If you answered “California’s high speed rail line to nowhere” you win an evening with Nancy Pelosi!!

Okay. That was blatantly false. She’d never agree to that and I shouldn’t have teased you with even the possibility – get your hopes up and all.

But you were right! I hope that’s comfort enough in these hard times.

In 2008, California voted yes on a $9 billion bond authorization to build the nation’s first high-speed railway. The plan is to construct an electric train that will connect Los Angeles with the Central Valley and then San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes.

But 15 years later, there is not a single mile of track laid, and executives involved say there isn’t enough money to finish the project. The latest estimates from the California High-Speed Rail Authority suggest it will cost between $88 billion and $128 billion to complete the entire system from LA to San Francisco. Inflation and higher construction costs have contributed to the high price tag.

The project has spent $9.8 billion so far, according to Brian Kelly, CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

Let’s check in with the governor, who was San Francisco’s mayor when this all got started.

Gavin Newsom 2010: Well, finally, California is going to get it right with this new High Speed Rail.

High Speed Rail 2023: LoL, no… pic.twitter.com/qR1qxp9AOe

— BiBIP (@Biruta09843219) May 18, 2023

Ah. Still the same, effective leadership producing about the same results.

Meanwhile, they’re just burning through cash and hoping for a bailout between either the crumbs of Biden’s “infrastructure” bill (most of the rail money is going to Amtrack) or a federal separate money dump.

…Despite the funding challenges, progress has been made on the project. In California’s Central Valley, 119 miles are under construction. The project recently celebrated its 10,000th construction worker on the job. The infrastructure design work is complete, and 422 out of 500 miles have been environmentally cleared, which is a monumental task in California.

“When we finish just the environmental clearing process, that cost is about $1.3 billion,” Kelly said. “And that’s for no steel in the ground or no cement.“

Well, DERP, the environmental stuff is eating you out of house and home. Did you forget you’re attempting this in CA?

And those 119 miles of track they hope to lay and get to running trains on? Don’t make your reservation for any time soon.

In 2008, California approved plans for nearly 400 miles of high-speed rail that would connect L.A. and San Francisco by 2020.

Instead, it got 119 miles of track that might be usable by 2027 — raising the question: what impedes American infrastructure? ➡️ https://t.co/Wo8OhA0LqI pic.twitter.com/3Rnl0DUdsF

— Kite & Key Media (@kiteandkeymedia) May 14, 2023

This is not, repeat NOT the same as the federal plan to shoot a high speed line out to Las Vegas that was such a disaster. Now, there is a bipartisan push underway from California and Nevada congressional reps begging for bucks to resurrect that same CA to Vegas high-speed rail line and may they have no luck.

This Los Angeles to San Francisco plan was approved by the CA legislature in 2008, has been paid for mostly by CA and wasn’t too highly endorsed out of the gate. Go figure.

Not to mention that CA's "high-speed" rail project is NOT the one approved by voters, but the plan created by the California Legislature.

Here's one high-speed rail advocates assessment of the Legislature's plan. BTW, the Legislature never let voters approve their "plan." pic.twitter.com/C2caePBnTW

— Soquel by the Creek (@SoquelCreek) May 12, 2023

Why it wasn’t became apparent when they finally started moving earth. Problems began almost immediately.

…One of the most expensive parts of the California project is the tunneling section that will be required outside of Los Angeles, so construction started in 2015 in the middle first, in Fresno, California, since it is a cheaper section to build.

Kelly said the project got off to a rough start. “They got into construction before they were ready to get into construction,” he said. “The good news is most of that is in our rearview mirror. And as we go forward, we’re getting the sequencing and chronology of our work right, and I’m very confident about the future of this project.“

The rail authority said the goal is to have the section between Bakersfield and Merced operational between 2030 and 2033.

So the 2027 date for operational was optimistic by about 5 or 6 years. And mind you, they were starting with the “easy part” first – they still have to tunnel through the stuff north of LA, with zero idea of what they’re going to run into.

Oh, great.

It’s easy to be “confident about the future” when you’re 15 years in and not much has happened. Got it locked on now, do you?

Where have we heard this song before?

The grim news for the rail was already flooding in when a report was released in March that the authority had overshot secured funding by $10B.

When Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his scaled down blueprint for the California bullet train four years ago, he proposed building a 171-mile starter segment in the Central Valley that would begin operating in 2030 and cost $22.8 billion.

Today, the blueprint is fraying — costs now exceed future funding, an official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and the schedule to start to carry people is slipping. That’s raising fresh concerns about the future of the nation’s largest infrastructure project.

New cost figures issued in an update report from the California High-Speed Rail Authority show that the plan to build the 171-mile initial segment has shot up to a high of $35 billion, exceeding secured funding by $10 billion.

The cost of that partial system is now higher than the $33 billion estimate for the entire 500-mile Los Angeles to San Francisco system when voters approved a bond in 2008.

What’s worse, that full system cost is set at up to $128 billion in the update, leaving a total funding gap of more than $100 billion for politicians to ponder.

When you run your state construction projects the same way the governor runs the state, those budgets are bound to look about identical. Lo and behold, they do. Every one of them is in a hole they dug for themselves.

As for federal help, we’ve got a Republican congress and it sure doesn’t sound like the local guy is going to be asking his fellow representatives to write any checks to his district any time soon. And thank God.

…Bakersfield native and now House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has long called the project, which would serve his own district, a boondoggle.

“In no way, shape, or form should the federal government allocate another dollar to California’s inept high speed rail,” McCarthy said in a statement to CalMatters. “The California High Speed Rail Authority has missed countless timelines and deceived the public about costs which are exorbitantly higher than originally estimated.”

You GO, Kevin! Man, I am so liking the cut of his jib since he got the job.

This is going to be one of those “is it too big to fail” scenarios and CA sure seems to be the epicenter of those boondoggles lately, every last one self-inflicted.

And they still have to calm those people down about the reparations they’re not going to pay.

Popcorn, anyone?

Sorry, not sorry.