“The entire planning process has been chaotic,” said Alexis, who says she voted for the rail bond measure. “We need to build a good process around this.”
Beyond that, the estimated cost of the rail network has tripled from earlier estimates, to nearly $100 billion. Planners are at a loss to say where they will get the bulk of the money needed to complete it. And the completion date for the 800-mile system has been pushed back from 2020 to 2033.
Federal high-speed rail investments
Meanwhile, a recent poll indicated that public sentiment in California has turned against the project.
Earlier this month, a key government review committee said the state should not release bonds to start building the railroad until the project is rethought — a decision that has helped throw the entire enterprise into limbo.
In a letter released earlier this month, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D), a supporter of high-speed rail, has called on Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to move “swiftly to address the high-speed rail project’s problems.”
She echoed six major areas cited by the peer review group that need to be rethought, including the need to invest initial funding into the state’s congested urban corridors.
Still, Brown seems committed to pushing ahead even as he makes adjustments on the fly. Earlier this month, he moved planning for high-speed rail into the state’s transportation agency, a decision aimed at better integrating transportation planning.
But others are urging the governor to slow down, even if it means busting a 2017 deadline for spending all of the stimulus money earmarked for the project.
“I feel like right now we are faced with two bad choices,” said state Sen. Joe Simitian, (D), who chairs a key subcommittee overseeing high-speed rail spending. “One bad choice is to kill the whole project. But the other is to say let’s spend $6.2 billion because we are being rushed into it because we could lose federal funding. What we have to do is take a deep breath, take a step back and re-evaluate the entire project. We don’t want to end up making a $100 billion mistake.”
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