HOTLINE readers know that the California high-speed train that was supposed to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco won’t reach either city, will not be high-speed, AND will cost at least triple the original forecast. Yet Biden keeps touting bullet trains and just threw another $3 billion at this “train to nowhere,” as our CTUP senior fellow Wendell Cox, calls it in his must-read WSJ article today. Here’s a brief excerpt.
It didn’t get a lot of attention, but last month the White House awarded $3.1 billion to the California High-Speed Rail project. This was supposed to be a bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. Instead, its costs keep rising even as the state scales back the plan. Since 2008, when California voters authorized a $10 billion bond issue for the train, they’ve been sold a bill of goods…
In legislative testimony, Louis S. Thompson, chairman of the Peer Review Committee, put the Phase I funding gap at $93 billion to $103 billion….
Meanwhile, Florida has a new rail system up and running between Orlando and Miami, with all private financing. Florida also has a state budget surplus.
