California Voters Approve $10 Billion Bond for Bullet Trains
November 6th, 2008This seems like a pretty good project… Better a few decades late than never, eh?
But if the state is hardly able to obtain financing for its current debt, how will it pull this thing off?
Via: AP:
California voters are green-lighting the nation’s most ambitious high-speed rail system, approving a nearly $10 billion bond to put speeding bullet trains capable of topping 200 mph between the state’s major metropolitan areas.
The measure, which passed with 52 percent support Tuesday, will fund the first phase of what is projected to be a $45 billion, 800-mile project built with state, federal, local and private money.
Backers sold the proposal as an innovative alternative to soaring airfares and gas prices. In the closing weeks of the campaign, they touted estimates that it would create nearly 160,000 construction-related jobs and 450,000 permanent jobs.
“In our state, transportation is always a big issue,” said Mark Baldassare, president of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California. “A lot of people have a sense that maybe that (bullet train) is something I can use at some point. It’s something they can relate to.”
The first phase of the rail line would link Anaheim, Los Angeles, Fresno and San Francisco. Planners eventually want to include Sacramento, San Diego and Oakland.
The $9.9 billion proposition includes $9 billion for bullet trains and $950 million for conventional commuter and intercity rail, including trains to connect travelers with the high-speed system.
“Californians decided to reduce our oil dependence, to build alternatives to traffic and long airport lines, and to help solve global warming. Californians were also voting to boost the economy,” said Emily Rusch of the California Public Interest Research Group.
High-speed rail lines are well established in Europe and Japan, but not the United States. Amtrak’s Acela Express, linking Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., is the only U.S. rail line that tops the 125 mph considered “high speed” by international standards, and even that line averages far slower over the course of its full run.
California’s plan still needs support from federal and local governments and private investments. Supporters say that with enough money, the first trains could be running in six years and the entire system could be completed by 2020.
Opponents also fear the measure might not pay for itself and require ongoing subsidies. An environmental group, meanwhile, has sued over the proposed route from the Central Valley to the San Francisco Bay area.
California’s effort has been 14 years in development, since it was first recommended by a commission in 1994.
This is an awesome thing the voters in CA approved. I dunno how they are going to finance it, but shiite. If you’ve ever seen “How They Killed the Electric Car,’ well, folks who saw a way to make money off of the gasoline engine killed not only the electric car, but the trolleys and the trains that used to exist in California.
Maybe instead of GM asking for money to continue its existence, it should pay back all the money and then some that they spent to destroy any semblance of a public transportation system.
Hey that’s a two-fer. If GM makes reparations for the money they have spent to destroy public transit and builds this train like yesterday, maybe they deserve a taxpayer subsidy and deserve to exist in future.
REPARATION is key.
Unfortunately I don’t think this really means much. Voters in my home state of Florida approved a similar measure 8 years ago. The state government basically refused to fund it and launched a campaign to kill it, which they eventually succeeded in. I chalk it up to another example of how centralized government doesn’t work.