What’s The Future of California High Speed Rail?

A map of the various segments of the California high-speed rail system (Photo – California High-Speed Rail Authority).

Following Governor Newsom’s downbeat assessment of high speed rail in his State of the State address, the Trump Administration is moving to revoke its existing $3.5 billion commitment to the project, which dates back to the Obama stimulus of 2009.

By Ethan Elkind

The trouble is that most of the dollars ($2.5 billion worth) have already been spent. Furthermore, as the state’s 2018 auditor report noted, California is not technically in violation of the agreement (yet), which required the state to finish building its Central Valley segment by December 2022.

So the Trump administration will have a hard time clawing those dollars back, though its effort to do so will probably involve a time-consuming, politically bruising process. And that’s a fight that the High Speed Rail Authority doesn’t need to wage right now. Authority leaders can thank the new governor for putting the system back in conservatives’ crosshairs with his State of the State remarks.

Meanwhile, the Governor’s comments and revised approach to the project sparked a lot of recent media interest in the project:

• Take Two on KPCC radio (8:30 minutes in), Matt Yglesias on Vox decried the politicization of the rail route selection, and Alissa Walker at Curbed spoke about the options currently on the table to get the system completed. Finally, StreetsBlog USA weighed in, noting that highway projects don’t get this level of funding scrutiny and that media reports have been slanted against the project in this spate of recent coverage.

None of what’s happening right in this matter seems to be good for getting the project finished. Ultimately, that will require a change in presidential administrations and congress to give California the federal dollars it needs to build the project as originally envisioned.

Now we’ll have to stay tuned to see how California responds to this federal move, including potential litigation.

Ethan Elkind directs the climate program at UC Berkeley Law, with a joint appointment at UCLA Law. His book “Railtown” was published by the University of California Press.