Map of California with colored lines representing the three proposed phases of high-speed rail construction. Even if the stars align, though, and a restive legislature can be persuaded to release the necessary funds, the segment still might not start serving passengers until 2030. Instead, his office is focusing on a 172-mile segment connecting a handful of medium-sized cities in the flat agricultural Central Valley. The California project is still technically up and running, but it is so far behind schedule that it has yet to lay a single mile of track, despite 14 years of work and about $5bn spent.Ĭalifornia’s governor, Gavin Newsom, is no longer talking about the 500-mile stretch from LA to San Francisco, because the projected price tag has skyrocketed far out of reach. The Obama plan collapsed, falling victim to a combination of inexperience, mismanagement and furious opposition from several key Republican legislators and state governors. It was not long before the incoming Obama administration upped the ante, with a national plan for 8,600 miles (13,840 km) of high-speed rail lines, later increased to 12,000 miles (19,312 km), that would help kick-start a dormant economy and wean a highly mobile nation off the fossil fuels threatening to destroy the climate.įast-forward to the present, and the dream is all but dead. The project was to be the start of a new era of high-speed rail that would eventually stretch the full length of the west coast, from San Diego to Vancouver, across the desert to Las Vegas, and, eventually, all across the continental United States.Ĭalifornia voters that year approved the sale of $9bn in state bonds, on the understanding that the LA to San Francisco line would be up and running by 2020.
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