California announced a plan on Monday to connect the Brightline High Speed Rail line, currently under construction from Las Vegas to LA, to San Francisco via a new high-speed rail it proposes in the Mojave Desert. But that’s only if a long-delayed bullet train from the City of Angels to the City by the Bay ever gets built — and that’s a big if.
On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom hammered a symbolic spike into the ground in Kern County, signaling the start of construction on the first segment of the California High-Speed Rail project (CAHSR). This publicly funded system, being developed by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, would cut the ground transportation time from LA to San Francisco from 6-7 hours to 3.
Also on Monday, California officials said its train, which will terminate at LA’s Union Station, will make a stop in Palmdale. That’s so it can connect to another high-speed rail line it plans to build. Called the High Desert Corridor, this one will zoom CAHSR riders 54 miles east to a stop on the privately funded Brightline West.
This connection is not only good news for Vegas visitors headed home to San Francisco, but also to downtown LA. Exiting the Brightline at its High Desert Corridor station, then bulleting west to the CAHSR train could cut up to an hour off the travel time to Union Station, since commuting there via light rail from Rancho Cucamonga is likely to be slow-going.
Train in Vain?
Don’t get too excited, though. Though Gov. Newsom says to expect an up-and-running CAHSR by 2033, experience says otherwise.
Opposition to the 463-mile CAHSR has delayed and jeopardized the project for decades. And it’s now stronger than ever since Republicans took control of Congress on Jan. 3. In fact, on Monday, Rep. Kevin Kiley, a Republican, introduced legislation to kill federal funding for what he called the “failed” high-speed rail project.
“California’s high-speed rail project has failed because of political incompetence, and there is no plausible scenario where the cost to federal or state taxpayers can be justified,” Kiley said in a news release promoting the bill.
Currently, the CAHSR is expected to cost $128 billion (including the cost of the High Desert Corridor). That’s almost quadruple the $33 billion price tag promised when it was originally proposed in 2008.
However, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the new plan to link three rail lines “would allow Newsom to leverage the infrastructure California has built with investments that have already been made in other projects.”
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