Cost of California’s high-speed rail project increases by $5 billion

By KATHLEEN RONAYNE | Related press

SACRAMENTO – Another $5 billion has been added to the cost of California’s ambitious but long-delayed high-speed rail line, estimates released Tuesday suggest $105 billion could be lost to complete the route from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

The figures have been included in the California High Speed ​​Rail Authority latest biennial business plan. The increase was in part due to commitments to minimize community disruptions, such as moving ships away from Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in the Central Valley and tunneling near Burbank airport. project official said.

The project’s price has risen steadily since voters first approved nearly $10 billion in bond money for it in 2008, when the total cost was pegged at $40 billion. In the years since, costs have continued to soar amid struggles to obtain needed land and other delays. Today, the railway administration is short of a lot of the money they need to complete the entire project.

The first part of the line will run through the Central Valley; Construction is underway on a 119-mile stretch of the track, where the trains will be tested for the first time before the track is extended to carry passengers from Merced to Bakersfield. According to the business plan, no track has been built yet, but authorities have already acquired 90% of the land they need for the first segment and more than half of the entire 500-mile (804 km) route now. The environment has been cleaned up, according to the business plan.

CEO Brian Kelly said on Tuesday that the possibility of getting a fresh round of cash from the federal government would put the project on a stronger path. California should be in a good position to compete for $6 billion in subsidies under the federal infrastructure bill that Congress passed last year, he said.

Under the Obama administration, California won about $3.5 billion for the project, after which former Republican President Donald Trump recovered about $1 billion of that. It was returned by the Biden administration.

Receiving billions of additional federal dollars would allow the project’s first operational route to be double-track rather than single-track and help the project move forward in design and other work, Kelly said.

“We just thought this was a great opportunity to really push the project forward,” he said.

Republican Congressman Jim Patterson of Fresno, a longtime critic of the project the county will run through, was unimpressed by the business plan hoping to get more federal money to build the dual track.

“Given the embarrassing failures with which this project has succeeded, I would be surprised if the federal government decided to throw more money at it,” Patterson said in a statement.

As the project awaits additional funding from the Biden administration, the railroad is also struggling to get money from the state. Last year, the Legislature did not agree to Governor Gavin Newsom’s budget request to release the remaining $4.2 billion in voter-approved bond funds for the project. Democratic leaders in the state congress were hesitant to release the money due to skepticism about the project’s overall approach and lack of sustained funding.

Last fall, Speaker of Congress Anthony Rendon and Representative Laura Friedman asked the rail government to delay its plan to electrify the first leg of the track. Neither of them responded to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Newsom, a Democrat, proposed freeing up money again in his January budget proposal as part of a transportation package that includes billions of dollars for rail and local transportation projects. direction.

Newsom spokesman Daniel Lopez said in a statement: “While the administration is disappointed that the shipping package was not completed last year, we continue to move forward and are working to achieve it. funded in this year’s budget.

In addition to bond money and federal dollars, the rail project is funded by revenue from California’s quota and trade program, which requires polluters to purchase carbon emissions permits.