Merced-Bakersfield bullet train costs likely to balloon $1 billion over prior estimate
As construction continues on a future bullet-train route through the central San Joaquin Valley, the California High-Speed Rail Authority estimates that the costs to complete the initial stretch of the line from Merced to Bakersfield may reach as high as $24 billion.
The state rail agency’s draft 2022 Business Plan was released Tuesday afternoon for 60 days of public comment before final approval and its eventual delivery to the California Legislature, as required by law, by May 1.
The 2022 estimates represent a cost increase of between 5.2% and 5.5% compared to projections in the 2020 business plan. That’s an increase of about $1.2 billion.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority is mandated to provide a new version of a business plan to legislators every two years – but the 2020 edition was delayed until last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID-19 has impacted how we function,” authority CEO Brian Kelly wrote in the introduction to the business plan, noting that more than 90% of the agency’s staff is working remotely at least part time instead of in state offices. “But (the pandemic) has not stopped us from advancing the nation’s first electrified high-speed rail project right here in California.”
“We are making meaningful progress to complete the first 119 miles of the system, the largest stretch of rail construction anywhere in the country,” he added.
The estimates for Valley construction in the 2022 plan range from $22.5 billion to $23.9 billion, and includes:
▪ $17.9 billion for construction on three three work contracts currently in progress from north of Madera to the Kern County town of Shafter, northwest of Bakersfield, and future installation of tracks, electrification and safety systems.
▪ $3 billion to $4.5 billion for future single-track extensions of the line north to downtown Merced and south into Bakersfield.
▪ $1.1 billion to add a second track to the Merced and Bakersfield extensions.
▪ $390 million for the purchase of two electric-powered train sets for testing and initial operations between Merced and Bakersfield.
Funding issues
What remains uncertain is where money will come from to complete the work in the Valley. Of about $11.4 billion that’s been available to the California High-Speed Rail Authority over the past decade, about $8.6 billion has been spent. That includes approximately $4.3 billion from Proposition 1A, a 2008 bond measure approved by California voters in 2008 that provided $9.9 billion to help pay for the planning and construction of a statewide bullet-train system.
The Obama administration chipped in about $3.5 billion in the early 2010s for California’s project in economic stimulus and railroad development grants. The rest of the money so far has come from money raised in “cap and trade” auctions of air-pollution allowances to companies as part of the state’s greenhouse gas-reduction program.
But there’s another $4.2 billion from Proposition 1A that’s being held up in negotiations between Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has requested it to keep construction moving in the San Joaquin Valley, and state legislative leaders who suggest deferring installation of electric power systems in the Valley and instead using the money to improve transportation infrastructure in other parts of California.
“The fundamental disagreement appears to come down to the question of when to electrify the assets we are constructing,” Kelly said. “The authority proposes to electrify the system for true high-speed rail service as soon as possible along the corridor connecting the cities of the Central Valley.”
Kelly added that the approach “also acknowledges that we have a constrained budget – enough to get a high-speed rail corridor started in the Central Valley, but not yet enough to extend it to the Bay Area and Southern California.”
“For us, this is the first operating segment of electrified high-speed rail, but certainly not the last,” he said.
The shortfall between what’s available and what’s needed is between $11.1 billion and $12.5 billion – and that doesn’t include what it may eventually cost to realize the entire statewide system envisioned by Proposition 1A for high-speed trains to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles at speeds up to 220 mph.
Depending on the complexity of construction and uncertainty of such costs as buying property for right of way, tunneling through the Coast Range toward San Jose and the Tehachapi and San Gabriel mountain ranges toward Los Angeles, the costs for a San Francisco-to Los Angeles/Anaheim system range from a low of $72.3 billion to as much as $105.1 billion.
This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 5:56 PM.
