifies the sort of infrastructure project the president supposedly wants to “Make America Great Again.”
“You have lamented that ‘we don’t have one fast train’ in our country,” Brown wrote. “Well, Mr. President, in California we are trying to fix that. We have a worldclass train system under construction.”
World-class? How embarrassing
specially given the timing of Brown’s letter, written just three days after the California HighSpeed Rail Authority released its latest round of ever-increasing cost estimates.
Construction of the state’s bullet-train system, still in its infancy, is already at least four years behind schedule, over budget and lacking most of the funding needed to complete the project.
Worse, to raise the down payment, $9 billion of state bond money, backers deceived voters with the very sort of lies and false promises for which Democrats — rightfully — now demonize the president.
It’s time to put an end to the high-speed rail boondoggle. Or, at the very least, give voters another say. Surprisingly, even Dan Richard, chair of the bullet train authority board and Brown’s political front man on the issue, welcomes a vote.
“I actually would be OK with that,” he told me Thursday morning. “I do think this is a choice that people ought to make. … At some point, sure, I’m happy to call the question with the voters.” Let’s do it. But, this time, let’s provide voters independent and realistic cost estimates, funding sources and timetables for completion.
Richard suggested placing a measure on the ballot in 2020. This year would be better; delay would allow Richard to continue spending money and laying more trackways, making it incrementally harder for voters to abandon the project. It’s an ongoing cynical strategy to convince the public to keep throwing good money after bad.
Indeed, Brown and Richard’s entire funding plan is predicated on buying time — especially on the notion that if they start building it, private investors will come. Thus far, not a single company has taken the bait.
Maybe voters, given a chance to make an informed decision, will go along. After all, the idea of a European-style bullet-train ride through rural California from San Francisco to Los Angeles is alluring.
If we had plenty of money to burn and otherwise stellar transportation infrastructure, high-speed rail might make sense. But California and its local governments are buried deeply in debt and the state’s transit systems and roadways are crumbling.
The bullet train, however enticing, is not wise use of tens of billions of transportation dollars. It wasn’t when voters passed Proposition 1A in 2008, and the situation is worse today.
To understand how badly this project has gone off the rails, compare what voters were told then with the rail authority’s reality last week:
A decade ago, voters were told the project would cost $45 billion for service from San Diego to San Francisco and Sacramento.
Today, the estimated cost is $63 billion-$98 billion for just the portion from Los Angeles (actually Anaheim) to San Fran- cisco. Richard says he has no idea what the rest of the promised system would cost.
In 2008, the ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco was forecast to take about 2 ½ hours and cost $50 one-way, or about $61 in today’s dollars. Today, the authority estimates the ride will take nearly three hours and the fare will be $93.
Voters were told then that sufficient money would come from federal, private, local and state sources.
The reality 10 years later: No private investment so far. Only about $20 billion of funding has been found, not even enough. to complete the link between Bakersfield and San Francisco, which is now supposed to be done by 2029.
That $20 billion includes the $9 billion of voter-approved bond borrowing — which must be paid back with taxpayer money in the state’s coffers — and $3.5 billion of federal funding approved by the Obama administration. There’s no chance of more federal money unless Democrats take back control of Congress and the White House.
The only thing keeping the program financially afloat is $8 billion the authority is counting on by 2030 from the state’s tenuous cap-and-trade pollution offset program.
Yet, the authority keeps tearing up the Central Valley building what could turn out to be tracks to nowhere.
This is no way to run a railroad — or build it. But this is the bullet-train program, the supposedly masterful infrastructure project, that Brown touted to Trump.
Sometimes it’s better to say nothing at all.