Fewer still on board with bullet train Fewer still on board with bullet train

December 11, 2011 9:30 AM

The Orange County Register

Last week was a bad week for California's touted high-speed rail project. That made it a good week for Californians, particularly for taxpayers.

The best news was a new Field Poll that showed the public has wised up to the boondoggle foisted upon them by a slick public-relations campaign and self-interested types, who want to profit no matter the cost to taxpayers.

Sixty-four percent of those surveyed said they want an opportunity to vote again on the $9.9 billion in bonds voters approved for the project three years ago. Even more gratifying was the fact that 59 percent said they would vote "no" the next time; 31 percent said they would vote "yes."

We have called for undoing the damage set in motion with the 2008 vote ever since it passed with a 52 percent favorable vote. As the proposed 800-mile route to tie together Southern and Northern California ballooned in cost, and its completion date was extended 14 years, public opposition has grown.

Voters and taxpayers have seen the project once estimated to cost $35 billion and to be completed by 2020 inflate to almost three times the original price and to take more than twice as long as promised. And that's if we believe the High-Speed Rail Authority's latest estimates. It's anyone's guess how much will be added to the current estimate of $98.5 billion or how many more years will be tacked on to the present 2034 estimated completion date.

There's no reason to saddle Californians with $1 billion a year burden, which is about the cost to pay off those bonds alone, if they all are sold. The Legislature should refuse to authorize bond sales. There's less reason to beg Washington for more money to backfill what now approaches a $90 billion shortfall.

Also last week there was good news out of Washington, D.C., where Republican lawmakers bashed the Obama administration's handling of $10.5 billion in grants doled out around the country, rather than concentrating the money in the congested northeastern corridor, where rail improvements make more sense.

House Railroads Subcommittee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said the administration should have funneled a majority of federal funds into one major project "to do it right," and serve as a showcase for other projects to come. Clearly, that one place wouldn't be California, where only $9.9 billion in state funding is assured, only $3 billion in federal funding has been allocated conditionally, and zero private financing has emerged.

The Legislature should put this matter back on the ballot, where voters assuredly would kill it.