Leaving high-speed rail segment unfinished would be an insult to Fresno, Valley
Gov. Gavin Newsom and high-ranking lawmakers are set to renew their battle over California’s bullet train — with Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley set up to be the fall guys.
Newsom’s proposed budget includes $4.2 billion for high-speed rail, which is the final chunk of the $9.95 billion bond approved by voters in 2008. Newsom tried last year as well, only to be rebuffed by powerful legislators (and fellow Democrats) from Los Angeles who’ve started eyeing some of that money for their own transportation projects.
If the stalemate continues much longer, the beleaguered project will face even more construction delays as well as the layoffs of workers, most of them Valley residents, currently building the 119-mile segment from Bakersfield to Merced.
And if it continues indefinitely, leaving Fresno and the Valley with little besides a few scattered concrete testaments to government incompetence and waste, that would be the greatest insult of all.
An insult to downtown Fresno and especially Chinatown, which has been strangled by street closures. An insult to all those businesses along the high-speed rail corridor made to relocate. An insult to every farmer who had their property carved up.
While the 2022 reality has fallen far short of the original dream — and by that I mean connecting Fresno and the Valley to California’s major population centers (and their high-paying jobs) by bullet trains — abandoning the project at this stage would be an even greater fiasco.
Newsom sounded resigned to do just that during his first State of the State speech, only to reverse course and vow his support for completing the San Joaquin Valley section.
The governor deserves credit for staying in the fight. But compared to Jerry Brown, he’s more a high-speed rail caretaker than champion.
Newsom clearly doesn’t want to be remembered as the guy who yanked the emergency brake. So he lets the bullet train limp along, leaving the tough (and even more expensive) decisions over extending the line to the Bay Area, Los Angeles and Sacramento to his successor.
Not exactly the bold actions of a governor nearly certain to win another four years in office.
Tracks must be electrified
Still, if Newsom caves now and allows Southern California lawmakers such as Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, chair of the Transportation Committee and a lead funding negotiator, to start siphoning off money set aside for high-speed rail, that would only whet the appetite.
The way I understand it, the High Speed Rail Authority needs the $4.2 billion in order to secure long-term contracts for electrifying the tracks between Merced and Bakersfield. Lawmakers want to withhold some of that money and put off the decision over electrifying the tracks.
This is a critical juncture because without electrified tracks we’d lose all the environmental benefits of high-speed rail and be left with a passenger train system that moves slightly faster than the speed of Amtrak.
Besides being nowhere close to what voters intended, such an about-face would also compromise the project’s ability to secure future federal funding. Might as well read its last rites and start shoveling dirt.
Once full of hope and optimism, I’ve since started to doubt whether high-speed rail will ever be completed as originally envisioned. Having such as grand dream pared down to fast trains between Merced and Bakersfield is certainly a letdown.
But cutting bait now, leaving Fresno with useless viaducts and before much-needed grade separations are built to relieve our freight train-blocked streets, would be an even larger insult.
This column has been updated to correct a wrong amount for what Newsom has budgeted.
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
