Shovel Ready” High Speed Rail? CA Is Ahead of the Game

Streetsblog » “Shovel Ready” High Speed Rail? CA Is Ahead of the Game

Shovel Ready” High Speed Rail? CA Is Ahead of the Game

by Damien Newton on June 4, 2009


Photo: Sacramento Bee

Yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden, met with governors from eight different states that are competing for High Speed Rail funding. Streetsblog's D.C. Correspondent wrote a story about the national implications of the meeting available at our New York site. While neither Schwarzenegger nor another representative from California was present, there was good news for California. From today's Times,

"The reason why California is looked at so closely -- it's been a priority of your governor, it's been a priority of your Legislature, they've talked about it, a lot of planning has been done," Biden said in a conference call with reporters.

The vice president said the administration wants "to get shovel-ready projects out the door as quickly as we can. . . . So California is in the game."

In other words, because California has been working on the San Francisco to San Diego High Speed Rail Corridor, and because voters put up funds for the project in the form of bond money; we have a leg up in applying for federal funds as the Obama Administration makes them available.

And let's be clear, it's not as though the entire corridor were "Shovel Ready" but there are two sets of track that the California High Speed Rail Authority says are ready to go. The first is local, as the state could connect Los Angeles to Anaheim at a cost of $3 billion. The second corridor would connect San Francisco to San Jose at somewhere between $4 billion and $5 billion.

Back when the federal stimulus was first passed, Ben Fried out of our New York office wrote a pretty brutal takedown of the final bill that I re-posted at the LA Streetsblog. Supporters of California High Speed Rail were upset for obvious reasons and I defended Fried's post in the comments section by saying.

But that so much of the negotition was done in Harry Reid's office (to the point that Pelosi actually pitched a fit about it according to Politico) and he's already talking about funding for the gamblin' train to Las Vegas, I am mighty sceptical that much, if any, of that money is going to end up being spent on the line we supported last fall. If it does, I'll do a mea culpa post and you can all "I told you so'd" me. I've certainly been willing to do them in the past.

Well, let's just say I'm not quite ready to eat crow just yet, but I got it marinating. In this case, the crow would taste awfully good.

2 Comments

Last comment by Andy K Leave a comment »

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Gary Kavanagh

Choo choo!! I've had my moments of doubt, but I had high hopes for this and it looks like CA may well become home to the first proper high speed rail system in the United States. Woo hoo!
June 4, 2009 at 10:31 am Link # 1
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Andy K

So, $8 billion for these first short segments, which leaves $32 billion for the rest of SJ to LA. Doesn't add up, does it? I know, these two segments are in urban areas, but even these cost seem unrealistic. At $5 billion, the SF to SJ segment is about $80 million per mile. Seems low - many bridges will need to be built, substations installed, etc, etc.

I'm all for improving our rail systems, however these unrealistic estimates do a real disservice. It makes it hard to make good decisions when estimates are so faulty.

Am I missing something?
June 4, 2009 at 11:11 am Link # 2