(The Center Square) — The California High-Speed Rail Authority has responded to the Federal Rail Authority’s plan to terminate $4 billion in federal funding for the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco high speed rail project.
Its response elaborates on its plans for continuing initial work on a 119-mile segment between Madera, which has a population of nearly 70,000, and Poplar Avenue in Kern County, which is near Shafter, a small city of just over 20,000 residents northwest of Bakersfield.
This segment is being expanded into the 171-mile “early operating segment” that will carry passengers all the way between Bakersfield and Merced by 2033.
According to CHSRA, the segment will cost between $32.7 billion to $36.3 billion, but is on track to be completed on time. The project has received enough re-authorized funding from California’s cap-and-trade program, which charges companies for carbon dioxide emissions, to cover its $6.5 billion shortfall by providing $1 billion per year.
It’s unclear whether the full, Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line will be able to offer costs and travel times that are competitive with air travel, which could complicate CAHSRA’s ongoing efforts to secure private financing for the project via public-private partnerships.
CHSRA also pushed back on federal claims that its ridership projections were overstated.
“FRA notes that CHSRA’s Phase I projection of annual riders exceeds Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor ridership and compares it to the number of Bay Area – Los Angeles airline passengers,” wrote CHSRA. “Those comparisons are inapt because California high speed trains will travel at over 200 mph and thus reach their destinations in far less time than the Northeast corridor’s average speed of well under 100 mph, and the trains will serve many more combinations of destinations than a Bay Area–Los Angeles trip.”
However, as earlier analysis from the Reason Foundation has found, CHSRA’s ridership projections assume Californians would use high speed rail at a higher rate than the Japanese use shinkansen, or the French use TGV.
CHRSA also responded to the FRA’s claims that CHRSA’s Office of the Inspector General said the early operating segment’s projected, and possibly optimistic, two million annual riders on the Bakersfield-Merced segment would not cover operating costs. Rather than dispute the claim, CHSRA said the OIG had never made such a claim.
Should the federal government withdraw $4 billion in funding, it’s unclear how money will be secured to fill in the gap. The state has narrowly avoided budget deficits through one-time measures and some cuts, and has, as reported by the state-funded Legislative Analyst’s Office “no capacity for new commitments.”
