Two Former Governors Weigh In on California’s Bullet Train

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/california-bullet-train.html

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Maybe you haven’t thought much about California’s plan to build a high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco since you voted for (or against) the nearly $10 billion bond measure to get the project started in 2008.

Maybe you didn’t live in California at the time, or you were too young to understand the instinctive appeal of an electrified transportation system that would replace gas-guzzling slogs up Interstate 5 with bullet train rides that would whisk riders between cities at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.

If any of that is true for you, it will probably come as no surprise that turning that grand vision into a reality has been monumentally difficult. The price tag of the effort has ballooned, and the route has shifted amid political squabbling and legal challenges. The future of the project has become uncertain, even as construction continues in the Central Valley.

But now, as I reported this week, there’s also heightened urgency around the effort, as the United States struggles to seriously address climate change and to overhaul crumbling roads, bridges, tunnels and railways.

President Biden, in his State of the Union address this month, told Americans that the nation was embarking on an “infrastructure decade,” meant “to put us on the path to win the economic competition of the 21st century.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom, in his State of the State address not long after, said that California had “no peers” when it came to climate policy — but that the state still must decrease its dependence on fossil fuels and thus free itself from the “grasp of petro-dictators.” None of that can happen overnight, he said.

“We’ve learned we can’t solve big problems like climate change situationally, with short-term thinking,” he said.

Experts and supporters of high-speed rail told me that the technology, which has been used in countries around the world, fits the bill for such a sweeping change. The ambivalence around building high-speed rail, they said, tells us a lot about what seems to be an alarming inability to take on transformative projects in the United States, no matter how badly they’re needed.

Yonah Freemark, a researcher with the Urban Institute who has been following California’s high-speed rail project, put it this way: “The fact that California is the only place in the United States where high-speed rail is being built is not an indictment of California but of the United States.”

On its face, this is a money problem. The full line is now projected to cost $105 billion, and the state legislative analyst’s office said in a recent report that it’s unclear where a lot of that would come from.

But people who have been following California’s bullet train plan for a long time said that when it comes to big government projects, it’s ultimately a matter of political will.

That was a perspective shared by two of California’s top statesmen: Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who both championed the project while serving as governor.

Brown, a Democrat who has been governor twice, recalled riding Japan’s bullet train in the early 1960s, not long after it was built. As someone who has fond childhood memories of riding Southern Pacific Railroad’s Coast Daylight and Lark trains, he was intrigued.

During his first tenure as governor, Brown recalled, officials in the administration of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, suggested that moving high-powered weapons around on new train lines would make it more difficult for enemies to target them. But Brown said he had another thought: Use high-speed rail for passengers.

“That was 1979,” he said. Brown asked lawmakers to study the issue.

By the time he became governor for the second time in 2011, after the bond measure led by Schwarzenegger had passed, other countries, including France, Spain and China, had built thousands of miles of electrified high-speed rail lines.

Today, Brown said, there’s yet another factor at play.

“We are in the situation of an increasingly competitive relationship with China,” he said.

But Schwarzenegger said the project had gotten bogged down by political provincialism that was chipping away at a desperately needed common good.

“It needs a cheerleader,” he said. “It needs someone that really is overlooking the whole thing.”

He added that it’s frustrating to hear opponents of the project dismiss it because it won’t make money.

“You look at the world and very rarely is any system very profitable,” Schwarzenegger said. “When we build schools, we don’t look like, ‘How do we make a big buck out of this whole thing?’”

For more:

Read the full article about why California’s ambitious high-speed rail is at a crossroads.

Learn about the signing of the federal infrastructure law.

A groggy Senate approved making daylight saving time permanent. If the legislation were to pass the House and be signed by President Biden, there would be no more springing forward or falling back.

Privacy police: California is building a new state agency with a $10 million budget to regulate Google, Facebook and others like them.

Expanded breaks: The airline industry is against a California law that gives pilots and flight attendants who are based there more rest and meal breaks than they are guaranteed under federal regulations, The Associated Press reports.

Minor league baseball: Newly introduced state legislation would limit minor league contracts and allow those players to profit off major league rights, The Associated Press reports.

State of emergency: A bid by Republican state lawmakers to end a Covid-19 state of emergency was blocked on Tuesday, The Los Angeles Times reports.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Anti-Asian sentiment: Two-thirds of Asian Americans in Los Angeles are worried about being a victim of a racial attack, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Orange County elections: All three races for Orange County supervisor seats will be contested, The Orange County Register reports.

Fossil ID: A newly discovered saber-toothed catlike predator has been given the name Diegoaelurus, or “San Diego’s cat,” The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Soldier’s death: A 23-year-old soldier died last week at the Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin, The Associated Press reports.

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

Return of the tule fog: This winter, the Central Valley’s deadly ground fog returned. It had been as good as gone for years, The Los Angeles Times reports.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

Missed paychecks: Over 100 employees with the San Francisco Unified School District protested over missing or incorrect checks, SFist reports.

Officer assault: Bryan Schmidt, a former Elk Grove police officer, was found to be guilty of battery and assault after stomping on a man’s head, The Associated Press reports.

Slow-cooker black bean soup.

Today’s tip comes from M. Ronald G. Kirchem:

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We’ll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

As you all know, California has some of the world’s most beautiful and varied natural environments — from the jumbo rocks and Joshua trees in the desert, to the (sometimes) snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada, to the teeming, colorful tide pools of Monterey Bay.

Many of these areas are part of national parks or monuments. But there are also 279 California state parks, and this year, for the first time, Californians can celebrate them with a series of events and programs modeled after National Park Week, including a land acknowledgment day and a children’s career day.

You can learn more here about California State Parks Week, which is set to run from June 14 to 18.

Thanks for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: In shape (3 letters).

Soumya Karlamangla, Briana Scalia and Mariel Wamsley contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com.